RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX in tlje 0f A TROGLODYTE Kal TOV fTTi^fipovvra \vfiv re Kai dvdyfiv, ei TTW? ev Tats \aftdv, as always, knowledge was power, and to survive, man had to understand the world he lived in. And so the first steps in knowledge were directly necessitated by external pressure, and the primitive theory of life was the first reaction of thought upon its environment. And as such it contained, in an undifferentiated whole, the germs of activities that have since drifted far apart. Animism is the first theory of the world, and out of it have differentiated science, philosophy, and reli- gion. The single basis of all three was the "anthro- pomorphic " assumption that all things were to be interpreted on the analogy of what man conceived to be his own nature, and hence supposed that volit- ion was the cause of motion, and that all events were to be ascribed to the action of personal spirits, with wills as capricious as man's own. 6. This theory was the basis of religion, in PRIMITIVE ANIMISM. I I that men feared and attempted to propitiate the spirits that conducted the operations of nature, al- though Animism can hardly yet be called a religion. It is not until some subordination is introduced into the spiritual chaos, which corresponded to the mater- ial chaos in the thought of early man, that real religion is evolved. But as the underlying simil- arity in the operations of nature came to be per- ceived, the numberless spirits aggregated into gods, and a god of fire presiding over the whole depart- ment, took the place of individual fire-spirits acting every time a fire burned. Thus Animism passes into Polytheisrrij and, as the consciousness of the uniformity of nature grows, into Monotheism, unless the derivative law of causation so obscures the personal volition from which it sprang as to make personal agency seem impossible, when there takes place a direct transition into Pantheism. 7. Animism is also the origin of philosophy, for the volitional theory of causation is also a theory of the ultimate truth about the world. 8. It is also the origin of science, for the spirits are also the efficient causes of phenomena, and the physical changes of the world are explained by their volitions. Thus^ while religion was rapidly differ- entiated from philosophy and science by the growth of an emotional factor, passing through fear and propitiation into worship, philosophy and science remained united much longer. The theories of the physical and of the metaphysical, the working theories of the actual appearances of the environ- ment, and of its ultimate nature, remained identical or closely connected. It is only in comparatively recent times that the independent- growth of the physical sciences, the accumulation of facts, the 1 2 INTRODUCTORY. validity of which could not be affected by any meta- physical interpretation that might be applied to them, together with the mutual contradictions of philosophic theories, has produced the semblance of their complete separation, and suggested the idea that science and metaphysics are two inde- pendent and mutually irrelevant branches of know- ledge. But should we not rather cherish the hope of a final reconciliation of these three speculative activities, of such a harmony of all the elements of thought as is worthy of their common parentage, and as will enable all in the end to subserve in unison to the attainment of the perfect life ? May not the appearances of the world be connected with its ultimate nature, i.e., science with meta- physics, and may not the true religion be but the emotional aspect of the true philosophy ? To such a consummation these discussions may perhaps in some measure pave the way ; they may contribute some material to bridge the Sea of Doubt, to mark a track across the Slough of De- spond, and thus to smooth the rough paths of virtue ; nor need we be dissatisfied if our successors trample under foot the stepping-stones we have collected, and thus at length attain the promised goal. 9. We have seen hitherto that no serious de- fence of the positivist attitude could be made on the ground of its desirability. It could not seriously be maintained that it was better in itself for us not to know anything beyond our present environment. It turns out to be impossible to separate the "posit- ive knowledge" of science from its metaphysical presuppositions; it was an undertaking justified neither by their common origin nor by the essential POSITIVISM IMPRACTICABLE. 13 solidarity of knowledge. For in the subsequent course of its development knowledge did not belie its origin. There has been no age when the Sphinx could be evaded, when the answers to her riddles were not of transcendent importance to life. To escape these questions proves neither possible, nor perhaps, right. For if there is any meaning at all in life, the philosophic impulse also cannot be devoid of its significance, nay, of a significance proportionate to its antiquity, its persistence, and its vital import- ance. To the question, therefore, of Positivism Why should you seek to know ? we may give the answer Because we must and ought. It is futile to bid us confine ourselves to this present world of phen- omena, and to assure us that the question as to the nature of God and of our future need not be raised. The world of phenomena, the sphere of positive science, is not self-supporting, self-sufficing, and self- explaining, it points beyond itself to a reality which underlies it, back to a past from which it is de- scended, and forward to a future it foreshadows. Man can not understand his own nature and that of his existing environment, the twofold aspect of a single fact, except by a reference to their previous and prospective conditions. Life cannot be lived now except in connexion with its past and future. And this, we shall see, is literally true, since the consistent attempt to take the world as it is, to con- fine ourselves to the given, to exclude all ulterior inquiries, inevitably leads to pessimism, i.e., to the utter negation of life. Positivism, therefore, i.e., the assertion that philo- sophy is unnecessary and useless, cannot maintain its position: it must either vanish or transform itself. J 4 INTRODUCTORY. It is merely the first stage in negation, and negation finds no rest until it has sunk to the lowest depth. And Positivism, especially, finds it very easy to pass into Agnosticism, with which it is indeed frequently combined. 10. Granted, it may be said, that a knowledge of God and of a future life would be of all things the most desirable, of all knowledge the most pre- cious, and that the search for it is irresistibly sug- gested by the constitution of things, it does not follow that it is also possible. It was, perhaps, a well-meant deception to maintain that philosophy was not needed, intended to console men for the fact that it is impossible. The rejection of meta- physics was put on the wrong ground : the assertion that they did not exist should have been supple- mented by the proof that they could not exist. The consoling sophism that philosophy is a matter of indifference having been falsified by the concern men display about it, and the simple assertion that we do not know having proved insufficient to repress the pertinacious questionings of the philosopher, it is now time to assert that we can not know, and to exhibit the illusoriness of metaphysics and the im- possibility of answering the ultimate questions of philosophy. This is the task which Agnosticism sets itself to prove, and we shall consider its achieve- ments in the next chapter. It will then appear that it succeeds only by suggesting a doubt of the com- petence of human knowledge, which cannot be con- fined to the sphere in which it started. It calls up Scepticism from the abyss of negation, and is ab- sorbed by a greater and more powerful spirit of evil. Scepticism, in its turn, can establish its case only by allying itself with Pessimism, and in Pessimism the POSITIVISM PASSES INTO AGNOSTICISM. 15 last disguise is thrown off, and Chaos once more swallows up the Cosmos. The second Book will be concerned with the rebirth and regeneration of the world by means of metaphysics, and the elaboration of the method of philosophy ; the third will apply the principles laid down to the solution of the problems of philosophy. CHAPTER II. AGNOSTICISM. \ i. Under the head of Agnosticism may be included all doctrines concerning the inherent insolubleness of certain questions, or inherent limitations or de- fects of the human mind, which, precluding from the knowledge of certain departments of existence, leave something unknowable beyond the barriers of possible knowledge. And where agnostic assertions are not made in the light-hearted contempt of ignorance, where an ignoramus is not the real basis of the cry of ignor- abimus, we may distinguish two species of rational Agnosticism. And looking at the character of the philosophies which have upheld them, we may call these two forms of Agnosticism the scientific and the epistemological. For though their general tend- ency is the same, there is a slight difference in the method of their argumentation. Scientific Agnost- icism infers a region of the unknowable from the indefinite and seemingly infinite expansion of know- ledge : epistemo logical Agnosticism is based rather on a consideration of the relativity of knowledge to the knowing faculty, and suggests that the limits of objects do not correspond to the limits of our knowledge of them. As types of these two agnost- icisms we may take Mr. Herbert Spencer and Kant; Mr. Spencer as the representative' of scient- ITS TWO KINDS. IJ ific and Kant of epistemological Agnosticism. And since somewhat different objections apply to each, it will be well to consider first the arguments against Agnosticism generally, before dealing with the special pleas of its chief exponents. And thus the exposure of the flaws involved in all forms of Agnosticism will finally drive it to seek refuge with Scepticism. 2. The first objection which may be made to every form of Agnosticism is, that it is impossible on practical grounds. It supposes that we can take up a position of suspense of judgment, based on a theoretical recognition of their unknowableness, with regard to the great principles which underlie the practical life, and need neither affirm nor deny them in action. This is really a re-assertion of the positivist plea that they were immaterial to practice, without the excuse positivism had in its ignorance of their importance. But such suspense of judg- ment is quite impossible. If we were purely think- ing beings, it would obviously be the right attitude towards matters not known. But. as we have also to act, and as action requires practical certainty, we must make up our minds in one way or the other, and our acts must belie the professions of our theory. No agnostic can live for five minutes without indulging in acts involving a belief or dis- belief in some of the unknowables he had solemnly forsworn. Questions such as the existence of God and the future of the soul cannot be treated as practically indifferent ; and the life, if not the theory, of the agnostic must practically answer them in some way or other. Just as men arrange their lives differently according as they believe them- selves to have one year more to live or fifty, ac- 1 8 AGNOSTICISM. cording as they possess a powerful patron or are thrown on their own resources, so life must be ordered either on the assumption or on the neglect of its indefinite prolongation and divine care. And the agnostic writers themselves afford this practical contradiction to their theories, though their idiosyncrasies lead them to adopt different sides of the alternative. Thus Mr. Spencer's Agnosticism practically denies the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, in spite of all his theoretical protests that he has merely referred them to the Unknowable. Kant, on the other hand, in a manner which would be comical, if it were not concerned with such serious issues, and which has brought upon him much ridicule, deliberately refutes his theor- etical agnosticism. He avowedly rehabilitates, by means of the Practical Reason, the dogmas he had invalidated by the Theoretic Reason. Hence he avows his personal belief in a God whose existence he had shown to be indemonstrable, in a future life for which he had asserted there could be no evidence, and in a freedom which he had admitted to contradict all causation in Time. The one thought which seems never to have suggested itself to him is, that the Power which was capable of playing such pranks upon its creatures, capable of devising a Theoretic Reason, destined by the es- sential constitution of its nature to irreconcilable conflict with the practical necessities of life, was hardly a fit object of our reverence or trust. The fact is, that this demand for an impossible suspense of judgment is based upon a confusion of scientific and philosophic certainty. In science, certainty = great probability, and impossibility = an off chance ; and hence in pure (as opposed to ab- CERTAINTY REQUIRED FOR ACTION. 19 stract 1 or applied) science certainty is neither fre- quent nor necessary. But in philosophy, which is the science of life, we require from our theory practical certainty in addition to its theoretic probab- ility, and as we must act, we must act often on very slight probabilities. While science, therefore, must remain conscious of all sorts of improbable and barely possible theories, seeing that they may suggest fruitful experiments and so enlarge the bounds of knowledge, philosophy, when it has once decided on the right solution, must sternly and rigorously put aside all its rivals, even though its choice was originally arrived at by a very slender preponderance. It must act and act without waver- ing and without hesitation, as soon as its initial inquiry has been concluded, nor allow itself to be easily dismayed by difficulties or deterred from following its principles to their consistent conclus- ions. Philosophy, at all events, cannot serve both God and Mammon. Any inconsistency and any hesitation is bound to be false, whatever theory of life is true. Such a thing, therefore, as a provisional theory of life would be absurd. How different is the course of merely theoretic science : upon all disputable points, it may, nay must, keep any number of provisional hypotheses before its eyes, and must be slow to decide in favour of one or the other ; it must be for ever doubting and testing, and, if con- venient, may even adopt conflicting explanations in different branches of its inquiries, and trust to fresh 1 Such as e.g. geometry. As its subject-matter is ideal Space and not the Real at all, all its assertions must be certain and necessary. But the necessity of mathematics is simply an ex- ample of the necessity possessed by all thought as thought [cf. ch. iii. 15]. 20 AGNOSTICISM. discovery to resolve the contradictions of its work- ing hypotheses. The patient temper which does not reject the remotest possibility that may throw light upon a subject, which, as in Darwin's case, is not ashamed to try absurd experiments which it is ashamed to record, is that which has led to great discovery. The mental attitude in short required in scientific research, is the very opposite to that required in a theory of life ; and in philosophy there is no room for the scientific suspense of judgment. From this point of view, then, Agnosticism is simply a misconception of the limits of science and philosophy, and its practical impossibility is fatal to its claims to be a theory of Life. 3. But it is also open to grave theoretic ob- jection. It involves in every case an argument from the known to the unknowable. For unless the assumption of the unknowable is purely gratuitous, and so refutes itself, there must be something in the constitution of the known to lead us to infer an unknowable. But such an inference from the known to the unknowable is a contradict- ion. For that very inference creates a bond be- tween the known and the unknowable, and to this extent renders the unknowable knowable. If we can know nothing else about the unknowable, we can at least know that it is the cause of the known. At the very least, the known is its manifestation, the " phenomenon " is the appearance of the " Noiimenon." Thus the connection between the known and the unknowable is in the same breath both asserted and denied. The primary statement of Agnosticism explicitly asserts, but implicitly denies, the imposs- ITS SELF-CONTRADICTION. 21 ibility of a transition from the known to the unknow- able. It is the vagary of an insane logic which from its very nature refutes itself. It is as imposs- ible to credit its initial assertion as it was to believe the Hibernian who asserted that he was dead. If, therefore, the assertion alone of the unknowable implies that it is not wholly unknowable, what busi- ness have we to call it the unknowable ? But this is not all. All reasoning that does not confine itself to an analysis of the logical necessities of our thought, must be based upon some real evid- ence, must have some ground' from which it draws its conclusions. But if so, that evidence must have a determinate character, which must affect its con- clusions, and which may, if we choose, appear in them. The inference as to the existence of a thing may often be so much the most important as to be the only one we care to derive from our evidence, but in itself it says least. An existential judgment cannot be made unless we have grounds for assert- ing very much more than bare existence. Either we have no grounds for asserting the existence of a thing at all, or we have grounds for asserting a certain kind of existence, an existence of a deter- minate character. It follows from these general principles of reasoning, that, in this case also, the evidence on the strength of which we inferred the existence of an unknowable beyond the known, can never justify an inference merely to the bare exist- ence of the unknowable. That inference must to some extent reveal the nature of the unknowable ; it must present us with some hints of its attributes or qualities ; the character of the unknowable must to some extent appear in its action. And so the paradoxical result ensues, that we really find our- 22 AGNOSTICISM. selves in possession of a good deal of knowledge about the unknowable. Indeed it has been plaus- ibly remarked, that, in the course of Mr. Spencer's philosophy, we are afforded far more information about the Unknowable than the combined efforts of revelation and theology have yet given us concern- ing God. 1 4. And there is no way by which Agnosticism can escape its fundamental contradiction. Either the nature of the known does not justify the infer- ence to an unknowable beyond, or, if it does, the unknowable ipso facto becomes knowable. All that any reasoning can ever prove is the unknown ; but no valid process of thought will carry us from the unknown to the unknowable. Agnosticism has here mistaken the unknown for the unknowable, and imagined that because the known could suggest the unknown, it could also suggest an unknowable beyond itself. But this is a paralogism. The known can sug- gest the unknown, and there is nothing extraord- inary in the existence of the latter, because know- ledge is fragmentary, and reality points to realities beyond it : we have problems that are not solved, and facts that are not independent. But unsolved problems are not on that account insoluble, nor are unknown facts unknowable. Science may become conscious of something beyond the known, because 1 The Unknowable has a high character in Mr. Spencer's philosophy. It is orderly and considerate in its habits, and always " conserves " the same amount of its various " manifesta- tions" in the world. This is all the more estimable, as if it did not do this, if e.g. it suddenly took to manifesting itself as mind, instead of as matter, or vice versa, it might very easily make knowledge impossible. NO EVIDENCE FOR THE UNKNOWABLE. 23 the facts suggest it, but they can never suggest that it should be unknowable. For the fact that the unknown persists in spite of the advance of knowledge is insufficient to prove it unknowable ; it is a phenomenon which must persist until knowledge is completed and the un- known is exhausted. Nor can we lay serious stress upon Mr. Spencer's argument that the circle of " surrounding nescience " grows with every advance of science. Not only is the truth of this statement doubtful, but its importance is slight. For a finite unknown can never grow into an infinite unknow- able, and even its growth is due only to the mis- taken practice of explaining the more known by means of the less known. If we work down the pyramid of knowledge, and regard the lower know- ledge as the deeper, we shall necessarily find that the lower layers are more extensive. 5. But there is no real warrant for the assert- ion that either our thought or its objects display an inherent necessity to plunge into an infinite process, the only plea which could to some extent excuse Agnosticism. There is no infinite process implied in the exist- ence of things, for existence is the highest category of the Real, and a thing cannot be more than a fact. Prima facie, therefore, there is no need to go beyond the fact ; a harmonious fact is as final to knowledge as it is to action. Its existence needs no explanation. If, therefore, a fact is asserted to be inharmonious or incongruous, the burden of proof lies with those who are not satisfied with things as they find them, and the unknown and un- satisfactory element has to be demonstrated in each case. And in an imperfectly-evolved world such 24 AGNOSTICISM. thought-provoking facts must be common, but they will not justify the assumption of an essentially un- knowable element not unless the ideal of complete adaptation, of a completely congruous system of facts be renounced as an illusion. Neither is an unknowable infinity latent in thought. Our search for explanation does not go on to infinity on the contrary, an infinite regress of reasons is no reason at all but only until we reach some really or apparently self-evident principle. If therefore our principles were always self-evident, and our facts always harmonious, there would be nothing to suggest a mystery beyond the actual, either of knowledge or of life, no hint of an un- known, and still less of an unknowable, working behind the veil. If a self-evident certainty of knowledge and a self-sufficing harmony of life be the ideal of our theoretic and practical activities, it is clear that they have no sympathy with a restless and endless striving after the infinite. The infinite region of the unknowable, which is supposed to border knowledge, is nothing, and can gain no support from the fact that our knowledge is, like all things, limited. For as we shall see [ 7], a limit does not imply anything beyond it, and the infinite is only a negation, the ideal limit of the finite [cf. ch. ix. 3], Hence we may console our- selves with the reflection that even if a real limit to knowledge existed, our thought could never dis- cover its reality. It would always regard it as an ideal limit, not as something beyond the known, but as the illusion of the self-transcendence of knowledge. 6. It has been shown then that the assertion of any unknowable is self-contradictory, and that COLLAPSE OF THE UNKNOWABLE. 25 knowledge, no matter what its difficulties may be, can never afford any positive ground for the as- sumption of an unknowable. But if agnostics per- sist in their assertions as a matter of faith, without having any positive basis of evidence, we may request them at least to make their theory consist- ent. If they gratuitously assume an unknowable, they must at least purify their assumption from an illusory reference to reality. If any connection with the known degrades the unknowable into the known, that link must be broken. The agnostics must pass over for good into the region of the unknowable and unthinkable, and burn their boats. They must make the separation between the unknowable and our real world complete, and carry it out consist- ently. They must no longer be allowed to base anything upon the unknowable, to make it the ground of anything actual, the cause of anything real, the reason of anything rational. They must no longer be allowed to decorate their first principle with an initial capital, for to spell it with U, is to liken it to reality in the known world, to attribute existence to it, to make an adjectival negation of knowledge into a substantive fact ; in a word, to hypostasize it. They must be prevented from say- ing even that the unknowable exists, for existence also is a predicate of the known world. Rigorously, the only statement they can be permitted to make is, that it is unknowable, and has no connection with the known. But this proposition would suggest nothing to our minds, just as nothing can validly suggest it to them; if we could hold the self-contradictory hypothesis that the unknowable existed, we should yet have to admit that its existence could never be discovered. 26 AGNOSTICISM. And if such consequences of his doctrine do not convince the agnostic that an unknowable, which is truly unknowable, truly out of relation to the known, is nothing, nothing ever will. 7. The inherent contradictions of the agnostic position generally having been exposed, it becomes necessary to point out the flaws in the special argu- ments of Mr. Spencer and of Kant, and to detect the weak points in the " antinomies " in which they have sought to enmesh the human reason. Spencer's positive arguments in favour of the assumption of an unknowable, if indeed they should be called arguments rather than metaphors drawn from a mistaken comparison of knowledge and Space, have been already, to a considerable extent, dealt with. It is not true that science is " a gradually increasing sphere in which every addition to its surface brings us into wider contact with surround- ing nescience." Neither is it true that " at the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must continue to arise, the question What lies beyond ? " or that "we cannot conceive any explanation pro- found enough to exclude the question What is the explanation of that explanation ? " It is indeed true that "positive knowledge does not, and cannot, fill the whole region of possible knowledge," if under "possible knowledge" we in- clude, as Mr. Spencer apparently wishes us to include, every casual question of fools and madmen. But no sane thought will argue on possibilities that everything might have been different from what it is, or trouble itself to consider the consequences of such absurd assumptions, nor will it seek an explan- ation of the self-evident, nor, when it has reached THE FINITUDE OF KNOWLEDGE. 2J the ultimate fact, will it stray beyond it into the shadowy region of fiction. But if the argument concerning the infinite pro- cess of thought cannot be regarded as more than a mistaken metaphor from Space, the argument which follows rises to a positive fallacy from the same source. Mr. Spencer says : * " To think of the First Cause as finite ( = limited in power) is to think of it as limited. To think of it as limited, necessarily implies a conception of something beyond its limits ; it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as bounded ( = limited in space), without conceiving a region surrounding its boundaries." We have ventured to emphasize by the use of italics the curious transition from finite to bounded by means of the ambiguous middle term, limited, for it is on this that the argument depends. Boundaries are, of course, frankly spatial, and Space is, of course, in some sense infinite (ch. ix., 2 ff.). But the limited is used not merely in a spatial sense, but also, more widely, in a sense to which spatial analogies no longer apply. Every boundary is a limit, but not every limit is a boundary. Limits exist in thoughts and feelings as well as in Space. When the stupidity of a sensational novel reaches the limits of his endurance, Mr. Spencer does not perceive a black line on the paper. Or again, a process of inference is limited by its premisses and its conclusion, but these are neither straight lines nor crooked. Again, it is not one of the difficulties of a limited liability company that it is necessarily sur- rounded by an infinite ocean of liabilities. It is not true, then, that in thought a limit, necessarily and 1 " First Principles," p. 37. 28 AGNOSTICISM. as such, implies anything beyond it : the not-known remains a merely logical possibility, an empty figure of speech, devoid of real content : it can lend no help to infer the real contrary of knowledge, the unknown, and still less does it involve the un- knowable. l 8. But Mr. Spencer, after the fashion of agnost- ics, lays far more stress on the indirect than on the 1 Mr. Spencer, when hard pressed for reasons in favour of a positive unknowable, does indeed make use of another argument (" First Princ.," p. 88), which respect for his other achievements must make his critics reluctant to dwell on. He suggests that " besides the definite consciousness of which logic formulates the laws, there is also an indefinite consciousness which cannot be formulated . . . and which is yet real as being a normal affection of the intellect." Is not this a clear confession of the extra-logical character of the agnostic's faith in the Unknowable ? And there has been nothing like this " indefinite consciousness," invented to know the Unknowable, since the days when Plato declared that Not-Being was 1/000) A.oyicr/x.0) cbrroV, to be grasped only by spurious reasoning; And the spuriousness of its nature seems to affect also the arguments in its favour, for a little further down we find Mr. Spencer contending that "an argument . . . which assigns to a term a certain meaning, but ends in showing that this term has no such meaning, is simply elaborate suicide. Clearly then the very demonstration that a definite consciousness of the Absolute is impossible unavoidably presupposes an indefinite consciousness of it." Has Mr. Spencer never heard of the method of reductio ad absurditm, and does he regard the fourth propos- ition of the first book of Euclid as a suicidal argument ? And does he seriously think that " the very proof that a definite consciousness of Unicorns or Chimeras is impossible, must necessarily involve an indefinite consciousness of them " ? And would the proof of the fictitious character of unicorns really destroy in his mind the reality of their " correlative," all two- horned animals ? It would have been better if in matters of logic, one of the few subjects to which he could not claim to have made any important addition, he had followed, as in the rest of his arguments for Agnosticism, the guidance of Mansel and of Hamilton. IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH EVOLUTION. 29 direct argument for the unknowable. And it is, of course, always possible to produce considerable effect by parading the real difficulties of metaphysics. But here again there are plenty of unknowns but no unknowable, plenty of unsolved problems and some which are doubtless insoluble if perversely stated, but none which can be declared insoluble in themselves. And least of all can Mr. Spencer assert that these problems are insoluble without being false to his own principles. An evolutionist must surely be the last to believe that any problems need remain insoluble because they have not hitherto been solved, the last to restrict by a dogmatic prohibition, even in thought, the boundless possibilities of future development. Indeed the raison d'etre of this essay is to show how evolution may lead to the solution of many of these apparently insoluble questions. A great part of Mr. Spencer's content- ion may indeed be accepted without qualification. The contradictions in the conceptions of Matter, Motion, Rest, and Force are insoluble, and fraught with dire consequences to all knowledge when manipulated by the sceptic (ch. iii. 5-8). They can be justified only as relative conceptions which must be transcended by metaphysical inquiry in the search for ultimate truth. Space and Time, again, present real difficulties and will cause us much trouble. The impossibility, on the other hand, of treating the Self as an object of knowledge and of finding the ends of the thread of consciousness l will turn out a fortunate and serviceable fact. 9. Mr. Spencer's account of the problems of 1 " First Principles," p. 66. 30 AGNOSTICISM. self-existence and causation, on the other hand, deserves closer attention. He rightly says that we must assume self-existence somewhere, and infers that we may as well assume it of the world as of a transcendent deity and cause of the world. Nothing is gained by accounting for the world by a self-existing God ; we have merely needlessly multiplied entities. And either theory is equally unable to satisfy our demand for a why : we can as little tell why God should exist as why the world should : we must seek a cause of the existence of God just as of the world. It will be seen from this that Mr. Spencer admits that we are prima facie entitled to ask the why of the world and the cause of its existence, but considers our demand futile, because the same de- mand may be renewed upon any answer we may get. It will be necessary, therefore, for any one asserting the self-existence of God, while denying that of the world, to make a distinction between their cases, which will justify their different treat- ment. And it is not perhaps so difficult to make such a distinction as it might at first appear. It was shown above ( 5) that our thought does not possess a futile craving after infinite explanations, but that its inquiries must in every case be suggested and provoked by something outside it. The impetus to thought is given by the discordant aspects of facts. We do not ask the why of a fact, unless the fact is so constituted as to provoke us to this question. If, therefore, we raise the question of the why of the world, this is not due to some gratuitous vagary of our thought, but to the fact that the world is so constituted as irresistibly to raise this question. THE PROBLEM OF SELF-EXISTENCE. 31 Hence it does so, not in virtue of being a world as such, but in consequence of being a world of a certain kind, with a certain character which prompts us to ask certain questions. It is because the world does not appear to be self-caused, that we ask for its cause. And conceivably the answer we gave to this question might be the vision of a fact that would not, when reached, arouse in us the same desire to ask the reason why. If, therefore, our conception of the Deity as the cause of the world, substituted a harmonious fact for a discordant one, a truly concordant cosmos for the conflict of unin- telligible chaos, we should have succeeded, not merely in postponing, but in actually solving the problem. But is the theory of the causation ot our world by a self-existent Deity such a solution ? This is at least possible ; for while the self-existence of the world is inferred from its character to be im- possible, and its existence is felt to require an explanation, that of God may eventually be seen not to require explanation. At all events the ex- planation is not an immediate necessity, and in the course of evolution many things no less wonderful may happen. Thus the question of self-existence and the conception of causation may be relative to an imperfect world still in the process of its develop- ment ; and together with the imperfection which drove us to seek a cause of the existent, the category by which we sought to explain it may itself disappear. The conception of causation may become simply inapplicable and unmeaning in a state of perfect adaptation (ch. xii.). For it is bound up with physical Becoming or change ; and as in the case of perfect adaptation, the organism and the environment would be in such complete correspond- 3 2 AGNOSTICISM. ence that each would instantaneously respond to every change in either ; and as there would hence be no interval of imperfect adaptation, no change could be perceived and no consciousness of change could arise. And without consciousness of change there would be no occasion for the use of the conception of causation. It is impossible, therefore, for an evolutionist, consistently with his principles, to maintain that any conception must remain what it now ; is and Mr. Spencer, while half admitting this, is really trying to combine two irreconcilable views when he says : l " The ideas of cause and origin, which have been slowly changing, will change still further. But no changes in them, even when pushed to the extreme, will expel them from consciousness. . . . No more in this than in other things will Evolution alter its general direction." But how, we may reasonably ask, can Mr. Spencer tell from the general direction of evolution in the past, that the relation of our conception of causation to self-existence will not undergo important and radical changes ? And may not a continuous change in degree finally amount to a change in kind ? Not only will these conceptions change, but they may be wholly trans- formed or become wholly otiose, because nothing would any longer correspond to them. Thus, in a state of complete adaptation or " Being," there would be no Becoming, i.e., no change for which it was needful to discover a cause. (Ch. iv. 4, xii. 4.) And this is the real reason why our present changing world is felt to be explained, when it is referred to a self-existent Deity as its cause. For 1 In the volume on Sociology in the International Scientific Series, p. 309. IS A FIRST CAUSE CONCEIVABLE ? 33 God is conceived as in a state of " Being," and even when not regarded as perfectly unchanging, He has attributed to Him at least that amount of permanence or Being which is implied in self-identity. We find, therefore, that when we inquire, not into existence in general, but only into that special portion of it which constitutes our world, a self-existent God may explain it in a way in which it could never explain itself. 10. And a similar solution may be given to the parallel difficulty concerning the cause of the First Cause. Mr. Spencer urges that the assumpt- ion of a first cause is futile, because we must con- tinue to ask for further causes of the first cause ad infinitum, and somewhat unjustly regards the diffic- ulty as one in the ' metaphysical ' conception of a first cause instead of in the ' scientific ' conception of causation generally. And yet the conception of a first cause represents only an attempt to escape from the difficulty of the infinite regress which is inherent in every form of causation. Whatever, therefore, it proves, is proved against the use of the conception of causation generally, i.e., the drift of the argument is sceptical and not agnostic. And, as a matter of fact, a First Cause, if the meaning of the term is properly limited, is open to rather less objection than an ordinary cause. If it is taken as an absolute First Cause of all things, it is indeed unthinkable, whereas a relative first cause of our phenomenal world may turn out a conception both valid and useful. An absolute First Cause of the universe as such (a-TrXaj?), is absurd, because it is a supposition which would explain nothing, and would only contradict itself. It could not explain the Becoming or cause R. ofS. D 34 AGNOSTICISM. of the changes in our world. For there could be nothing either within or without it to cause it to be the cause of the world at one time rather than at another. For if there were anything that could thus compel it to become a cause, that something would itself be the first cause. Whatever, there- fore, the condition of the First Cause happened to be, it would remain for ever, without change, alike whether no world existed at all or whether myriad worlds were mirrored in its dream. Since, then, the world exists, it must always have existed. But if it has always existed, it has not come into being, and hence it has had no cause. And not only does this result contradict our premiss, that a first cause of the world existed, but it does not even appear how an absolute first cause could be a cause at all. For, as the cause of the All would be all, the sum of its existence could neither be increased nor diminished : it would be equally all- embracing, whether the world existed or not. It could gain nothing then by the creation, and lose nothing by the destruction of the world : it would contain nothing that could determine it at one time to create, at another to remain in motionless absorpt- ion in itself. The changes, therefore, of our world are not in the least explained by such a cause. (Cf. ch. x, n.) If, therefore, we put the First Cause of our world = a First Cause of all things, the result is confusion, and the collapse of our conception. But no such consequence need follow if we regard the First Cause as the cause merely of our universe, not v of the totality of existence. The question as to the cause of the First Cause may then be met by the suggestion that to a non-phenomenal First Cause RANTS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 35 the category of causation, to which the difficulty is due, is not applicable in the same way as to the phenomenal causes of physical science. ii. The Kantian Agnosticism, to which we must next direct our attention, has proved as stimul- ating to philosophers as the Spencerian has been comforting to scientists, when afflicted with doubts as to whether a rational interpretation of their first principles was possible. And just as the discovery of the Unknowable appeared to the one the crown- ing achievement of human knowledge, so it has seemed to the others a discovery most important to knowledge that we could not know certain subjects. Indeed, the whole of post- Kantian philosophy seems to be occupied in persistent but futile attempts to wriggle out of Kant's conclusions while accepting their basis, or in expounding the meaning of an argument so subtle that only a born metaphys- ician could make his way unaided through its ob- scurities. And as complete success, either in establishing the Kantian case, or in making it wholly intelligible to the world, would destroy the whole occupation of philosophers, it is perhaps fortunate that they have not committed the happy despatch by doing the only thing they supposed themselves entitled to attempt. The difference between Spencerian and Kantian Agnosticism may be roughly formulated as being, that while the former declares knowledge impossible because of its knowledge of the Unknowable, the latter does so because of its knowledge of the im- potencies of our knowledge. By Kant, the possib- ility of metaphysics is denied, not because of the infinite complexity of things, begetting an infinite process of knowledge, but because of the faulty 36 .AGNOSTICISM. constitution of our minds, and the limitations of our faculties. It is not that things actively elude our minds, but that our knowledge cannot reach them. Its activity .cannot penetrate to the real nature of things, or disturb the serene calm of their essences, the "otium cum dignitate of the thing-in-itself." We can know only appearances, not the ultimate (which is also .the real) nature cf things. In Kantian language, our knowledge is only of pheno- mena not of Noiimena. 12. Now, as we have already pointed out ( 3~6)i the absurdity of making unknowable realities, the causes of phenomena, it is here merely necess- ary to point out how this assumption, in Kant's special form, is refuted by himself, and contradict's his own clearly enunciated principles. Kant himself lays great stress on the fact that all the categories or fundamental conceptions of our knowledge have a value and a .meaning only relat- ively to the world of our experience, in his own phrase, are " of immanent application." Now chief among these categories are 'the conceptions of Sub- stance and Cause. Hence, on Kant's own showing, the unknowable Noumena can be neither substances nor causes. And yet, unless they are both, we can neither say that they are, nor that they are the causes of phenomena. They are not substances, i.e., they do not exist, they are not causes, i.e., if they did, they would explain nothing. It remains that they are nothing, and that Kant's doctrine of the unknowable Noumena is a mistake. That this is so, has been generally admitted by all competent critics of Kant ; but it is astonishing that this result should have led so few of them to question the soundness of the basis from which Kant was able to reach such absurd conclusions. FORM AND MATTER. 37 13; K-ant's great discovery, in his own 'estimat- ion was, that the inquiry into the nature of our knowing faculty must precede actual investigation. We- must discover how we can know, before we examine what we do know. This is the gist of the famous Criticism, and the basis of a theory of know- ledge which substituted " epistemology " for meta- physics. But though this undertaking is- apparently simple, it involves several assumptions which are no longer admissible in the present state of our know- ledge. 141 It involves, in the first place, the assumpt- ion that the Form and Matter of knowledge can be separated : that the growth of the Matter does not affect its Form, and that hence it is possible to examine the knowing' faculty independently, and that any conclusion arrived at concerning it will hold good of all our knowledge for all time. For, unless all possibilities of valid inference can be determined with absolute certainty, in consequence of an exhaustive analysis of their forms, it is evident that the future course of knowledge cannot be pre- dicted. And yet, even as a matter of pure logic, it seems that no such separation of Form and Matter is possible. The " pure forms " collapse as empty abstractions when it is attempted to treat them as independent realities. The "laws of thought" by themselves do not work nor lead to real knowledge. Even in logic, thought turns out to be an organism in which form and matter imply each > other, so that each grows with the growth of the other. And when we go on to the principles of actual investigation, it appears still more clearly that we can never know until we try. The process, which is fruitful of results, cannot be predicted beforehand, but only analysed after the event. And every such 38 AGNOSTICISM. result in some way modifies the principles from which we started, and the method by which we reached it. Thus, the application of the Historical Method to biological science has not only been most fruitful of results, but it has reacted profoundly upon the method itself, and changed the whole course of sociological inquiry. We cannot know, then, how we know, except in dependence upon what we know. The theory of knowledge appears only from its practice, and it is a prejudice to think that it can be prejudged. 15. And the Kantian separation of the form and matter of knowledge is not only vicious on general grounds, but the whole epistemological standpoint is utterly irreconcilable with the modern conception of the world as an evolution. The Kantian theory of knowledge is able to assert that the mind can never do certain things, because it claims to have given an exhaustive account and a complete classification of the powers and impot- encies of the human mind. But how if the mind which it analyses have not the dead fixity of an artificial machine, but be a living organism with boundless capacities for de- velopment ? How then, can any classification of its faculties be complete or conclusive ? How can one analyse the latent germs which have not yet reached the surface ? how foretell the future growth, ' even,' of what yet lacks its full development ? Why, even the impotencies of our minds may be potentialities prescient of future powers ! And these suggestions are so far from being unverified analogies from other spheres of knowledge, that we can already actually trace some startling changes in the development of our categories. (Ch. iii, 10.) EVOLUTION V. EPISTEMOLOGY. 39 It would be more to the purpose if, instead of attacking others, epistemology looked to itself, if, instead of interfering with metaphysics and psy- chology, it raised its own stock question about it- self and considered ' how,' if at all, ' epistemology was possible.' 16. The epistemological standpoint, then, is false, because it makes no allowance for the growth of the faculties of the mind which it attempts to analyse, and so it can not establish unknowable limits to thought, or prove anything against the possibility of metaphysics. But it is also so im- potent in itself, and so inherently futile that it can- not, legitimately and in accordance with its own principles, even attempt any attack upon meta- physics. It is not only false, but barren. To establish a proposition which may appear somewhat startling, let us recollect why the Kantian doctrine of Nolimena broke down. It broke down in attempting to pass from phenomena to things-in- themselves. And it broke down because it attempted to transcend itself and to ignore the limits of its method. It may be asserted further that epistem- ology must break down whenever it tries to trans- cend its limits, and that it is yet under constant temptation to attempt this, because if it does not and keeps within its proper limits, it is iMerly useless. 17. For it professes to be nothing but an " immanent criticism of experience," an account of what is " implied in knowledge." What is implied in this attitude, however, is, that it can neither generate nor criticize actual knowledge. Given actual knowledge, " Criticism " can analyse it, can tell us what is implied in it. It can show us what categories we have used, and how the "forms of 40 AGNOSTICISM. thought " are combined with the matter. It can re-arrange the factors in knowledge and show us the logical connexions of its elements. But it can do no more. It can bring to the surface what is concealed in the depth, it can render explicit what was implicit, but it can create nothing new. It can neither account for the origin nor judge of the ultimate validity of any actual bit of knowledge. For to do so, it would have to cease to be " im- manent," to cease to deal with the logical elements "implied 1 in knowledge," and to reach real facts. But if it dealt with real facts, actual instances of knowledge, it would become a science like all others, psychology or something of the sort, and would cease to be the theory and criticism of all knowledge. If, on the other hand, our theory of knowledge claimed to deal with ultimate existences, it would, like the Platonic theory of Ideas, become a meta- physic. 1 But of course it would be absurd to assert that the series of logical elements, the "a priori forms of intuition and thought," such as Space and Time, Cause, Substance; Interaction, etc., were actual existences, and not abstractions " implied in reality." 1 T. H. Green in his " Prolegomena to Ethics " makes what looks like an attempt to do this, and comes very near, asserting it. He talks about a " metaphysic of knowledge," but does not venture, like Hegel, to put it forward definitely as absolute metaphysic. His "spiritual principle implied in nature" is rather our means for inferring the Absolute than, the Absolute itself,; it does not attain to the dignity of a hypostasized abstraction, although it strongly suggests one, and remains an epistemological ambiguity. Still it is often difficult to remember that all Green's statements must be taken in an epistemological' sense, especially when he " theologizes," and declares that individuals are only parts of the " eternal self-consciousness," a statement that ought not to mean anything more than that they exemplify the use of the category of self-consciousness. THE AMBIGUITY OF A PRIORI. 4! And so epistemology remains in the air, a great mist, as it were, suspended between science and metaphysics, and makes ineffectual attempts to come into contact with both. But this is intrinsically impossible, and all it does is to obscure the issues between science and metaphysics, and by the fog it raises, to prevent the combatants from meeting, and either fighting out, or, as is more probable, com- posing their differences. Its contributions to the question of the relation of science and metaphysics are always irrelevant and often misleading. For whether it be its misfortune or its fault, epistemology is in the habit of using terms in a peculiar sense of its own. When we are told, e.g- n that "the conception ot cause is a' priori and cannot be derived from ex- perience, because it is the presupposition of all experience," or informed that " an eternal self is the presupposition of all knowledge," we are, accord- ing to the bent of our sympathies, either consoled or confounded. But the exultation of the one party and the depression of the other is alike premature. Upon further inquiry it appears that the priority of the epistemologists is not in, time at all and does not refer to historical events. They are not making statements about the actual origin or ultimate nature of knowledge, but only about the relation of certain factors in existing knowledge. They do not mean that the conception' of cause is a priori in the sense that many ages ago it existed without experience, and that, when experience came, it was subsumed under ti\\-=> pre-existing category, nor are they speak- ing of any experience any one ever had. Cause is a priori, because, if we eliminate this factor out of actual experience, we are left with a fictitious 42 AGNOSTICISM. abstraction of " mere experience " and the whole conception collapses. But it would be equally erroneous to suppose that the a priori forms of thought could exist without the matter given by experience. Perception without conception, as Kant himself says, is blind ; conception without perception is empty : the reality lies in their combination alone. Similarly the assertion that the eternal self is pre- supposed in all knowledge, conceals merely the commonplace fact that all knowledge must be some- body s knowledge, must be referred to some " I." The self is eternal or timeless, because it is a logical abstraction (cf. p. 81) and because abstractions do not exist either in Space or in Time. It is eternal in precisely the same way and for precisely the same reasons as the .isosceles triangle. There is in fact no reason why epistemology should designate one of the mutually-implied elements in knowledge as a priori, and the other as a posteriori rather than vice versa, and the use of such a word as " prior " merely has the misleading effect of producing an irresistible reference to Time. It would be a great boon if epistemologists gave up the use of both words, even though their whole science would prob- ably disappear with it. Nor would this be a result one could affect to deplore ; a science which is so sterile of truth in itself, and yet so fruitful in engendering error in others, had better be destroyed. It can utter only trivial truisms within the limits of its " immanent criticism " ; beyond them it gets ultra vires, and can only suggest dangerous con- fusions. It can prove nothing, still less prove fatal to metaphysics. It is a Criticism which can validly criticize nothing but itself, and to itself its criticism is deadly. KANT F. METAPHYSICS. 43 1 8. It remains, as before, not only to exhibit the unsoundness of the basis of epistemological Agnosticism, but also to point out the flaws in Kant's reductio ad absurdum of metaphysics. For it is in the negative polemic against meta- physic that the chief strength of Agnosticism lies, and it is by the skilfulness of its attack that it can most easily cover the weakness of its own positive position. Kant's description of the antinomies ot metaphysics, of the contradictory necessities and perplexing inadequacies which distract the human mind in dealing with certain ultimate questions, is deservedly famous. Their fame must be our apology for stating them so briefly and for merely indicating here the side in the conflict which we intend subsequently to espouse. The difficulties of metaphysics, according to Kant, fall under the three pseudo-sciences of Ontology, Cosmology, and Rational Psychology, and are concerned with the conceptions or " Ideas of the Pure Reason," i.e., of God, the world, and the Self. 19. With respect to the first, Kant asserts that no theoretical proof of the existence of God can be given, though three may be attempted. These he calls the ontological, the cosmological and the physico- theological. The ontological proof infers the existence of God from the necessity of the conception of a being possessing all reality. We have this conception ; and since real existence is included in the conception of "all reality," the being we conceive must be con- ceived also to have real existence. The cosmological proof is a form of the argument from causation, and runs as follows : If anything 44 AGNOSTICISM. exists, an absolutely necessary being exists. Now I exist : therefore an absolutely necessary (uncon- ditioned) being (i.e., God as the First Cause) exists. The physico-theological proof is the argument from design, and argues^ from the wisdom and in- telligence in the creation to the existence of a wise and intelligent Creator. Now, says Kant, both the cosmological and the physico-theological proofs depend ultimately on the ontological, and the ontological simply begs the question. It professes to establish the existence of God, i.e,> to show that a reality corresponds to our conception* But in order to do so, it assumes the conception of a totality of all reality, in which it has covertly included actual existence. Mere thought, therefore, cannot prove that a reality corresponds to its ideas ; it would be as reasonable to suppose that we. might increase our property by thinking of vast sums. Reality can be derived only from experience of reality, not from any manipulation of abstract ideas. To this argument,, which has never been, met, nothing need- be added ; it is a conclusive refuta- tion of a conception- of God which: has almost monopolized the attention of philosophers. With regard to the cosmological, it must be pointed out that, until it has been connected with the ontological proof, it does not specify what the " absolutely necessary being " is, or exclude the possibility of its being the: world as a whole, or a Spencerian " Unknowable" instead of a God. So it is connected with the ontological proof, on the ground that the conception of a being possessing all reality is the only one which can completely determine that THE PROOFS OF GOD S EXISTENCE. 45 of a necessary being. 1 Thus the cosmological proof stands and falls with the ontological. The physico-theological proof in its turn depends on the cosmological, and must argue from the con- tingent existence of the world to -an absolute First Cause, if it is to be adequate. For in itself it is concerned wholly with the finite and cannot properly infer anything but an adequate finite cause of pheno- mena. The argument from design cannot validly pass from the conception of a great Architect of the world, designing and disposing his materials like a human craftsman, to an absolute and infinite Creator. Thus the only.argument in favour of the existence of God which has any cogency, the only one which could give us any insight -into His nature, is in- adequate. It cannot prove an infinite God. This admission of Kant's we shall do we'll to store up for subsequent use, when it will be necess- ary to inquire whether infinity is a possible or desirable attribute of the Deity. For should it appear (v. rh. x.) that an infinite God would be an embarrassment rather than a,n advantage, the inability of the argument from design to justify a false conception of the Deity will .have been a fortunate deficiency. 20. The four antinomies involved in the at- tempt to think the ultimate nature of the world are concerned with its infinity, the infinite divisibility of substances, the conflict of causation and freewill, and 1 All other conceptions would be inadequate predicates, which could not determine their subject singly, and hence could not establish its existence. For all real existences are subjects con- taining an infinity of predicates, and the only predicate which contains an infinity of attributes and can thus put its subject on a par with a real existence and thereby confer reality upon it, is the conception of an ens realissimum. 46 AGNOSTICISM. its first cause. On each of these subjects contra- dictory propositions may be maintained, either that the world is infinite in Space and Time, or that it is not, etc. The last of these antinomies has been already discussed in connection with Mr. Spencer's views ( 10), and it is here only necessary to remark, in completion of what was previously asserted, that Kant proves conclusively that the First Cause cannot be one in the series of caused phenomena. Hence, if in seeking a cause of our world, we are inquiring- into the cause of existence in general, we are doomed to disappointment. If all things are caused, then a First Cause is impossible. If God, therefore is the cause of all things, the All is God, and God (in the traditional sense) is nothing. The antinomy of causation and freedom can be profitably discussed only when we have realized the origin and nature of our conception of causation (y. ch. iii, n, and App. I.). The second antinomy is concerned with the relat- ions of part to whole : the thesis maintains that unless absolutely simple substances exist, composite substances are impossible, and hence nothing exists ; the antithesis infers the infinite divisibility of sub- stances from the infinite divisibility of the Space in which they exist, and asserts that simple substances could never be objects of perception or of any ex- perience. Kant's proof in the antithesis is based on several assumptions. In the first place he assumes that the infinite divisibility of our conception of Space must be applied to the spatially-extended objects, that the ideal Space which we conceive, and the real Space which we perceive, are one and the THE INFINITY OF THE WORLD. 47 same ; in short, that our conception of Space is not an abstraction from an attribute of the Real, a uni- versal mode of the interaction of the Existent, but simply an ideal a priori form of intuition, under which things must appear to us. Even though, therefore, metaphysically speaking, ultimate entities may be " monads," yet, phenomenally, their appear- ances must be subject to the laws of spatial intuition and composite. Secondly, Kant argues that the Self or Soul is not an instance of a simple sub- stance, because its apparent simplicity is merely due to the fact that in declaring its own substant- iality, it is contemplating itself; that if it could be externally perceived, it would probably display its compositeness. Now every one of these assertions may be tra- versed. We need not suppose, and indeed scientific atomism has always refused to suppose, that the mathematical infinite divisibility of Space holds good of real objects ; nor that ideal Space, which is con- ceived, but never seen, is like real Space ; nor again that Space is an a priori form which exists independ- ently of the interactions of the bodies that occupy it. Further, it may be remarked that Kant here illustrates both of the two great fallacies of his doctrine : (i) he forgets the impotence of epistemo- logy and allows himself to treat his a priori Space as a condition and not as a mode of existence, and so regards it as something which can prescribe to reality its mode of behaviour. (2) He makes the impossible distinction between phenomena and noiimena. Lastly, we may point out that Kant's argument against the existence of absolute sub- stances is bound up with his doctrine of the Self, presently to be considered, and need only wonder 48 AGNOSTICISM. in passing how Kant could arrive at his extra- ordinary confidence that if he could only get outside himself and see his Self, 'it would appear to be a composite patchwork of various substances ! Does he imagine that if he could see his soul it would be his soul? And even -if he could see it, and see that it was composite, it would yet, on his own principles, be a fallacy to infer the multiplicity of the (noumenal) subject from that of its (pheno- menal) appearance. -It may be that our idea of the unity of the soul requires modification ult- imately, but it can hardly be denied that our con- sciousness of the oneness of our Self -is theflrima facie basis of our assertion of the unity of substance. Lastly, his first antinomy deals with the limits of the world in Space and Time. The thesis main- tains that the world must have limits in Space and in Time; it must have had a beginning in Time and must come to an end in Space, because of the conflict between the conceptions of infinity and of a whole. An infinite whole is an impossibility, because its infinity consists just in the fact that it cannot be completed. Time, therefore, without beginning, is a contradiction in terms, for past Time is infinite, and yet limited by the present. An infinite world in Space, on the other hand, is no world at all, -i.e., it can never be completed and treated as a whole. The antithesis argues that limits to the world in Space and Time are unthinkable. For did they exist, they would imply in the world a relation to empty Space and empty Time, i.e., relations to nonentities, and hence contradictions. We can never conceive limits to Space, but our thought must ever stray beyond any imagined limit, and THE INFINITY OF TIME. 49 inquire into its beyond. So with Time ; even if we imagined an absolute beginning of the world, the empty Time which preceded the existence of the world, could neither itself have caused the world nor have contained anything that could cause it. Now, as we intend to return to the subject of the infinity of Space and Time (ch. vi. 2 ff.), it will here suffice to remark that Kant understates the force of the argument in favour of the limitation of the world in Space and Time, by stating it in metaphysical terms merely. The infinity of the world is indeed in metapliysical conflict with our conception of a whole, and, we may add, of a process and of causation, but it is also incompatible with all scientific doctrines which involve these conceptions. And, as we shall see, these form no inconsiderable portion of all the sciences, but one so great that their abandonment would ruin many important sciences like physics, mechanics, chemistry, and biology, and bring universal scepticism in its train. The difficulties of the thesis, therefore, are not merely difficulties of metaphysics, as the agnostic would make out, but also real difficulties of all science. Those of the antithesis, on the other hand, are purely metaphysical. They do not conflict with the facts, but with our ideas. The infinity of Space and Time is not, and never can be, a fact. An infinite reality can never be perceived, infinity must always be merely a matter of idea, merely a necess- ity of thought. It is not the actual perception of Space and Time that leads us to the conviction that they are infinite, but the conceptions we form about them. If therefore the identity and parallel- ism of our ideal conceptions of Space and Time which involve infinity, and our real perceptions of R. ofS. E 50 AGNOSTICISM. objects in Space and Time, which cannot involve infinity, be denied, the whole antithesis vanishes. For infinity in thought is quite compatible with actual finitude. With regard to the origin of the world in Time, Kant's difficulty, like Spencer's about the First Cause ( 10), applies only to an absolute beginning of all things. If nothing originally existed, nothing can have come into being. But if something existed eternally, that something may at some point have caused the existence of our world. There is in fact a third alternative to the infinite existence of the world and its beginning in empty Time. For though the world cannot have come into existence in Time, it may perfectly well have done so with Time. Time and our phenomenal world may be correlated conditions of our present dispensation. This is a possibility which Kant should have noticed and considered, all the more that it is as old as Plato, who in the Timaeus (38 B) calls Time the moving image of Eternity, and that it has been adopted by the majority of thinkers who have con- sidered the question of creation seriously, e.g., by St. Augustine, who says, Non est factus nmndus in temper e, sed cunt tempered \ 21. Lastly, we must consider Kant's attack upon the old rational psychology, which professed to derive from the substantiality of the Self or Soul its immateriality, incorruptibility, personality, im- mortality, etc. And with regard to the a priori proofs of rational psychology, Kant may be admitted to have made out his case. 2 The simplicity of the 1 "The world was not made in Time, but together with Time." 2 Thus he shows that the immortality cannot be inferred from the simplicity of the soul : for though the simple cannot be dis- solved into its component parts, it may yet be annihilated by evanescence. THE REALITY OF THE SELF; 51 soul cannot be made a proof of its- immortality ; such juggling with ideas cannot afford any real certainty of a future life. But Kant's own doctrine is of a more dubious character. The question is, whether our conscious- ness of our own existence can be made the basis of theoretical inferences. 1 Kant puts it as the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes, and denies that it is the basis of any knowledge. For, he says, self- consciousness is a mere form, indifferent to its matter, the actual contents which fill it (cf. 14), and utterly empty in itself. The Self is a mere "synthetic unity of apperception," which:unites and binds together " the manifold of perception " into a whole, and thus makes experience and knowledge possible. But it does no more ; it is a paralogism to regard our own existence as the one certain fact and the basis of all knowledge. This argument depends on the substitution of the Cogito ergo sum, i.e. the explicit assertion of exist- ence, for the implicit conviction which we feel. It assumes that thought can be put = consciousness, and that that which cannot be stated in terms of thought, e.g. feeling, is nothing. But as a matter of fact, the Cogito ergo sum can- not be regarded as the ratio essendi, but only as the ratio cognoscendi of our existence. It is not that we are because we think, but we are able to think because we are. And we not only think, but will 1 On theoretical grounds his verdict about the existence of the soul is non liqitet. But this, of course, does not hinder him, here as elsewhere, from reversing the agnosticism of the Theoretic Reason by means of the Practical Reason. So he asserts that the moral consciousness does establish the reality of the Self. " I am, because I ought," as it were. Only, he says, this does not suffice for any theoretic inference. 5 2 AGNOSTICISM. and fed. And Will and Feeling ace other than Thought, and Thought does not fully represent them. It is true that if we desire to assert our existence, we must assert it in terms of thought, i.e., as Cogito ergo sum, but then we assert it only against a doubt, and a doubt so futile does not require to be refuted. As long, therefore, as we content ourselves with our inner consciousness, i.e., the feeling of our existence, we have committed nothing which thought can lay hold of. And when it does lay hold of our expressed conviction of our existence, and attempts to show it is invalid, it only does so to cover itself with confusion. Kant's attack on the reality of the Self may be refuted out of his own mouth. He admits 1 (i) that oar thought can think the Self only in the position of a subject, i.e., that the " I " can never be the predicate of any statement ; (2) that our thought is discursive, i.e., all its state- ments are predicates. Hence (3) the Self, cannot be a (mere) conception. Thereupon he argues, that because the conception of the Self is empty, the Self is no reality. This argument not merely involves the direct contradiction of denying and asserting, almost in the same breath, that the Self was a con- ception, but actually argues from the defect of a defective conception to a defect in its subject. First he shows conclusively that if the Self is real, our thought can never do justice to it, then he argues, that because our thought cannot do justice to it, the Self is not real. If it could be validly asserted that the Self was a conception at all, it must surely be admitted that, so far from being empty, it is the fullest of all conceptions, with a 1 Prolegomena, p. 116 (Reclam), Mahaffy's trans, p. 47. THE ORIGIN OK AGNOSTICISM. 53 content coextensive with the whole world. For every thought that was ever thought, every feeling that was ever felt, every act that was ever willed, was contained in the consciousness of some self, was thought, felt, or willed within the soul of somebody. The proper inference then surely was,, that the emptiness of our conception, of our thought-symbol of the Self, proved nothing against its- reality, but much against thought, the abstractions of which here prove utterly inadequate to- grasp the reality. Thus the breakdown of Kant's argument leads us on to the important distinction of Thought and Reality, which in the- next chapter will be emphas- ized by scepticism to the utmost ; it illustrates unexpectedly our contention that Agnosticism paves the way for Scepticism. 22. Our elaborate examination of Agnosticism has been< rendered necessary, not only by the repute of the authors criticized, but still more by the fact that the agnostic attitude towards ultimate philo- sophic problems- is the most prevalent one among philosophers and cultivated men generally. But the length of the argument will have been more than justified, if it can induce us to realize the arrogance of the pretensions to omniscience lurking beneath the mock modesty of the agnostic's assert- ion of the unknowable,, and if it enables us to see how inconclusive are the attacks on metaphysics by which he seeks to veil the weakness of his own position. And yet the doubt may recur How can we know things as they really are ? and will not be set at rest until we have exposed its origin as. well as its futility. We might indeed answer it by shifting the onus probandi, and asking, Why shoulcU not 54 AGNOSTICISM. things appear as they are ? Why should not appearances be true, or a sure basis whence to infer the truth ? Why should not " things as they are " be either nothing at all, or at least irrelevant machinery intended to produce in us the spectacle of the world ? The suggestion that appearances are divided by an impassable gulf from the reality of things is a mere prejudice, which may be left to flounder in its own impotence. But, it is urged, is it not a fact that appearances are deceptive ? It is this that makes Agnosticism plausible. But for this, but for the fact that appearances are but the raw material of knowledge, there would be nothing to suggest anything beyond what is given. Only the fact will not bear the inference the agnostic seeks to put upon it. It does not justify the assumption of a world of things " as they really are," opposed to a world of appearances. All it in- volves is that the real and ultimate nature of things must be inferred, that things do not yet appear as they are. The known suggests an unknown, but not an unknowable. And what is this but the phenomenon of the growth of knowledge, what but the fact that in a world not yet fully known, the imperfection of our knowledge must suggest its own defect, and cause things to appear at first other than what they subsequently turn out to be ? The feeling, therefore, from which Agnosticism draws its force, is an illusion incident to the growth of knowledge. In a perfectly known world things would appear as they were, and would be what they appeared ; there would be no occasion to correct the judgments of sense or to go beyond the given. Thus the same growth of knowledge which made TRANSITION TO SCEPTICISM. 55 it impossible to admit that agnosticism could be true, explains also how it comes to seem true. 23. The course of the argument has so far been directed to establish that Agnosticism is an illusion and cannot be true. It must now establish that if it is true, it must cease to be itself, and pass into something profounder and more consistent Its only hope lies in its turning into Scepticism, and internal and external necessities combine to turn it into this. Scepticism is the only refuge for Agnosticism from the external pressure of reason : it alone can suspend and reverse the condemnation pronounced on its absurdities. The sceptic may admit that Agnosticism has failed, that its arguments are fall- acious and absurd. But, he asks, what does this prove ? What but the absurdity of all arguments ? Arguments may be made to prove anything, but in the end they prove nothing. Not only is there an Unknowable beyond knowledge, but all around it and before its eyes. The mistake of Agnosticism was not in thinking that some things were unknow- able, but in implying that there is anything not unknowable, not in clinging to demonstrable ab- surdities, but in supposing that anything but absurdities were demonstrable. Agnosticism erred in attempting to draw a distinction between meta- physics and the rest of knowledge, and so was sur- prised by their solidarity and overwhelmed by their union. This was a mistake in principle ; for meta- physic is not only every whit as good as any other knowledge, but indeed superior. For metaphysic is the science of the ultimate chaos in which all knowledge ends ; so far from being false, it is pre- eminently true, for it alone of all the sciences is 56 AGNOSTICISM. aware of its condition. All knowledge terminates in nonsense, but metaphysic alone confesses this fact. 24. Thus Scepticism rises superior to the question in dispute, not only by rescuing- Agnostic- ism from metaphysical objections, but also by its kindly rehabilitation of metaphysics. But it is not merely the outcome of the dispute between Agnostic- ism and metaphysics, but also of the logical self- development of Agnosticism. Agnosticism had asserted that there exists in the world something unknowable and that certain questions cannot be solved. But admitting this, how can we limit the havoc this- admission works in the whole structure of knowledge ? If any one thing is unknowable, may there not be many others like it ? If some questions are insoluble, how do we know that insoluble questions are confined to a single department of thought ? Nay, if the Unknowable is at the basis of all knowledge, if all things are "manifestations of the Unknowable," how can it manifest anything but its unknowableness ? If all our explanations terminate in the inconceiv- able, are they not all illusions-? If an unknowable force underlies all things, if the ultimate constitution of things cannot be grasped by our minds, what can our knowledge do but laboriously lead us to the conclusion' that all our science is- a fraud, hopelessly vitiated by the unknowable character of its basis ? Does not this fundamental flaw falsify all the futile efforts of beings constitutionally incapable of under- standing the real nature of things ? Agnosticism, at all events; has no strength to resist such suggestions, and falls into the deeper but seemingly securer abyss of Scepticism. CHAPTER IIL SCEPTICISM. i. SCEPTICISM is, as was shown in the last chapter, the development of Agnosticism, which passes into it as necessarily as Positivism passed into Agnosticism. It is, related to Agnosticism as the whole to the: part ; it both refutes and completes it ; for it is Agnosticism, perfected and purified from prejudice. By Scepticism we mean the denial of the possibility of knowledge, based on rational grounds. For the psychological scepticism, so frequent now- a-days, which is distracted by doubt, not because nothing is worthy of belief, but because the mind has lost the faculty of belief,, is indeed one of the most serious and distressing symptoms of our times, but belongs rather to the pathology of the human mind. True Scepticism does not arise from a morbid flabbinesss. of the intellectual fibre, but is vigorously aggressive and dogmatic. For though it sometimes affects to doubt rather than to deny the possibility of knowledge, the real intention of the doubt is yet to deny and to destroy the practical certainty of knowledge.. If Scepticism' did not succeed in producing any practical effect, if its doubt of the possibility of knowledge were theoretically ad- mitted but practically ignored, it would feel that it had failed. 2. In pursuance of its object of proving the 5$ SCEPTICISM. impossibility of knowledge, Scepticism may adopt several modes of procedure, of which only those can be at once disposed of which involve a denial of the laws of thought. The most common form, perhaps, is the ancient scepticism based on the " relativity of knowledge," i.e., on the distinction of phenomena and the real nature of things, which denies that we can know aught, because we cannot know things "as they really are." This scepticism is merely a re- appearance of Agnosticism, extended and enlarged, if not improved, and directed not merely against metaphysics, but against the whole of knowledge. And as such it has been already refuted in the last chapter ( 22). Here it need merely be character- ized as a gratuitous prejudice, since it has no positive ground for assuming these unknowable things-in- themselves. If no argument can directly refute it, neither can any argument establish it. But the onus probandi surely lies on those who attack, and not on those who assert the existence of knowledge. And, as has been shown, if such a world of things- in- themselves existed, we could never know of its existence (chap. ii. 6). It is a gross abuse, there- fore, to invent a transcendent world of unknowable things-in-themselves, merely in order to cast a slur on knowledge, to convict it of incapacity, merely because it cannot transcend itself. 3. Scepticism is on firmer ground when it becomes immanent instead of transcendent, and asserts not that there may be something behind appearances, but that appearances are inherently conflicting, and that knowledge is impossible, be- cause this conflict within consciousness and between its data can never be resolved. If the constituent elements of consciousness are essentially disparate THE CONFLICT OF THE FACTORS OF KNOWLEDGE. 59 and incongruous, Scepticism has merely to compare the characteristics of the given factors, and to pro- nounce their disagreement to be irreconcilable, in order to prove that knowledge, i.e., systematic harmony of the given, is impossible, and need not perform the impossible feat of getting help from the unknowable outside consciousness. Its aim must therefore be throughout to elicit the conflict and incompatibility of the constituents of knowledge. It will begin by showing that appearances are deceptive, and in so doing it will be proving a truism. For the whole of science is concerned with enabling us to see through the deceptive appearances of things, and to perceive their real nature. But Scepticism will contend that science fails ; that this deceptiveness is ultimate and never can be seen through ; that in fancying that our science can correct it, we are once more deceived. For all science is an interpretation of phenomena by means of thought, in which we substitute thought-symbols for the real things of which we are treating, and suppose that the manipulations of our symbols will hold good of the realities we perceived, and will thus enable us to manage and calculate their course. But it turns out (i) that not one of the categories of our knowledge, not one of the fundamental conceptions which underlie all science, is adequate to describe the nature of the Real, and that science is everywhere based upon fictitious assumptions known to be false : (2) the reason of this is dis- covered to lie in the radically different natures of thought and feeling, which give us two utterly discordant aspects of existence, and render it im- possible that the real thing perceived by feeling should ever be symbolized by thought ; and (3), as 6O SCEPTICISM.. it appears that every utterance involves a reference to reality, it is both- false and impossible, false, because the thought-symbols expressed by speech cannot be true of reality, and because- the course of inference does not correspond to the. course of nature; and impossible; because we cannot see how the transition from fact to symbol should ever have been made.. Thus Scepticism succeeds not only in exhibiting the justice of its, denial of knowledge, but literally reduces its opponents- to silence. It is the course of this process which we must now follow. 4. It has been said with some point, that the best eyre for the admiration of old institutions lies in the study of their history ; and certainly our traditional faith in, reason must be very, strong or very blind, if it can resist the doubts of the com- petency of our categories suggested by the least study of their origin and history.. We are all, thanks to the perhaps not wholly disinterested efforts of modern science, familiar with the discredit which their anthropomorphic character has brought on the central conceptions of religion, and have seen the grossness of savage superstitions traced throughout their survivals in modern theo- logy. But though the Sceptic will be at one with the scientist in reprobating the anthropomorphism of the savage, he will hardly have the politeness to confine the inferences from his historical studies to the single sphere of religion, or to show any greater respect for the sacro-sanctity of science.. For he finds that all our knowledge is vitiated by this fundamental flaw of its anthropomorphic origin, that the conceptions of our science are all direct descend- FIRST PRINCIPLES ALL ANTHROPOMORPHIC. 6 1 ants of the grossest anthropomorphisms of primi- tive savages, who naively and uncritically ascribed whatsoever they felt, and whatsoever seemed natural to them to the world outside them. And grotesque as was the savage's method of explanation, grossly erroneous as was the ascription to nature of these primitive fancies, it was at all events better than their subsequent treatment at the hands of science. They were not rejected outright, but reduced into unmeaning skeletons of explanations by the cutting away of such portions as seemed too obviously false to be any longer retained ; they were not buried in merciful oblivion, but permitted to linger on in a maimed and impotent condition, starved, and stripped of the sensuous analogies that suggested their self-evidence. And by this brutal process of mutilation, all the advantages of the primitive view have been lost, without countervailing gain, and without extirpating the original taint of our know- ledge : it is as though we should attempt to change an Ethiopian's skin by flaying him, and then dis- cover that even his bones were not as the bones of a white man. Our categories have too often be- come mere symbols, words to which no definite fact can be found to correspond. Thus the animistic conception of a cause as a personal will (chap. i. 5, 6), was intelligible though false ; but what possible meaning can be attached to the conception of Cause as Identity ? So long, again, as a frankly material view was taken of Substance, and nothing was accounted substance that could not be touched, seen, tasted, and smelt, we were at least secured against the hypostasizing of "second substances," safe from the confusions of ideas with real existences with which 62 SCEPTICISM. the history of philosophy teems, exempt from the metaphysical fictions of modern science, from intan- gible solids like the ether, from ' vortex rings ' in 4 frictionless fluids.' So too the geometrical ignor- ance of the savage left him blissfully untroubled by the possibilities of pseudo-spherical, or four-dimens- ional Space ; his simple theory of causation had not yet evolved an insoluble contradiction between free will and necessity. Happy too were the ages of scientific faith in anthropomorphic metaphor, when a mystic marriage of male and female elements could be witnessed in every chemical combination, and when terms like arsenic l and chemical affinity? as yet conveyed a meaning that explained their nature. But we are burdened by the heritage of ancient thought and ancient fancy, while we 'have to our loss exchanged their vividness for modern excre- scences, quite as false and far more obscure. And our categories are not able to fit the facts, even when they have been whittled away into nonsense ; not even then do they succeed in being true. 5. For not one of the principal conceptions of our science is true, not one is able to grasp the " Becoming " of things as it really is. All are what we call "approximations," which leave an unex- plained surd in everything they are supposed to explain ; and not only are they false, but we know that they are false, however we may choose to ignore it. We believe in our first principles, though we know that they involve fictions ; we believe in them because these fictions are so transparent as no longer to excite surprise. Is it then too much to say that the Credo qiiia absnrdum is the basis of 1 Arsenic = the male element. 2 Affinity = relationship by marriage. CONTRADICTIONS OF TIME. 63 science as well as of theology, and that knowledge as well as faith is reared upon the milk of mythology ? 6. It e.g. we consider the conception of Time, we find that Time is for scientific purposes taken as discrete, and divided into years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds ; and indeed its accuracy in measuring Time is one of the chief boasts of modern science. And yet is not this very measurement of Time based on all sorts of fictitious assumptions ? When we ask how Time is measured, we perceive that our measurements in the last resort are all based on the supposed regularity of certain motions. And the measurement of these motions again depends on the supposed accuracy of our time-pieces. And further, as far as our observation can "check their vagaries, we have every reason to believe that not one of these motions is really regular. And so our measurements of time move in a vicious circle : Time depends on motion and motion on Time. Some interesting corollaries would follow from this, such as that if the motions on which our measure- ment of Time depends were uniformly accelerated, the flow of Time also would be accelerated in like proportion, and the events of a lifetime might be crowded into what would previously have been re- garded as a few minutes. And if this acceleration were conceived to go on indefinitely, any finite series of events could be compressed into an in- finitely short time. Or conversely, supposing that the flow of Time could somehow be indefinitely accelerated without corresponding acceleration in the flow of events, a finite series of events would last for an infinite Time. In either case the infinite divisibility of Time would be equivalent to infinite duration, and the essential subjectivity of Time 64 SCEPTICISM. would peep through our apparently objective measurements. And is not a further fiction involved in the measurement of Time at all ? For our measure- ment is, and must be, in terms of the discrete, whereas that which we attempt to measure is continuous, one, and indivisible by our arbitrary partitions. Again, Time is infinite, and yet science treats it as though it were finite : we fancy that the past explains the present ; Time has no beginning, and yet we search the past for the origins of things : the world of which science is the knowledge cannot have existed from all time, and yet a beginning of the world in Time is impossible. Our real consciousness of Time conflicts at every point with the treatment of Time required in science, and this conflict culminates as a contradiction in terms in the insoluble antinomy of the completed infinity of past Time. For the original and only valid meaning of infinity is that which can never be completed by the addition of units, and yet we undoubtedly regard the past infinity as completed by the present. 7. Nor do we fare any better when we com- pare our conception of Space with the reality : its infinite extent and divisibility cannot be forced into the scheme of science. An infinite and infinitely divisible world is not an object of knowledge ; so science postulates the atom at the one, and the "confines of the universe" at the other extreme, as the limits of Space, in order to obtain definite quantities which can be calculated. And yet we can conceive neither how the atom should be in- capable of further division, nor how the extent of OF SPACE. 65 the world can be limited. For it is equally difficult to treat of " Space " apart from that which fills it, i.e. Matter, and to neglect this distinction. If Space = the spatially-extended, then the infinite extent and divisibility of Space must apply to Matter, i.e. atoms and limits of the material universe are impossible. If, on the other hand, Space is distinguished from that which fills it, we not only seem to be making a false abstraction, inasmuch as Space is never pre- sented to us except as filled by Matter, but to com- mit ourselves to the existence of the Void or empty space, existing certainly between the interstices of the atoms, and probably beyond the limits of the universe. But empty Space, possessing no qualities by which it could possibly be cognizable, is a thing in no way distinguishable from nothing, i.e. a non- entity. And further, if Space be not identified with the spatially extended, how do we know that the properties of Space hold good of the spatially- extended, i.e. that bodies obey the laws prescribed for them by mathematics ? And even when Space has been distinguished from that which fills it, it seems necessary to dis- tinguish afresh between real Space which we per- ceive and ideal or conceptual Space, about which we reason in mathematics. For they differ on the important point of infinity : real Space is not in- finite, for nothing infinite can be perceived. In- finity, on the other hand, is the most prominent attribute of ideal Space. And so their other pro- perties also might be different, e.g. all the lines drawn in real Space might really be closed curves, owing to an inherent curvature of Space, etc. If, then, ideal Space and real Space are different, a serious difficulty arises for mathematics, for they deal with R. ofS. 66 SCEPTICISM. ideally straight lines, perfect circles, etc., such as do not exist in* real Space, and which, for all we know, may be incapable of so existing, because real Space is " pseudo - spherical " or "four-dimensional." If, therefore, mathematical demonstrations are supposed to apply to figures in real Space, they are not true, and if not, to what do they apply ? It seems easy to reply, to the ideal space in our minds ; but what if there be no relation between 1 real and ideal Space ? And if mathematical truths exist only in our heads, what and where are they before they are discovered ? Surely the truth that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles did not come into being when it was first discovered ? Such considerations may justify the Sceptic in his doubt whether the ideal certainty of mathematics is after all relevant to reality, and in his denial of the self-evidence of the assumptions which underlie the scientific treatment of Space. 8. Motion also is feigned for scientific purposes to be something different from what it is : it can be calculated only on the assumption that it is discrete and proceeds from point to point, and yet the ancient Zeno's famous fallacy of the Arrow warns us that the Real moves continuously}- Our conception, too, of Rest is illusory ; for all things seem to be in more or less rapid motion. And yet motion is calculated only by the assumption of fixed points, i. e. of Rest. But these fixed points 1 If the arrow really moved from point to point, it would be at rest at each point, i.e. would never move at all. But of course it never is at the points at all, but moves through them. Only unfortunately our thought and our speech refuses to express a fact which our eyes behold, and we must continue to say one thing, while meaning another. OF MOTION AND REST;. 6'f are fictitious, and so our calculations are wholly arbitrary, for in limitless Space all motion must be relative : the bodies which from certain points of view seem to be at rest, from others seemito be in motion, and so on^ alternately at rest and in motion ad infinitumi Nor is there any theoretic reason to be assigned for giving one point of view- the pre- ference over another. I f, then, . Motion is relative to any and every point, it is relative to nothing, and does not admit of being objectively determined. And even if we were content that motion should be relative, yet energy must be real, and indeed its conservation is one of the chief doctrines of modern physics. But energy is ever generated out of and passing into motion, and the amount of actual and potential energy possessed by any system of bodies would be relative to the points which for the purpose of our calculations were feigned to be at rest. Thus from one point of view a-system might possess three times the motive energy it has from another, and the question arises which of these seeming energies is the subject of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. And in. whatever way we answer, that doctrine is false. For the points relatively to which energy is conserved do not preserve their relative positions for two- moments together,. and hence the case to which the doctrine refers never arises. The doctrine of the conservation of energy is a purely metaphysical assertion concerning a state of things that cannot possibly arise in our experience. And the same conviction of the entirely metempirical and hypothetical character of the doctrine of the con- servation of energy is forced upon us when we ex- amine the statements which our physicists make concerning it. For they admit that it does not 68 SCEPTICISM. hold good of any actual system ; in any system of bodies we may choose to take, the sum of energy does not remain the same from moment to moment. What else is : it then but to trifle with the ignorance of their hearers to talk about demonstrating the doctrine by actual experiment? They might as well prove that two parallel straight lines never met by an assiduous use of the measuring tape. And the case is no better, but rather worse, when it is explained that strictly speaking the conservation of energy holds only of an infinite system. For an infinite system is in the very nature of things im- possible. It would be a whole which was not a whole, a system which was not a system (Cf. ch. 9 8 and ch. 2 20). However it is put, the doctrine can be asserted only of a fictitious case, well known to be impossible. And of the assumptions subsidiary to that of the conservation of energy, the conception of potential energy deserves special criticism. For it illustrates the haphazard way in which our science accepts incompatible first principles. Potential energy is defined as energy of position. But how can there be position in infinite Space ? Position is deter- mined with reference to at least three points, and each of these with reference to three others, and so on until we either get to fixed points with an ab- solute position, or go on to infinity and are never able to determine position at all. Thus the reality of Motion, Rest, Energy, and Position in every case involves metaphysical postul- ates which experience does not satisfy, and we have agreed that for the present a reduction to meta- physics shall be esteemed a reduction to absurdity. 9. The conception of Matter, which may next OF MATTER, 69 be considered, though it at present seems indis- pensable to science, is really a fruitful source of perplexities. For it appears that all we know of Matter is the forces it exercises. Matter, therefore, is said to be unknowable in itself, and this unknow- ableness of matter-in-itself is quoted in support of the belief in the unknowable generally. And yet it is perhaps hardly astonishing that a baseless abstraction should be unknowable in itself. And Matter certainly is such an abstraction. For all that appears to us is bodies, which we call material. They possess certain more or less obvious points of resemblance, and the abstraction, " Matter," is promptly invented to account for them. But this is not only a gross instance of abstract metaphysics, but also a fiction which in the end profits us little. Certain superficial aspects of bodies are taken and exaggerated into primary qualities of Matter. The hardness of bodies is explained by the hardness of the ultimate particles of which they are composed, their divisibility and compressibility by the empty interstices between these ultimate atoms. So as the final result bodies are to be explained by their com- position out of atoms, possessing the attributes of gravity, impenetrability, and inertia. These attributes, however, suffer severally from the defects of being false, insufficient, and unin- telligible. No visible material body, e.g., is im- penetrable or absolutely solid : all are more or less compressible. So the atoms of absolute solidity have been falsely invented, in order to explain a property of bodies, which, after all, they were un- able to explain ; viz., their relative solidity. For the supposed solidity of the atoms is, according to modern scientific views, utterly irrelevant to the /O SCEPTICISM. actual solidity of bodies. The latter is due to re- pellent forces acting at molecular distances, and not due to contact with the atoms. Nor is it even true that the complex of interacting atoms composing a body is solid in the way the body seems to be solid, seeing that the atoms are separated by distances vast when compared with their own size: 1 And as nothing else can come within striking distance of them and put their internal economy to the test, it is difficult to see what it matters whether the atoms are solid or liquid, empty or full inside. It follows from the atomic theory in its present shape that the solidity which we feel is not real, that the solidity which exists is not relevant, and that bodies are not really solid. And the atomic theory is not only -false, but feeble. It cannot, after all, explain the behaviour of bodies, but must call to aid the hypothesis of a luminiferous ether, inter- penetrating all bodies, the vibrations most cherished of the anthropo- morphic prejudices of science. Still, the avowed 1 As the size of the interstices in the most solid bodies is to that of the atoms as five to one, it is clear that the solidity we feel has not much to do with the hardness of the atoms. ETHER AND GRAVITY. 71 properties of the ether are sufficiently extraordinary. It is an adamantine solid several hundred times more rigid than the most solid bodies, and vibrates at the rate of from 470 to 760 billion times per second. And this intangible solid has no gravity, and thereby lacks the great characteristic of matter. 1 For gravity has been since Newton's time re- garded as the primary attribute of matter, although its nature and operation is, by Newton's own ad- mission, unthinkable. For it differs radically from all the other forces in the physical universe in that it does not require time for its transmission. Sound travels at the rate of I,IQO feet per second, and light at the rate of 186,000 miles; but the changes in gravitative attraction seem to be instantaneous. So either Time or Space 2 do not seem to exist for it, and it also may be said to involve Action at a dis- tance. Such action our scientists persist in regarding as impossible, although their own physics evidently require it, and although there is no real reason why it should be more unthinkable than anything else. The objection to it seems nothing but the survival of the primitive prejudice that all action must be like a band of savages in a tug-of-war. If meta- physics had been consulted, it would have been obvious that no special medium was required to 1 If the ether gravitated, it would be attracted towards the larger aggregates of matter, and hence be denser in the neigh- bourhood of the stars than in interstellar space ; but if its density varied, it would not propagate light in straight lines. 2 If it can traverse any distance instantaneously ; for the fact that it varies inversely as the square of the distance does not prove that gravity recognises the prior existence of space. The distances between bodies may be 'only the phenomenal expres- sion of their metaphysical attractions and repulsions. 72 SCEPTICISM. make interaction possible between bodies that co- exist, seeing that their co-existence is an ample guarantee of their connection and of the possibility of their interaction. Lastly, the Inertia of matter is a prejudice in- herited from a time when the test of life was self- motion ; and its retention now makes the origination of motion by matter impossible, and thus forms an insuperable obstacle to any successful materialistic (or rather hylozoist) explanation of the world. The sum total therefore of the explanation of bodies by scientific doctrines of Matter is : (1) That all things are Matter. (2) That gravitation is the characteristic quality of Matter. (3) That gravitation is entirely unthinkable. (4) That ether is Matter, but does not gravitate. (5) That Matter is solid, but that solidity is not due to the solidity of Matter. (6) That Matter does not explain all things be- cause it is inert. It will be seen from this, that until the theory of Matter acquires something like self-consistency it is needless for the sceptic to inquire whether it ex- plains the action of bodies. 10. Force is the conception which does most work in science ; but it is only a clumsy depersonal- ization of our human volition, from the sense of which it sprang, and the sense of effort still seems indissolubly associated with it. This fact is, of course, irresistibly suggestive of false ideas as to the " cause of motion," it is subsequently defined to be. The correlative conceptions again of Activity and Passivity, which so long dominated human thought, FORCE AND INTERACTION. 73 are now discarded by science. We now say that a force is one half a stress, and substitute interact- ion for the distinction of active and passive ; and indeed the fact that action and reaction are equal and opposite has become as obvious a necessity of thought as it ever was to the Greeks, that one thing must be acted upon and the other act upon it. And yet what business have we to speak even of interaction ? All we see is how two bodies seem to change each other's motions, without being able to grasp how they do so in their action at a distance. Even so we have assumed too much ; for what right have we to assume that one influences the other, what justification for defining force as the cause of motion, for applying our conception of causation to the things around us ? ii. Since the time of Hume the vital import- ance to science of the conception of causation has been fully recognised, and it would now be generally admitted that a successful assault upon it is in itself sufficient to establish the case of Scepticism. And fully proportionate to its importance are the diffic- ulties of justifying this principle. Its historical antecedents are in themselves almost sufficient to condemn it ; and the existing divergences as to its nature make a consistent defence almost impossible. Originally, as has been remarked, the conception of cause was a transference of the internal sense of volition and effort to things outside the organism. The changes in the world were supposed to be due to the action of immanent spirits. In course of time these divine spirits were no longer regarded as directly causing events, but as being the first causes which set secondary causes in motion. It was then supposed that cause and effect were con- 74 SCEPTICISM. nected by chains of necessity, which ultimately de- pended from the First Cause of -the All. Then Hume remarked that necessity was subjective and falsely anthropopathic, and that the necessary con- nexion between cause and effect could never be traced. So it was suggested that if cause and effect were merely antecedent and consequent, ^science would suffer no hurt, and that it worked equally well with an (ambiguously) " invariable " antecedent. But the arbitrary distinction -between the anteced- ent conditions which were causes of the effect, and those which were not, proved untenable.; the cry was raised that all the conditions must be included. This was done, and it then .appeared, as the triumphant result of -a scientific purification of the category of causation, that the cause was identical with the effect ! And this reductio ad absurdum of the whole conception was actually hailed as the highest achievement of philosophic criticism, about which it was alone remarkable that the element of temporal succession from cause to effect should somehow have dropped out of sight ! It was simply curious that the category which was to have explained the Becoming of nature should finally involve no transition whatever, and thus be unable to discern the various elements, to distinguish the different phases, in the flow of things. The true use of the conception was to teach us that every- thing was the cause or the effect of everything else, to suggest that our failure to see this arose from an illusion of Time, unworthy of the timelessness of our true Self. Of course, however, it is not intended to suggest that an extreme of epistemological fatuity like this view of causation could ever work in practice ; it is CAUSATION. 75 merely the legitimate outcome of the attempt to apply the category consistently to the explanation of things. And not only is Cause useless when purged of its incongruities, but it is false, -if taken at an earlier stage in the process. The necessary connexion of cause and effect is not, as Hume rightly remarked, anything visible in rerum natura, but a fiction of the mind. All we see in nature is how a thing is or becomes, how one thing or phase follows upon another. Either, therefore, -the necess- ary connexion is pure assumption, or all Becoming must be called necessary ; in the latter case we simply produce useless ambiguity in a useful term without curing the defects of causation. If, again, mere sequence is causation, night, as has been long ago pointed out, would be .the cause of day. The fact is, that in applying the conception of causation to the world we have made a gigantic assumption ; and that all these difficulties arise from the fact that our assumption breaks down everywhere as soon as it is tested. Secondary causes involve just as great difficulties as first causes, the perplexities of which we have already considered (ch. ii., 10). It is assumed (i.) that events depend on one another, and not on some remote agency behind the veil of illusion. But what if the successive aspects of the world be comparable to the continuous shuf- fling of a gigantic kaleidoscope, in the tube -of which we were imprisoned as .impotent spectators of a world that had no meaning or .intelligible connec- tion ? Would not .the attempt to know .phenomena, to derive one set from another by our category of causation, be inherently futile ? And (2) it is assumed that we are both entitled and able to dis- 76 SCEPTICISM. member the continuous flow of events, to dissever it into discrete stages, to distinguish certain elements in the infinitely complex whole of phenomena, and to connect them with others as their causes or effects. But what if the Becoming of things be an integral whole, which could be understood only from the point of view of the whole ? Would not the idea of causation be inherently invalid, just because it isolates certain factors ? And in any case it is inherently false. For whether our dissection of the continuous flux of phenomena be justifiable or not, the separation by which we isolate certain fragments must be false. We hear a noise and see a bird fall ; we jump to the conclusion that it has been shot. But what right have we thus to connect the firing of the gun and the death of the bird as cause and effect, and to separate them from the infinite mult- itude of concomitant circumstances ? Why do we neglect all the rest as immaterial ? We cannot say, " because all the other circumstances remain the same," for the world never remains the same for two consecutive moments. How then can we say beforehand that the remotest and occultest circum- stances have not been essential to the result? It was at least a merit of astrology that it faced the difficulty, and did not disdain to suppose that even the stars had an influence over human events. The supposition of ancient divination, that the fate of a fight might be calculated from the entrails of chickens, the flight of rooks, or the conjunction of planets, may appear a sober and sensible doctrine of causation, far less absurd than the arbitrary and indefensible procedure of modern science. But even supposing that we had made good a claim to apply our subjective category of causation SUBSTANCE. 7 J to the Becoming of things, we should only have plunged into greater difficulties. For we are im- pelled by the very law of causation itself, which forbids us to say that things have been caused by nothing, to ask for cause after cause in an infinite regress, and can never find rest in a first cause in the endless series of phenomena. And even if a first cause could be reached, it would be subject to all the difficulties discussed in the last chapter ( 10). What then shall we say of a principle of explana- tion which cannot explain, but deludes us with its endless regress as we pursue it ? What but that it is false and as deceitful as it is incapable ? Lastly, there must be recorded against the category of causation the crowning absurdity, that, like Time, it contradicts itself. For in its later stages as a "scientific conception" it becomes forgetful of its original form, and engages in an insoluble conflict with the freedom of the will, which it condemns as an intolerable exception to its supremacy. It rises in rebellion against the will which begot it, and this final impiety adds dishonour to the damage of its fall (Cp. App. I. 5). 12. The category of Substance presents diffic- ulties hardly less serious than those of causation. For if substance be the permanent in change, where shall it be found in a world where nought is per- manent but change ? And in any case it must be admitted that the relation we suppose to exist between substance and attributes, the way in which we imagine substances to hold plurality in unity, is certainly false. For while we regard a substance as the unity of many attributes, and compose a thing out of its qualities, the real things are concrete unities. Their attributes or qualities are nothing 78 SCEPTICISM. but the modes of their interaction, or to state the matter with still fewer assumptions, phases we ascribe to the same substance. But this permanent identity of thing's from moment to moment, this hypothesis of a substantial substratum persisting through change, is a grave assumption. How do we know that successive appearances are changes of the same substance ? It is, after all, an* inference that the dog who comes into- my room is the same dog who left me five minutes ago, and not, as mediaeval scholars would have considered probable, a demon with intent to tempt me. And if, with Kant, we urge against this denial of Substance, that change implies permanence, it is equally easy to answer, with Mr. Balfour, that Kant himself admitted the possibility of alternation, i.e. of a kaleidoscopic wavering of appearances, in which the sole connection between the successive phases was a fiction of our minds. 13. Our highest and most abstract categories also, those of Being and Becoming, fare no better at the sceptic's hands. For while it soon appears that in nature nothing is, but everything becomes, Becom- ing turns out to be a contradiction in terms, merely a word to designate a forcibly effected union of Being and Not- Being. For when we say that a thing becomes, we can describe it only by the two ends of the process, positively by what it is and negatively by what it is not. Thus the hatching of a chicken is defined by the egg which it is, but will not be, and the chicken, which it is not, but will be. Becoming, therefore, is not properly a category of our thought, but a fact which we symbolize by the word ; and that which we try to express by it appears as the unknowable, the incomprehensible by thought, THE BECOMING OF THINGS UNKNOWABLE. 79 which no category of ours can grasp. For all reality is immersed in the flux of Becoming, which glides before our eyes in a Protean stream of change, interminable, indeterminate, indefinite, indescribable, impenetrable, a boundless and groundless abyss into which we cast the frail network of our categories fruit- lessly and in vain. And this revelation of the flux of things sums up the doom of science ;: surely; we must say, the god- dess of wisdom could not be born of the froth and spume of such fluctuating waves ; our search for truth beneath the idle show of such appearances is surely vain ; the sensuous veil that hides the truth is all the picture. 14. Thus the principles of our science all break down, because not one is capable of expressing the Becoming of things. Our science: has turned out a patchwork raft, compiled out of the battered frag- ments of ancient superstitions, that floats idly on a sea of doubt, unable to attain to the terra firma of certainty, and still more incapable of wafting the ark of life to the distant islands of the Blest. But this fiasco of human science does not satisfy the sceptic : he is prepared to explain how it comes about. That the categories of our thought should prove inadequate to the explanation of reality will cease to surprise us, when we have considered the complete difference of character which exists between our thoughts on the one hand and the reality which is given to feeling in perception on the other. For it is not true that perception and conception are distinguished merely by the greater vividness of the consciousness which accompanies the former : their difference is an essential difference of character, and as soon as it is realized puts an end to the So SCEPTICISM. ridiculous attempts to derive the peculiarities of our thought from "experience." Our conceptions can- not be derived from experience, for the simple reason that no amount of experience can make them square with "experience" (v. above 6-13). The character of our thought (i.e. of the " intuitive " principles of the intuitionists) and that of our feeling (i.e. of the experience of the empiricists) differ so radically that no length of common employment in the use of man has made their deliverances agree. And it is this difference which was described by the misleading term of the " a priori element in know- > * ledge" (v. ch. 2 17). This does not mean, or at least should not be taken to mean, that our thought is prior to sense-experience in Time, that we first have thought- categories and then classify our experi- ences by their aid ; it is intended to describe the morphology of thought, the law of its development, the intrinsic character and structure which it displays in all its manifestations. The intuitionists then were right in contending that there was in thought an element that could not be derived from " experience," an element different from and alien to "sensation," a stream of con- sciousness which sprang from the obscurity of the same origin, and has run parallel with feeling through- out the whole history of the human mind. But it was the assertion of a more dubious doctrine to claim for thought greater dignity and greater cer- tainty, nay to represent it as the sole ground of certainty on the ground of this very difference. Is it not rather a ground for the sceptical inference that since thought and feeling are fundamentally different, knowledge, which depends on a harmonious combination of the two, is impossible ? CHARACTERISTICS OF REALITY. 8 I It is into the evidence for this suggestion that we must now enter. 15. The Real in perception, so far as the inadequacy of our language allows us to describe it, is always unique and individual. It is substantial and substantival, i.e. it is not dependent on other things for its existence, not itself an attribute, but a subject, to which qualities are attributed. It exists in Time and Space, in which it continuously becomes. It is presented with an infinite wealth of sensuous detail, and interacts with the other real things in continual change. Our thought, on the other hand, does not exist either in Space or in Time. We should not come across the happy hunting grounds of the equilateral triangle, even on a voyage to the moon or one of the minor planets, neither did truth come into exist- ence at the time when we made its discovery. The truth that 2x2 = 4 cannot be said to date from the time when men first became conscious of it, or to be localized in the heads of those who are aware of it. We feel that the word 'exist' is quite inadequate to describe the peculiarities of its nature, for, like all the truths of our thought, it is not, and cannot be, a fact which can fall under the observation of our senses. We may try to express it by saying that thought holds good eternally or timelessly in the intelligible sphere (ev roVy I/O^TO)), but even so it will be doubtful whether we shall avoid misconception. For the temptation to confuse the real existence of thought as a psychological fact inside human heads, with its logical validity, which is eternal, and " un- become," unchanging and unlocalized, is too great for most philosophy. And further, all thought is abstract, i.e. it expresses only a selected extract, R. of S. G 82 SCEPTICISM. distilled from the infinite wealth of perception, and rejects the greater part of the sensuous context as irrelevant. It is universal, i.e. common to indi- viduals, and hence incapable of representing their uniqueness. It is discursive, i.e. it proceeds step by step, from one definite conception to another, and hence can only state a thing successively as a series, and not simultaneously as a whole. So it is incap- able of representing the continuous except by the fiction of an infinity of discrete steps, and this incapacity is the secret ground of the constant attempts to regard Space and Time as composed of discrete atoms and moments ( 6, 7), and to draw hard and fast lines of demarcation, where reality exhibits one thing passing into another by insensible gradations in an uninterrupted flow. And, above all, thought is adjectival. It cannot stand by itself, but must always be attributed to some substantive reality. In other words, thought must always be somebody's thought, and any statement of our thought must refer to something : the abstractions of thought must be attached to some real subject which they qualify. No statement we can possibly make, can possibly be a fact, at the most it may be true of the fact, and to forget this is to commit the most serious of philosophic crimes, viz., that of hypostasizing abstractions. The objects of our thought, in short, are not real existences interacting in the sensible world, but ideal relations connected by the logical laws of an " eternal " validity. Hence the logical treatment, also, our thought requires, differs : its highest category is not actual existence, but logical necessity. And while in the real world a fact cannot be more than a fact, and is AND- OF THOUGHT; 83- either a fact or- nothing at all; a truth' for thought may vary through, all the gradations of logical necessity, from' possibility up to " necessary truth/' Whenever, therefore, we set out to prove a. fact, we are trying to- derive it from a totally different order of existence,- to deduce the real from the logical, and hence to reduce reality to thought. Thus all- proof is perversion : it involves an unwarranted manipul- ation of the evidence on^ which it is based. As soon as we are not content to take things simply as they are, and for what they are, as soon as we inquire into the reason of what is, we inevitably pass into the totally different sphere of what must be (or may be, for possibility indicates only the degree of confidence with which we attribute the logical con- nexion, necessary in itself, to reality), in which things do not become but are related. For it is only as a psychological event in the life history of an individual whose knowledge grows, that truth becomes or changes ; in itself it possesses an ideal validity which is eternal, and to which the analogies of Time and Space are inapplicable. Hence there is no change or motion about the world of Ideas : change and motion belong only to the world of existence and exist either in the real mind which apprehends, or in the Becoming of things which it seeks to comprehend. Instead of changes whereby one thing takes the place of another, the ideal world exhibits only logically necessary connexions between its co-existent and mutually implicated members. To speak therefore of a logical process or a process of thought, is a misnomer, if by process we mean any change in the relations of the ideas. The ideas must co-exist, or else there is no relation between them; but if they co-exist, i.e. are both there already, ."84 SCEPTICISM. there is no change and no process. The process therefore must be. a pyschological process in the mind, which travels over the pre-existing system of mutually-dependent relations, and can only render explicit the relations which were before implicitly involved. That is to say, if our reasoning is cogent, our conclusion ought at the end of the process to appear a petitio principii which is involved in the premisses, and our conclusion ought to appear nothing new, ex post facto. And the reason is that the supra-sensible world of Ideas is unaffected by the manipulations by which we catch glimpses of its correlations, and that its co- existent members have nothing to do with the coming into and passing out of being of the sensible world. 1 1 Students of ancient philosophy will have perceived that this account of the contrast between reality and thought agrees entirely with Plato's much-maligned description of the world of Ideas. Every one of his assertions is literally true. It is true that the Ideas form a connected hierarchy which abides unchangeably and eternally " beyond the heavens." It is true that the Idea is the universal, the one opposed to the many which are pervaded by it, and which cannot absorb it. It is true, likewise, that the sensible is knowable only by partaking in the Ideas, that " matter " is the nonexistent, and that the Sensible with its Becoming contains an element of non-existence baffling thought. [ = The Real is know- able only in terms of thought, and in so far as it is not so express- ible, it is nothing for thought] And Plato is no less eloquently true in his silence than in his explanations. He does not explain how sensible things " partake in " the Ideas. And the reason is that this partaking is inexplicable, that the connection of thought with reality is just the difficulty, which Plato saw, but which his successors mostly failed to see. If the Sensible and the Idea are fundamentally different, such partaking is an assumption which our knowledge must assume, but which it cannot justify against scepticism. And so Platonism, as its later history showed, is capable of developing in two directions: it may either confess that the connection cannot be made, and so pass into the scepticism of the new Academy, or it must seek extra- THEIR DIVERGENCE MAKES KNOWLEDGE IMPOSSIBLE. 85, r6. It follows from this divergence between thought and reality, that our thought can only symbolize things, and from the extent of that diverg- ence, that it can only symbolize them imperfectly, and in such a way that upon all the critical ques- tions the disagreement between thought and reality is hopeless. Thought can neither grasp the indi- viduality of the Real, which it fails to define as- particularity, nor its Becoming, which it fails to describe by the categories of Being and Not- Being (v. 13,), nor the exuberant abundance of sense perception, which it fails to express in terms of thought-relations, and cuts away as irrelevant to the abstractions with which alone it can work. Thought and feeling- thus speak in different tongues, as it were, and where is the interpreter that can render them intelligible to each other ? And yet knowledge consists only in their har- mony, in the conformity of truth and fact, in the correspondence of our thought-symbols, with which we reason, with the reality which we feel. If then such harmony cannot be attained, our reasonings may be perfectly valid within their own sphere, and our feelings perfectly unquestionable within theirs, and yet knowledge will be impossible. For we cannot bestow the title of knowledge on an inequit- able adherence to one side : neither reasoning which can attribute no meaning to facts, nor un- reasoning acceptance of facts which have no mean- ing, deserves the name of knowledge. And yet it would seem that to one or other of these alternatives logical certainty in the ecstasy of Neoplatonism. In the one case it sacrifices the theory of Ideas, in the other the sensible world, but in no case does it so solve the problem as to make knowledge possible. 86 .-SCEPTICISM. we were confined, for the symbols of our thought cannot interpret reality. This is not only, as has been shown, an inevitable result of the different natures of thought and feeling, but it is confirmed by the character of all our knowledge. For all our knowledge, every statement about the world which can possibly be made, deals with -realities in terms of thought, states facts in terms of thought-relations. But these thought-relations are not facts, and dis- aster swiftly overtakes .the attempt to treat them as such. For in the first place things cannot be analysed into thought-relations ; one may make any number of statements about a thing and yet never be assured that all has been stated that .could be said about the thing. In other words, any real thing possesses an infinity of content, which no amount of thought- relations can exhaust. But what is this but an indirect admission that the analysis of things in terms of thought has failed ; just as the infinite regress of causes was an indic- ation that the category of causation -had broken down ( n) ? And, secondly, even if we supposed that the whole meaning of a thing >could be stated by our thought, even so, things would not be complexes of thought-relations. For our statements would remain a series of propositions about the thing, which would for ever fail to make or he the thing. They would remain a series to be discursively apprehended, unable again to coalesce into a real whole. And thus every attempt to symbolize feeling in terms of thought is not merely misrepresentation, but futile misrepresentation, which does not in the end succeed in its endeavour. 17. But this divorce of Truth and Fact, this IS ALL JUDGMENT INVALID ? 87 disparateness of Thought and Feeling, involves still further consequences. Not only does it render knowledge impossible, but it renders all reasoning invalid, formally vicious as well as materially false, and in the end leaves it a practice theoretically inexplicable, and practically indefensible. For ac- cording to the most recent researches of logicians, 1 all significant judgment involves a reference of the ideal content recognised as such and it is this which we express in judging to an unexpressed reality beyond the judgment. The real subject of judgment is the real world ; it states facts as ideas, in terms of thought. We talk ideas, but talk about a reality behind them. But if the ideas and the reality are disparate, is not every judgment invalid ? For is not every judgment a deliberate confusion of things essentially different ? If every judgment that is not meaningless involves an ex- plicit reference of thought to reality, in which an ideal content is substituted for a wholly different fact, how is it not fatally unsound ? And not only does this reference of thought to reality vitiate all judgment, and so all inference and all knowledge; but it is not even possible to explain how this reference was made. If thought and feeling are so different in character, what suggested the attempt to interpret the one by the other ? Why did we not acquiesce in the con- viction that thought was unreal, and that feeling was as indescribable as it is incommunicable ? Why must we needs essay to solder together such dis- cordant elements into a single form ? And indeed was this not as gratuitous as it is unavailing ? If 1 Reference may be made especially to Mr. F. H. Bradley's profound work, " The Principles of Logic," ch. i and 2. 88 SCEPTICISM. in judgment we start with an explicit recognition of the essential difference of the ideal content from reality, what enables us to assert their implicit con- nection ? If we start with the assertion that thought and fact are not the same, how do we proceed con- fidently to assert that they are the same, to the extent of substituting the one for the other ? What frenzy gives us the force to leap this gulf, and to pass from avowed difference to unsuggested identity? And this transition is prior, both in idea and in time, to all knowledge ; for it had to be made before knowledge could come into existence : thought and feeling must cohere, must have become commen- surable, before man could become a rational animal. Assuredly the unknown man or monkey who first discovered that his semi-articulate utterances could mean something, i.e., could be made to stand for something else than what they were, must be con- sidered to have made the greatest of all discoveries. Only unfortunately this hypothetical origin of know- ledge in an obscure accident will hardly reassure the sceptic as to its validity ; he will not readily accept its de facto achievement on the authority of an ancestral ape. 1 8. And if judgment is thus invalid, what shall be said of the concatenation of judgments in in- ference ? If judgment cannot attain to truth, how far may not our inferences stray from it ? And certainly there is this much to be said in their favour, that they hardly pretend to corre- spond with fact. They assert the truth of their conclusions, but not that there is anything in nature to correspond to their methods and processes. And indeed it would be difficult to persuade the most credulous that hypothetical and disjunctive premisses CAN REASONING REACH TRUTH ? 89 could be facts. There are no "ifs" about facts, nor can a real man be " either dead or alive." And yet it is upon devices of this sort that all our reasonings rest. For all inference depends on universal pro- positions, and universal propositions are all hypo- thetical. They do not assert the reality of any particular case, when they assert that something holds good of all cases. The proposition " all infinites are unknowable " does not assert that any- thing infinite exists : it equals, " if anything is infinite, it is unknowable." And this illustration of the superior scientific importance of universal propositions leads us on to another peculiarity of our science, viz., that it ascribes greater truth to more general propositions. It is ever aiming at generalizing phenomena, i.e. at gathering together isolated phenomena under general formulas common to them all, of which it regards the individual phenomena as instances or cases. And the more successful it is in bringing out the universal relations of things, the more truly scientific do we esteem it. And the higher the generalization, the more completely is it deemed to explain the lower and less general. Nevertheless it was admitted that the individual was the Real, and it must be admitted also that the less general pro- positions come nearer to a description of the Real, and to an expression of its individuality, than the more general, which have obliterated all similitude with the Real by their vague generalities. To say that an individual is John Smith, is to designate him more closely than to call him an Englishman, or an animal, or a material substance. Thus the course of truth leads directly away from reality. From the standpoint of thought, the more universal 90 SCEPTICISM. is the more real ; from that of sense, the less uni- versal. If, therefore, we could attain the ideal of science, and derive all things in the world from the action of a single law, that law would ipso facto be most unreal, i.e., furthest removed from reality. How can we expect, then, that our results should come out right, if in our inquiry we deliberately walk away from reality ? And after this can we be any longer astonished to find that all proof should be perversion ( 15), and that all science should end in mythology ( 5) ? 19. And so the Sceptic will conclude that knowledge originated in a process which seems to have arisen amid the animal beginnings of man, perchance from one of those fortuitous variations to which modern science professes itself indebted for so many interesting and important phenomena but which is historically .inexplicable and logically indefensible ; that it progresses by shamelessly ignoring patent differences ; and that it results in principles which after all prove false and incom- petent to grasp the -reality of things. He will agree with Heraclitus of old in thinking that not even a grunt can be truthfully uttered concerning the Becoming of things, and will claim to seal the mouth of the defenders of knowledge, until they can show how thought can harmonize with feeling, or our conceptions correspond with facts. And this he knows can never be, for since the equivalence of thought and feeling has been denied, no reasoning which assumes it can avail against Scepticism ; the proof of their correspondence would have to be derived from thought alone or feeling alone. And yet feeling alone is inarticulate, while thought alone is vain, and has no contact with reality; they cannot DOES KNOWLEDGE WORK ? 91 coalesce, and each must separately succumb to the attack of Scepticism. 20. But all these demonstrations leave us cold. It seems idle to urge that judgment is impossible, that inference is invalid, that the categories of our thought cannot interpret the cipher of reality, in face of the .fact that, rightly or wrongly, the assump- tions of our knowledge work. The theoretic falsity of science shrinks back into the obscurest shade of self-tormenting sophistry before the brilliant evidence daily afforded us of its practical .certainty. Our mathematics may be grounded on falsity, and pro- ceed by .fiction, but yet they somehow -manage to predict the time of an eclipse within the tenth part of a second. Such reflections have often rendered theoretic scepticism practically harmless, and even some- times enabled it to strike up a curious alliance with theological orthodoxy. But they show, not that Scepticism is harmless, but that in. merely theoretical scepticism .it has not attained its fullest development. It is baffled, not because it has been convicted of error, but because the venue has been changed. The knowledge which it attacks, shifts its ground and takes refuge in the strong citadel of practice, and mere scepticism has not the siege .artillery to assault it. And this new position knowledge can maintain only until Scepticism decides to press its attack .home. "Knowledge is safe only while it is not pursued, safe until the sceptic disputes his adversary's .appeal to the .higher .court of practice. When he .does, !it soon appears that the " practical working"" 'of our knowledge is far from conclusive of the -question. at issue. If knowledge appeals to practice, the sceptic may say, to practice it shall go. 92 SCEPTICISM. What is meant by saying that knowledge works in practice ? Is it enough that we should be able to work out from our theoretic . assumptions isolated results which hold good in practice ? Are the fundamental principles of life and knowledge justi- fied by their application to isolated cases ? Shall we" stay to praise the correctness of the minor details of a picture, if its whole plan is preposterous, and its whole conception is perverse ? Surely that is not enough : if knowledge is to be justified by its practical success, it must be because its success is complete, because it succeeds in producing a complete harmony in the practical sphere. For else it may be merely an elaborate fraud, designed to lead us by an arduous and round-about way to the inevitable conclusion, that the nature of things is ultimately inexplicable. 'Our knowledge works' what won- der if it works ? For where would be the mischief if it did not work ? If it did not work, we should not worry. If, arguing falsely from false premisses to vicious conclusions, these did not, by some malicious mockery of a primordial perversity of things, partly correspond to the processes of nature, how should we be deceived? What if the light of science be but a baleful will-of-the-wisp which involves us ever deeper in the marshes of nescience ? How should we be lured into the fruitless toil of science, if it did not hold out to us a delusive hope of reducing into a cosmos of knowledge the chaos of our present- ations, if we saw at the outset what with much labour we perceive at the end, that our knowledge always leaves us with an irrational remainder of final in- explicability ? In order to rebut the suggestion that the apparent practical success of knowledge is one more illusion, TRANSITION TO PESSIMISM. 93 a false clue that involves us only the more inextric- ably in the maze of perplexity, its vindicators must be prepared to show that knowledge solves, or can reasonably be considered capable of solving, the problems of practical life, capable of constituting it into a concordant whole. In this way, and in this way alone, knowledge would acquire a problematic certainty, conditional upon its capacity to give, on the basis of its assumptions, a complete solution of the problem of life. But is it likely that knowledge, after failing to justify itself, will be able to solve the whole problem when complicated by the addition of the practical aspect ? This the sceptic will surely deny, and in so doing he becomes a' pessimist. 21. Scepticism passes into Pessimism in two ways. In the first place it is the practical answer of Scepticism to the defence of knowledge on pract- ical grounds. The pessimist admits that know- ledge appears to work ; but it appears to work only in order to lead us the more surely astray, to com- plicate the miseries of life by one more illusory aim ; it works only to work us woe. For how can our science claim indulgence on the ground of its practical success, when all it does is to relieve the lesser miseries of life, in order that we may have the leisure and the sensitiveness the more, hope- lessly to feel its primary antinomies ? How can the certainty of mathematics console us for the uncertainty of life ? Or how does the piling up of pyramids and Forth Bridges alleviate the agony of death ? As it was in the beginning, the pessimist will maintain, it is now, and ever will be, that Death and Sin are the fruit of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is true, too true, that increase of 94 SCEPTICISM. science is increase of sorrow, and that he that multiplies knowledge, multiplies misery. In the end it also is vanity and vexation of spirit. Thus, just as Agnosticism could explain and justify itself" only by passing into Scepticism, so Scepticism is compelled to deny that knowledge works on pessimistic grounds. And secondly, as Agnosticism passed into Scep- ticism, so Scepticism develops into Pessimism by internal forces. Pessimism is the- proper emotional reflex of intellectual scepticism; We may indeed think the world evil without thinking it unknowable, but we can hardly think it good, if it be unknow- able. Not only can we not approve of a nature of things which renders the satisfaction of our knowing faculty impossible, but we must feel that a scheme of things which contains such elaborate provision for deceiving us, is likely to display similar per- versity throughout. And the sense of an all-pervad- ing perversity of things is the root of Pessimism. Thus, in passing into Pessimism the negation of philosophy reaches its ultimate resting-place in the unfathomed' chaos where the powers of darkness and disorder eneulf the Cosmos. CHAPTER IV. PESSIMISM. yeXcas KOL TravTa KOVIS KCU Travra TO p-vjoeVy IlavTa yap e dXoya>v cart TO, yiyvoyu.ci'a. 1 8 i. PESSIMISM has both an emotional and an ) intellectual aspect, and these may be to a large extent separated in practice. Emotional pessimism consists in the feeling that life is not worth living, or that the world is evil. As this conclusion may be derived from a variety of premisses, the intellect- ual grounds of pessimism are exceedingly various. Almost every philosophic doctrine has been made the intellectual basis of pessimism, but with most of them pessimism has no direct connection. There exists, nevertheless, an intellectual ground from which emotional pessimism most easily and natur- ally results, and as many or all of the other grounds may be reduced to it, it may fairly be called the essence of Pessimism. This essential basis of Pessimism is what we have reached in the course of the argument, and shall henceforth consider. It may be most briefly described as the supposition of the fundamental perversity or irrationality of all things. It asserts that the problem of life is inherently insoluble, that the attempt to obtain a harmonious and significant 1 All is a mockery, and all is dust, and all is naught, For the irrational engenders all that becomes. (Glycon, Anthol. Pal. x. 124.) 96 PESSIMISM. solution is comparable to circle-squaring, and that hence, from whatever side we attack the difficulty, we are baffled by invincible discords. This position is the negation of all the activities that make up life : for they all in different ways assume that life has a meaning, that its ends and its means are not incommensurable, that it is not a hopeless and senseless striving that ends in nothing. It is the negation of happiness and goodness, be- cause it asserts that these ideals are meaningless phantoms impossible of attainment ; of science, because knowledge is a snare and a delusion, and in the end a fruitless waste of labour ; of philosophy, because it assumes that the world has a meaning which may be discovered, whereas in truth the secret of the universe cannot be unravelled, because the world contains nothing which admits of rational interpretation. Thus Pessimism not only includes all the views we have been considering, Agnosticism which denied the possibility of all philosophy, and Scepticism which denied that of all knowledge, but adds on its own account a denial of the possibility of all rational conduct. And so, since it cuts at the roots of them all, the possibility of this Pessimism must be the primary consideration, not only of philosophy, but of science, of ethics, and of eudaemonism. 2. And not only is it possible that the con- stitution of things is intrinsically perverse, but it is possible for Pessimism plausibly to urge that this is extremely probable. The one thing certain, it may be said, about the world, is the fundamental discord which runs through all creation, is the ingen- ious perversity which baffles all effort, is the futil- ity to which all the activities of life are condemned. THE INTRINSIC PERVERSITY OF THINGS. 97 This Pessimism which denies that anything can in any way be made of life, because life is hope- lessly irrational, because its conflicting aspects are insuperable, is the primary question for philosophy. If it can be answered, difficulties may remain in plenty, but there is no impossibility, and indeed we are pledged to the faith that an answer may ult- imately be found to every valid difficulty the human mind can validly feel. If it cannot be answered, the whole edifice of life collapses at a blow, and for its practice we are left to the chance guidance of our inclinations, and deprived even of the hope that they will not lead us into destruction. And yet such pessimism is particularly formidable because of its very simplicity. It does not require the aid of any abstruse metaphysics ; it has not to rely on subtle inferences that take it beyond the obvious and visible ; it merely takes the facts of the world, such as they are, and requests us to put two and two together. It takes the main activities of life, the main aims of life which are capable of being desired for their own sake, and shows how in each case, (i) their attainment is impossible; (2) their imperfection is inherent and ineradicable ; and (3) the aggravation of these defects is to be looked for in the course of time rather than their amelioration. In this way it does not, it is true, justify the ill- coined title of "pessimism," nor claim to prove a superlative which is ambiguous in the case of optimism and absurd in that of pessimism, 1 nor does 1 Optimism may mean, and originally meant, the doctrine that ours is the best of all possible worlds. But it is often taken as equivalent to the assertion that good predominates. So pessimism should mean that ours was the worst of all possible worlds, but how are we to know this? R. ofS. H 98 PESSIMISM it at once declare life evil. For though the pessimist asserts this ultimately, just as the optimist asserts that life is good, he cannot do it directly. What- ever testimony he may bring to the actual evils of life, the optimist may refuse to conclude that the evil predominates. Hence it is only by the tend- encies of things that the question can be scientific- ally argued, and that probable but unprovable assertions on either side can be established or refuted. The question as to the value of life is mainly a question of Meliorism or Pejorism : for to whatever side we suppose the balance to incline at the outset, it is bound to be more than counter- balanced in the end by a constant tendency in the opposite direction. 3. Hence we must consider the nature and prospects of the four main pursuits or aims of life, happiness, goodness, beauty, and knowledge, and see what fate awaits the sensuous, moral, sesthetic, and intellectual enthusiasms. We shall consider first what is the value of life from the point of view of happiness, not only because happiness is in a way the supreme end including all the rest, because if it could be truly attained the means would be of comparatively slight importance, or because the full and unmarred attain- ment of any of the others would bring happiness in its train, but also because it has been popularly supposed to be the sole interest of Pessimism. It has been supposed that the whole question of pessimism and optimism was as to whether there was a surplus of pleasure or pain in the world, and implied agreement to a common hedonistic basis. 1 But this is really an accident of the historic 1 E.g. by H. Spencer: "Data of Ethics," p. 27. NOT PRIMARILY HEDONISTIC. 99 development of the controversy, which does not affect its essential nature, nor justify the derivation of Pessimism from the consciousness of a baffled love of pleasure. The Pessimist need not assert that life normally brings with it a surplus of pain, though he will doubtless be prone to think so, i.e., he need not base his pessimism on hedonism : his denial of the pleasure-value of life may be the con- sequence and not the cause of his pessimism. No doubt most pessimists have also been hedonists, and several excellent reasons may be given for the fact ; but this is no reason why Pessimism should be based on hedonism. It would be possible to base Pessimism on several non-hedonistic principles ; on a despair of the possibility of goodness, of know ledge, of beauty, or on an aristocratic contempt for human happiness. For it would be possible to argue that the happiness of creatures so petty and con- temptible as men was insufficient to redeem the character of the universe : whether or not man enjoyed a short-lived surplus of ephemeral and intrinsically worthless pleasure, there was in this nothing great, nothing noble, nothing worthy of being the aim of effort, nothing capable of satisfying the aspirations of the soul. The deepest pessimism is not hedonistic ; for hedonism implies a presumption, a confidence in the claims of man, which it cannot countenance ; it asserts, not that life is valueless because it is un- happy, but that it is unhappy because it is valueless. And that so many pessimists have been hedonists is easily explained by the facts that so few of them had probed the real depths of the abyss of Pessim- ism, that they, like the majority of men, were naturally hedonists, and above all, that the accept- ICO PESSIMISM. ance of the hedonistic basis was the surest way of carrying the war into the enemy's country. For hedonism is the chief stronghold of optimism : the most obvious defence of life is on the ground of its happiness. Indeed, if we neglect for the moment metaphysical possibilities, life can hardly be pronounced "a success from any other point of view. Can it seriously be asserted that the present race of men deserve to live because of their good- ness, or of their wisdom, or of their beauty ? Would not any impartial man with a decently high stand- ard in these respects, if he were armed with omnipotence for an hour, destroy the whole race with a destruction more utter than that which over- took the Cities of the Plain; lest he should leave daughters of Lot among the favoured few ? Or shall it be said that any present or probable satis- faction of the moral, intellectual and aesthetic activities of average man makes his life worth living ? Surely if our life is not on the average good because it is happy and pleasant, it cannot be seen to be very good because it is virtuous, beauti- ful or wise. Optimists then are well-advised to defend the value of life on the ground of its pleasure-value, for if the defence breaks down here, the resistance will be a mere pretence elsewhere. The optimist and not the pessimist is the real hedonist, for the latter's condemnation of life rests on the conscious- ness of too many evils for him to base it on a single class : he is too deeply absorbed in the endless spectacle of Evil to have the leisure specially to bewail the hedonistic imperfections of life, the brevity and illusoriness of pleasure. 4. We must consider then the claims of life to THE IDEAL OF HAPPINESS. IOI be happy, and ask what happiness is and on what it depends. Happiness may be defined from within as the fruition of fulfilled desire, from without as complete adaptation to environment. A complete corre- spondence between the soul and its environment is required for perfect happiness ; it can be attained only if our desires are at once realized in our con- ditions of life, or if they are at once accommodated to them. We need either a wondrous control of our environment or a wondrous plasticity of our nature. But both of these are rendered imposs- ible by what seems to be the intrinsic constitution of our environment. If that environment were something fixed and unchanging, it is conceivable that we might, in the course of time, come to under- stand it and our nature so perfectly as to bring complete correspondence within our reach. But our environment is not fixed : it is constantly shift- ing and changing, and, humanly speaking, it seems impossible that it should be fixed. For it appears to be an essential feature of our world to be a world of Becoming, and to such an ever-changing environ- ment there can be no adaptation. Whenever we fancy that we have adapted ourselves to our con- ditions, the circumstances change : a turn of the kaleidoscope and the labour of a life-time is ren- dered unavailing. Hence it is that not one of the activities or functions of life is ever quite com- mensurate with its end, that our efforts are for ever disproportionate to our objects, and for ever fail of attaining an end which is too lofty for our means. The Ideal seems sometimes to be within our sight, but it is never within our reach, and we can never cross the great gulf that parts it from the Actual. IO2 PESSIMISM. And so the ideal of perfect adaptation, harmony or happiness is not one which has any application to the world in which we live ; the dream of its realiz- ation is forbidden by the constitution of things. It was not then a false instinct that prompted men to postpone the attainment of happiness to a heaven beyond their ken in another world ; for assuredly it is an illusion in this world of ours. And what may be inferred from this ? What but this, that the attempt to judge life by the standard of happiness is to judge it by a conception which is inapplicable and unmeaning, by a standard which is false and futile ? What but this, that in aiming at happiness we are deliberately striving after the impossible, and that it would be strange indeed if the vanity of our aim did not reveal itself in the failure of our efforts ? 5. But it will not perhaps suffice to assert generally the impossibility of adaptation to environ- ment under the given conditions of sensible existence, and the fact will at all events become more obvious, if we consider the question more in detail. We shall find that adaptation to environment is intrin- sically impossible from whatever side we approach the question, no matter whether we consider the physical, social, or psychological environment, the case of the individual or of the race. The individual cannot adapt himself to his physical environment, because in the end the strength of life must be exhausted in the effort to keep up with the changes the revolving seasons bring, because in the end waste must exceed repair, and the vain struggle of life be solved in death, that the unstable com- pounds of his bodily frame may be dissociated into stabler forms of lifeless matter. If the performance IMPOSSIBILITY OF ADAPTATION. 103 of the functions of life is the aim of life, life is a fail- ure, for all its forms must die and pass away. 6. Nor is there adaptation to the social en- vironment : births, marriages, and deaths ring the changes of our social happiness. How can there be stability in relations where all the acting forces come and go, are attracted and divorced by influences they can neither calculate nor govern ? To set one's heart upon the fortunes of another does but multiply the sources of its deadly hurt, and the more expose our vitals to the shafts of fortune. For in the end all love is loss, and all affection breeds affliction. What does it then avail to vow in vain a faith that fate frustrates? why should our will weave ties that death and chance must shatter ? Does not true wisdom, then, lie in a self-centred absorption in one's own interests ? Is not a cool and calm selfishness, which does not place its happi- ness in aught beyond its self, which engages in social relations but does not engage itself in them, the primary condition of prosperity ? Does not the sage's soul retire into its own sphere and contemplate its own intrinsic radiance, unbroken, untouched and unobscured by sympathetic shadows from the lives of others ? Is not feeling with others in very truth sympathy, suffering with them ? 7. The dream of such a self-sufficing severance from all physical and social ties may be an ideal for fakirs, but it is impossible for men. And even were it possible, happiness would be as little found in the individual soul as in the social life. For here too, harmony is unattainable : the dis- cords of the essential elements of our nature can never be composed by beings subjected to the material world of Time and Space. It is impossible IO4 PESSIMISM. to compromise the claims of the future with the desires of the present, impossible also to cast off the fetters of the past. The life which is warped and narrowed down to limited possibilities by the past, must sacrifice either its present or its future, and most often sacrifices both, in vain. For how can we, starting from the perverse and incongruous materials we did not make, so mould our lives that we can be happy both in youth and in old age, enjoy our lives and yet be glad at death ? How shall we not regret in age the pleasures and the freshness of youth, or in youth struggle vainly to attain the wisdom and the calm of age ? And this incongruence of the inner constitution of man's soul is invincible and universal : his nature is a disordered jumble of misinherited tendencies. The image of a multitude of warring and destructive beasts which Plato regarded as the inner state of a tyrant's soul, fails to describe the full horror of the facts: for each man's soul contains the representatives of ancestral savages and beasts, and has out of such discordant elements to form a government to guide his course. Thus, in addition to the external difficulties of life, there is constant danger of rebellion and anarchy within. The reason has to provide not only against attacks from with- out, but to curb the conflict of the elements within; for if it reach a certain point, the mind is shattered and a raging maniac leaps forth into the light. And so the lusts of the flesh, the incubus of an- cestral sins, are ever at war with the aspirations of the spirit ; our feelings, the deep-rooted reaction of our emotional nature upon ancient and obsolete conditions of life, persist into a present where they are out of harmony with the more flexible conclu- NO HOPE FOR HUMANITY. 1 05 sions of our reason, and cannot be conformed to them within the brief space of a life-time. Thus, from whatever side we regard the life of the individual, adaptation is impossible : whether we consider its physical, social, or psychological con- ditions, there is war and constant struggle, over- shadowed by the certainty of ultimate defeat. It is ill dicing with the gods, who load the dice with death : the pursuit of happiness is an unequal fight with fate, for us, " the helpless pieces of a cruel game," whose life seems little but a series of forced moves resulting in an inevitable checkmate. 8. And if we consider the prospects of the race, they appear equally hopeless. Physically complete adaptation is impossible. We know that our solar system cannot go on for ever, and that the ultimate fate of humanity, imprisoned in a decaying planet, must be to shiver and to starve to death in ever-deepening gloom. 9. Again, the possibility of social harmony depends on the possibility of so reconciling the claims of the individual with the requirements of society, that men would be perfectly free to do what they pleased, and be pleased to do what they ought. But how shall we cherish such an illusion in face of the evidence of the infinity of the individual, of the boundless growth of selfish demands, of the insatiable cravings of ambition, avarice, and vanity ? Until it has been shown how human society could rid itself of poverty, discontent and crime, could regu- late the number and the reproduction of the race, could eradicate love and hunger, and the competit- ion between individuals for the prizes of those passions, and so the envy, hatred and malice which that competition must engender, such hopes of social IO6 PESSIMISM. harmony can bear no relation to the actualities of life. 10. Or lastly, if we consider the psychological conditions of internal harmony, we shall have again to admit its impossibility under the present constit- ution of things. The primary reflex in the rational soul of the action of the environment, is the growth of certain convictions as to the practical necessities of life. These convictions, when they have sunk into the soul, generate corresponding emotions, and ultim- ately become incarnate, as it were, in the physical structure of the body (whether by direct adaptation, or by natural selection). But this process requires much time. And what is the result in a world of constant change ? The conditions of life change ; the conduct required by the new conditions is first (though often all too late) perceived by the reason, and after a time the suitable emotions are grown, prompting to the performance of that conduct ; and last of all, perhaps only by the action of heredity through numberless generations, the body is moulded into fitness to perform its new functions. But how if these changes follow more rapidly than the capa- city of the organism to adapt themselves to them ? It would tend to fall behind the times ; and thus if A, B, C, be successive stages in the conditions of life, requiring the adaptation of the organism to them, it might be that our reason had adapted itself to stage C, our feelings to B, while our body was still only fitted to perform the duties of stage A, and there would arise a conflict in the soul, i.e. the elements of our being would be always more or less unadapted to their work. And there can be no doubt that such is everywhere and normally the THE CONFLICT IN THE SOUL. IC>7 case. We can as yet hardly boast to have dis- covered the solutions to the complex problems of modern life with our reason ; our feelings are con- tinually harking back irrationally to the conditions of a remote antiquity, while our bodies are still more unsuited to the sedentary and intellectual life of civilization. And so we are impelled in contrary directions by the conflicting constituents of our nature, and life becomes a burden to men whose faculties are not competent to perform the functions it requires. It would be but a slight exaggeration of our inability to keep pace with the changes of things to say that our bodies are those of animals, our feelings those of savages, our reason that of men, while our destiny and duties seem those of angels. Thus this internal discord, this conflict between the convictions of the head and the promptings of the heart, between the aspirations of the will and the shackles imposed on them by " the body of this death " is not, as we would fain believe, a transitory symptom of the present age, due to the ascetic superstitions of an effete religion, or, as Mr. Spencer would persuade us, to the survival of military habits in an industrial age, but a necessary and permanent feature, which marks and stains the whole of Evol- ution. Internal non-adaptation is the inevitable concomitant of life in a changing world, and must exist until Time pass into Eternity. ii. But not only does the intrinsic constitut- ion of things render the pursuit of happiness that of an unattainable ideal, but even the approximations to it, as we fondly call them, are put beyond our reach by the course of events. Happiness can never be attained, and, for all our efforts, the delusive phantom recedes further and further from our eyes. IO8 PESSIMISM. The evidence of Pejorism, i.e., of the fact that the world has been growing more unhappy, must of necessity be historical, and as our knowledge of history is imperfect, it cannot in itself be conclusive. But in connection with the facts which have been mentioned, it becomes highly significant testimony to Pessimism. This testimony may be considered with a view to its bearing upon the physical, material, social and psychological effects of " progress " upon the happi- ness of mankind. 1 2. In estimating the effect of physical changes in the organism upon happiness, it is essential to bear in mind the fact that the physical functions of life are largely, and probably increasingly, performed unconsciously, and only enter into consciousness as pain, when out of order. Hence all the improve- ments in the conditions of life which merely secure the carrying on of the physical functions are useless for the production of positive happiness. Our ordin- ary life is none the happier because it is securer against violent interruption of its functions, because we are less liable to be butchered or burnt. The proper functioning of our organism is doubtless a primary condition of positive happiness, but does not in itself constitute any considerable factor in it. Hence by far the larger part of the increased security and protection of life is of no avail for the production of pleasurable feeling, and its effect would, on the whole, probably be more than counterbalanced by the diminution of happiness arising out of the non - elimination of diseased and unfit organisms which in former times could not have survived to suffer much. Secondly, the pleasures arising from the bodily EVOLUTION FOR THE WORSE. IO9 organism are, owing to the lack of adaptation be- tween man and his environment, particularly liable to be interfered with by the 'development of the higher feelings of the mind, and hence to be im- paired by the progress of civilization ( 9). For it is necessary to remember that different pleasures are either mutually exclusive, or can only be enjoyed together to a very limited extent, while different pains admit of indefinite intensification by combination up to the point at which death or un- consciousness ensues. Thus the greater sensitive- ness of a more refined nervous system is rendered unavailing as a source of pleasure, while it is terribly efficacious as a source of pain. And our non-adaptation to our environment is also a fruitful source of new pains. There can be little doubt that our organism is not adapted to the conditions of modern life ; our brains are not equal to the intellectual strain imposed on them ; our nerves are disordered by the hurry and worry of stimuli to which they cannot respond with sufficient rapidity and delicacy ; our eyes cannot be persist- ently used for reading without painful malformations, and even our stomachs are becoming increasingly incompetent to digest the complexities of modern cookery. In short, the physical machine was not meant to work at such pressure, nor can it sustain the strains where we require it. And in addition to sources of misery which seem to be, in part at least, due to human action, there are others more purely physical, which form the penalties nature has affixed to Evolution. Among them may be instanced a fruitful source of acute pain in the progressive decay of the teeth of civil- ized man. It has been asserted that no philosophy IIO PESSIMISM. was proof against toothache, but Pessimism at any rate can convert toothache into a proof of its philoso- phy. And, more generally, civilized man becomes far more subject to minor ailments, which, together with his nervous sensitiveness, probably make " a bad cold " as painful as a deadly disease was to a savage. In fact, the higher races of man seem, like the higher breeds of domestic animals, to develop an astonishing aptitude for illness, a delicateness and want of stamina which makes them suffer acutely when they have to bear privations, even when their superior morale enables them to bear up against them, and their superior knowledge enables them to delay death. Again, there is a progressive loss in the power of recuperation under injury as we advance to the higher forms of life. Just as a crab, on losing a limb, will grow another, or as a snail can repair the loss even of its head, so savage races will recover from hurts which would prove fatal to Europeans. And if this process goes on, we may justly dread the time when the merest scratch will prove an incurable wound. Or again, we find several facts about the repro- duction of the race, which may well occasion des- pondency. Births are easier and safer among savages than among civilized men, and most difficult among the most civilized of these. And other facts connected with this subject seem to set a limit to the intellectual development of man. There seems to be a decided tendency for highly educated women to be sterile, probably because their organism does not possess the superfluous energy which renders reproduction possible. And, to a large extent, the explanation both of this and the previous phenome- PHYSICAL LIMITS TO PROGRESS. I I I non lies in the fact that there is a physical limit to the size of the head of an infant which can be born. It would follow from this that since there is an un- doubted relation between intellect and the size of the brain, the bulk of our geniuses even now perish in their birth. Lastly, if we go back to prehuman stages in the history of Evolution, we find that some of the most fundamental features of animal life are not original. Sexual reproduction, e.g., has been evolved, and there was originally no difference between nutrition and reproduction. One cannot help thinking, how- ever, that much evil and much suffering might have been prevented if this connection had been main- tained, if life had never been complicated by the distinction of the sexes, if reproduction had never occurred, except as an incident of superabundant nutrition, and if children had never made their appearance, except where there was an abundance of food ! And recently it has been suggested also that death itself is derivative, and was evolved by the amoeba from a mistaken desire to promote the survival of the fittest. 1 Into the somewhat inadequate evidence for this speculation there is no need to enter, nor to deny that the biological and physiological reasons for this unparalleled feat of Evolution are doubtless of a highly satisfactory character. But from a purely human point of view it seems the final condemnation of the process. From an evolution which could invent and cause death, man has evidently no happi- ness to hope ; rather he must in fear and trembling expect it to bring forth some new and unconjectured horror. 1 By Professor Weismann. I I 2 PESSIMISM. 13. Taking next the material conditions of life, it is undeniable that many ameliorations of the lot of man have taken place within our knowledge. But material progress is not in itself a cure of the miseries of the soul ; on the contrary, it alone renders possible that growth of sensitiveness and reflection which makes men conscious pessimists. So it is not surprising that the chief prophets of Pes- simism should have arisen amongst those who from a coarsely material point of view had less to com- plain of than their fellows. Nor is it surprising that an age pre-eminent for its material progress should be also an age pre-eminent for its spiritual misery. For how can railways, telegraphs and telephones make men happy ? To be deprived of their con- veniences would doubtless be pain acutely felt and indignantly resented ; but when the first joy of novel discovery is past, their possession is no source of positive pleasure. 14. But even if it be admitted that material progress, unlike the evolution of the bodily organ- ism, has in itself brought a surplus of pleasure, it cannot be considered in abstraction, apart from its indirect effect upon social conditions. And if these are taken into consideration, it appears that every new luxury generates a thousand new wants in those who possess it, a thousand ignoble ambitions in those who may hope to do so, a thousand hateful jealousies in those who behold it beyond their reach. The happiness of the unsophisticated savage was not wholly created by the vivid imaginations of eighteenth century theorists : it is a theory, to some extent at least, borne out by the customary pro- cedure of introducing civilization among savages. Savages have comparatively few wants they cannot MATERIAL PROGRESS. I I 3 satisfy, and so will not slave to produce things in order to satisfy the wants of civilized man. The trader therefore must excite passions powerful enough to overcome the natural indolence of the savage ; and so with rum and rifles he gratifies his desire of drink and of revenge. Thus the savage enters on the path of money-getting, propter vitam vivendi perdere causas, an endless path whence there is no return, and where to falter is to fall. He is demoralized and often too destroyed, but civilization triumphs and the world " progresses," and though each generation be more unhappy than its prede- cessor, each hopes that its successor will be more fortunate. And in another way at any rate, material progress has been the source of much misery, and a chief factor in the increase of social discord, by widening the material gulf between the rich and the poor, and the intellectual gulf between the educated and uneducated, and by stimulating the envy of the poor, nay, by making possible the education which made them conscious of their misery. It is the fierce lust for the material good things of life which has brought upon modern society the great and growing danger of revolutionary Socialism, and which baffles the well-meant efforts of those who would content it with less than the utter destruction of civilization. And not the least pathetic feature of a desperate situation is that, while the unreason- ing insistance of those who claim the good things of life is becoming fiercer, the happiness they covet is imaginary, and those who are supposed to possess the means to happiness are either too blast to enjoy them, or have made them the means to new pains. And though these progressively increasing pains R. ofS. I 114 PESSIMISM. and claims of an ever-deepening sensitiveness will doubtless appear morbid and ridiculous from the fact that they differ in almost every case, they are none the less real, none the less the bane of many lives comparatively free from other sources of misery, none the less a cause of social non-adaptation. And while there is so much dirty work to be done in the world, tendencies which engender in men a distaste for dirty work are not conducive to hap- piness. While, e.g., battles have to be fought, it is a distinct source of misery that so few of the men who fight them should now delight in carnage for its own sake. 1 5. But perhaps the most serious and disheart- ening source of non-adaptation to the social environ- ment, and one indeed which largely underlies the symptoms to which allusion has been made, is the over-rapid growth of the social environment itself. It is impossible for society to harmonize the con- flicting claims of its members because of the con- stant addition of new claimants : adaptation to the social environment is nullified by the ever-increasing complexity of the social environment itself. It was comparatively feasible for political philo- sophers in ancient times to theorize about ideal republics in which social harmony was attained : the citizens for whom they legislated formed but a small proportion even of the human inhabitants of the State ; their material wants were to be sup- plied by the forced labour of slaves and inferior classes, whose happiness was excluded from con- sideration. So, too, the difficulties of the population question w r ere evaded by summary methods of infanticide, i.e., the rights of children were not recognised, and even in the case of women that GROWTH OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT. 115 recognition was little more than nominal. With so restricted a body of fully-qualified citizens, i.e., with so circumscribed an area of the social environment, it is not astonishing that the structural perfection of ancient states should have been far greater than ours and the ideal far nearer : the ancient State could represent a higher type of social organism because it made no attempt to solve the problems which perplex us. But we have successively admitted the claims of children, slaves, and women, and with the growing complexity of our social problems we have sunk out of sight even of an approximate solution in a quagmire of perplexities, in which we are more hopelessly involved with every step in our " progress." Nor need the process stop with man : in the laws for the prevention of cruelty to animals there is marked a more than incipient recognition of the rights of animals, and already there are thousands who resent the sufferings of vivisected dogs as keenly as the most ardent abolitionist did those of negro slaves, and there are more convinced of the iniquity of vivisection now than there were convinced of the iniquity of slavery one hundred years ago. 1 6. But not only is the prodigious growth of the social environment removing a harmony of the social forces further and further from our sight, but a parallel process is rendering harmony more and more unattainable for the individual soul. In the earliest beginnings of life, adaptation, in so far as it exists, is physical or nothing at all. The organism adapts itself directly to its environment or it perishes. At a subsequent stage it is primarily emotional and secondarily physical ; i.e. the pressure of circumstances generates feelings which subse- n6 .PESSIMISM. quently direct the actions -of the body. In the amoeba there is scarcely any search for -or effort after food : it assimilates the digestible substances it comes across. And hence there is no need of feeling. But higher animals are capable of pursuing their prey, and hence are stimulated by the pangs of hunger. In man, again, the conditions of life have become so complex that the sample feelings no longer suffice. Man cannot, as a rule, when hungry, simply put forth his hand and eat. The means to gratify his feelings and his physical needs require a long and far-sighted process of calculation, and thus reason becomes the main factor in vital adapt- ation. As Mr. Spencer phrases it, the more complex and re-representative feelings gain greater authority and become more important than the simple and presentative feelings, and the latter must be re- pressed as leading to fatal imprudences. To the consequences of this process allusion has already been made ( 10) ; it produces an -ever-growing dis- cord within the individual soul. More specifically, however, a single case may be mentioned of the growing non-adaptation of the feelings to the con- ditions of modern life, because it is fraught with such fatal consequences to human welfare and be- cause no reformer dares even to attack a well-spring of evil in the soul of man which poisons the whole of modern life. 17. In animals the reproductive instinct does not do more such is the waste of life than main- tain the numbers of the race. But in man that waste is so diminished that population normally in- creases, and increases rapidly. And every advance in civilization, in medicine, in material comfort, in peaceableness and respect for human life, increases THE POPULATION. QUESTION. llj the length and the security of life and diminishes the death-rate. In other words,, it diminishes the number of new births required to maintain, the race and the fertility which '^ politically necessary. But no corresponding change takes place in the natural fertility of the race. What is the result ? If we suppose that a healthy woman, marrying at the right age, could without detriment to her health produce six children, 1 and if we take into consider- ation also the fact that the length of life will soon on an average extend over two generations, i.e. that men may reasonably expect to see their grand- children grown up, it is evident that population will be fully maintained if one-fifth to one- sixth of the women in a society provide for its. continuance ;. i.e. the services of four out of every five,, at least,, might be dispensed with from this point of view.. If, therefore, only the one who was really wanted,, wanted to marry, while the other four were content to leave no descendants, all would be well, and human desires would be adapted to the require- ments of the situation. But in that case the repro- ductive instinct would have to be reduced, it would be hard to say to what fraction of its present strength. This is so far from being the case that even if it is not true that its strength has not been, reduced at all, it is yet obvious that its reduction has not taken place in anything like a degree pror portionate to the reduction of the need of its exercise. 1 As a fact the average fertility of marriage is four-and-a-half, But for many reasons the actual number of. children falls far short of the possible maximum. For under the present conditions healthy and strong women are by no means exclusively selectedt for marriage, and other artificial conditions limit the number of\ children produced,, in most cases .far .below, what it. might be.. I I 8 PESSIMISM. And this is not astonishing for many reasons. For (i) feelings are slow to be eradicated, and their persistence is the greater the more deep-seated and important they were. Hence any considerable change in human nature seems in this case to border upon the impossible, although it must be admitted that no instinct which was acquired in the course of Evolution can be exempted from the possibility of being again removed by an adaptation to cir- cumstances similar to that which generated it. (2) Civilization, although it gives the over-sensual mani- fold opportunities of killing themselves, does not directly favour the less sensual as against the more sensual, as it favours the gentler as against the more violent, the more industrious as against the lazier; on the contrary, it perhaps makes the sensual the more likely to leave offspring. (3) Human instit- utions and social forces have, in almost all cases, done their utmost to keep the amative instinct at its pristine strength. Christianity alone has even attempted to contend with human nature in this respect, and even it, in Protestant countries at least, may now be said to have retired baffled from the contest. Its defeat indeed will surprise no one who considers the means it adopted in order to repress sensuality, and reflects upon the fatuity, e.g., of con- demning to celibacy those who were presumably the most spiritually-minded and least sensual in each generation. And what are the present arrangements of society ? Are they not all calculated to foster these feelings In the young ? What else but " love " is the tale which is dinned into their all-too-willing ears from every side? Not to speak of too un- savoury matters, what is to be thought of the effect THE SEXUAL INSTINCT. IK) of poetry and literature ? What is the inex- haustible subject of lyric poetry ? What of the novels that form nine-tenths of the reading of mankind ? Are they not all of them tales of love, and do not nine-tenths of them inculcate as their sole fragment of philosophy that love is the one redeem- ing feature in life ? Would it not then be a miracle if men did not accept this doctrine and cherish their animal instincts to their own destruc- tion and that of others ? For what does society do for the feelings it has thus trained up ? Does it render satisfaction poss- ible ? Far from it ; it makes marriage difficult and sordid, and all other means odious and dangerous both to body and soul. Even one hundred years ago Kant could say that men were physically adult fifteen years before they were economically adult, i.e., capable of support- ing a household, and since then the age of mar- riage has gone on becoming later and later. And women in many cases never get a chance of marrying at all ! On the effect such a condition of things must have upon morality it is unnecess- ary to say anything, except that it renders all preaching a ghastly and unavailing mockery; but from the point of view of human misery the con- sequences of immorality form too great and too growing a contribution to its sum total to be ignored by Pessimism. And let us consider whether there can be happiness in the soul whose strongest feeling can find no vent in the only way which can give it permanent satisfaction, and reflect upon the myriads who are, and will be, in this condition, and then, if we dare, let us assert that the world is growing happier ! Is it not certain, rather, that it must be 1 20 PESSIMISM. growing both more unhappy and more immoral ? For the strength of the instinct being constant, and its field of action being continuously circumscribed, must not the internal pressure of necessity become more painful ? must not the outbursts of passion more and more frequently and violently burst through the limits of the law ? 1 8. We have seen so far how impossible is adaptation, how ineradicable is misery, and how inevitable is the growth of unhappiness ; but it is perhaps necessary also to display the fallaciousness of the appeal which optimism makes to the law of adaptation, which may be called the evolutionist argument against Pessimism. It may be stated as follows : Other things being equal, those men will survive whose speculative doctrines tend to make them more successful in life. This will generate in time a strong bias in favour of those doctrines, which may go the length of making their opposites not only practically impossible, but even theoretically unintelligible. Hence, quite apart from questions of their truth or falsehood, we may rest assured that doctrines tending to handicap those that hold them in the struggle for existence, must in the long run vanish away. Now Pessimism is certainly such a doctrine. It diminishes the amount of pleasure of its votaries, and thus deprives them of its vitalizing effects ; it depresses their energies, efforts and en- terprise, by its constant suggestion of the general futility of all things, even when it does not settle the question of survival by the short remedy of suicide. Hence, the optimist will survive better than the pessimist, and pessimism will receive its final answer from the brutal logic of facts. The THE EVOLUTIONIST ANSWER INCONCLUSIVE. 121 king of gods and men will stop the railing mouth of Thersites by the cold clod of earth, by the un- answerable summons of his dread herald Death. Thus Pessimism is hopeless, and doomed to pass away, and can cherish no hope, even if true, of per- suading men of its truth. 19. Pessimists will doubtless use this argu- ment to explain the undeniably optimistic bias ot the generality of men, but will deny several of its assumptions. For instance, it assumed that, other things being equal, the optimist would survive. But how if Pessimism be causally connected with other qualifications for survival, e.g. with growth of knowledge ? How, if increase of wisdom be truly increase of sorrow ? Might not the wiser pessimist survive better than the ignorant optimist ? History, indeed, seems to teach that this has frequently hap- pened, and that gay savages and the lightly-living races of the South have not been more successful than those who have soberly and sadly borne the burden of civilization and of science. Thus, there is nothing absurd in the supposition that with the attainment of a certain degree of mental development, the conviction of the futility of life should be irresistibly borne in upon all men, and that the forces of evolution should for ever urge mankind towards Pessimism, even though it meant death. Pessimism may invert the evolut- ionist argument, and urge not that the susceptib- ility to pessimistic modes of thinking will be des- troyed by the progress of the world, but that the progress of the world will be artificially suppressed, because of the destruction which pessimistic modes of thinking involve as soon as a certain point is reached. Civilization, then, would be an ocean 122 PESSIMISM. which for ever urged its foremost waves against the adamantine rocks of Pessimism that broke and shattered them, and for ever pushed forward fresh breakers to carry on a futile contest. And, moreover, the evolutionist argument assumes that the environment is constant, and that hence the law of adaptation must produce happiness in the end. But what if the environment is not constant, but itself evolving, and evolving more rapidly than our powers of adaptation ? And since the Pessimist may claim to have shown that this is actually the case ( 12-17), must not the world be growing unhappier in spite of all the law of adaptation can do ? Will not the constant introduction of new conditions of life, to which mankind has not yet grown adapted by the elimination of protesters, pro- vide a constant source of Pessimism ? May not the intrinsic perversity of things render adaptation eternally impossible ? And lastly, supposing the argument to be valid, would it not confirm the Pessimist in his pessimism ? Would it not seem to him one more instance of the utter malignity of the constitution of things, that his protest should be overborne by the brutal tyranny of facts, that truth should be unable to prevail, that the triumphant lust of life should lead reason captive ? It must be confessed, therefore, that the evolu- tionist answer is not only theoretically insufficient, but also inadequately supported by the facts. The facts of life admit of the pessimistic interpretation, and the difficulty is rather to see what other in- terpretation they will admit of. 20. When once the possibility of happiness has been disproved, no possible moral value of life THE IDEAL OF GOODNESS. 123 can save it from condemnation. On the contrary, it would be an arrangement worthy of the most fiendish ingenuity to combine progressive growth in goodness with progressive growth in misery. But there is no necessity to anticipate this, seeing that the ideal of goodness is as unmeaning and impossible as that of happiness. And for the same reasons. Just as happiness depended on the proportion between desires and their fulfilment, so goodness depends on the proportion between the moral standard and moral conduct. If our standard be high, and our conduct fall far short of it, we shall feel more wicked than if our standard and our conduct be alike low, and the latter approximate more closely to the former. Virtue depends on adaptation to the moral environment, on relation to the moral ideal. And as before, both the environ- ment and the ideal are capable of growing, and of growing more rapidly than the individual's adapt- ation to them. Thus it may be that the more we do, the more is given us to do ; the more duties we fulfil, the more fresh duties are laid upon us ; the further we advance, the further we are from our end. The result, then, of the moral judgment will depend on the proportion between aim and achieve- ment. If moral theory develops more rapidly than moral practice, if the refinement of our sense of sin outstrips the refinement of our morals, there is nothing improbable or impossible in the prospect that the heirs of a long course of moral improve- ment may be the most wicked of men, utter scoun- drels as judged by their own moral standard. And there is some reason to think that this 1 24 PESSIMISM. process has actually been going on, to judge by the lower type of the moral ideal in modern times as compared with ancient. The Greeks regarded the moral man as one rejoicing in the exercise of virtue, and finding his highest pleasure in virtuous activities which were the natural expression of his nature. The conduct of a man who, in spite of sore tempt- ation, acted rightly and controlled his evil impulses, they regarded as an altogether inferior type, scarcely worthy of the name of virtue. But with us the case is different ; the unswerving performance of duty is the highest ideal to which man is considered capable of aspiring ; to expect him not to feel temptation, to find pleasure in doing his duty, is to expect superhuman perfection. But duty is in itself a mark of imperfection, for if there were more perfect correspondence between the internal nature and the external environment, be- tween the feelings and the conduct required, the moral act would be accompanied by pleasure, and prompted by the impulse of feeling, instead of by the coercive sense of duty. Our ideal of morality then represents a lower stage of moral progress than that of the Greeks. Are we then so far inferior to them in moral development ? Assuredly riot; there can be no doubt that though we are further from the attainment of our moral ideal than the Greeks were from theirs, we have advanced immensely beyond the Greeks in this very matter of morality, and that measured on an absolute scale our conduct and our ideal must rank far higher than theirs. Thus, if there is an absolute scale, we are objectively better, though subjectively worse. But is there such an absolute scale ? To assert this would be to assert that there is a definite limit IS VIRTUE A PHANTOM ? 125 to the growth of the moral . environment, to the expansion of the moral ideal. It would be to assert the existence of a permanent and unchanging environment somewhere, even though it were in the heaven of heavens, the existence of an eternal Ideal, of an unalterable standard of Right. And what is there in the character of our sensible world of change to justify such an assumption ? Thus goodness is as unattainable as happiness, and like it an ideal for which the Real has no room. It is indeed in one way even more unmeaning, for the perfection of 'goodness would destroy its own moral character. If all our duties became pleasures, they would ipso facto cease to be duties, and the virtue which is no longer tempted to do wrong ceases to be virtue. And so must not the pessimist's judgment be that in aiming at goodness we are but pursuing the fleeting image of a mirage^ that with its delus- ive promise of the waters of eternal life, and the green palms of victorious virtue, lures us ever deeper into the wilderness of Sin ; that mankind will do well to abandon the wild-goose chase of such a winged phantom as insane folly ; and that goodness, so far from being an alternative to happiness, is not even an end which can be rationally aimed at ? 21. Byway of contrast to the otherwise un- redeemed gloom of their pictures of life, pessimist writers have been wont to assert that whatever gratification could be got out of life must be derived from the aesthetic emotions and activities ; hence it is incumbent upon us to examine whether their assertions are well founded. In the first place, there is clearly a subtle irony in fixing upon the rarest and most capricious of our 126 PESSIMISM. sensibilities as the redeeming feature in life. For as disputes about taste show, our sense of beauty hardly yet gives rise to objectively valid judgments. It is still in so rudimentary a state of development that we are in most cases quite unable to justify its judgments, and to say how and why anything is beautiful. We may indeed conjecture that in the end aesthetic emotion would be found to be the crowning approval of a perfect harmony, of a com- plete adaptation of means to ends, of an exact fitness of things. But if so, a developed sense of the beautiful would find little to admire in a world like ours, in which all things are more or less discordant and unadapted. What wonder, then, that of true beauty we should have no perception and no under- standing ? But even the imperfect sense of beauty we have developed is a bane rather than a blessing. For even by its standard the vast majority of things in the world are ugly, and the longing for the beautiful can be gratified only at the cost of much subserv- ience to the hideous and the loathsome. And then the pursuit of the beautiful brings us into frequent conflict with the good ; for though we may come to perceive in some cases that the good is beautiful, it is yet far from being the case that the beautiful is always good. The antagonism, too, between the useful and the ornamental is too well known to require comment. But the most fatal effect of the development of the aesthetic sense is its influence upon our feelings. It renders us sensitive to evils which we had not had the refinement to perceive before, and it causes us to shrink in disgust from evils we had thought it our duty to face, and to ^grapple with. The TPIE IDEAL OF BEAUTY. I2/ aesthetic temperament is naturally impelled to avoid what is coarse and ugly, low and common-place, and so loses sympathy with nine-tenths of human life. It is not merely that duties and functions like those of hospital nurses or butchers, however necess- ary and morally admirable they may be, must continue to be aesthetically repulsive, but that the meanness and ugliness of the greater part of life seems too irremediable to admit of the hope of improvement. It is not from the resignation and retirement of the aesthetically-minded that the great " reforms " of history have received their impulse, but from the moral enthusiasm or party spirit of men whose every step was marked by brutal utilit- arianism or unbeautiful fanaticism. 1 It is well, then, that the world is still so Philistine ; for if once the hideous and unalterable sordidness of life were fully realized, it might come to pass that few would care to survive to feel it long. Thus the enthusiasm for beauty does but com- plicate our already all too complex lives, does but add one more warring aim which we can never realize. 1 The history of the Renaissance may seem to refute the view that culture and artistic sense have not been the moving forces of the world. But the Renaissance was a revival of learning quite as much as of art, prompted as much by the desire for knowledge as for beauty. And, after all, in the end it effected little. It was soon absorbed or swept away by the Reformation, and it is well known that, after a little hesitation, most of the chiefs of the Renaissance condoned the abuses of the old order of things and remained Catholics. The intellectual liberty (such as it is) we have since attained, we owe, not to the Renaissance, but rather to the conflict of equally intolerant and equally power- ful orthodoxies, and the progress of science has been stimulated far more by the hope of its material advantages than by the desire of pure knowledge.* 128 PESSIMISM. 22. Lastly, the claim of the intellectual activit- ies to provide an aim to life has really been already disposed of by Scepticism. If knowledge cannot lull asleep the discordant strife of the elements of our being, if it cannot discover the road to harmony and to bliss, then knowledge fails in practice, and then its theoretical defects stamp it as an illusion (cf. ch. iii., 20, 21). And it is an illusion for the same reason as the other activities of life, because in order to be true it requires an ideal, fixed, per- manent and definite, as the standard whereby to measure the passing and indeterminate flux of things. And such an ideal it can nowhere find in a world of Becoming. The Becoming of the world is the rock upon which the ark of life is shattered : to know, to be good, to be happy, we require a fixed standard of Being, but the ideal which our reason and our heart demand our eyes can nowhere see. Thus, all reason can do is to render us sensible of the hopelessness of our position ; it is the fire, kindled by the collision of discordant elements, which consumes the soul of man, and by the lurid light it throws upon our gloomy lot we can just see that our doom is irrevocable, that we are the helpless victims of a gigantic auto da fl, of which Evolution is the celebration. For since every advance does but widen the chasm between the ideal and the actual, our only hope would be to retrace the course of Evolution, and to simplify life by a return to the primitive contentment of the amoeba. But though the amoeba is far more per- fectly adapted to its environment than any of its descendants, it may well be doubted whether even the amoeba is happy : in any case, it suffices that Till- RUIN OF HOPE. 129 such an escape from misery by a return to uncon- sciousness is impossible. Thus we must resign ourselves to our fate, and, to adapt a famous image of Plato's, allow the immortal steeds of Progress and of Reason to drag the chariot of the Soul with reckless speed adown the race-course of life, while the reluctant mortal charioteer makes vain essays to break the rush, and succeeds only in racking and rending his car asunder. And so the mad course will go on, until " terrenum equitem gravatus" * the Pegasus of Pro- gress kicks over the traces, wrecks the chariot, and leaves the blanched bones of the charioteer to mark the melancholy track for successors neither wiser nor more fortunate. 23. Thus ruin, final and irretrievable, has overtaken the attempt to deal with life, such as it is, or rather, to regard the present appearances of things as self-sufficing and ultimate : there remains only the poor consolation of knowing that we have brought this ruin upon ourselves. For perhaps the reflection may obtrude that we are ourselves responsible for the disaster, in that we insisted on ignoring the heavenly nature of our ideals. If we must needs drag the chariot of the soul through the mire of earth, and feed our Pegasus on the sordid fare most alien from the ambrosia that formed his proper nourishment ; if we deny him the use of his wings, and keep him down to the dusty track that dimmed his sight, and if thus we fail, is it so sure that we may rightly blame the divine steeds of Reason and of Evolution ? To this question the following section of this essay will attempt to give an answer. 1 " Spurning his earth-born rider." BOOK II. CHAPTER V. RECO N S T R V C TI O N. i. THE avowed object of the preceding chap- ters has been to trace out the consequences of the denial of metaphysics, i.e. of a systematic examin- ation of ultimate questions, and of its bearing upon the theory and practice of life. But incidentally far more serious results followed. Not merely did Positivism lead on to Agnosticism, Agnosticism to Scepticism, and Scepticism to Pessimism, but the two latter strengthened themselves with arguments which it seems well-nigh impossible to refute. And so what advance has been made towards a solution of the problem of life ? What has it availed to show the dire consequences of the unphilosophical view, if in so doing we have destroyed also the basis of all others ? Have we not enmeshed our- selves also in a deadly snare and been beguiled into a position from which there is no escape ? Have we not ourselves destroyed all the hopes or illusions that make life valuable ? Yet it may be that this apparent loss will prove real gain ; even now it is possible to see counter- vailing advantages. In the first place, we have faced the worst that can be said against the scheme of things, and may at least hope to be acquitted of the suspicion that weakness or disingenuousness has prompted us to 1 34 RECONSTRUCTION. understate or overlook the difficulties that beset the attempt to discover any meaning in life. And from this thoroughness in stating the negative position we may also draw the assurance that whatever germs of higher hopes have survived such ruthless destruction, must surely be immortal, and fraught with no humble destiny. Secondly, the wholesale havoc Pessimism has wrought has effectually cleared the ground : Pessim- ism has played the part of a Samson, and in its fall has crushed alike philosopher and Philistine. Not only has it enabled us to see the real drift and final outcome of popular theories which would otherwise be continually delaying our progress, but it has also swept away the mass of philosophic con- structions, of which none have answered, and very few can even be said to have considered, the questions which have been brought forward. So, whenever we encounter doctrines based upon the veiled assumptions of agnosticism, scepticism, and pessimism, or such as have no answer to the poss- ibilities on which they are grounded, we shall be able to reduce them to their lowest terms, as it were, to refer them to their types, and thus to remove their obstructions. We shall give such opponents the choice between yielding or confessing to the latent pessimism of their views, and thus use pessimism as a sort of provisional reductio ad absiird- HM, justifying us in rejecting them in their im- perfect form. And, thirdly, we have raised, in an acute form, the question of the method of philosophy, by showing that the attempt to exclude all philosophic methods on the ground of metaphysics, and to speculate about the problems of life by means of merely A IJARGAIN WITH SCEPTICISM. 135 common-sense reflection leads to irremediable dis- aster. And the toil and trouble of probing to its utmost depths the abyss of Pessimism will not have been in vain, if it can bring home to us this con- viction, that either a metaphysical method can rescue philosophy or all is lost, that salvation is to be found in metaphysics or not at all. 2. But in addition to these, other advantages may indirectly result from an attentive criticism of what has been proved by Scepticism and Pessimism, and of how it has been proved. The demonstration of Scepticism depended on the discrepancy between thought and reality, be- tween things as we think them, and as they appear to us, on the difference of thought and feeling, on the impossibility of representing the whole by the part. And as it denied the correspondence of the elements which constitute knowledge, it cannot be directly refuted. For any argument which assumes such correspondence begs the question, while any argument which proceeds by only one of the factors, is ex kypothesi incapable of proving the existence of truth, i.e. of the harmony of both. Any refutation, therefore, of Scepticism must be indirect ; and of such refutations, that which is based on its practical absurdity has been already considered. It is transcended by Pessimism, which admits that the assumptions of our knowledge work, in a certain sense, but only up to a certain point, and work only in order to plunge us into a more irredeemable chaos. For in the end they fail, and fail us just at the critical point : they imply intel- lectual ideals to which the Becoming of sensible things will not conform. Nothing remains, therefore, but to make a kind of 156 RECONSTRUCTION. bargain with Scepticism, and to assume provision- ally the unproved hypothesis of the real validity of the principles of our thought, of the substantial parallelism of our thought and reality, on condition of thereby solving all the problems of life. For it would be absurd to deny that we can know, if our knowledge can solve, or show the way to the solu- tion of all the problems of the world. And this concession must and should satisfy us. It is indeed no more than what we should really have been justified in demanding before we were urged to it by Scepticism, that the authenticity of human knowledge should be guaranteed by its capacity to deal 'with all human problems. We may claim that, if the scheme of things is rational at all, it should not mock our reason with puzzles that are insoluble. We must assert that either the human reason is competent to solve all the difficulties that human minds can properly feel, or that in all things it is the plaything of an unknowable, unmanageable and inexorable perversity of things. But whether we might have urged this claim of our own accord or not, Scepticism renders all debate superfluous : we must accept its terms or give up the hope of re- storing the validity of knowledge. And the aspect of the world which Pessimism presents to us is a no less stimulus in the search for a truly satisfactory philosophy. It is based on a possibility which may repel us, but which is so deeply rooted in the nature of our world that we can never wholly reject it. It thus forms an eternal contrast to the true philo- sophy, the gloomy realm of shades which receives the recreant outcasts from the light. Its conclusion that life is miserable, and not worth living, was the outcome of a speculative suggestion. WHAT PHILOSOPHY MUST ACHIEVE. 137 That suggestion was that of the ultimate perversity of the constitution of things, as a consequence of which all problems are intrinsically insoluble, all questions inherently meaningless, and all methods incurably impracticable. It is no use asking quest- ions, because no answer can be given ; it is futile to make any sort of effort, for we are ever baffled in the end, and the greater the effort the more bitter the disappointment : the cup of life must be drained to the dregs, and however we struggle, the dregs are bitter with death. Theoretically life is a puzzle which has no solution ; practical^ it is a Barmecide feast at which the wretched dupes, the victims of an inscrutable fate, make believe to enjoy delights as unreal and fleeting as the shadow of a dream. In short, it is all a ghastly, senseless striving after the impossible. And not the least terrible point about this view is its probability. It can claim greater simplicity, greater prima facie probability, than any other. It may not be the only possible explanation of the facts considered in the last two chapters, but it is considerably the most obvious explanation. Every alternative to it will have to explain away many things which it is exceedingly difficult to explain away. It will have to account for evil and imper- fection ; and even when it has shown the possibility of a final reconciliation, it will have to show why this could not have been attained without the long time-process of the world's development. So in theoretical matters it will have to show not merely that the Becoming of things is ultimately knowable, but also to explain how it was conducive to the end to be attained. In short, in order to have an alternative to Pess- 130 RECONSTRUCTION. imism, we must be prepared to account for Imper- fection, Becoming and Time the three chief and most obvious characteristics of our world. In this, stupendous task the only favourable omen at the start is that no sane human being will resign him- self to Pessimism if he can possibly help it, that the merest possibility of an alternative must be hailed with delight by every one who has become con- scious of the difficulty. The search, then, for an alternative to Pessimism is a desperate undertaking, which can be justified only by success ; for success alone can save us from despair. And it must be admitted that appearances are against us, and that our only hope is to pene- trate beyond them : the very principles of our reasoning are hypothetical, conceded ad hoc by Scepticism : the end at which we aim, if attained, would revolutionize the character of the world, and nothing short of complete success will deliver us from the monstrous spectre of Pessimism. We set out, then, under sentence of death, like Sir Walter Raleigh, to discover Eldorado, and the penalty of failure will be inexorably exacted if we fail. 3. Under such circumstances we shall do well to begin by taking stock of our resources, by seeing what salvage may be fished up out of the shipwreck of our hopes. In addition to the laws of our thought, there is one principle which Scepticism did not deny, and indeed could not deny, without manifestly cutting away the basis of its own argument, viz. the reality of the Self or Soul. Our scepticism did not deny it, because it was immanent and did not stray beyond the limits of THE REALITY OF THE SELF. 139 consciousness (cf. iii. 3) : it was concerned only to establish the existence of an irreconcilable discord within the soul. Nor does Pessimism care to deny the reality of the soul, for suffering could hardly be the supreme reality, if the soul which suffered were not real. The only thing that Scepticism and Pessimism would protest against would be the attempt to derive from the admission of the reality of the Self an admission of its existence as a simple and im- mortal substance, after the fashion of the " rational psychology" of old; but this we have no intention of doing. The existence of the Self is at present asserted only as the basis of all knowledge, and in this sense it cannot be validly doubted. Accord- ingly it has been denied by Agnosticism rather than by Scepticism, i.e. by a doctrine which turned out inadequate on its own presuppositions. Among these denials of the existence of the Self or soul, Hume's argument has the first claim on our attention. He contends that the soul does not exist because he never finds it existing without some particular content, never catches himself without some " im- pression or idea." This argument may be regarded as an ingenious redudio ad absurdum of Berkeley's nominalism, which denied the existence of universal conceptions on the ground that the psychical images in the mind always contained some irrelevant ac- cessories. But it has no efficacy against all who avoid confounding the idea (or conception) as a universal predicate with the (image or) idea as a psychological fact (cp. iii. 1 5). And the conditions upon which Hume would admit the existence of the soul would seem to be of a ridiculous severity. So 1 40 RECONSTRUCTION. long as consciousness is consciousness of something, of something more than mere existence, we cannot, says Hume, infer from it our own existence. Reality could not, apparently, be attributed to any soul that was not capable of being reduced to an absolute blank. But this implies, in the first place, the fallacy that mere existence is possible, undis- tinguished by any particular content, that a mere fact can be found, which is not determined by a certain character (cp. ch. ii. 3). And secondly, one must wonder who could be supposed to be in the least concerned to assert the existence of such a perfectly void soul, and who need be dismayed at the discovery that his soul could never be caught in such a condition of fatuous nudity. The exist- ence of the soul does not depend on its capacity to dispense with all content, nor is any slur cast upon at by the fact that the contents of consciousness vary. The ideal to which the variations of consciousness point is not a soul which has been annihilated by the loss of all its contents, but one of which the contents have attained to stability and perfection. 4. Kant's objection to the reality of the soul is .similar to Hume's. But, like many of his doctrines, it is a compromise, not altogether successful, between Hume and the old metaphysics, and so rejects a .good deal of Hume's argument. Kant recognises the necessity of admitting at least an cpistcuiological reality of the soul, as the principle on which the possibility of consciousness and the unity of know- ledge depends. As such, it is the soul which forms the fleeting series of impressions, thoughts, etc., into a continuous system, and thus makes a connected consciousness possible. Yet Kant strenuously maintains that the soul is THE SELF AS THE PRIMARY CERTAINTY. 141 only an epistemological and not a metaphysical (or ultimate) principle, and that it must not be treated as existing outside of the context of knowledge, nor supposed to exist as a " thing-in-itself." And he does this on the same grounds as Hume, viz., be- cause the " I think " impartially accompanies all the contents of consciousness and never exists apart from them : so it must be a mere form of know- ledge and not a substantive reality. But as we have already rejected Kant's separation of form and matter, appearance and thing-in-itself (ch. ii. 14, 12), the real existence of the self is admitted when it is confessed necessary to the existence of knowledge, and the reality of consciousness. And besides, its existence as the basis of knowledge presupposes its existence as, a reality. For while the laws of our thought persist, they compel us to admit that opcrari scquitur csse, and that which is implied in the activity of knowledge must be before it can be active. It is not necessary, therefore, to linger any longer over Kant's objections to the reality of the Self: we may refer for a further exposure of their fallacious- ness to the criticism of Kant's agnosticism (ch. ii. ^ 21), and accept the reality of the Self as the funda- mental basis of all life, knowledge and proof. As the most certain of all things, it is the Alpha, the starting-point, and it would not be surprising if it turned out also the Omega, the goal of philosophy. 5. And it is not only the primary certainty in itself, but also affords us the first firm basis of a criticism of Scepticism. Scepticism was based on the disparateness and conflict of the elements of knowledge, on the imposs- ibility of finding a connection between the incom- 1 4 2 RECONSTRUCTION. mensurable aspects of things. But all these discordant aspects are activities of the same self ; the thought and feeling which conflict are both "mine"; my "self" unites "my" thoughts and "my" feeling into a single consciousness. It gives us the unity as an accomplished fact, and leaves us the task of discovering how the miracle was effected. Hence we are justified in provisionally accepting the parallelism of thought and feeling as a fact, and assuming that the conclusions we prove concerning the thought symbols representing reality will hold good of the facts. At any rate we cannot go wrong in sticking to realities which unite thought and feeling, like the conscious self. It may be false to be guided by the felt objects of perception, or by the abstractions of our thought, but the procedure by means of selves which both think and feel must surely be true. Thus the reality of the Self restores to us, even though only provisionally, the use of the categories and first principles of our thought with a view to the interpretation of things. And it justifies further a bold solution of the diffi- culty into which the hopeless conflict of thought and perception had involved us. We had ventured to express a suspicion (ch. iv. 23), that possibly the excessive deference shown to phenomenal facts and the perceptions of our senses was responsible for the dire straits to which Pessimism reduced us. Pessimism was the natural inference to draw from the apparent supremacy of Becoming in the pheno- menal world, and Becoming was unknowable and irreconcilably at variance with the principles of our thought. But was it not, after all, a prejudice to suppose the appearance of Becoming higher than the AND UNION OF THOUGHT AND FEELING. 143 ideals of our thought ? Why should not our thought represent a higher plane of truth than the intrinsi- cally unknowable Becoming of nature ? why should not the definiteness and permanence of our ideas approximate more closely to the ultimate constitu- tion of things than the interminable changes of phenomena ? Why should not the changes of the Real, instead of being a proof of the impossibility of the Ideal, mark rather its efforts to approximate to the Ideal ? And if so, the persistent fiction by which we interpreted Becoming by the categories of our thought, will have been prompted by a sounder in- stinct than we suspected, and will be justified by the issue : it is not that our thought fails to penetrate into the nature of things, but that the nature of things is as yet too imperfect to come up to the ideals of our thought ; it is the Real that is tainted with unreality, because it cannot express the per- fection of the ideal. And from this point of view a meaning may be suggested even for the discrepancy which Scepti- cism made so much of, between our thought and the appearance of the reality. Might not the very extravagance of the contradiction between what is seen and what is conceived, taken in connection with the inseparable conjunction of thought and feeling, be intended to lead us by a certain path to what is inferred, to raise us from phenomenal appearances and the strife of inadequate categories, to a still higher plane of transcendent reality, capable of resolving all our doubts and of reconciling fact and knowledge ? This suggestion is one which may hereafter be verified ; at present it must appear an arbitrary 144 RECONSTRUCTION. cutting of the Gordian knot. But it is the fact alone that thought and feeling are alike activities of the Self, the fact that all things are phenomena for a conscious soul, which renders it even possible to assign a higher authority to the Ideal, and to assert that it will in the end be found to possess greater reality. And this fact also legalizes what would appear an arbitrary act of power, for in appealing to the Self to compose the conflict between thought and feeling, we are appealing to the legitimate sovereign of both, to whom they both belong, and who has a right to arrange the order of their merit. Thus the assertion of the reality of the Self affords us the inestimable gain of enabling us to burst through the fetters of Scepticism and to clear the road for further progress. 6. And from the same principle follows a cor- ollary hardly less important. We are now in a position to protest against the ridiculous charge of anthropomorphism which is so frequently brought against our thought. The sceptic might indeed have dispensed with a device which more properly belongs to the agnostic, but it was too handy not to be utilized when thrown in his way. He used it fairly and impartially against all knowledge, and not like the agnostic, against a selected portion (ch. iii. 4), but he could not raise it to the dignity of a vital argument. But even though it benefited the sceptic little, its refutation will benefit us much. We shall rightly seize the opportunity of exposing a wide- spread superstition, which should really by this time have ceased to figure in any serious philosophic argument. For what conceivable meaning can be attached to the reproach that a conception is anthro- pomorphic ? Anthropomorphic means partaking of ANTHROPOMORPHISM INEVITABLE. 145 the nature of man, and what human reasoning can fail to render the peculiarities of the human reason ? Thus the prohibition of anthropomorphic reasoning is the prohibition of all reasoning in the supposed interests of a fiction of un-anthropomorphic thought (probably of the Unknowable ?) which can never be known to exist, and which, if it existed, would be utterly inconceivable to us. Surely it is too plain for words that all our thought and all our feeling must be anthropomorphic. The proposal to avoid anthropomorphism is as absurd as the suggestion that we should take an unbiassed outside view of ourselves by jumping out of our skin. 7. If, then, everything we think is of necessity anthropomorphic, the only possible distinction which can be made is not between thought which is anthropomorphic and thought which is not, but between good and bad anthropomorphism. Bad anthropomorphism is of several sorts, and we may distinguish between the false and the confused. By false anthropomorphism is meant the ascription to beings other than ourselves of qualities or attributes which we know they cannot possess because of their difference from ourselves. This is exemplified by the attribution of specifically human qualities to the animals below, and to God above us. When, e.g., I assert that my dog worships me as a god, my an- thropomorphism is false, because I have no reason to ascribe religious emotions to dogs. Similarly, when I expect God to eat the flesh of sacrificial victims, my anthropomorphism is false, for I know that God is a spirit and not a fact in the phenomenal world. 8. By confused anthropomorphism is meant that which arises when, starting from some obvious human R. of S. L 146 RECONSTRUCTION. analogy, our principle of explanation is chopped and chipped, in deference to the apparent exigencies of the facts, until its elements may at last become mutually contradictory, and the original points of analogy may entirely disappear. We have already had occasion to criticize such confused anthropo- morphisms from a sceptical point of view (ch. iii. 4), and shall have further occasion to do so from that of a consistent and conscious anthropomorphism. And yet it is in the interests of these weatherbeaten old anthropomorphisms, whose original shape is often scarce recognizable, that protests are generally raised against anthropomorphism which keeps closer to the primary principles of explanation. This confused anthropomorphism, though not often wholly wrong, is generally ridiculous, and its claims to superiority over the rest are simply monstrous. For even where the mutilations it has suffered in the course of its chequered career have not rendered it unfit for service, even where its modifications have brought it nearer to the facts, it is a lamentable truth that just in proportion as it departs from the analogy of human action its value as an explanation diminishes, and the process it attempts to describe becomes as unintelligible as it was before explan- ation was essayed at all. The absolute Infinite, e.g. may be the full and final explanation of all things, only unfortunately it is a conception which has exalted itself so far beyond our grasp that it appears to the human reason a mere bundle of contradict- ions. Again, when a soporific virtue is assigned as the reason why poppies put us to sleep, and a universal force of gravitation as the reason why bodies attract one another, we feel that the value of the explanation has been reduced to a minimum. TRUE ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 147 9. The ideal of true anthropomorphism, and the ideal also of true science, would be realized when all our explanations made use of no principles which were not self-evident to human mindfe, sel- explanatory to human feelings. Such ideals are, it- is true, remote from the present state of our know- ledge, but we may lay it down as a canon of inquiry that a principle is the better, other things being equal, the more closely it clings to the analogy of human agency, the more completely parallel its; course runs to the course of the human mind. When by the master-key of the Self all problems have been undone, when all things have been shown: to be of like nature with the mind that knows them, then at length will knowledge be perfect and per- fectly anthropomorphic. Our care, then, must be, not to avoid anthropo- morphism, but to avoid bad anthropomorphism, not to allow the inevitable anthropomorphism of our explanations to become confused or inconsistent, or to lag behind the conceptions of our highest aspir- ations. We start, then<, with the- certainty of our own existence, on the basis and analogy of which the world must be interpreted.. CHAPTER VI. THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. i. WE are now in a position to embark upon the important subject of the method of philosophy, on which it may reasonably be suspected that the failure or success of a philosophy will depend. Among the possible claimants to the honours of the true method we may dismiss two, viz., the epistemological and the psychological. The epistemological method must be rejected for the reasons already stated (ch. ii. 13-17). It suc- cumbed both to scepticism and to science : to science because science could not admit that any theory of knowledge had a right to treat the mind as a fixed product that could be exhaustively analysed, instead of being an organically living and developing growth ; to scepticism, because its denial of the ultimate reality of the Self (ch. v. 4) incapacitated it from transcending the antithesis of thought and reality, and because it could never show that its assertions held good of the real world. The psychological method is subject to the same defects as the epistemological in a higher degree, and possesses also some peculiar to itself. It also is invalidated by the growth of the mind, which it attempts to make the sole standard of knowledge. The human mind, as it now is, appears to science to be a transitory phase of a development from NOT, THE METHOD OF PSYCHOLOGY. 149 protoplasm into beings who may be reasonably sup- posed to be incalculably superior to existing man, and science cannot possibly make any single term of this development the measure of all things. To understand that development it must be of supreme importance to discover the origins of what is in what was, and its destiny and final condition in what will be, but it is of subordinate interest to know what it happens to be at any fleeting moment of its evolution. The actual condition, therefore, ot the human mind cannot by itself afford a universal criterion of the world ; for it is necessarily imperfect and points back to a past out of which it has deve- loped, and forwards to a future which it fore- shadows. The fact that the mind has a history is fatal to the claims of the psychological method, for it destroys the final authority of its actual deliver- ances. And of that history the psychological method cannot take account without ceasing to be psychological, and submitting to the restrictions of historical and metaphysical methods. And besides this fatal disability, the psychological method involves other inherent defects. It is particularly liable to the vice of false abstract- ion. Not only is it constantly tempted to draw hard and fast lines between the various " faculties " of the soul and to forget its fundamental unity, but it is bound to repeat the same error in its treatment of the relation of the mind to " external " things, and to consider it in isolation from the world in which it lives. It cannot treat the mind and the world as different aspects of the same fact, as dif- ferent sides of the same stress, as the mutually im- plicated action and reaction of interacting factors. And yet it may be boldly laid down that no ex- I5O THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. planation of the world can be successful which for- gets that the world is essentially one and indivisible, and that its parts cannot be explained in isolation, but only in conjunction. Man is the microcosm, and cannot be understood except in the context of the macrocosm which environs him and with which he interacts. Hence it is a fruitless waste of labour to give isolated explanations of this faculty or that, to trace the genesis of this sense or that, for they all can be assigned their proper place only by a reference to the whole. 2. The method of philosophy, therefore, must 'be either physical' or metaphysical. I. Of these, the physical may more properly be called the pseiido-metaphysical, because it attempts to extend the method of the physical sciences to the solution of ultimate questions, i.e., to metaphysics. II. The second method may be called the ab- stract metaphysical, because it attempts to state the whole truth of all reality in terms of thought ab- stractions. III. Thirdly, the true method may be called the concrete metaphysical, as combining the advantages and avoiding the defects of the other two. Thus, e.g., the first explains the higher by the lower, since the objects of the physical sciences rank lower in the hierarchy of existence than the mind ; while the -other two agree in explaining the lower by -the higher. But in very different ways. For while the higher of abstract metaphysics is a mere abstraction, selected at random out of the plenitude of existence with which it has no intrinsic connect- ion, the higher of the concrete metaphysical method is organically connected with the lower. Thus it escapes the constant temptation of the first to deny THE PSEUDO-METAPHYSICAL METHOD. 151 the higher, and of the second to ignore the lower. Again, the pseudo-metaphysical and the concrete metaphysical agree in rejecting the doctrine of the abstract metaphysical as to the difference in kind between the higher and the lower, but with very different motives. The one asserts the connection of higher and lower in order to degrade the higher, the other in order to redeem the lower. But it is necessary to consider the strength and the weakness of each method in detail. 3. I. The pseudo-metaphysical method puts forward the method of science as the method of philosophy. But it is doomed to perpetual failure. It is not merely that, as we saw (ch. ii. 2), the mental attitude required in science and in philo- sophy is different, but that the scientific material it uses is both inadequate and intractable. It is inadequate because the physical sciences are all based on all sorts of assumed first principles, often of the confused anthropomorphic order (ch. v. 8), which are only valid within the limits of each science, and are often mutually conflicting, like the assumption of the theory of gravitation that all matter gravitates, and that of the undulatory theory that luminiferous ether does not (ch. iii. 9), or as completely devoid of ultimate validity as the mathe- matical use of impossible quantities. 1 And from a 1 The use of graphic formulae in chemistry may be instanced. To represent simple and indivisible atoms as equipped with all sorts of hooks and bonds for grappling with their neighbours (or themselves) is impossible mythology, especially when we reflect that multiplicity of parts seems excluded by the conception of an atom. Or again, what are we to say of " negative elements " diminishing the atomic weight of the bodies with which they com- bine? Such a dematerializing agency is surely a mere symbol, and cannot possibly correspond to any actual fact. 152 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. scientific point of view no objection can be taken' to the use of serviceable fictions, however discordant and contradictory they may be, so long as they are really useful to the particular sciences. On the other hand, it is just the business of philosophy to reinterpret these fundamental assumptions of the sciences, and to reconcile their conflicts, by showing that they are not ultimate truths but convenient formulae for special purposes. But for this very reason they cannot form the basis of philosophy. It is philosophy alone which renders them capable of forming parts of a single and consistent system of knowledge. And the data supplied by the physical sciences are intractable, because they are data of a lower order than the facts they are to explain. The objects of the physical sciences form the lower orders in the hierarchy of existence, more extensive but less significant. Thus the atoms of the physicists may indeed be found in the organizat- ion of conscious beings, but they are subordinate : a living organism exhibits actions which cannot be formulated by the laws of physics alone ; man is material, but he is also a great deal more. Again, all bodies gravitate, but the activities of living, to say nothing of rational, bodies cannot be explained by the action of gravitation alone. So chemical affinities are presupposed in biological actions, but yet life is something more than and beyond chemical affinity. And it is the same inherent flaw of the method which is displayed, not only in the palpable absurdity of explaining biological facts by chemical or mechanical facts, but also in that of explaining the rational or moral by mere biology. The pseudo- metaphysical method of physical VIRTUES AND VICES OF THE METHOD OF SCIENCE. 153 science, which of necessity must try to explain the higher by the lower, constantly fails to include the whole of the higher, and is therefore constantly driven to deny what it cannot explain, and to reduce the higher to the lower. But though at first it seems plausible to explain the higher and fuller by something which seems simpler because less signific- ant, by dint of leaving out its surplus meaning, this process becomes more and more difficult the further it is carried, and if it were carried to its con- sistent conclusion, it would be seen to refute itself. It would end by explaining all things by that which is nothing in itself, and has meaning only in relat- ion to the things it is supposed to explain. The further we carry our researches into the lower, the more it appears that it is not really simple, but only vaguer and more indefinite, and that the lack of differentiation indicates not that we have got down to the fundamental principles of the complex, but that it arises from a confounding of all the distinct- ions which enable us to comprehend the thing. To take only the one example of protoplasm, which is the starting-point of biology (itself one of the higher sciences). For biology protoplasm is ultim- ate : it can no longer be derived from any lower and " simpler " form of life. It can be defined only in terms of what it becomes or develops into. And yet this " simple " protoplasm performs all the funct- ions which in its differentiated developments fall to the share of the most various structures and the most various faculties. It sees and hears and smells and tastes and feels, thinks and wills and moves, it absorbs and excretes, it grows and reproduces itself, and all without any discoverable difference of struc- ture. What then have we gained by deriving 154 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. differences we can see and partly understand from hypothetical differences which are invisible and in- comprehensible ? Is the mystery lessened by being relegated to the mythical region of the unknowable and imperceptible, and is it not in very deed an explanation ignoti per ignotius ? But we shall have abundant illustration of this defect of the method hereafter (ch. vii. 4-14). At present it is more pleasant to turn from the intrinsic weakness of the method to its intrinsic strength. Its great merit is the emphasis it lays on the law of continuity. It refuses to draw hard and fast divisions anywhere. It does not sever the con- nections at the articulations of the cosmos. It does not regard the higher as toto coelo different from the lower ; it never loses its grasp of the essential unity of things, even though it may sometimes drag what is lofty in the mire. But even in its errors it is not unprofitable. The connections it establishes between the higher and the lower serve to bridge the moats which dissever the continuity of the universe, and will stand firm, even though their architects were mistaken in their ulterior aims. The scientific truths it discovers are so much gain to those who utilize the material more wisely, and, up to a certain point, it gives us pure truth. We need therefore merely pull down certain excrescences and extravagances, and we shall have firm foundations of science and material of inestimable value. We may say then, that the pseudo-metaphysical method is not so much false as insufficient. 4. II. The abstract metaphysical method, which has been the method hitherto most frequent in philosophy, differs widely from the pseudo-meta- THE METHOD OF ABSTRACT METAPHYSIC. 155 physical in its character. It promises much more, but accomplishes much less. Indeed, we are con- stantly tempted to assert that it has accomplished nothing, and to say that science has never been assisted, but often been perverted by metaphysics. But such ebullitions of pardonable impatience would ignore the immense impulse, the far-reaching sug- gestions which the whole intellectual and emotional life of men has often received from metaphysical doctrines. But if the metaphysical method is more suggestive, it is also less sound. It produces artificial constructions which charm us by the harmonious interdependence of their parts, but which are fatally unstable. The demolition of a single part drags the whole edifice to the ground, and in the common ruin all its outworks perish. And so metaphysical systems have seemed like a succession of beauteous bubbles blown from the reflective pipe of genius, which delighted us for a season and then were dis- sipated into thin air. Where are the metaphysical systems of the earlier Greeks or later Germans ? Their multitudinous shades are buried in the bulky tomes of our histories of philosophy, and but rarely stalk about the earth in the eccentricities of living representatives. The fatal flaw in almost all the metaphysics of the past was their abstractness, and this is a flaw which far exceeds their merits. For what does it avail that the metaphysical method rightly protests against the explanation of the higher by the lower, if it confines itself to a mere protest, to a mere assertion of their difference ? To tell us that the spiritual is not natural, that soul is not body, that God is not man, that appear- ance is not reality, is to tell us nothing. All this does is to constitute a difference in kind between 156 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. the higher and the lower, to break in two the unity of the universe, to open an impassable abyss between here and hereafter, so that they that would pass from earth to heaven cannot pass from facts to metaphysics, while those who breathe the unsubstant- ial air of metaphysical meditation can never reach the gross but solid facts. To assert the difference between the higher and the lower is not enough ; we require a method which will also bring out their connection. \ 5. After this breach in the law of continuity, and the assertion of the utter difference of higher and lower, the method of abstract metaphysics develops in two ways. If it retains any consciousness of the lower earthly plane at all, the difference between the higher and the lower becomes accentuated into antagonism. The spiritual becomes the supernatural, the pheno- menal becomes the unreal, the body is opposed to the soul in everlasting conflict, man to God and earth to heaven. There results, first, an irreconcil- able dualism of the higher and lower, and in the end the lower or physical plane is regarded as the sphere of the principle of evil. It is well known how near many Manichaean heresies, as well as certain forms of orthodoxy, come to making the Devil the ruler of the world, from whose dominion the individual can only escape by special miraculous grace, and the whole ascetic view of life, once so widely prevalent, really results from the same tend- ency. And that these consequences are not due to the bias of individuals, but inherent in the method, is shown also in the history of pre-Christian philo- sophy. In their asceticism and contempt for the material the Neo-Platonists yielded not a whit to THE ANTAGONISM OF HIGHER AND LOWER. 157 the most enthusiastic monk. And yet they might justly trace their intellectual descent from the most Hellenic of Hellenic philosophers, and yet they are connected by an unbroken chain of logical necessity with the doctrine of Plato. And indeed we can find in Plato both the source and the reason of Neo-Platonic asceticism. For the Platonic system is perhaps the most purely metaphysical the world has ever seen. To Plato metaphysical " Ideas " abstracted from phenomena were the only true reality, while the phenomena of sense were real only as partaking in them. The result is that the connection of the Ideas with the Sensible becomes entirely unintelligible (cf. iii. 15, note) : the contrast has become so sharp that union becomes inconceiv- able, and Plato himself admits that he cannot explain how sensible things partake of the Ideas. And, as might have been expected, his metaphysical dualism spreads from the theoretic to the practical sphere, and in his latest and maturest work we find him seriously propounding the theory of an evil World- Soul, the action of which is to differentiate the character of the imperfect world of Becoming from the perfection of the world of Ideas. 1 But from 1 Laws x. 8960, 8980. It seems hopeless to deny this anti- thesis of the phenomenal and the real on the a priori ground that Plato was too great a philosopher to be a dualist, and for this reason to assume that a reconciliation of the Ideas and the Sensible must be found somewhere in his system. For it is no derogation to Plato's genius to say that he failed to achieve what no philo- sopher has succeeded in achieving, viz., the impossible task of reconciling the higher and the lower by abstract metaphysics. And at all events Plato showed more discernment than his critics in seeing where the real crux lay, and in perceiving that its solution was, on his principles and by his method, impossible. And if a way out of the difficulty was discovered by Plato, is it not astonish- ing that all his successors should not only have failed to discover 158 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. the admission of an evil and irrational principle in the physical world, at war with the principle of Good and Reason, to that of its supremacy in the visible world, is only a small step, easily forced upon the mind by the evils of life, and hence we find it constantly and consistently taken in the Gnostic and Neo- Platonic speculations. Thus we find the abstract metaphysical method, in one of its develop- ments, passing from the dualism of the Ideal and the Real to their inherent conflict and to final Pessimism. The separation of the physical and the metaphysical, the %w/>a/ids which the acute criti- cism of Plato's great disciple, Aristotle, detected as the central flaw of the Platonic system, has avenged itself by a fearful penalty. 6. But the metaphysical method may essay to rid itself of the contrast of higher and lower by a still more heroic remedy. Just as the pseudo- metaphysical method yielded to the temptation of denying the higher, so conversely the metaphysical method may yield to the temptation of ignoring the lower. The metaphysician wings his flight to the invisible, and loses sight of earth altogether. He closes his eyes and hardens his heart to the facts of life. He declares unreal whatever does not fit into the narrow limits of his theories, on the ground that whatever is real is rational, and leaving to his dis- ciples a glittering legacy of magniloquent but un- meaning phrases, he vanishes into the air before he can be caught and questioned about the meaning of his enchantments. But even he cannot outsoar the atmosphere which supports him : in the end the irresistible attraction of earth brings him down it in Plato, but have themselves one and all come to grief over this same difficulty ? HEGEL'S " METAPHYSIC" 159 with a fall more dire than that of Icarus : stripped of the false plumes in which he had counterfeited the divine bird of Zeus, and pursued by the imprec- ations of those who discovered too late the cheat which had deceived him, and at length perceive that a haughty scorn of the phenomenal does not satisfy the demands of reality, and that empty abstractions are not the staff of life, he perishes miserably, and leaves lasting discredit on a subject which seems composed of a series of splendid failures. Of this type of metaphysics we may take as examples Eleaticism in ancient, and Hegelianism in modern times. The Eleatic philosophy seems to have simply ignored the phenomenal, and to have consisted in an emphatic assertion of the abstract unity of the universe. Its ingenious polemic against the possibility of Becoming has been preserved in Zeno's famous fallacies about motion, and "Achilles and the Tortoise " and " The Arrow " will ever retain their charm even though the world has long ago replied to the system which they illustrated and defended by a solvitiir ambulando. The same praise of ingenuity may be bestowed also upon the Hegelian system, which is doubtless the most ingenious system of false pretences that adorns the history of philosophy. For even its metaphysical character is largely a pretence. It pretends to give us metaphysics where it really has no business to be more than epistemological. We fancy it is speaking of metaphysical realities when it is really dealing with logical categories. It pre- tends to give us a thought -process incarnate in reality, but the thought remains motionless, and its transitions are really affected by the surreptitious introduction of phenomenal Becoming. It pretends l6o THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. to deal with the realities of life, but it talks of abstract- ions throughout. It pretends to explain all things, and then ascribes inconvenient facts to the " con- tingency of matter," i.e. it pretends to be a rational explanation of the world, and then admits an element of irrationality. It pretends to solve all practical problems, but finally turns out to be necessarily incapable of solving a single one. It professes to give categorical answers to disputed questions, but its most definite assertions are rendered worthless by the taint of a subtle ambiguity. It seems a hard saying, but it is no more than what is strictly demon- strable, that Hegelianism never anywhere gets within sight of a fact, or within touch of reality. And the reason is simple : you cannot, without paying the penalty, substitute abstractions for real- ities ; the thought-symbol cannot do duty for the thing symbolized ; the development of a logical category is not the same as the evolution of a real individual. The " dialectical process," if we admit the phrase, is logical and not in Time, and has nothing to do with the world process in Time. Hegelianism is the greatest system of abstract meta- physics, because it starts from the highest abstract- ion and makes the most persistent effort to work down to reality from it, because its abstractions are carried out most ruthlessly, because its confusions are concealed most artfully, and because it hence seems to come closer to reality than systems which stopped short of such perfect illusion. But for these very reasons it is also the falsest of abstract metaphysical systems, if degrees be admitted, where all are fundamentally false. 7. For the truth is that any theory which puts forward an abstraction as the ultimate explanation ABSTRACT FIRST PRINCIPLES ALL BAD. l6l of all things is false. It is no matter what we call it, whether it is dubbed the Absolute, or the Un- knowable, or the Idea, or the Will, or the Uncon- scious, or Matter, or Reason, the Good or the In- finite. Nor is it a relevant difference whether the fundamental principle be picked up out of the sphere of material or of immaterial things, and whether we pronounce that the All is the One, or Number, or a material " element," like Fire, Water, or Air. For all these first principles are abstractions ; they will give partial interpretations of aspects of things, more or less successful according to the importance of the element denoted by the abstraction, and ac- cording to the care with which it has been selected. But not one of them can ever be wholly successful, for each of them is a part which cannot include the whole. The efforts, therefore, of such theories may present to the astounded spectator the most surpris- ing feats of mental acrobatism, but they must be as fruitless as a man's attempt to put himself into his own pocket. 8. In addition to the evils of the X/O'O"M? involved in the abstractions of mere metaphysics, further difficulties arise out of the random and haphazard way in which they arrive at their first principles. Philosophies are, for the most part, generated by reflection upon the difficulties of the theories of the past, and so work on from age to age in the same old narrow and vicious groove. Hence the history of philosophy presents a series of unprofitable con- troversies, like that as to the nature of universals, as to the origin of knowledge, as to the existence of an ''external " world, etc., which would either never have been raised or rapidly adjusted if philosophy had kept in closer contact with the real problems of R. of S. M 1 62 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. life, and shown itself more sensitive to outside in- fluences. And it is manifest that this sectarian adherence to the traditional formulation of philosophic questions affords but the slenderest guarantee that the first principles of philosophy will be such as to be applicable to any other subject. Such principles have no organic connexion with the positive sciences, and very often must be incapable of utilizing scientific facts. Hence the general attitude of abstract metaphysics is anti- scientific, and hence the antagonism of physical science and philosophy, which in the present day is so detrimental to the best interests of both. Thus each of the two methods on which the human mind has hitherto placed its chief reliance in order to achieve the Herculean task of silencing the Sphinx, is vitiated by its peculiar disabilities. The pseudo-metaphysical method may be compared to an earth-born Antaeus, whose strength fails as soon as he is raised above the ground ; the abstract metaphysical to a flighty Icarus, who reaches the ground only in his death. The one is of use only on the earth, and the other only in the air, whereas the winged Sphinx is equally at home in either element. 9. We require, then, a method which combines the excellencies of both the pseudo-metaphysical and the abstract metaphysical, if philosophy is to be possible at all. It must be metaphysical, and yet not abstract ; it must agree with the metaphysical in explaining the lower by the higher, and with the pseudo-metaphysical in admitting their intrinsic like- ness and the continuity of all existence. And so it must avoid the weaknesses of the others. Un- TRUE METAPHYSIC BASED ON SCIENCE. 163 like the first, it must explain the less known and less intelligible lower, i.e., the more remote from human nature by the more known and more in- telligible, i.e. that which is nearer to human nature. Unlike the second, it must avoid the x 60 ! 040 "^ 9 f phenomenal and real, the abstract opposition of ideal and actual. Unlike the second, too, its principles must be organically connected with the sciences, aided by them, and reciprocating their assistance. How can this be ? Simply by basing our meta- physics on our science. Our metaphysics must be concrete, and not abstract ; they must be the inquiry into the ultimate nature of concrete realities, and not of thought abstractions. In other words, they must proceed from the phenomenally real to the ultimately real, from science to metaphysics. And so the method of philosophy must utilize the results of science ; metaphysical theories must be suggested by scientific researches, and must approve themselves by in their turn suggesting scientific advances. Their principles of explanation must be systematic- ally based on the sciences, and not picked up at random, and their function must be to systematize the fundamental principles of the various sciences. Metaphysic, in short, must again become what it once was in the time of Aristotle the science of ultimate existence, the science of the first principles of the physical sciences. 10. But is such a method more than the vision of an imagination which has soared too far above the region of the actual ? Is such a reconciliation of science and metaphysics possible at all ? It is certainly extremely difficult. In the first place, because of the scarcity of 164 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. philosophical predecessors. With the mention of Berkeley's " spirits " and Leibnitz's " monads " we have almost exhausted the list of philosophical principles which are not liable to the charge of being abstractions, or of explaining the higher by the lower. Aristotle also regarded the concrete indi- vidual as the primary reality (irptorij ova-ia), and in his practice gives us an unequalled example of the way in which science and metaphysics should work together. Much help may be derived from all these, and in questions of method, especially from Aristotle. n. But even with the utmost help and in- genuity, our task is still tremendous. Its difficulty arises from two main causes. (1) Our imperfect knowledge of the lower. (2) Our imperfect attainment of the higher. These two causes conspire to make most of the facts in the world unintelligible. We have to ac- cept them as facts for which we can give no reason. Why does gravity vary inversely as the square of the distance ? A simple fact like this will defy ex- planation for many an age, for it is the lowest and most general of physical facts, and therefore the last to be rendered intelligible from the point of view of the higher. For just as in ascending a mountain the higher peaks are the first to be perceived, the first whose groupings can be understood, just as it is not until we reach the summit that we rise to a free purview of the whole, and that the inter-connection of the lowlands and the direction of the valleys can be made out ; so in philosophy we can only catch partial and misleading views of what is below, while we toil through the dense forest of prejudice, and can only gain mysterious hints of what lies beyond, THE HIGHER LIFE RICHER THOUGH UNIMAGINABLE. 165 while what is above is shrouded in the mists of early morning. 12. And not only are we hampered by our avowed ignorance of the lower, but in view of the slight deference which the scheme of things pays to man and his desires, we must admit also that little progress has been made in the attainment of the higher. We are after all far nearer to the beast than to the angel, far closer to hell than to heaven. We can feel the throb of brutal instincts, we can conceive the anguish of undying torment ; but the calm of superhuman virtue leaves us cold, and visions of eternal bliss seem empty and unmeaning. Yet this is in the nature of things inevitable. The higher can in a way understand the lower, by tracing in it the germs the higher has developed. But the lower cannot in the same way anticipate the higher. In the case of existences higher than our- selves, we can ascribe to them the possession of certain qualities sensu eminentiori, or the perfection of our highest activities. But how, if our activities seem essentially imperfect, bound up with imperfect conditions, relative to imperfect stages of develop- ment ? In such cases perfection means destruction. One human activity after another must be excluded from the ideal life, and we can imagine nothing which can take their place ; and owing to this pro- gressive elimination of the lower activities, it is a great achievement if we can retain any aspect of human life as a permanent ideal, and in any case the ideals of perfection become mere forms, the whole content of which has been eviscerated. And so the higher life seems dull and empty. We are able to describe it only by negatives, by the negation of the lower attributes unworthy of it. This is the I 66 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. real explanation of the eternal emptiness of happi- ness, of the ennui of bliss which is so marked in the popular representations of heaven. It is the ex- planation also of the irrepressible tendency to de- scribe God by negations, as the ineffable, infinite, immutable, incomprehensible and unknowable, which is continually making religion the half-way house to agnosticism. But in reality this is a mere prejudice, though a very pardonable one. To overcome it, we should consider the parallel of the relation of the infra- human to the human from the point of view of the former. How unable would the amoeba be to realize the higher activities of man, how inevitably would the dim forecasts of its knowledge deny to man the activities, whatever they are, that make up the life of the amoeba ! To a less degree, the same incapacity is displayed also among men. The un- thinking masses also condemn the life of the thinker as dull, empty, and uneventful, simply because they cannot imagine how much fuller his heightened consciousness makes it, how much more intense are the pleasures and pains of the sage than those of coarser minds that cannot react upon the subtler stimuli. From such examples we begin to perceive that the higher is not a negation, because the lower cannot determine its positive attributes. Every step in advance does indeed mean a dropping away of some lower activities, until they have all dis- appeared. But each step in advance also opens up new activities, and fuller realizations of old activities, which progressively increase the total content of life, and make the higher life richer and fuller than the lower. But these, of course, are not visible from the standpoint of the lower. The lament, therefore, THE LIMITATIONS OF THE METHOD. 1 67 over the emptiness of the higher life, is as though one were to lament in the ascent of a mountain that the advance was pure loss, because the scenery at the foot must be more and more obscured, oblivious of the fact that the ascent would bring new features into view of which we could not have dreamt be- low. Or to illustrate by a mathematical parallel : the higher can understand the lower just as we can abstract one and two dimensions from three dimens- ional space ; the lower cannot understand the higher, just as we cannot add a fourth dimension to Space. 1 3. These defects in the concrete metaphysical method are insurmountable ; and though they do not impair its correctness, they sadly limit its achievements. They render it impossible for philosophy to solve all questions, to be more than fragmentary, to be complete and final. Philosophy must be content if it can make out the general drift of life, if it can determine its main features, if it can approximately decipher its chief enigmas, if not with perfect certainty and in full detail, yet with reasonable probability. Its function is to form a temporary roofing- in of the pyramid of knowledge, which anticipates the completion of the structure, and enables the workers to work secured against the inclemency of the skies, but which from time to time must be renewed and modified and expanded, so as to satisfy the requirements of its growing bulk. A philosophical system will share the characteristics of the sciences on which it is based. It will consist of a series of happy, but not random, guesses, more or less probable, and deriving a certain amount of support from their connexion, able to explain the broad outlines of the constitution of things to a greater or less extent, but leaving much as yet 1 68 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. inexplicable ; like scientific theories also it will be ratified by the way it works and stands the test of experience. Finality, completeness, and perfection are as impossible at present in a true system of philosophy as in any of the sciences, and if this lack is censured by the admirers of spick and span sys- tems which have a glib response for every question, we must admit that as yet philosophy can do little more than keep alive the sacred fire of hope, than throw a light upon the path of progress. But we may be more than consoled by the reflection that such philosophy, though it is imperfect, is at least alive, and that its potentialities of progress render it immensely superior to the most artful and artificial system, the symmetry of which forbids the slightest change. 14. But little as philosophy can as yet achieve, it could nevertheless have achieved far more than it has done if it had kept in touch with science. Ought it not to have profited immensely by the unparalleled advance of the sciences in the course of the present century ? Ought it not to have gathered from this advance data of primary interest and principles of surpassing importance ? But the traditional metaphysics have known so little to profit by the teaching of science that, even in purely metaphysical matters, scientific theories are now often far in advance of philosophical ones, and involve metaphysical principles which philosophy has either not yet realized at all, or only grudgingly recognized, and failed to apply generally to the solution of its own problems. 1 And yet it is the 1 Like the metaphysical principles of Evolution (ch. vii.) and the impossibility of infinity (ch. vii. 20; ch. ix. 2-11), and of Interaction (ch. xii. 10; ch. vii. i) respectively. METAPHYSICAL GAINS FROM MODERN SCIENCE. 169 conviction that metaphysical principles underlie the great scientific progress of our age, and that they afford the key to the solution of the chief problems of philosophy, that can embolden philosophy to refuse to surrender to pessimistic and sceptical despair. But as the actual discussion of the metaphysical principles involved in modern scientific conceptions will demonstrate far more clearly than any general argument can do, not only that the method of con- crete metaphysics is possible, but that it is true, and yields philosophic results of supreme importance, we must delay no longer to consider the Metaphysics of Evolution. We shall see in the next chapter how a scientific doctrine, originating in the single science of biology, from the suggestion of an ob- scure sociological analogy, has pursued its triumph- ant march through all the sciences, impelled by the irresistible impetus of its metaphysical nature, and how the metaphysical conception which had been the latent cause of its success at last becomes explicit, and enriches philosophy with the accumu- lated wealth of the data it has collected. CHAPTER VII. THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. i. THE discussion of the metaphysics of Evolut- ion may come with the shock of seeming paradox on those who pride themselves on their complete exemption from metaphysical views and metaphys- ical knowledge. But in reality their surprise is quite uncalled for ; and if they knew what meta- physics were, they would perceive that it was as difficult to avoid talking metaphysics as it is to avoid talking prose. It requires a real poet to avoid prose, and it requires a real metaphysician to avoid metaphysical assumptions. For ordinary men the choice is only between good and bad metaphysics as between good and bad prose. For metaphysics is simply the science of the fundamental principles of all knowing and being, and it is impossible to act or think without assum- ing and implying some such principles. It is as impossible to carry on life without metaphysical principles as it is to carry on thought without logical principles. The only real question is whether our various metaphysical principles are to be consistent with one another and capable of being combined into a connected whole or not ; and it is highly probable that, unless great care is taken, they will not be so consistent. Hence the object of the systematic study of metaphysics is to render WHAT METAPHYSICS MEAN. l^Jl us conscious of the errors of the bad metaphysics of common life and common science, and to avoid such views of fundamental principles as will make nonsense of all things. In this respect metaphysics resemble logic, the science of the principles on which our thought proceeds ; for logical principles also cannot be with impunity ignored. If we are ignorant of them, it is probable that our thought will misapply them ; but to dispense with them is impossible. But though metaphysical and logical principles cannot be dispensed with, it is not neces- sary to be conscious of them ; on the contrary, just as people reasoned rightly and thought logically long before Aristotle explicitly stated the principles of logic, so it is possible to discover and to use metaphysical principles in ordinary life and in science long before they are consciously appro- priated by systematic philosophy. And so it is not too much to say that every con- siderable advance in science has involved a parallel advance in our view of metaphysical first principles ; and it would not be difficult to illustrate this by the history of metaphysical principles of acknow- ledged importance, which have owed their dis- covery, or at least their acceptance, to the progress of the other sciences. Thus it was nothing but Newton's discovery of gravitation which enabled the principle of Interaction to supersede the old conceptions of Activity and Passivity (cf. ch. iii. 10); and the full import of the metaphysical re- volution which was thus worked by a physical discovery has hardly even now been realized in all philosophic controversies (ch. xii. lo). 1 1 It must not, however, be supposed that metaphysical ad vances are always conditioned by scientific progress, and that the 172 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. This explanation should suffice to render the assertion of metaphysical principles in Evolution a truism rather than a paradox, and to convince us that, if their importance is in any way proportionate to their scientific value, they will throw much light upon the ultimate problems of life. And it will be the object of this chapter to show, not only what the metaphysical principles underlying the progress of modern science are, but also that our expectat- ions as to their value are likely to be more than fulfilled. 2. The great method of science which has proved so fruitful of progress in modern times has been the Historical Method, which investigates things by tracing their history. Wherever it has been possible to apply it, the light thrown on the nature of things by the study of their history sciences owe nothing to metaphysics. On the contrary, the ob- ligation is reciprocal, and metaphysics react upon science and accelerate its progress. And in early times metaphysical know- ledge is often far ahead of physical science. But in such cases the metaphysical conceptions are apt to prove barren, because no physical facts are known which exemplify them. And being thus destitute of illustration by reason of the backwardness of the physical sciences, the true metaphysics are often rejected in favour of less advanced principles, which may be supported by a plausible show of facts. It is pretty clear, for instance, that in the time of Aristotle Greek metaphysics were far ahead, not only of Greek science, but also of all but the most recent develop- ments of modern science. The lack of progressiveness of pure metaphysics since is to be attributed, not merely to the disastrous introduction into speculative philosophy of the popular doctrine of God's "infinity" (ch. x. 7), but also to the fact that meta- physics had to wait until the physical sciences had reached a point which afforded the data for further metaphysical progress. Hence, as we shall see ( 16), the metaphysical principles of Evolution were already contemplated by Aristotle, but rejected by him for lack of the scientific corroboration which they are now receiving. THE POSTULATES OF THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 173 has been such that in most branches of science a rejection of the Historic Method would justly be regarded as a conclusive mark of unscientific per- versity. And in its origin evolutionism is nothing but a special application and development of the Historical Method, the metaphysical assumptions of which it shares. Those assumptions are so few and so simple that ordinary thought would hardly think of calling them metaphysical ; and yet they really involve some very grave metaphysical diffic- ulties. The fundamental assumption on which every form of the Historical Method is based is that the thing investigated has had a history. And to say that a thing has had a history is to assert, not only that it has had a past, but that this past has a bearing upon and a connexion with its present condition. These postulates are so easily granted on ord- inary occasions that we are apt to overlook the metaphysical assumptions to which they commit us. The reality of history implies the reality of the past ; i.e., the reality of Time and the causality of the past with respect to the present. For the con- ditions which render the application of the Historical Method valid are absent, if a thing has not existed in the past, or if its past is not causally connected with its present. And these conditions, which make it possible to speak of a history at all, will be found ultimately to involve, not only the reality, but also, as a further metaphysical postulate, the limitation of Time, or, at all events, of the past of the thing to which a history is ascribed. But this very important point deserves further elucidation. 174 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. 3. The Historical Method supposes that the cause and explanation of the present state of a thing is to be found in its past, that its nature will appear when its origin has been discovered. But what if this supposition be an illusion ? What if there is no real causal connexion between the past and present states of things, and the succession of their phases resembles rather the successive arrange- ments of a kaleidoscope, or of dissolving views in a magic-lantern, in which picture follows upon pic- ture without any intrinsic connexion between them (cf. ch. iii. n)? 1 And again, what if things have had no origin ? Surely the search for origins, the claim that the explanation of things is to be found in their history, is fundamentally false if the infinity of Time renders the whole conception of a beginning or origin a delusive prejudice of our fancy ? If things have fluctuated to and fro from all eternity, in a confused and unintelligible series of indeterminate changes, if everything has passed into everything else by in- sensible and indefinite gradations, not in virtue of any determinate and discoverable law, but in con- sequence of the kaleidoscopic freaks of an irrational, inscrutable, and irresponsible " Unknowable," will not their nature baffle the utmost efforts of historical research? If men have "developed" into proto- plasm and protoplasm into man, in an infinite number of infinitely various and capricious ways, 1 Of course it is not intended to assert that there is no con- nexion between the successive pictures, but only that there is no direct connexion ; i.e., that the earlier image is not the cause of its successor. And just as the structure of the kaleidoscope underlies the appearances in the one case, so the ultimate per- versity of things (ch. v. 2, p. 137) would underlie them on the other hypothesis. THE REALITY OF HISTORY. 175 what meaning can any longer be attached to the history of the Evolution of man out of protoplasm ? If the Becoming of the world has really been in- finite, no amount of history will bring us any nearer to its real origin ; it is vain to sound the bottomless abyss of the past with the puny plummet of science. The Historical Method is futile, all theories of Evolution are false, and the nature of things is really unknowable. And if we refuse to admit these conclusions, we must admit as the metaphysical postulate of the Historical Method in all its forms, that things have had an origin, and their history a beginning. And so it appears that the ancient historians, who began their histories with the beginning of the world, were prompted by a correct and truly scientific instinct ; they felt that unless they began at the beginning, they would have to leave much obscure, and, that if a beginning was in the nature of things unattain- able, all would be left obscure, and all explan- ations would ultimately come to nought. Thus the vindication of a determinate beginning and a real origin as the necessary pre-supposition of any hist- orical account, commits us to the doctrine of a be- ginning of the world, or at least of the present order of things. But it does not directly compel us to as- sert the finiteness of Time. Until the nature of the infinity of Time has been investigated (in ch. ix. 1 1), we may here reserve judgment, all the more easily that we do not perhaps really require to limit Time for the purposes of the Historical Method. But we can avoid it only by a supposition at least as dif- ficult. The origin which the method requires need not have an origin of Time ; it is conceivable that the world existed for an infinity of time, and then 176 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. entered into the historical process of development at some fixed point in the past. Supposing e.g., that life had existed from all time in the form of protoplasm, it might suddenly have taken to de- veloping more complex forms, and this point would form the starting-point of biology, and the ideal fixed point to which the Historical Method would go back. Or again, an " eternal " Deity may have existed always, and at some point in the past have created the beginnings of the world. In this second case the ideal starting-point of the Historical Method would be also the real beginning of the world (at least as a world) ; in the first, it would be ideal only, and mark the limit merely for our knowledge. But in either case, the Historical Method would be unable to distinguish the ideal from the real limit ; it could not determine whether its starting-point was merely an instantaneous phase in the history, or whether it had not existed for an infinity before the beginning of change and beyond the reach of all history. It is thus an intrinsic limitation of the Historical Method, that even where it does penetrate to an apparent beginning, it cannot tell us whether it is the beginning of the existence of the thing or only of its history. 4. Now it follows from the fact that modern Evolutionism is a special application of the Histori- cal Method that it shares all the metaphysical as- sumption and limitations of that method. But in the course of its development it has superadded several others. And as its history affords the most instructive examples of how scientific progress un- wittingly develops metaphysical conceptions (ch. vi. 9, 1 6), it will be no real digression to trace the history of the theory of Evolution. EVOLUTIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL METHOD. 177 The evolutionism which has revolutionized the thought of our century is the evolutionism of Charles Darwin, and confessedly arose out of an interpretation of the gradations and affinities of animal species in the light of the Malthusian law of population. That is to say, it arose out of a hint which the single science of zoology received from the science of sociology. 1 After revolutionizing zoology, it found its scope so much enlarged by that process, that it could be applied with success to many other sciences, such as botany, biology and anthropology, with especial appropriateness to sociology (from which it had received its original impulse), and even to psychology and ethics. 2 And every new application had the effect of bringing out more definitely the principles by which it pro- ceeded. Thus it appeared a,s the co,mrn,on result of all evolutionist histories, what had not before seemed a necessary characteristic of historical explanations, that they traced the genesis of the higher and more differentiated subsequent forms out of earlier forms which were lower and simpler and more homo- geneous. And hence arose the first specific ad- dition Evolutionism made to the Historical Method proper, whu'ch may be described as the assertion that historical research le^ds us from the more com- plex to the simpler, and "explains" complexity by deriving it from simplicity. And perhaps it is the aesthetic obviousness of this process, rather than any magic virtue in mere history, which has ren- dered evolutionist explanations so plausible and so 1 Cf. Darwin's Life, I., p. 83, and compare Mr. Spencer's Study of Sociology, p. 438. 2 For a similar example, cf. Study of Sociology, p. 335, ff. (i3th ed.). R.ofS. I/O THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. popular. But it is this addition also which commits the evolutionist theory of descent to a course of metaphysical assertion by which it becomes at the outset a specimen, though a most favourable one, of the pseudo-metaphysical method (ch. vi. 3). And if in this it errs, its error is yet venial. It had achieved so much in the way of extending the borders of science, and thrown such a surprising light upon so many obscure problems, that we might well be pardoned for a greater blindness to the limita- tions of the theory than we have actually displayed. For we were able to carry the histories of things so much further back than we had ever expected, and were so wholly absorbed in disputing the details of those histories, that our dazzled and distracted reason could hardly muster the composure to in- quire whether the historical explanations of evol- utionism were successful as a whole, and whether their complete success would not bring out an in- herent weakness of the method. The consciousness of this difficulty was generated only by the further advance of the theory of Evolution itself. 5. That historical explanations should trace the development of the complex out of the simple was at first merely an empirical fact of observation ; it was an interesting scientific fact, but not a philo- sophic principle. But when this turned out to be the invariable result of each new extension of the Historical Method, the idea was imperatively sug- gested that this fact was no mere accident, but the result of an essential law in the history of things. The development of the simple into the complex came to be regarded as the higher law which all the applications of the Historical Method to the various sciences illustrated, and the theory of Evolution EVOLUTION OF DARWIN AND OF SPENCER. l'79 thereby ceased to be merely scientific, and be'came avowedly metaphysical. The merit of the discovery and formulation of this great generalization belongs to Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose evolutionism is related to the bio- logical evolutionism of Darwin much as the New- tonian law of gravitation is related to Kepler's laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies. And the step taken by Mr. Spencer was not only one of the utmost importance for the development of the philosophic implications of the theory of Evolution, but also thoroughly justified by purely scientific con- siderations. For it was only by such a generaliza- tion that the applications of evolutionist principles to the various sciences could be brought into a connection that explained the similarity of their evolutions. A merely biological evolutionism, e.g., could never have accounted for the evolution of the chemical elements ( 9) ; but from the standpoint of a philosophic evolutionism the evolution in biology and in chemistry are instances of one and the same law. 6. When Evolution has been recognised as the universal law of the Becoming of things, the position of affairs is, that all things are subject to 'a law, which explains the higher as the development of the lower, and that this law may be formulated by means of the historical data of this development. We have thus advanced beyond the conception of isolated things having a history, to the conception of a history of all things, a world-history ; not only must things be taken in their historical context, but that context is one and the same for all. And the world has not only got a history, but that history has a meaning, it is the process which l8o THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. works out the universal law of Evolution. The different sections of the world's history must be consistently interpreted with a reference to the universal law which they illustrate, i.e., interpreted as parts of the world-process. And here we come upon the first distinct trace of the teleology which is inseparable from all evol- utionism. 1 For when the phenomena of the world's evolution are subordinated to the general law of Evolution, their relation inevitably tends to become that of means to an end. All things happen as illustrations of, or in order to illustrate the general law of Evolution. But it is still possible to disavow the teleology at this point in the development of evolutionism, although it admits of little doubt that the success of evolutionism in combating other kinds of teleological explanation is due to its own tele- ology. For the attraction which teleology has for the human mind is indestructible ; an ineradicable in- stinct forbids us to renounce the hope of finding in the rest of nature that action for the sake of rational ends which is so prominent in that section of nature represented by intelligence. And, as we saw (ch. v. 6), all knowledge is based on the anthropo- morphic assumption that the course of nature cor- responds to the operation of our minds. If, then, it must correspond to some extent for knowledge to be possible at all, the completer the correspondence, the more knowable will the world be, and the teleological explanation of things, which asserts this 1 For even biological evolutionism is not free from teleology of a sort. It explains structure as arising by natural selection in order to survival in the struggle for existence, and thereby puts it in the position of a means to an end. WHEN IS A HISTORY AN EXPLANATION ? l8l correspondence to the fullest extent, thus becomes a legitimate ideal of knowledge. But before describing the fully developed tele- ology of an evolutionism which is fully conscious of its metaphysical implications, it is necessary to return to the question of the value and validity of the explanation of the higher by its development out of the lower, which has been asserted to be a prominent feature, not only in philosophic evolution- ism, but also in its merely biological stage. 7. In what sense and under what conditions is a history of the development of the lower into the higher a complete and satisfactory explanation of anything ? Is the mere fact that such an evolution takes place sufficient to satisfy us ? If so, we might without further inquiry credit a conjuror, when be- fore our eyes he changes a mango-seed into a mango- tree, or an egg into a handkerchief. It is not suffic- ient that a fact should happen for it to be intelli- gible ; on the contrary, many facts, like death, e.g., remain mysteries although they continually come under our observation. Hence it is not true that a mere history, merely as history, always explains the matter it deals with. In so far, therefore, as historical explanations of things seem satisfactory, it must be because they fulfil other conditions also. What those conditions are will perhaps appear most clearly from an examination of the actual procedure of historical explanations. It appears from such examinations that one of three things may happen to a thing, the evolution of which is investigated by the Historical Method. (i) It may be traced up to a point beyond which historical knowledge will not carry us ; we may come to an unresolved and irresolvable residuum, 1 82 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. which is the basis and datum of evolution, and which no evolution can explain. (2) The thing to be explained may merge into something else, and cease to exist, or at least to be distinguishable as such. (3) It may vanish entirely : it may be traced to its first appearance on the scene. It is possible to illustrate each of these results of the historical explanation from various evolutionist theories. The first may perhaps be said to be the most common result in the present condition of our data. If we rigorously refuse to follow the evolution- ist method beyond the data which are indisputably given, instead of prolonging our histories inferen- tially, we almost everywhere come to a point at which our evidence fails us. To take the most striking example, we can trace the history of life down to protoplasm, but we have no evidence that could explain how life arose out of lifeless matter. Strictly speaking, therefore, protoplasm is the inex- plicable datum of biological evolution. For, though it so happens that protoplasm, or something very like that hypothetical basis of biology, is an actually visible substance, and so capable of further analysis by chemical and physical methods, there is nothing in its chemical and physical properties to bridge the gulf between them and the phenomena of life, nothing that renders it less of an ultimate fact for biology. As an instance of the second we may quote the supposed origin of the intellectual and the moral consciousness in the evolution of life. As we trace the history of intelligence downwards, we seem to pass from the highest reason of man by insensible gradations to a form of life in which nothing that EVERYTHING DERIVED FROM ITS GERM. 183 can fairly be called reason can any longer be dis- tinguished. In the lowest forms of life there is not only no reason, but hardly any feeling, to be detected. It is only by the analogy of the higher forms of life that we ascribe to protoplasm the rudiments of thought and sensation. And what is true of intellectual and sensory consciousness, is still more conspicuous in the case of the moral consciousness. There is no need here to go down into animal life, for we find abundant examples in what must be called human beings of what seems a total absence of all moral feeling. We can all but fix the date of the origin of the moral consciousness, all but see how it differentiated itself out of the other factors of savage life. Of the third result we should obtain an example if by any chance we could witness the creation or coming into being of any- thing. 8. But let us consider what effect would be produced upon the actual results of evolutionist explanations, if the law of evolution could be really and completely universalized. The first case will evidently not bear universalizing. An evolution which starts with an original datum is not com- pletely successful in explaining a thing. On the contrary, it is probable that we should attribute to the original datum the germs at least of all the qualities of the final product, and thereby render the whole explanation illusory. For if we have already got in the original germ all the differences and difficulties we detect in the final product, the whole explanation becomes a petitio principii, and merely unfolds what we have taken care to put into the thing beforehand. Neither can the second case be universalized. 184 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. For it is clear that things cannot go on indefinitely being merged into other things, for the last thing would have nothing else for it to be merged into. There remains, then, the third case, viz., that our theory of Evolution traces all things back to the point where they arise out of nothing. But is this an explanation ? Have we gained anything by showing laboriously and with an im- mense mass of illustration how A arises out of B, B out of C, etc., until we come to Z, and say that Z arises out of nothing ? And so we are, finally, confronted with this unthinkable miracle of the creation of all things out of nothing, as the final completion and logical per- fection of the historical explanation ! And yet it is an axiomatic principle of human thought that things cannot arise out of nothing, i,e., causelessly! l 9. And that origination out of nothing is not merely the logical conclusion to which a consistent use of the historical explanation must lead, appears from the fact that it has already been not obscurely asserted in certain evolutionist theories. If we follow the bolder theories of the evolution- ists, as illustrating the logical development of the method, without for the moment considering whether they are justified by the scientific data, we find that they derive all the phenomena of human life from the properties of original protoplasm. And they do not hesitate to carry us beyond this and to con- struct histories of " biogenesis," intended to account for the origin of life out of inorganic matter. They may attack the problem in a purely mechanical manner by regarding the phenomena of life as differing only in degree from processes of combina- 1 Ex nihilo nihil ; in nihilum nil posse reverti. MR. CROOKES' THEORY OF PROTHYLE. 185 tion and crystallization, or they may also grapple with the logical difficulty of conceiving a transition from the unconscious to the conscious by theories of "mind-stuff" and the like. When once this mauvais pas has been surmounted, evolutionism finds more congenial material in the region of chemical and physical theories. Indeed, the most recent advances of chemical theory, as represented by Mr. Crookes' doctrine of Protyle (prothyle P), 1 enable it to construct an extremely interesting and complete cosmogony. The importance of Mr. Crookes' views to the theory of evolutionism is so great, and they have as yet penetrated so little into the general culture of the day, that no apology is needed for dwelling on them at greater length than on the well-known theories of Darwin and Spencer. 2 10. Chemists have for some time been struck by the fact that a certain order and connection may be detected among the " elements." The working out of the periodic law, /. its content can, like all reality, never be exhausted by our ideal symbols. Hence various formulations of the law of Evolution may all be true and equally true : true not merely in the sense of approximating in different degrees to the truth, but rather as each embracing a more or less prominent aspect of the whole truth. Hence it is no disparagement of Mr. Spencer's formula to say that it is unsuited for many purposes, for which more significant statements of the nature of Evolution are required. Thus, in sociology the promotion of heterogeneity, is not an aim for which it is possible to feel much enthusiasm, nor even one which would stimulate to any definite course of conduct. For so many things might lead to so many kinds of heterogeneity, many of which would appear far from desirable, that we should probably neglect more pressing necessities in the perplexities of promoting heterogeneity. 3. If, on the other hand, we take a formula like Eduard von Hartmann's, according to whom Evolu- tion consists in the development of consciousness, or more precisely, in the development of conscious reason out of the Unconscious, we find that the ACCORDING TO V. HARTMANN. 215 process is at once raised from the merely physical to the intellectual sphere, and that we have a formula which would afford considerable guidance in soci- ology. Indeed, it would be both significant and true of the whole of organic evolution ; for whatever else, and whatever more it is, it certainly involves a continuous raising and intensifying of consciousness. But on the other hand, it seems difficult to apply this to inorganic evolution. How shall we regard the evolution of the solar system out of a homogen- eous nebula, to say nothing of the evolution of dif- ferentiated matter out of indeterminate prothyle, as a growth of consciousness ? And even if in our distress we had recourse to the difficult, and perhaps gratuitous, hypothesis, that inorganic matter was really conscious, it would be difficult to detect any higher consciousness in a stone than in an incandes- cent gas. Or shall we say that the inorganic evolu- tion prepared the way for the organic ? But why then all these aeons of inorganic evolution ? Surely it is too large a factor in the world's history to be denied all intrinsic significance. If it is a mere means to the production of conscious organisms, could the means not be prepared without such a portentous waste of time and energy ? Von Hart- mann's formula, then, cannot be applied universally without supplementary hypotheses which largely im- pair its value. Let us see, however, whether it is not possible to discover a formula as true as Spencer's and as significant as von Hartmann's, and to elicit from nature a lesson which shall at the same time illus- trate more clearly than all previous discussions, how the method of concrete metaphysics draws its philo- sophical results from scientific facts. 2l6 FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 4. In studying the wonderful organization of the polities of social insects like the ants and bees, the political philosopher will be tempted to compare their States with those of men. And at first sight the comparison is greatly to man's disadvantage. The social insects appear to have solved many prob- lems the solution of which would in human States be justly esteemed Utopian. They have solved the great fundamental questions of Feeding and Breed- ing, which underlie all social life: the demons of Hunger and of Love have lost their terrors for the citizen of the City of the Bees. Short of natural calamities such as no foresight can avert, his labour secures to each member sufficient food and shelter (for clothing he does not need). Nor can starvation arise from over- (or under-) population, for population can be accurately regulated, without difficulty and without disturbance. No amatory passions can dis- turb the calm of social amity, for all the citizens are sexless, or at least unsexed. No wonder, then, that the cities of the Ants and Bees have no need of prisons or police, that their discipline displays perfect obedience and perfect harmony, that their members support one another like one united family, that, in a word, their instincts prompt them to do what they ought, and are perfectly harmonious with their social environment. We have here perfect socialism har- monized with all but perfect industry, organization and legality, and there is no doubt that, as far as form goes, the structural perfection of these societies is far higher than that of any men have ever attained to. In so far as civilization is measured by the capacity for social communion and co-operation, the ants and bees are immeasurably our superiors. 5. Why, then, are they not the masters of our THE CITY OF THE BEES. 217 planet ? Their diminutive size is an obstacle, but size is unavailing against intelligence. The real reason is different. The social insects did not achieve these marvellous results, except at a severe and, as it proved, a fatal cost. They solved the social question by elimin- ating the factors they ought to have reconciled with the social welfare. Sexuality and the difficulties of population being disturbing elements in social organ- isms, they cut the Gordian knot by confining mem- bership of the State to the sexless. The males and females, both of the bees and of the ants, contribute more or less to its existence, for which they supply the necessary basis, but they do not form part of the community. The males are, as is well known, simply turned out to starve, while the queen-bee or ant, in spite of the reverence shown her, is kept as a sort of State-prisoner, upon whom the security of the State depends. What is the effect of this curi- ous solution of the social problem ? This, that the training of -the citizens in each generation is wasted, and that, as they leave no descendants, there is no possibility of hereditary improvement, either by direct inheritance of acquired intelligence or by the survival of the descendants of the more intelligent. Each generation is descended from queens that have no training, and no occasion to exert their intel- lectual faculties, and hence each generation is as wise as its predecessor. In other words, the State of the social insects is unprogressive, because the develop- ment of the individual has been stopped; its perfect- ion has been bought by the sacrifice of progress. The individual has been harmonized with social requirements, but only by having his individuality crushed, and with it has vanished all the hope of the 2l8 FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. race. The ants and bees, therefore, may be said to present a terrible example of the fallacy of Abstract Socialism, 6. This example may well suggest the reflection that true progress avoids alike excessive individ- ualism and excessive socialism, and consists in a harmonious development of the individual and his social medium. And in fact we find that whereas neither the individual by himself, nor the society which has crushed the individual, can develop beyond a limited extent, all real progress concurrently develops both the individual and the social medium. It is a develop- ment of the individual in society, and of society through individuals. A harmonious development like this does not develop the individual in a fakir-like isol- ation, by himself and for himself, but as a member of society and together with society : and similarly the development of society involves that of the indivi- duals who compose it, and consists therein. The two progress pari passzi, so that we may perhaps conjec- ture that they are not two facts, but one. And by the development of the individual is meant that the individual, becomes more of an in- dividual, a fuJier and more perfect individual ; by the development of society, that society becomes more of a society, a fuller and more perfect society, of which the members are more and more dependent on one another, act and react upon one another with greater and greater intensity. But this formula must be tested and verified by its applicability to the different stages of Evolution, alike to the evolution of human society, to that of the lower animals, and finally to that of the inorganic world. DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN SOCIETY. 2IQ 7. With regard to actual human society the illustrations of its truth meet us on all sides. Thus it is to adopt what has become almost a commonplace definition of civilization to say that a civilized society is a highly complex, differentiated and specialized organism, and that in progressive societies its complexity, the specialization and differentiation of the functions of the parts, are in- creased every day. But what does this mean but that in the progress of Evolution the social organism is ever becoming more and more of a society ? The division of labour, which is one of the chief factors of increasing efficiency,, makes each special- ized class more dependent on the others, which supply it, in exchange for the products, of its labour, with the means of satisfying all the wrants of life ; for everything but the single article which it pro- duces far in excess of its. own requirements, it is dependent upon society. The effect of higher evolution in making the individuals of higher societies more individual, is less obvious at first, because highly specialized work becomes monotonous and mechanical, and so soul- destroying. But perhaps much of the mischief is due to the fact that our social sympathies, are not yet sufficiently developed for us to take interest in each other's specialisms. And in any case, the evil works its own cure, for surely some of the surplus wealth produced by the division of labour might be devoted to the alleviation of its secondary mischiefs. And if we consider the total effects of the division of labour on society, we find that it does facilitate higher developments of individuality. Division of labour and the general complexity of social structure in higher societies renders possible accumulation of 22O FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. wealth and the growth of leisured classes, possessing that leisure (v and eSt^cra e/xauroV {Heraclitus). FORESHADOWS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. 241 the interference of other things, and what could interfere with the all-embracing world-process? But the full vindication of our hopes will be the arduous task of the succeeding Book ; for the present we must content ourselves with the first glimpse of Heaven we have caught through a rift in the clouds. BOOK III. CHAPTER IX. MAN AND THE WORDD. i. WE are now in a position to attack the "riddles of the Sphinx" themselves, which, as we said at the outset (ch. i. 3), concern the relation of Man to the World which environs him, to his Cause and to his Future. Of these questions we shall most fitly commence with the first, for, as will be shown, it leads on to the others. By the environment of man we mean primarily his material environment, the world of material things in Space and Time, the existence of which presents an abundance of perplexities to the philosophic mind. In this question of the relation of man to his environment are involved the questions of the existence of an external world, which has been called the battle-ground of metaphysics because the inconclusive skirmishes of unprofitable philo- sophies have been largely conducted in a field in which neither side could gain anything but con- fusion of the nature of Matter and its relation to Spirit, of the infinity of Space and Time, and gener- ally of the characteristics of the Becoming of things. Of these it will be convenient to consider first the existence of the world in Space and Time. For if our environment is infinite in respect to Space and Time, all hope of a solution of the 246 MAN AND THE WORLD. problem of life must be at once abandoned ; for to an infinite environment there can be no adaptation (cp. ch. iv. 4). Hence to admit the infinity of Space and Time is to give up all hope of tran- scending Pessimism, and it is necessary to subject this doctrine to careful criticism. 2. It is necessary, in the first place, to determine the proper sense of infinity. First of all we must reject the popular and poeti- cal use in which infinity is vaguely used as the equivalent of any extremely large quantity, and indicates merely the point at which the intelligent appreciation of magnitude ceases. This limit, of course, varies immensely with times and seasons and stages of civilization. Thus the Greeks, as their language shows, at one time regarded 10,000 as an infinitely large number ; the Romans con- tented themselves with 600, while to many savages everything above two or three is "many," and " infinity " begins before five has been reached. So, too, the sands of the seashore, the hairs of the head, and even the stars of heaven have all been popular ' representatives of infinity. Yet an exact computa- tion shows that a luxuriant head of hair does not contain much over 100,000, and that the stars visible to the naked eye at any one time amount to less than 3,000. And the number of grains of sand on a definite piece of shore, though it may be indefinitely large, is not infinite. The popular usage, in short, means very little : infinity is merely a big word which impresses people because they do not understand it. And how little they understand its proper meaning is shown by the history of allied words like " endless," " immense," " incalculable," " immeasurable," " in- THE MEANINGS OF INFINITY. 247 numerable," etc., all of which originally implied infinity. From this point of view infinity is the last straggler of a whole host of words, which under the persuasive influence of popular usage have long come to mean nothing more than great magnitude, and is distinguished from them merely by the precarious allegiance it still owAs to the technical - terminology of the learned. 3. From this wholly improper and positive use of infinity we may pass to one wholly proper, when used in its strictness, but negative. This is the mathematical use, which asserts that there can be no end to the successive synthesis of unity in measuring a quantity. We can never in our thought arrive at a point when the addition of unity to a quantity, however large, is impossible. Now as to this, it is noticeable (i) that the definition is purely negative, and makes the con- ception of infinity the conception of a limit, and (2) that it is purely subjective. The definition makes no reference to reality, but merely asserts that " we cannot help thinking. . . ." We seem thus to receive a hint that the idea of infinity indicates a defect, imperfection or limitation of our thought, to which reality is only subjected in so far as we must interpret it by our thought. 4. From this, the true conception of infinity, is derived the mathematical doctrine of infinity, that since infinity contains a number of given units greater than all number, all finite quantities may be neglected in comparison with it. This reasoning involves a subtle transition from the negative to a positive conception, which finally results in infinity becoming a kind of mathematical topsyturvydom, where two parallel straight lines meet and enclose spaces, and 248 MAN AND THE WORLD. two circles intersect at four points, etc. And, of course, so long as these symbols are recognized as fictions convenient, and even necessary, for the technical purposes of mathematicians, nobody need complain (cp. ch. vi. 3), but unfortunately mathe- maticians, like other mortals, are apt to forget this, and frequently require a gentle reminder of their logical absurdity. When, e.g., they say that two parallel straight lines meet at infinity, they really mean that they do not meet at all, or that we can continue to conceive ourselves as prolonging them, without their approaching. Or, again, the doctrine that one infinity can be greater than another, is, to say the least, inaccurate. For if infinity be taken positively, it must mean something out of relation to quantity, and different in kind, to which, therefore, phrases like "greater and less than" are totally inapplicable. If, e.g., one of two straight lines may be produced indefinitely in one direction and the other in both, the mathematical doctrine is that the second infinity is greater than the first. But the question whether one will at any time be greater or less than the other will depend on the rate at which they are produced and the size of the "successive syntheses," and not on their being infinite in one or two directions. But in order to measure them at all, and so to be able to speak of greater or less with respect to them, they must both be limited first, which is ex hypothesi impossible. Hence the category of quantity is inapplicable to the case, and the positive conception of infinity is absurd, an infinite quantity being a contradiction in terms. For being infinite, no measure can exhaust it, while a quantity is that which is composed of units of measurement. INFINITY ALWAYS IDEAL A DEFECT OF THOUGHT. 249 5. Now does the infinity of Space resemble the valid negative, or the invalid positive conception of infinity ? There is no need to regard it as anything but the former. We need not mean by the infinity of Space anything more than that we cannot think a limit to Space, can conceive no space which is not bounded by spaces, and similarly in the case of Time ; we can conceive no time which was not preceded by an earlier time. It is evident that this infinity is purely conceptual and negative. No man has ever found by ex- perience that Space and Time have no limits. The infinity of Space and Time can never be given as an actual fact. We can never, except in poetry, get to the limits of the universe, and gaze into the Void beyond, if only because of the prosaic attraction of the bodies behind us. But, unfortunately, we seem since the days of Aristotle to have forgotten the obvious fact that infinity can never be anything real, anything more than a potential infinity in our thoiight. But can we argue from this potential infinity of our conceptions to the infinity of the spatially extended world, and of the Becoming in Time ? This would seem to be an argument based upon hazardous assumptions and resulting in inextricable difficulties. 6. It involves, in the first place, a relapse into the illegitimate conception of infinity as something positive and actual, if it is to state facts about the real world and not to make correct but useless state- ments about our subjective frame of mind. For while we adhere to the true definition of infinity, the proposition that the world is infinite in Space and 250 MAN AND THE WORLD. Time must resolve itself into the assertion that we cannot think Space and Time exhausted and limited by successive additions of spaces and times. But this tells us nothing as to whether the real world is infinite, when not in relation to our present modes of thinking it. This brings out, secondly, the robust assumption, on which the inference of the infinity of the world from the infinity of our conceptions is based. It assumes a complete agreement between reality and thought, in virtue of which an infinity, which is true primarily of our ideas, may be safely transferred to the real world. But our experience in dealing with Scepticism (ch. iii.) ought to have left us very sceptical as to the ease with which such a corre- spondence can be effected. And even if we hope and believe that concord between thought and reality will be ultimately attained, this faith will afford but one more reason for regarding the asser- tion of their present correspondence with grave suspicion. The infinity contained in our conceptions of Space and Time, therefore, so far from leading on to the infinity of the real world as a matter of course, militates rather in favour of the conclusion that the real world is limited in Space and had a beginning in Time. And this presumption is confirmed by the strongest positive reasons. The doctrine of the infinity of Space and Time turns out, in the first place, to be vicious in its origin and based upon an abuse of the faculty of abstraction. And further, it cannot even claim the undivided support of the necessities of thought. On the contrary, it is in the sharpest conflict with some of the strongest necessities of our thought. The infinity of Space and Time INFINITY A FALSE ABSTRACTION. 25! contradicts some of the chief conceptions of our thought, and that of Time even contradicts itself (ch. iii. 6). The infinity of Space conflicts with the conception of the world as a whole, the infinity of Time with that of the world as a process, and as has been already shown (ch. vii. 3, 20), all evolutionist or historic methods imply that Time is limited and that the world had a beginning. Lastly, the in- finity of the world involves a reductio ad absurdum of the category of causation. And, of course, these metaphysical difficulties about the infinity of Space and Time reappear in science, and generate conflicts between the principal and most approved scientific doctrines and this alleged infinity. It is not merely that science knows nothing of anything infinite, but that it is in various ways compelled to assert that infinity is directly incompatible with verified knowledge. It is neces- sary, therefore, to give a sketch of these objections. 7. We are too apt, in the first place, to forget that "Space" and "Time" are mere abstractions. We speak as though things were plunged in Space and Time, and as if Space and Time could exist without them. But as a matter of fact Space and Time are constituted by things, and are only two prominent aspects of their interaction. It is as the result of the attractions and repulsions of things that they constitute certain spaces between one another. Empty Space and empty Time are bogies which we have no business to conjure up out of the limbo of vain imaginings. Hence there is no real difficulty in conceiving (with Aristotle) that Space should be limited by the spatially-extended, i.e. bodies, seeing that the conception has no meaning except in connection with bodies : where bodies 252 MAN AND THE WORLD. cease, there Space would cease also, and the question as to what is beyond is unanswerable, because unmeaning and invalid. If, then, " pure " Space is an abstraction from the spatially-extended reality, and if real Space is actually delimited by that which fills it, viz. bodies, the resulting position of affairs is, that the infinity of conceptual Space is merely a trick of abstraction, which imposes upon us by dint of its very simplicity. For it ceases to be surprising that if we abstract from that which really limits Space, the remaining abstraction, viz., conceptual or ideal " Space," should have to be regarded as unlimited in idea. Only of course this vice of our thought proves less 'than nothing as to the infinity of the physical world. A similar argument would dispose of the question as to the infinity of real Time and as to what existed before the beginning of the world, and thus the whole difficulty would be shown to rest upon a miscon- ception. 8. The metaphysical difficulties of the infinity of Time amount to a self-contradiction, i.e., to a conflict with the supreme law of human thought. For the infinity of the past is regarded as limited by the present, i.e., it is a completed infinity. But a completed infinity is a contradiction of the very conception of infinity, which consisted in the im- possibility of completing the infinite by successive synthesis. Again, the infinity of the world in Space involves a hopeless contradiction of the conception of a whole. For when we speak of the world or uni- verse, we mean the totality of existing things. But in order to attain to such a whole, it would be necessary to grasp things together as a totality, and THE METAPHYSICAL CONTRADICTIONS OF INFINITY. 253 to define off the existent against the non-existent. But this condition cannot be satisfied in the case of an infinite, which can never be completed by succes- sive synthesis, and never therefore be grasped together as a whole. We may generalize the case of the infinite quantity ( 4), and say that an in- finite whole is, like a bottomless pit, a contradiction in terms, in which the infinity negates the whole and the whole excludes infinity. We must aban- don, therefore, either the conception of a totality or that of the infinity of the world. If the world is a whole, it is not infinite, if it is infinite, it is not a whole, i.e., not a world at all. And there is a parallel contradiction between the conception of infinity and of a process. It was shown in chapter vii. 20 that a process is necessarily and essentially finite, and limited by the two points between which the process lies. Unless it were finite, it would be a mere wavering and fluctuating Becoming, void of Being, and as such unknowable. The Becoming, therefore, of reality must be en- closed within the limits of a conception, which enables us to define it as having Being relatively to one point and Not- Being relatively to another. To apply to the world the conception of a process is to imply that its Becoming is definite and finite. If, therefore, we wish to assert that the world has a real history, that its Evolution is a fact and that our formulas of Evolution are true, we must think the world as finite in Space and Time. Lastly, the belief in infinity conflicts with the most indispensable organon of all knowledge and all science, the conception of causation (cp. ch. iii. ii s.f.). For a chain of causation depends on the strength of its initial member, and if the series of 254 MAN AND THE WORLD. causes be infinite, if there be no such thing as a first cause, the whole series dangles uselessly in the air or falls asunder, inasmuch as each of the rela- tive causes receives no necessity to transmit to the next beneath it, and hence the ultimate effect also is not necessary. 9. And, as might have been expected, these metaphysical contradictions reappear in science in the shape of conflicts between the supposed infinity of the physical world and some of the most valu- able scientific principles. Thus the impossibility of thinking a world infinite in Space as a whole nullifies the principle of the conservation of energy, makes it impossible to re- gard the universe as a conservative system, and thus brings upon physics a terrible Nemesis in the shape of the dissipation of energy. For if we duly take successively increasing spheres in Space, it is easily apparent that there is uncompensated loss of energy in each, and that the greater part of the energy radiated out by the bodies within it is lost, not being arrested by bodies on which it can im- pinge. Hence the larger the concentric spheres become, the greater the loss of energy, until finally the amount of energy would become infinitesimal. Now at first it might seem possible to reply to this by the mathematical argument that the universe being infinite, the energy radiated out in any direc- tion is certain sooner or later to hit upon some body and thus to avoid being lost. But to this it might be similarly answered, that as in an infinite number of these cases the body absorbing the energy would be at an infinite distance, the energy protected would be infinitely small, i.e., nothing. And besides the argument presupposes an impossibility, and THE SCIENTIFIC CONTRADICTIONS OF INFINITY. 255 tacitly assumes that it is possible to speak of the universe as an infinite whole possessing infinite . energy. Hence our present physics cannot evade the inference that the energy of any finite part of the world must be undergoing gradual dissipation, and would have been entirely dissipated, if it had existed infinitely in the past. And as this has not as a matter of fact happened, the conclusion is that the world with its store of energy, which is now being dissipated, came into being at some definite point in the past. In order, therefore, to assert the real infinity of Space, the facts of the world and the principles of science compel us to deny its infinity in Time, and to infer both a beginning of the existence of energy and an end, in its inevitable dissipation. Science, in short, must be consistent and treat the infinite extension of Space as it has already treated its infinite divisibility. In idea Space is not only infinite but infinitely divisible ; in reality science posits the atom as the indivisible minimum of spatially-extended reality. If there- fore science is entitled to assume a minimum of material reality and to reject the reality of the infini- tesimal, it is by a parity of reasoning entitled to postulate also a maximum extent of the world and to reject the reality of the infinite. Further, it was shown in ch. iii. 8 that the in- finity of Space contradicted the reality of motion and hence of energy, and scepticism inferred from this the illusoriness of the latter. But we may equally well infer the illusoriness of infinity, and when science is reduced to a choice between the reality of energy and the reality of infinity, it cannot for a moment hesitate to reject the latter. But if science must reject the infinity of Space it 256 MAN AND THE WORLD. cannot maintain that of Time. Just as the infinity of Space, combined with the finiteness of Time, resulted in the destruction of energy by dissipation, so conversely, the finitude of Space, combined with the infinity of Time, results in the destruction of energy by equilibration. For in infinite Time a finite world must have gone through all possible changes already, and thus have arrived at a con- dition of equilibrium and a changeless state of Being sharply contrasted with its actual Becoming. As to the infinity of Time, it contradicts, under any circumstances, the conception of the world as a process, i.e., as a whole in Time. This contra- diction gives us no choice between denying the infinity of Time and admitting that the search for a beginning is comparable to the labour of the Danaids, that common sense, which inquires into the "whence" of things in order to discover their nature, is but the crude basis of subtler error, that the Historical Method is futile, that all our theories of Evolution are false, and that the nature of things is really unknowable. Yet science is surely entitled to struggle hard against the relinquishment of such approved principles, against the demolition of the whole fabric of knowledge, in deference to what cannot but appear to it a mere metaphysical pre- judice. And not only is the finiteness of Time essential to knowledge, but it also carries with it that of Space. For a world finite in Time but infinite in Space cannot be included under a finite process, and hence baffles all attempts at grasping it by an intelligible conception. A spatially infinite world cannot be said to be evolving or engaged in a pro- cess at all, i.e., to be passing from state A to state INFINITY NEED NOT BE PERMANENT. 257 B. For it could never wholly get to A, and hence could never wholly be becoming B. And the converse supposition of a world finite in Space and infinite in Time, which from the point of view of a whole has been already shown to be absurd, is equally impossible from that of the con- ception of a process. Its absurdity may be illus- trated by the fact that if it were engaged in a process, it would require an infinite Time to reach any given point in the process, and an infinite number of infinities to reach the present, i.e., would never reach the present at all. 10. And to set against the cumulative force of all these metaphysical and scientific contradictions, nothing can be urged in favour of the infinity of Space and Time, except a disability of our imper- fect thought, a disability, moreover, which does not even profess to warrant the assertion of a positive infinity of real Space and Time. We cannot think Space and Time as limited, we cannot conceive how the world is limited in Space and Time. But can we assert this ideal infinity of the real world ? Assuredly we can not : nothing compels us to go behind the contradiction. At the utmost all it proves is that there is a lack of correspondence between the constitution of our minds and that of the world, and there is no need to regard this con- flict as likely to be permanent. If, therefore, we are not satisfied with saying that the world must be finite, though we cannot, while our intuition of Space remains what it is, see how, a solution is yet possible through a change in that intuition. 1 1 The word " intuition " here is used merely as a translation of the preciser German term " Anschauung," and has no reference to any contrast with " experience." R. ofS. s 258 MAN AND THE WORLD. The idea of infinity need not form part of an intuition of Space different from ours, and after all, that intuition is only subjective. Subjective not only as existing in consciousness like the whole world of phenomena (cp. 13), but subjective also as being a peculiarity of thought unconfirmed by feeling. There is nothing, therefore, impossible in the suggestion that in the progress of Evolution the infinity of Space should disappear either with or before the intuition of Space itself. It would thus turn out to be nothing more than a transitory phase or condition of our minds, accidental to our present imperfect development, which would cease to lay claim to ultimate reality when the upward struggle of Evolution had raised us to a more harmonious state of being. And indeed there would be nothing inadmissible even in the idea of a non-spatial and non-material existence as the goal of the develop- ment- of the spatial and material, if our examination of the nature of the material should justify a doubt of the permanence of Matter as a mode of our con- sciousness (cp. 17-32). Our attitude, therefore, towards Space will be twofold : speaking as scientists and accepting the phenomenal reality of Space, and of the sensible \vorld for what it is worth, we shall distinguish between our idea of Space and real Space, deny that real Space is infinite, and contend that the sensible world is finite. But this scientific postulate does not so much solve as carve through the meta- physical perplexity. To metaphysicians, therefore, the conflict between the conceptual and the sensible will suggest their reconciliation in a non-spatial " intelligible world." And with regard to this in- telligible world, we must protest against two mis- SPACE A TRANSITORY FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 259 constructions by which Kant sought to damage the conception. It is not unknowable, and has nothing to do with what Kant strangely called Noiimena (objects of thought), because they were unthinkable. And, secondly, it is not the abstract conception of a world in general. It is a real existence, which is legitimately, and - perhaps necessarily, inferred from the discords of the phenomenal world. And though our data may not at first enable us to assert much more than its real existence, there is no reason why similar inferences should not eventually give us more definite information as to the nature of that existence. The final solution, therefore, may be briefly stated as being that the subjectivity of Space, or at least of the infinity involved in its conception, is likely to be brought out in the future evolution of the world, and this solution has the advantage of har- monizing with two such important doctrines as those of Evolution and of Idealism : and Idealism would surely be a still more futile and useless doctrine than its worst enemies or wildest champions would assert, if it cannot be appealed to to rescue philo- sophy from this perplexity. ii. The infinity of Time, however, can not be disposed of so easily by a decree of subjectivity. For the reality of Time is involved in the reality of the world-process.. Now a process need not be in Space (as, e.g., a process of thought), and, the world-process may therefore retain its meaning, even though spatial extension be nothing more than a passing phase of that process in, our consciousness ; but the subjectivity of Time would destroy the whole meaning and reality of the world-process, and negate the idea of the world as an evolution. 26O MAN AND THE WORLD. Hence theories which have regarded Time as an illusion, as the phenomenal distortion of the Eternal, have ultimately had to confess their inability to assign any meaning to the course of events in Time, and so arrived at despair, practical and theoretical, with regard to the phenomenal world. For it is evident that a process is necessarily in Time, 1 and involves a temporal connection between its suc- cessive phases. Our dilemma then is this, that if the reality of Time is denied, the whole meaning and rationality of the world is destroyed at one blow; if it is admitted, 'we do not rid ourselves of its infinity and its contradiction of itself and of science. A clue out of the labyrinth may be found by observing with Aristotle (Phys. IV. 2233.) that our consciousness of Time depends on the perception of motion (/aV^o-t?), i.e., on the changes, and the regularity of the changes, in short, on the Becoming of the world. Time, as the consciousness of suc- cession, is not indeed, as we feel at first sight tempted to assert, bound up with the permanence of physical motions, by which we at present mea- sure it, and regulate the subjective times of our several consciousnesses (ch. iii. 6) ; but it does seem to depend upon our consciousness of Change or Becoming in the wider sense, of which physical motion is but a single example. If, therefore, there were no change, Time would not exist for us, i.e., would not exist at all. The question therefore arises whether we can form a conception of a state in which change is 1 A " logical process " is really a psychological one : the pro- cess is only in the mind which traces the co-existing links of logical necessity. Cp. ch. iii. 15 s. r . TIME AND ETERNITY. 26 1 transcended, and to this question we must answer yes. The ideal. of perfect adaptation is such a con- ception, and in a state of perfect adaptation there would be no consciousness of change (cp. ch. ii. 9, p. 32; ch. iv. 4). Unless, therefore, happiness and harmony are the illusions the Pessimist asserts them: to be, we must conclude that in such a state of perfection Time would be transcended. But transcended by what ? It is easy to answer that its place will be taken by Eternity, but less easy to explain the meaning of that much-abused word, and its relation to Time. For nothing would be gained if Eternity were regarded merely as the negation of Time : this would neither save the meaning of the world-process nor correspond to the positive character of happiness. Eternity must be regarded as positive, and its relation to Time must be conceived analogous to the relation of Being to Becoming. The parallelism of the two is indeed surprising. The idea of Time involves an inherent contradiction, and so also does Becoming. For though Becoming is a fact of daily experience, it remains a contradiction to thought, and cannot be defined except as a union of Being and Not- Being (ch. iii. 13). And in this union Being is the positive element, the standard to which all Becoming is referred. That which becomes, is only in so far as it has Being, and in so far as it is not, it is nothing. Construed on this analogy, Time would be real only as the presage of Eternity, and Eternity would be the ultimate standard by which its contradictions would be measured and har- monized. And Time and Becoming are not only analogous, but inseparably connected. For not only does all Becoming take place in Time, but without 262 MAX AND THE WORLD. Becoming there would be no Time. And may we not then say that what Becoming is without Being, that Time would be without Eternity, viz., self- contradictory and unmeaning ? Thus we begin to perceive the nature of the limits of Time. The beginning of Time and the birth of our present universe (cp. ch. ii. 20 s.f.) must have been a coincident transition from equable and unchanging Being, from the harmonious Now of Eternity into the unrest, struggle and discord of Becoming, and the self-contradictory flow of Time. Thus Time might be called a Corruption of Eter- nity, just as Becoming is a Corruption of Being. For in either case the change must be conceived as one of decadence, and Being and Eternity as the positive conceptions from which Becoming and Time represent a partial falling away. And both Time and Becoming may be called corruptions of Eternal Being also with reference to their intimate connection with Evil and Imper- fection. For in the ever-changing world of Time complete adaptation and adjustment, a perfect har- mony between a thing and its environment does not and can not exist, and it is just certain aspects of this non-adaptation, non-equilibrium and discord, that we denominate evil (ch. iv. 4). Thus Time, Becoming, and Evil form part of the same problem (cp. ch. v. 2 s.f.), and to recognize that the question as to the origin of each is a question as to the origin of all, is the first great step towards the solution of this triune perplexity of philosophy. And the mystery of Time is in a fair way of solution when we -can express it in terms of the others, and say that Time is biit the measure of the impermanence of the imperfect, and that the reason why we fail to HOW TIME PASSES INTO ETERNITY. 263 attain to the ideal of Eternity is that we fail equally to attain to the cognate ideals of Being and Adapt- ation. The question thereby resolves itself into the old difficulty (ch. v. 5) of why the Real cannot realize the perfection of the Ideals of our reason. But if it could, is it not evident that there would be an end of Time, as of Change and of Evil, and would not Time pass into Eternity ? Regarding Eternity, therefore, as the Ideal, and not as the negation of Time, as that into which Time tends to pass in the process of Evolution, as that into which it will pass at the end of that process, it is possible to resolve the difficulty of the depen- dence of the world-process on the reality of Time. If Time is the corruption of Eternity, if it is but the imperfect shadow cast by Eternity on the pre- scient soul of man, then what is true of Time holds of Eternity sensu eminentiori, and in becoming a process in Eternity the world-process does not have its meaning annihilated. On the contrary, it for the first time attains to its full plenitude of import. We may conclude therefore, for the' present, that the solution of the problem of Time lies in its re-attainment of Eternity. 1 2. The next subject which awaits discussion in our relations to our environment is that of man's relation to the material world. But before entering into a discussion of the relations and functions of Matter and Spirit, it will be necessary to allude as briefly as may be to the question of Idealism and the external world. Idealism is popularly supposed to consist in a denial of the existence of an external world. -But this accusation is really a corollary from the funda- mental fact of Idealism, which idealists have been 264 MAN AND THE WORLD. by no means anxious to draw. On the contrary, they' have made every effort to evade it, although their opponents may uncharitably think that their efforts were either unsuccessful, or succeeded only at a disproportionate cost of further absurdities. But that idealists should strain every nerve to escape from the most obvious corollary of their doctrine was but natural. No serious philosopher can really hold a doctrine which would hardly be credible even at an advanced stage of insanity, viz., that nothing exists beside himself. Or rather, if he is all that exists, he is certainly insane. 1 Sub- jective idealists therefore do not exist outside lunatic asylums and certain histories of philosophy. Into the various devices of idealists to avoid sub- jective idealism, it is not necessary to enter, as they mostly consist in appeals to a deus ex mackina, a " divine mind in which the world exists." But even if it should not be considered derogatory to the divine majesty that a God should be invented to help philosophers out of a difficulty of their own creation, the difficulties that beset the relation of the individual and the "universal" mind are even greater than those of Idealism. It will be more profitable, therefore, to analyse the basis of all idealism, and to consider what it proves, and whether it necessitates the inferences of Idealism. 13. The primary fact of Idealism is that all things exist in our consciousness exist as objects of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions ; that 1 Compare the remark Goethe attributes to the idealist : " Fiinvahr, wenn ich dies alles bin, So bin ich heute narrisch." Faust I. : Walpurgisnachtstraum. IDEALISM AND THE " EXTERNAL WORLD." 265 that which does not and can not enter into our consciousness in one of these ways is unknowable and imperceptible, and therefore nothing. It is thus the positive converse of the proposition that the unknowable is nothing (ch. ii. 6). But this fact is just as unimportant, controversially, as it is scientific- ally irrefragable. Thinkers of all parties, who know what they are about, are agreed that it is undeniable, and that it is impossible to acquiesce in it as final. Idealists and realists alike perceive the necessity of so interpreting it as to render it com- patible with the objective existence of the phe- nomenal world : their only difference is about the means. Idealists mostly seek to preserve the verbal state- ment of the primary fact of idealism by saying that all things exist in consciousness, but in a divine consciousness, appear to a divine " I," and hence are subjective to the Absolute, but objective to us, and independent of our thoughts and feelings. But in so doing they forget that they have trans- muted a fact into a theory, if not into a fiction. "My" consciousness assures me that all things appear to vie, exist in my consciousness, but it carries with it no such reference to a divine consciousness. There is only a verbal and illusory identity between my own " I " and that of God. My consciousness tells me nothing directly about the way in which things appear to God. The transition, therefore, from my consciousness to God's is an extremely hazardous one, and does not of itself imply any similarity between the contents of my consciousness and of God's. Indeed, upon reflection, it will seem pro- bable that things would appear widely different to a divine being, and one would be sorry to think that 266 MAN AND THE WORLD. they should appear no better. But the " objective world " is a world which appears to me, and no appearances to some one else will explain it. For the pantheistic proposition that in appearing to me, the world really appears to God, and that my own " I " is but a section of the divine " I," is not one capable of being thought out. For the universal " I " either has another consciousness beside mine, or it has not. If it has, the objective reality of things will be things as they appear to that consciousness, and things as they appear to mine will be reduced to a subjective illusion, i.e., we fall back into the subjec- tive idealism from which we are seeking to escape. If it has not, why should the reality of things be constituted by my consciousness, rather than by that of any other self-conscious " I/' which is also a fragment of the divine self-consciousness ? Things appear differently to me and to others, but to whom do they appear as they really are ? It matters not what answer is given to this question, the result will be the same ; the world, as it appears to every con- sciousness but one, will be an illusion. 14. But if Idealism cannot extricate itself from the toils of illusionism, let us see whether Realism is more successful in getting over the primary subjec- tivity of the world. Realism will naturally seek to draw a distinction between existing in consciousness and existing solely in consciousness. It does not follow that because the world exists in my consciousness, it exists only in rny consciousness. We may cheerfully admit even that the world cannot exist out of my consciousness. For it may be that ultimately the in- dependence, either of the world or of the " I," will be seen to involve the same fallacy of false abstrac- THE WORLD'S REALITY GIVEN WITH THE SELF'S. 267 tiori (cp. ch. vi. 2 s.f.), and that in the end "I" can no more exist without the world than the world can exist without me (cp. ch. x. 20). Indeed, even now the content of the Self is given only by inter- action and contrast with the world, or Not-Self. But at present this is a mere suggestion, and we must content ourselves with showing that the fact will bear the interpretation Realism puts upon it. It is a mistake to suppose that the only inference from the existence of the world in consciousness is that it exists only in consciousness, and that its existence is therefore dependent on the subject's conscious- ness. For, granting the self-existence of the world independently of my consciousness, it would yet exist for me only as reflected in my consciousness. In other words, the fact of its existence in my consciousness would be the same, whether or not the world were self- existent. Both interpretations being thus possible, there can be no doubt as to which is preferable. Sense and science alike require us to believe that the existence of the world is not dependent on its appearance in any one's consciousness. The phenomenal world and the phenomenal self, to whom it appears, are mutually implicated facts, and we have no business to assume the existence of either out of their given context. And this mutual implication of the self and the world is equally fatal to both the extremes, both to subjective Idealism and to Materialism. We have as little ground for asserting that consciousness is merely a phenomenon of Matter, as for asserting that the material world is merely a phenomenon of any one's consciousness. But a choice is still left be- tween transcendental, or ultimate, and phenomenal, or immediate, realism. 268 MAN AND THE WORLD. This choice is decided in favour of the former, not only by the contradictions which the assumption of the ultimate reality of the phenomenal world in- volves (cp. ch. iii. 2-12, and 21), but also by the fact that one of the factors in the phenomenal world lays claim to ultimate reality. For each of us is strongly persuaded of the absolute existence of his own self. And the proper inference from this is, not that the phenomenal world exists in an absol- ute Self, but that a transcendent world of ultimate reality corresponds to the reality of the Self. Of this existence of ultimate realities outside our- selves we can have no direct proof: there can be no direct disproof of subjective idealism, just as there can be no direct disproof of pessimism. It is sufficient to show that it is practically impossible and absurd, and that its competitor can give an alternative interpretation of the facts, which gives a rational and harmonious solution. And indeed it is a mistake to suppose that all things require to be proved (cp. ch. ii. 5), for proof is an activity of thought, and thought does not constitute the whole of consciousness. A fact may be as surely attested by feeling or will, as by the most rigorous demon- stration, and ultimately all demonstration rests on such self-evident facts. 1 The existence of a reality 1 The only alternative to this view of ultimate certainty is that which regards consistency as the basis of proof. But consistency may mean two very different things. If we mean by it that the premisses of arguments do not contradict one another, and that on the strength of this we can go on proving everything by every- thing else all round, we are surely deluded. For such an argu- ment in a circle is fallacious, as Aristotle pointed out long ago, even though the circle be as large as the universe. If, on the other hand, it means that things are so fitted together as to excite no sense of incongruity, then consistency just describes one of IDEALISM VERSUS MATERIALISM. 269 outside ourselves is such a fact, irresistibly attested by feeling, and one which does not require further proof. In this respect it is exactly on a par with the existence of one's self. No man can prove his own existence ; and, we may add, no sane man wants to. The correlative facts of the existence of Self and Not- Self are certified by the same evidence, the irresistible affirmation of feeling, and their supreme certainty cannot be touched, and much less shaken, by any idealist argument. 1 5. Was Idealism, then, merely an unprofitable sophism merely a troublesome quibble which ob- structed our path ? By no means : we may learn much from the difficulty to which it drew attention. In the first place, it brought out clearly the impor- tant distinction, which we had already anticipated in our account of Space and Time, of phenomenal and ultimate reality, and our answer depended on the distinction between them. What was reasserted against subjective idealism was the existence of ultimate reality, but we refrained from identifying this with phenomenal reality. We did not commit ourselves to the assertion of the absolute reality of every stick and every stone exactly as we now be- hold it. The world, as it now appears to us, may be but the subjective reflexion of the ultimate reality, and thus idealism would be true, at least of our phenomenal world. And, secondly, Idealism supplies the antidote to the materialism which regards consciousness as an accident without which the world is quite capable of existing. Idealism and Materialism, starting from opposite the chief characteristics of self-evidence, and becomes simply a lax statement of the rival theory. 270 MAX AND THE WORLD. standpoints, are impelled by the force of all but in- superable reasonings towards contrary conclusions, and as they meet midway, the shock of their col- lision seems like to shatter the authority of human reason. For just as Idealism concluded from the fact that the world exists in consciousness, that it existed only in the individual's consciousness, so Materialism concludes from the fact that the world dispenses with every individual, that all may be dispensed with. The exaggeration and the flaw is the same in both. Materialism overlooks that the world it speaks of is phenomenal, that the indivi- dual dispensed with is phenomenal also ; and that what appears need not be all that ultimately is. Its arguments, therefore, do not touch the individual's conviction of his ultimate reality. Similarly, Ideal- ism cannot affect the individual's conviction that there must be something beside himself to account for the appearances to him. If, then, we recognize the distinction of the phenomenal and ultimate reality, the contradiction between Materialism and Idealism ceases to be insoluble. 1 6. And to say nothing of other difficulties which it alone can solve, this fact is in itself suffici- ent reason for making the distinction between phen- omenal and transcendent reality, which may at first sight appear somewhat needless. In so doing we are proving true to the principle of our method, by solving a conflict between thought and fact by an appeal to metaphysic. And it is certainly a more satisfactory method thus to reconcile the contending parties than for each to go on re -asserting the un- tenableness of its opponent's position from its own point of view. Students of philosophy must be well- nigh sick by this time of hearing the well-worn WANTED A METAPHYSICAL ACCOUNT OF MATTER. 271 philosophic argument against Materialism, that it is " a gigantic hysteron-proteron " and a logical contra- diction. And the small impression this mode of argument has hitherto produced, might well arouse the most supine of philosophers to abandon the method of sterile and captious criticism, and to bethink himself of an alternative explanation of the phenomenal world. If Materialism is bad meta- physics, what is the true metaphysical explanation of Matter ? If self-consciousness is the primary fact of knowledge, what part does it play in the explanation of the phenomenal world ? What is the relation of Matter and Spirit ? what is the mean- ing of the distinction of Body and Soul ? and what is the function and purpose of the arrangement of the material cosmos ? If we remember the primary subjectivity of the phenomenal world, and proceed by the right method, we shall be enabled to give substantially sufficient answers to these questions. And the right method will here as elsewhere be one which derives its meta- physical conclusions from scientific data and justifies them by parallels from acknowledged scientific facts. 17. In analysing the conception of Matter, the first thing to remark is that Matter is an abstraction from material bodies or things. Things are all indi- vidual and no one thing is exactly like any other. Nevertheless we detect in them certain resemblances in virtue of which we call them material, and regard them as composed of the abstraction " Matter." Matter, therefore, like all abstractions, is an adjective but not a substantive fact (cp. ch. iii. 15, p. 82), and it is this which justifies the philosophic protest against the materialist annihilation of the mind by means of one of its own abstractions. 272 MAN AND THE WORLD. This abstract Matter, moreover, stands in a curious relation to the equally abstract conception of Force. According to the ordinary scientific doctrine, which ignores the metaphysical character of Matter, forgets that it is an abstraction, and treats it as a reality, Matter is the substratum or vehicle of Force. All the sensible qualities of Matter are due to forces, gravitative, cohesive, repulsive, chem- ical, electrical, or to motions (like Heat, Sound, Light, etc.), or " motive forces." Matter itself, therefore, is left as the unknown and unknowable substratum of Force. There is no reason why the term Matter should appear from one end of a sci- entific account of the world to the other. It is not required to explain the appearance of anything we can experience, and is merely a metaphysical fiction designed to provide forces with a vehicle. Hence the idea easily suggested itself to scientists to drop out the totally otiose conception of Matter, and to regard the " atoms " of physics as Force- centres. But though physics could perfectly well employ such force- centres, their nature requires further elucidation. It is impossible, in the first place, to regard them, with Faraday, as material points, devoid of magnitude. For this would not only stultify the whole aim of the theory by reintro- ducing Matter, but involve the further difficulty that as the material points would be infinitely small, the velocity which any force, however small, would im- part to them, would be infinite, and they would rush about the universe with infinite velocities, and never remain long enough anywhere for their existence to become known. If, on the other hand, the force- centres are really points, i.e., mathematical points " without parts and without magnitude," it is diffi- MATTER AND FORCE. 273 cult to see how real forces could be attached to ideal points. And again, unless each of these atomic forces were attached to some real substratum, what would keep them separate, or prevent them from combining into one gigantic resultant Force, which would sweep the universe headlong into Chaos ? In short, the whole conception of independent force-centres rests upon insufficient metaphysical analysis. A force which has no substratum, which acting from nothing, is the force of nothing, but as it were in the air, is utterly unthinkable. But is this any reason for reverting to unknowable " Matter " as the substratum, in order that our forces may inhere in it, and not stray about helplessly? It would be a great mistake to suppose this. Our " forces " may require a substratum, but there is no reason why that substratum should be material. It is, as Mr. Mill says, a coarse prejudice of popular thought, to which science has needlessly deferred, to suppose that the cause must be like the effect, that a nightmare, e.g. Y must resemble the plum-pud- ding which caused it. So there is no need to sup- pose that an unknowable " Matter " is an ultimate reality, merely because phenomenal things have the attribute of materiality. Matter is not the only con- ceivable substratum of Force. 1 8. We found just now that Force-centres, in order to be a satisfactory scientific explanation of things, required some agency to prevent the indi- vidual atomic forces from coalescing into one. This postulate is realized if the force- atoms be endowed with something like intelligence, and thus enabled to keep their positions with respect to one another, i.e., to keep their positions in Space. We shall then say that they act at or from the points where they 274 MA N AND THE WORLD. appear, and shall have substituted a known and knowable substratum, viz., intelligence, for unknow- able "Matter." Our " force-atoms " will have deve- loped into " monads" spiritual entities akin to our- selves. Thus the dualism of Matter and Spirit would have been transcended, and the lower, viz. Matter, would have been interpreted as a phenom- enal appearance of the higher, viz. Spirit. 19. And a similar result follows from the ana- lysis of the conception of Force. Just as Matter was a conception which could not be applied to ultimate reality at all, so Force is a conception which inevitably implies the spiritual character of the ult- imate reality. Historically it is undeniable that Force is depersonalized Will, that the prototype of Force is Will, which even now is the Force par ex- cellence and the only one we know directly. The sense of Effort also, which is a distinctive element in the conception of Force, is irresistibly suggestive of the action of a spiritual being. For how can there be effort without intelligence and will ? It is this closer reference to our own consciousness which makes Force a more satisfactory explanation of things than Matter : it is nearer to the higher, and hence more capable of really explaining than the lower. And we see this also by the issue of the attempt to interpret Force in terms of lower concep- tions. Force is frequently defined as the cause of motion (cp. ch. iii. 10), and if this definition were metaphysically true, the sooner Force were obliter- ated from the vocabulary of science the better. Its association with the sense of effort would lead to groundless suggestions of similarity with the action of our wills, which could only be misleading. But, as we saw (ch. iii. 1 1, 8), the conceptions of cause and MATTER ULTIMATELY REDUCIBLE TO SPIRIT. 275 motion are even more replete with contradiction and perplexity, and to explain Force in terms of cause and motion is to explain what is imperfectly known in terms of what is still less known. When we assert that the Becoming of things- is due to the action of forces, we can form some sort of inadequate idea of how the process works, but we have not the least idea of what causation consists- in as soon as we rigidly exclude all human analogies. To use caus- ation without a reference to our own wills is to use a category which has been reduced to a mere word without meaning, a category, moreover, the use of which involves us in the inextricable difficulties of an infinite regress. 20. If, on the other hand, we admit that Matter may be resolved into forces, and that the only pos- sible substratum of Force is intelligence, the way is open for a reconciliation of the metaphysics of Ideal- ism with the requirements of science. Idealism admits the phenomenal reality of the " material " world, and science recognizes that it has neither need nor right, to assert its ultimate reality. The unity of philosophy and of the universe is vindicated by the discovery of the fundamental identity of Matter and Spirit, and the ultimate reduction of the former to the latter. And not only has science no need to assert the ultimate reality of Matter, but it actually benefits, in a hardly less degree than metaphysics, from the interpretation of the phenomena of Matter we have propounded. If Matter is not and can not be an ultimate mode of being, it follows that the pseudo- metaphysical speculations as to its ultimate consti- tution lead only to a loss of time and temper. The conceptions of atoms, ether, space, etc., are not 2/6 "MAN AND THE WORLD. capable of being cleared of their contradictions, because they have only a relative validity in the phenomenal world, and the phenomenal world taken by itself is full of contradictions. Science therefore need not concern itself to pursue its assumptions beyond the point at which they are most useful practically, nor attempt the hopeless task of solving the 'perplexities which arise when it is essayed to give them an ontological validity. And this is the true answer to the sceptical criticism of the first principles of science (ch. iii. 6-n). Hence it will be sufficient to assume as many undulating agencies as are requisite to explain the phenomena of light and electricity, without troubling whether the assumption of the reality of a luminiferous ether would not involve impossibilities. The difficulties inherent in the conceptions of Matter, Motion, and Infinity, puzzles like that of the infinitude of the material universe, of the infinite divisibility of Matter and the relativity of Motion, lose their sting, when we cease to imagine that the facts with which they are concerned are ultimate. It is enough to know that we shall never get to the end of the world, or come to a particle we cannot divide. But though Matter ultimately be but a form of the Evolution of Spirit, difficulties remain in plenty. Before the reconciliation can be considered com- plete, e.g., it is necessary to determine the nature of the intelligence which Matter is divined to conceal, and to discover what is the function of this disguise of Spirit. 21. After the dispersion of the doubts which Scepticism had cast on the first principles of science, we must consider the nature of the intelligence of the Force-atoms. It is possible either to regard THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF "ATOMS." 2/ each atom, with Leibnitz and Lotze, as a meta- physical entity or monad, and to regard their inter- actions as constituting the material universe, or to ascribe them to the direct action of divine force. Nor is it a question of vital importance which we prefer. For, on the one hand, we cannot dispense with the divine force in trying to understand the arrangement of the world and the aim of its pro- cess, and, on the other, it is not very much, more difficult to conceive of an atom as possessing rudi<- mentary consciousness and individuality than to do this in the case of an amoeba. But perhaps it is better, in the present state of our knowledge, and until Mr. Crookes' theories of the individualities of atoms (ch. vii. 1 1) have received fuller confirmation, to recognize the distinction between organic and inorganic being, and to ascribe consciousness only to living beings, out of which it is historically pro- bable that our highly evolved consciousness has directly developed. An atom, then, may be defined as a constant manifestation of divine Force or Will, exercised at a definite point. In this definition, which moreover can be easily adapted to new requirements, should the old conceptions of atoms cease to be serviceable expressions for the scientific facts, the constancy of the divine Will excludes the association of caprice, while the localization prevents the fusion and confusion of the force-atoms. It must not, however, be supposed that there is any intrinsic connection between the forces and the mathematical points at which they act. It is merely that at these points we come under the influence of a certain intensity of divine Force. That this intensity is a constant and definite one, and that we can therefore measure it in num- 2/8 MAN AND THE WORLD. bers of force units, and speak of the conservation of mass and energy, is a fact given only by experi- ence, and one which need hold good only in so far as it subserves to the idea of the whole. And if 'it be objected that a thing can not act where it is not, it may be replied that the divine Force is omnipresent, or its action in matter may be com- pared to a piece of machinery which remained in action in the absence of its constructor, which affected us on reaching certain spots, and which might fairly be said to represent a constant will of its constructor. But if we penetrate a little deeper, the difficulty will appear gratuitous. For we have seen ( 10) that Space can not be an ultimate reality, but must be regarded as a creation of the divine Force on precisely the same footing as Matter, and need not appear real. to us except in our present condition. Thus the " objective " world in Space and Time would be the direct creation in our consciousness of the divine Force, and represent merely a state or condition of our mind, which need not be true or exist at all, except for a being in that condition. And yet it would be the only reality and the primary object of knowledge for such a consciousness. 22. We have spoken hitherto of the world as a manifestation of divine Force, and treated the physical forces from the point of view of the sub- ject of which they were forces. But Force, to be real, requires at least two factors, and cannot act iipon nothing, any more than it can be the force of nothing. We must consider, then, the objects also upon which the divine Force acts. It must be a manifestation to (something or) somebody, it must act upon (something or) somebody. Upon whom ? Upon us, surely, for it is to us that the THE WORLD A STXJSSS BETWEEN GOD AND SPIRITS. 279 world appears. But that it should appear to us implies a certain independence and distinction from the Deity. For Force implies resistance, and there would be nothing for the divine Force to act upon, if we were not distinct and resisting entities. Or rather, we should remember that the conception of Force is imperfect, if we regard only the force which acts, and not that which it acts upon, and which calls it out by its resistance, that every action implies reaction, and that to speak of forces is but a convenient but inaccurate way of speaking of a Stress or Inter-action between two factors. And of these factors each must be real in order to make pos- sible the existence of the force exercised by either. When, therefore, we call the universe a manifestation of divine Force, we are not speaking with perfect precision, but leaving out of account the other half of the Stress, viz., the Reaction of the Ego upon that force. The cosmos of our experience is a stress or inter-action between God and ourselves. And in such interaction both sides are affected. If God appears to us as the world, if the splendour of perfection can be thus distorted in the dross of the material, the Self also, which is a factor in that interaction, cannot appear in its fulness. We must distinguish therefore between the Self as it ultimately is, and as it appears to itself in its interaction with the Deity. This distinction may be marked by calling the Self as it appears, the phenomenal self, and the self as the ultimate reality, the Transcendental Ego. By the latter name it is intended to express its transcendence of the limit- ations of our ordinary consciousness and of our phen- omenal world, and yet to emphasize its fundamental kinship with our normal self. And in agreement 280 MAN AND THE WORLD. with Kant's phraseology, it is called " transcend- ent^/," because its existence is not directly pre- sented, but inferred, based upon a metaphysical inference from the phenomenal to the transcendent.^ On the other hand, our ordinary selves are phenome- nal, just as phenomenal as the phenomenal world. We can discover our character only from our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and introspective psychology is a science of observation. It is by experience and experiment that we arrive at a knowledge of ourselves, by an examination of the varying flow of consciousness. But in order to be conscious of the connection of the flow of phenomena in consciousness, in order to be convinced that my feelings to-day and yesterday both belong to me, it is necessary that there should be something permanent which connects them {cp. ch. v, 3). This permanent being, which holds together the Becoming of the phenomenal selves, is secured by the Trans- cendental Ego, which is, as it were, the form con- taining as its content the whole of our psychic life. But the form cannot be separated from its content (ch. ii. 14), and hence the Ego cannot be reduced to an empty form, or regarded as different from the Self. They must be in some way one, and their unity must correspond to our conviction that we change and yet are the same. What, then, is the relation of the Ego to the Self ? For it seems that 1 There is, however, this difference:: in Kant " transcenden- tal'^ that which is reached by an episteraological argument, a truth implied in the nature of our knowledge. Having, how- ever, rejected epistemology, we must modify the meaning of a " transcendental proof" into being " a proof of the transcendent," viz., that which transcends not experience generally, as in Kant but our actual presentations, i.e., which is based on meta- physical necessities. THE SELF AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL EGO. 281 the Transcendental Ego can neither be separate from or equivalent to the phenomenal self ( = the content of consciousness). If it were separate, the " I " would be divided, would be not one but two ; if it were equivalent, the self which interacts with the Deity would be equivalent to the self which is the result of that interaction. To understand this relation, we must remember that the ordinary phenomenal " I " is essentially changing, and displays different sides of its nature at different times. Hence its actual consciousness never represents the whole capacity of the self. What " I " think, feel, etc., is only a small portion at any time of what I am capable of thinking and feeling, and its amount is very different when I am intensely active and half asleep. But do not the latent capacities of feeling, etc., truly belong to myself, or does its reality admit of degrees corre- sponding to the intensities of consciousness ? Am " I " annihilated when I fall .asleep, and resurrected when I awake ? Assuredly this would be a strange doctrine, and one from which the acceptance of the Transcendental Ego delivers us. The Transcen- dental Ego is the " I " with all its powers and latent capacities of development, the ultimate reality which we have not yet actually reached. The phen- omenal self is that portion of the Transcendental Ego which is at any time actual (exists evepyeia), or present in consciousness, and forms but a feeble and partial excerpt of the Ego. But the Self is as yet alone real, and as in the progress of its develop- ment it unfolds all its hidden powers, it approximates more and more to the Ego, until at last the actual and the potential would become co-extensive, the Self and the Ego would coincide, and in the attain- 282 MAN AND THE WORLD. ment of perfection we should be all we are capable of being. 23. And this account of the relation of the Ego to the Self is not only metaphysically necessary, but supported also by the direct scientific evidence of experimental psychology. For it seems to pro- vide an explanation of the exceedingly perplexing phenomena of double or multifold and alternating consciousness, multiplex personality and "secondary" selves. These curious phenomena forcibly bring home to us what a partial and imperfect thing our ordinary consciousness is, how much goes on within us of which we know nothing, how far the pheno- menal falls short of being co-extensive with our whole nature. And yet we must either include these changes of personality within the limits of our own "self," or ascribe them to possession by "spirits." And there can be little doubt that the former theory is in most cases obviously preferable. The secondary selves show such close relations to the primary, display such complications of inclusive and exclusive memories, betray such constant tendencies to merge into or to absorb their primaries, that we cannot exclude them from our " selves." Indeed, it is often difficult to decide which of several personalities is to be regarded as the primary self. What, e.g., is the real self of personages like Felida X. or Madame B. P 1 Is it the Leonie of waking life, the dull uneducated peasant woman, who knows nothing of the higher faculties she is capable of displaying when the habitual grouping of the elements of her being has been resifted by hypnotization ? Or is it the bright 1 Compare Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. iv. p. 129. The case of Felida X., given fully in Hypnotisme et Double Conscience, par le Dr. Azatn. Paris, 1887. SECONDARY AND NORMAL "SELVES." 283 and lively Leontine of the hypnotic condition, who knows all that Leonie does, but speaks of her in the third person ? Or is it not rather the Leonore of a still deeper stage, with her higher intellect and perfect memory of all that she, Leontine and Leonie have done ? By the theory suggested all these difficulties may be solved. They merely illustrate the contention that our ordinary selves are neither our whole selves nor our true selves. They are, as Mr. Myers phrases it, merely that portion of our self which has happened to come to the surface, or which it has paid to develop into actual consciousness in the course of Evolution. They are our habitual or normal selves, more or less on a par with the secondary selves, and like them, phenomenal. But the Ego includes them all, and this inclusion justifies us in reckoning these phenomena part of ourselves. In it the phenomenal selves unite and combine, and as a beginning of this fusion it is interesting to find traces of coalescence in the higher stages of personalities which at lower stages had seemed exclusive and antagonistic. 1 24. The way in which the world arises may now be represented as follows. If there are two beings, God and an Ego, capable of interacting, and if thereupon interaction takes place, there will be a reflexion of that interaction presented to or con- ceived by the Ego. And if, for reasons to be sub- sequently elucidated (ch. x. 25, 26), there is an element of non-adaptation and imperfection in this interaction, both factors will appear to the Ego in a distorted shape. Its image of the interaction will not correspond to the reality. And such a distorted image our universe is, and hence the divine half of 1 Compare Proceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. iv. p. 529 s.f. 284 MAN AND THE WORLD. the stress (cp. 22) is represented by the material world, and that of the Ego by our present pheno- menal selves. But just as the development of our- selves reveals more and more our full nature, so it must be supposed that the development of the world will reveal more and more fully the nature of God, so that in the course of Evolution, our conception of the interaction between us and the Deity would come to correspond more and more to the reality, until at the completion of the process, the last thin veil would be rent asunder, and the perfected spirits would behold the undimmed splendour of truth in the light of the countenance of God. 25. But many difficulties remain. Granting that Matter is the product of an interaction between the Deity and the Ego, we have not yet fully accounted for the objective world. The objective world includes not only things but persons, i.e., spiritual beings. Are these then also subjective hallucinations of each man's Ego ? It is not as imperative to deny the ultimate reality of spiritual beings as it was to deny that of unknow- able and lifeless Matter. But it is undeniable that the admission of their reality creates some difficulty. For how can others share in the subjective cosmos arising out of the interaction between the Deity and the Ego of each of us ? Metaphysic alone might long have failed to find an answer to this question, and the idea of a " pre-established harmony " be- tween the phenomenal worlds of several spirits might long have continued to seem a strange flight of fancy, if the progress of science had not enabled us to conceive the process on scientific analogies. The problem, in the first place, has much affinity with what we see in dreams. In a dream also we THE ANALOGY OF DREAMS. 285 have a sensuous presentation laying claim to reality, and yet possessing only subjective validity. A dream is a hallucination, and yet not a random hallucination : each feature in the wildest dream is causally connected with a reality transcending the dream state (in this case our ordinary "waking" life), and when we awake we can generally account even for its greatest absurdities. And yet those absurdities do not, as a rule, strike us while we dream. We live for the nonce in topsyturvydom, and are surprised at nothing. While it lasts, therefore, a dream has all the characteristics of reality. And so with our present life : it seems real and rational, because we are yet asleep, because the eyes of the soul are not yet opened to pierce the veil of illusion. But if the rough touch of death awoke us from the lethargy of life, and withdrew the veil that shrouded from our sight the true nature of the cosmos, would not our earth-life appear a dream, the hallucin- ation of an evil nightmare ? Certainly the analogy holds very exactly. The world of dreams is moulded, although with strange distortions, upon that of our waking life ; so is our present world on that of ultimate reality. It is real while it lasts ; so is our world ; when we awake, both cease to be true, but not to be significant. And both, moreover, may be seen through by reflec- tion. Just as we are sometimes so struck by the monstrous incongruity of our dreams that, even as we dream, we are conscious that we dream, so philosophy arouses us to a consciousness that the phenomenal is not the real. But yet the parallel would not be complete unless different people had parallel and corresponding dreams or hallucinations. Exceptionally this cor- 286 MAN AND THE WORLD. respondence has been recorded even in the case of dreams, 1 but for a frequent and normal occurrence of such parallelism we must go to the nascent science of hypnotism. Not only are hypnotized subjects easily subjected to hallucinations at the will of their operator, both while hypnotized and when they have apparently returned to their normal condition, but it is quite possible to make several siibjects share in the same hallucination. Now as yet our knowledge of these phenomena is too rudimentary for us to assign limits to the extent and complexity of the hallucinations which may be in this way induced, but even now their consistency is quite astounding. The subject to whom it has been suggested that he will at such and such a time have audience of the President of the French Republic, is not disillusioned by any incongruity in the appearance and demeanour of his phantom president : a hallucinatory photograph on a spotless piece of paper obeys all the laws of optics ; it is reflected in a mirror, doubled by a prism, magnified by a lens, etc. 2 And if such effects are possible to us, if we can experimentally create subjective worlds of objective reality (i.e., valid for several persons), even though of comparatively limited extent and variety, in a human consciousness, what may not be achieved by an operator of vastly greater knowledge and power ? Shall we assert that this hallucinatory cosmos would fall short even of the almost infinite complexity and variety of our world ? 1 Vide Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 380 ff., 590 ff. 2 Proceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. iv. p. n, vol. iii. p. 167. THE ANALOGY OF HYPNOTIC HALLUCINATIONS. 287 We may put, then, the analogy in terms of a con- tinuous proportion, and say that the hypnotic or dream-consciousness is to the normal, as the normal is to the ultimate. And in each case the lower is related to the higher as the actual to the potential : while we sleep our dream-consciousness is all that is actual and our waking self exists only potentially ; while we live on earth our normal consciousness alone is actual and our true selves are the ideals of unrealized aspirations. And thus to philosophy, as to religion, its reproach has become its glory. Just as the Cross has become the symbol of religious hope, so philosophy has answered the taunts that truth is a dream and God a hallucination, by gathering truth from dreams, and by tracing the method of God's working through hallucinations. 26. But though the "objective world" be a hallucination, subjective in its mode of genesis, it is not on that account without a meaning, without a purpose. Not even our own casual and disconnected hallucinations are without connection with the real world, without the most direct significance for our real life. Still less can this be the case with the material world : it must be possible to determine the teleological significance of Matter, and of the phenomenal selves incarnated in it. For it is neces- sary, on metaphysical grounds, to endorse the protest which is generally made in the interests of Materialism, against the separation of Body and Soul, the dualism of Matter and Spirit, and to wel- come the accumulating proofs of their complete correspondence and interdependence. For the universe is one ; Body and Soul, Matter and Spirit are but different aspects, the outside and 288 MAN AND THE WORLD. the inside of the same fact : the material is but the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual state. No other theory of their relations can possibly be drawn from our premisses : for if the phenomenal world is a stress between the Deity and the Ego, the soul is but the reaction of the Ego upon the divine action which encases it as the body. But this very analysis of a stress, this very distinction between force and resistance, action and reaction is a logical and not a real one, and so it is not surprising that they should be distinguishable in thought but inseparable in reality. 27. And this close connection of the material and the spiritual will enable us to understand why the single process of Evolution is a correlated development of both, why the development of a spirit is naturally accompanied by a growth in the complexity of its material reflex. Of this fact Materialism gives an explanation which is not only plausible in itself, but persuasive by its favourable contrast with all the other meta- physical explanations hitherto offered. It is all very well, a materialist may urge, to give meta- physical explanations of Matter in the lofty region of vague generalities, but when we come down to humble but solid facts, and require a specific ex- planation of this or that, the courage and the meta- physics of the opponents of Materialism evaporate, and shedding around them a " divine mist " of mystical verbiage they hasten to regain the cloudy peaks of metaphysics. Granted, therefore, that it is hard to conceive the constitution of Matter as an ultimate fact, that Matter may quite well be an immediate activity of the Divine Energy, that the conception of the universe as a stress between the MATERIALISM AND BODILY ORGANIZATION. 2 9 Deity and the Ego is a possible explanation of the interaction and close connection of Matter and Spirit, granted all this, the question may yet be asked why the growth of the complexity of material organization should be the invariable accompani- ment of the growth of consciousness. Is it not the easiest and most reasonable. explanation of this fact to suppose that spirit is a kind of harmony, resulting from the proper collocation of material particles ? And indeed, do not the facts of the evolution of life directly negative the supposition that Matter is an instrument of the Deity ? For if the world-process were the realization of a Divine purpose, the lower forms of material organisms would necessarily be less harmonious to that purpose, and hence should require a more powerful and complicated machinery of Matter than the higher and more harmonized. Instead of which, material organization rises in com- plexity and power /^r/ passu with the development of consciousness, and the obvious inference is that it is the cause of the development of consciousness. That such a materialistic explanation of the facts is the most obvious to the vulgar, it is needless to dispute, that it is also the soundest, it is imperative to deny. We may boldly accept the challenge of Materialism, and if we succeed, we may reasonably expect that a defeat of Materialism on the ground of its own choice will not mean merely a passing foray of the metaphysical mountaineers, but a final conquest of the rich lowlands of science from the materialists who have terrorized over them so long. For the greater complexity of material organiz- ation in the development of the world several reasons may be given. In the first place, we may appeal to 2 9O MAN AND THE WORLD. the fact that growth of complexity seems to be the law of Evolution in all things, and might parallel the greater complexity and delicacy of the individual organism by the growing complexity and delicacy of the higher social organism {cp. ch. viii. 7). For if growth of complexity is a universal law of Evol- ution, there need be no inter-dependence between the manifestations of that law, i.e., no causal relation between the greater complexity of material organ- ization and the development of consciousness. Secondly, we may say quite generally, that if the world-process represents a gradual harmonizing of the Deity and the Ego, it must bring with it an increase in the intercourse and interaction between them. Hence the reflex of that interaction in the consciousness of the Ego, viz., the world, would show a parallel development. The greater intensity and the greater number of relations between the Ego and the Deity would generate an intenser consciousness on the one side and a more complex organization on the other. Thus the materialist explanation of the fact would in both these cases be a fallacy of cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and confuse a parallelism due to a common origin with causal dependence. These considerations, however, are perhaps insuf- ficient to explain the whole function of Matter in the Evolution of the world, and we must examine rather the part material organization plays in the different organisms. In the lowest and simplest forms of life, e.g., proto- plasm, consciousness is reduced to a minimum, and it has no organization to speak of. The protoplasm has to do all its work itself ; the amceba catches its food consciously and digests it consciously. When ORGANIZATION AS LABOUR-SAVING MECHANISM. 29!' it feels, its consciousness has to be all there, and on the spot where the feeling is. Now let us suppose that it differentiates itself and sets up a rudimentary organization, say a stomach. It no longer requires to supervise the digestion of its food in its proper person and with its whole con- sciousness, but only gets called in by the structure it has set up. when something has gone wrong, and it has dyspepsia. It is a familiar observation that we know and feel nothing of our bodily organism until it is out of order. In health our nerves and our digestion do not demand the attention of our con- sciousness. And the conjecture may be hazarded that this is precisely the reason why we have grown nerves and a digestive apparatus. For the estab- lishment of a nervous system makes it possible for consciousness to be concentrated at the centre of affairs and quietly to receive reports and send orders through the nerves-, instead of rushing about all over the body. There is thus a considerable economy of conscious- ness involved in every piece of material organization. Its raison d'etre is that it liberates a certain amount of consciousness. That is to say, consciousness, instead of being bound down to the performance of lower and mechanical functions, is set free to pursue higher aims or to perfect its attainment of the lower, and thus the total of intelligence is increased. E.g., our original protoplasm, when it has got a stomach, can devote the attention it formerly bestowed upon digesting its breakfast to improved methods of catching it, and so its descendants, as they increase the complexity and efficiency of their organic ma- chinery, may rise to the contemplation of the highest problems of life. 2Q2 MAN AND THE WORLD. Thus organization is not a primary fact in the history of life. The unconscious material organiz- ation is simply the ex-conscious. Our unconsciousness of how we (our wills) control our bodies, gives no support to : the view that body and soul are different: we have merely forgotten how we grew our bodies in the long process of Evolution. But as the pro- cess still goes on we can retrace the steps of our past development. Our acts still form our bodies for good and ill. First, they generate habits, and habits gradually become mechanical and uncon- scious. Habits, again, gradually produce organic changes, at first slight changes, it may be, in the development of the muscles and the expression of countenance. But in the course of generations these are summed up into hereditary organization. The only reason why this production of physical changes as the expression of psychical nature is not more obvious is, in the first place, that for reasons already stated (ch. iv. 10, 16), our faculties have not been harmoniously developed, and that the corre- spondence between the different elements of our being is very far from perfect. And moreover, by far the greater part of our nature is given us, and in the course of a single life-time comparatively little can be done towards changing the outer into conformity with the inner man. Nevertheless, it may perhaps be suspected that our direct control of our bodily organism, though an obscured, is not an extinct power, that under favourable circumstances we possess what appears to be a supernatural and is certainly a supernormal power over our bodies, and that this is the true source of the perennial accounts of miracles of healing and extraordinary faculties. MATTER AS THE RESTRAINT OF SPIRITS.- 2.93 The essential meaning, then, of material organiz- ation in the evolution of the individual is Mechanism, and structure is essentially a labour-saving apparatiis which sets free consciousness. And this estimate of the function of Matter and the meaning of complexity of organization in the individual is confirmed by its applicability to the organization of society. For both the complex structure of higher societies (cp. ch. viii. 7) and their elaborate material machinery are essentially contrivances for liberating force, and enabling them, to produce a higher intelligence, which shall be competent to deal with higher problems. 28. And it is not only from the point of view of the individual organism that Matter seems to, be mechanism, but no less from that of the Deity. It is not merely that Atoms have the appearance of being " manufactured articles," from their equality, regu- larity and similarity, for they may not be of divine manufacture, and we may be compelled to deny, their uniformity (cp. ch. vii. n). But if we think, out the relation which on our theory must exist be- tween the Deity and the Egos, we shall perceive that Matter is an admirably calculated machinery for regulating, limiting, and restraining the conscious- ness which it encases. Its impersonal character, gives it the superiority which Aristotle ascribed to the law over personal rule. 1 It does not cause hatred, and escapes " the detestation which men feel for those who thwart their impulses, even when they do it rightly." Even children and savages cannot long be angry with sticks and stones. The dull resistance with which it meets and checks the outbursts of unreasoning passion, is more subduing 1 Eth. Nic. x. 9, 12. 294 MAN AND THE WORLD. than the most active display of power. The irre- sponsive and impassive inertia, against which we dash ourselves in vain, binds us with more rigid and yet securer bonds than any our fancy could have imagined. Matter constrains us by a necessity we can neither resist nor resent, and to dispute its sway would not only be a waste of time and strength, but display a ludicrous lack of the sense of the ridiculous. But if Matter be a controlling mechanism, we can see also why the lower beings possess a less com- plex organization. A simpler and coarser machinery depresses their consciousness to a very low point, and so they have not the intelligence seriously to affect the course of events. On the other hand, in order to /permit of the higher manifestations of consciousness, admitting of greater spontaneity, of greater powers for good and for evil, a more com- plex, elaborate and delicate mechanism of Matter is required, to secure the necessary control of the resultant action. Slaves may be driven by the lash, governed by simple and violent means, but free men require to be guided by subtler and more compli- cated modes of suasion. Or, to vary the metaphor, if the material encasement be coarse and simple, as in the lower organisms, it permits only a little intelligence to permeate through it ; if it is delicate and complex, it leaves more pores and exits, as it were, for the manifestations of consciousness. Or, to appeal to the analogy already found so service- able ( 24), it is -far easier for the operator to put his hypnotized subject asleep than to produce the higher manifestations in which the consciousness of the subject is called forth, but guided by the will of the operator ; and these require far more elaborate THE FINAL ANSWER TO MATERIALISM. 295 and delicate preparations. On this analogy, then, we may say that the lower animals are still en- tranced in the lower stage of brute lethargy, while we have passed into the higher phase of somnam- bulism, which already permits us strange glimpses of a lucidity that divines the realities of a transcen- dent world. And this gives the final answer to Materialism : it consists in showing in detail what was asserted at the outset ( 16), viz., that Materialism is a hysteron proteron, a putting of the cart before the horse, which may be rectified by just inverting the con- nection between Matter and consciousness. Matter is not that which produces consciousness, but that which limits it and confines its intensity within cer- tain limits : material organization does not construct consciousness out of arrangements of atoms, but contracts its manifestation within the sphere which it permits. This explanation does not involve the denial either of the facts or of the principle involved in Materialism, viz., the unity of all life and the con- tinuity of all existence. It admits the connection of Matter and consciousness, but contends that the course of interpretation must proceed in the con- trary direction. Thus it will fit the facts alleged in favour of Materialism equally well, besides enabling us to understand facts which Materialism rejected as " supernatural." It explains the lower by the higher, Matter by Spirit, instead of vice versa, and thereby attains to an explanation which is ultimately tenable instead of one which is ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation the possibility of which no evidence in favour of Materialism can possibly affect. For if, e.g., a man loses consciousness as soon as his brain is 296 MAN AND THE WORLD. injured, it is clearly as good an explanation to say the injury to the brain destroyed the mechanism by- which the manifestation of consciousness was ren- dered possible, as to say that it destroyed the seat of consciousness. On the other hand, there are facts which the former theory suits far better. If, e.g., as sometimes happens, the man after a time more or less recovers the faculties of which the injury to his brain had deprived him, and that not in consequence of a renewal of the injured part, but in consequence of the inhibited functions being performed by the vicarious action of other parts, the easiest explan- ation certainly is that after a time consciousness con- stitutes the remaining parts into a mechanism capable of acting as a substitute for the lost parts. And again, if the body is a mechanism for inhibit- ing consciousness, for preventing the full powers of the Ego from being prematurely actualized, it will be necessary to invert also our ordinary ideas on the subject of memory, and to account for forgetfulness instead of for memory. It will be during life that we drink the bitter cup of Lethe, it will be with our brain that we are enabled to forget. And this will serve to explain not only the extraordinary memories of the drowning and the dying generally, but also the curious hints which experimental psychology occasionally affords us that nothing is ever forgotten wholly and beyond recall. 1 1 And yet this is a fact which to materialism is utterly inexplic- able. For on a materialist hypothesis the memory of anything must consist of a certain arrangement of certain particles of brain tissue, and in the case of complex facts, the memory would evi- dently require a very complex system of particles. Now as the contents of the brain are limited, it is clear that there can only be a limited number of such systems of particles, and hence a limited number of facts remembered. It would be physically THE SPIRITUALIZATION OF MATTER. 297 29. And that Matter is ultimately divine force and divine mechanism, is shown also by the develop- ment it undergoes. For coincidently with the spiritual development of spiritual beings, Matter also undergoes a process of spiriiualization. And of spiritualization in two senses, (i) The gulf be- tween its (apparent) properties and those of Spirit diminishes. We discover that it possesses more and more analogies with Spirit. And curiously enough this is one of the chief reasons why the advance of science has seemed favourable to Materialism. For as the spiritual character of Matter became better known, it became less absurd to explain all things by Matter. But such successes of Materialism have been gained only by absorbing alien elements, and have hopelessly impaired its metaphysical value. In this sense Materialism has, since the days of Democritus and Lucretius, been fighting a losing battle. Its seeming victories have been won by the absorption of spiritualistic elements which have corrupted the simplicity of its original conception of Matter, and caused it to diverge further and further from the " clear and definitely intelligible" motions of solid particles. The con- nection of the scientific conception of Matter with the hard Matter of common experience has become fainter and fainter, as science is compelled to multiply impossible that the brain could be charged with memories beyond a certain point. And if we consider the number of impressions and ideas which daily enter into our consciousness, it is clear that even in youth the brain must soon reach the saturation point of memory, and that the struggle for existence in our memory must be very severe. If therefore we receive unexpected proofs of the survival in memory of the facts most unlikely to be remembered, we have evidently reached a phenomenon which it is exceedingly difficult for materialism to explain. 298 MAN AND THE WORLD. invisible, impalpable and imponderable substances in the " unseen universe," by which it explains the visible. The ignorance of Lucretius permitted him to give to his Atomism a far greater formal perfec- tion, than the fuller knowledge of modern physicists admits of, and every far-sighted materialist must lament that science should have been driven to give metaphysicians such openings for crushing tu quoques as it has by asserting the existence of supra-sensible substances like the ether and of timeless forces like gravitation (cp. ch. iii. 9). For with what face after this can science protest against the admission of supra-sensible world of eternal Being, as involved in the complete explanation of the physical universe, when precisely similar assumptions have already been used by science for the purposes of a partial explanation ? Metaphysicians, on the other hand, will regard these facts as indications that the de- velopment of Matter and Spirit proceeds along con- verging lines, and that by the time the supra-sensible is reached a single reality will be seen to embrace the manifestations of both. 30. And (2) the spiritualization of Matter is displayed also in its relations to spiritual beings. As in the course of Evolution these become more harmonized with the Divine Will, Matter, the expression of that Will, becomes more and more harmonized with the desires of spiritual beings. The chains that bound us are gradually relaxed, the restrictions that fettered us are one by one removed, as intelligent insight grows strong enough to take the place of physical compulsion. We obtain command of Nature by knowledge of her laws, and it is by our obedience to the laws of the material that we win our way to spiritual freedom. Hence SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL PROGRESS. 2QQ there is deep symbolic truth in the myth of Prome- theus the Firebearer, which connects the discovery of fire with man's advance to a higher spiritual con- dition. For it is difficult to realize, and impossible to over-estimate, the importance of this step in the spiritualization of Matter, whereby what had seemed hopelessly unmanageable and immovable vanished and volatilized at the magic touch of flame. And in the spiritualization of man the discovery of fire was no less essential, as the foundation of all subsequent spiritual progress. And it is still true that spiritual progress in the long run depends on material progress, and this is equally true of the development of the individual and of the race. Indeed, it is even more obviously true in the case of the race, when the process takes place on a larger scale and our survey extends over a longer history. Historically it is true that the higher has developed out of the lower, the moral and intellectual life out of the material, and ulti- mately it can only rise pari passu with the improve- ment of the material. It is a fact to which our vulgar Theodicy loves to blind itself, that a great, and perhaps the greater, part of the evil in the world is not due to the perversity of men and institutions, to the tyranny of priests and princes, but to the material conditions of life, and cannot therefore be removed by the mere progress of intel- ligence or morality. These evils are but the reaction of ordinary human nature upon the ineluctable pres- sure of material conditions, and can be eradicated only by a completer command of those conditions, by the knowledge which is power. On the other hand, the growth of knowledge brings with it a slow but sure remedy for these evils : every extension 3OO MAN AND THE WORLD. of our knowledge of the nature of Matter affords the material basis for a higher spiritual condition ; ultimately material progress means spiritual pro- gress. And thus it is true of social, as of metaphys- ical, problems, that many which at present seem insoluble are slowly ripening to their solution. Hence it is our business to take care that a due balance of functions, a proper harmony is preserved of the material, intellectual and moral elements of progress. For a one-sided development is in the end fatal to all. Material progress alone, if it neglects the spiritual elements of life, will in the end bring about moral and intellectual decay, and a condition of society not only unfavourable to further material progress, but incapable of maintaining the prosperity it has acquired. Power over Matter which does not rest on an assured basis of intelligence and morality is certain to be lost in the ignorance and violence of a society which does not make a proper use of the knowledge it possesses. And the limits of spiritual progress in the absence of a material basis are equally obvious. When "plain living" becomes a euphemism for starvation, "high think- ing " is no longer possible, and fakirism is a carica- ture of spirituality. And so in the case of the individual. Psychical progress is evolved on a physical basis. The in- tellectual and moral qualities are developed sub- sequently to the physical, and developed out of them. And though this does not of course explain them away for the lower cannot explain away the higher it yet shows that the distinction of body and soul must not be exaggerated into an irreconcilable dif- ference. For just as Matter approximates to Spirit in the course of Evolution, so the body approx- A HARMONIOUS DEVELOPMENT REQUIRED. 301 i mates to the soul. In neither case, indeed, does the lower become absorbed into the higher, but it becomes more distinctly subordinated to it. As we progress, the higher intellectual and moral qualities play a more and more important part in life, and tend to predominate in consciousness over the physical functions. For the physical processes tend to become unconscious. Conscious- ness, therefore, is less engrossed by the mechanism of life. Hence the body itself becomes more and more fitted to be the body of a spiritual being, better and better adapted as the vehicle of a life which is more than physical. It develops higher physical powers, and becomes less of an obstacle to spiritual progress. And when the individual development is allowed to proceed normally and harmoniously, there does not arise any conflict between the higher and the lower stages : the lower are the potential- ities of which the higher are the realization, the promise of which the higher are the fulfilment, the foundation upon which the higher rear the edifice, the stem of which the higher are the flowers. Hence the higher does not destroy or supersede the lower, but transforms it, and includes it in what is its realization also. The intellectual and the moral life is higher than and more than the physical, and also its perfection. Wherever, therefore, there appears an antagon- ism between the higher and the lower, we may rest assured that there the higher also has not been fully attained, and that whether the blame fall on the individual, or, as is more frequently the case, on the society, a higher life which involves the mortification and neglect of the physical is both wrong and foolish, i.e., both morally and intellectu- 3O2 MAN AND THE WORLD. ally defective. Ethical systems, therefore, which inculcate such a neglect of the material are funda- mentally false : for just because the physical duties are the lower, they take precedence over the higher: the physical necessities of life (TO tyv) precede both in Time and in urgency the moral necessities of living well (TO elis, a meaningless mass of machinery, from which the motive force has been withdrawn ; but as its emptiness is spiritual, and not visible and palpable, we fail to see the parallelism. And so again it might be, if we lived more wisely, that the body would not be outworn before the spirit wearied of its life on earth, or before it had prepared for itself a spiritual tenement, with which, at the summons of the angel of death, it would soar aloft as gladly as the butterfly. But yet again, it may be asked, if death is but change, why should the complex of phenomena we call the body be left behind to decay and to pollute a world from which the spirit has departed ? But what would such critics have ? Would they prefer that men ait death should silently vanish away, and be dissolved into air like ghosts ? Would this be a more satisfactory mode of effecting one's exit ? And does not, after all, the objection on the ground of the decay of the body rest upon a misconception ? There is no reason why the body should not be preserved : death, as we now know, has nothing to do with the decay of the body. For decay is a phenomenon of life, not of death, of the life of the 396 IMMORTALITY. micro-organisms that live upon the bodies of the dead. And is there not a certain symbolic fitness in the persistence for a season of the body in the phenomenal world in which the spirit worked, and which its action will affect as long as that world remains ? It forms, as it were, a symbol of a spiritual agency whose spiritual development has taken other forms, and left this shell behind in its advance to higher phases of existence. There is no reason, therefore, why we should take the phenomenon of death as conclusive of the matter, or regard it as inconsistent with the con- ception of a spiritual process of purification by means of the gradations of existence. For if such be the essential meaning of the world-process, it is evident that no indefinite stay can be made in any one stage, and indeed none could permanently meet the spiritual requirements. It is, moreover, pretty obvious in our case that long life is by no means an unmixed blessing : for by an intelligent mind the lessons of life are soon learnt, and while the social environment remains what it is, the experience of a protracted life is apt only to engender a conviction that all is humbug, a cynical disbelief in all ideals and the possibility of realizing them. 9. Such considerations may tend to counteract the overwhelming impressiveness of the fact of death, but they only demonstrate the possibility of a future life. And moreover, though death makes the strongest appeal to our feelings, the doctrine of a future life involves a difficulty far more serious in the eyes of reason. This difficulty arises out of the impossibility of fixing the point at which im- mortality begins, either in the beginning of the individual's life or in that of the race. It seems so WANTED A GRADUATED IMMORTALITY. 397 utterly impossible to attribute an immortal, or indeed any sort of consciousness, to the material rudiments of our individual existence ; and the modern doctrine of the descent of man makes it almost as impossible to do so in the case of the race. The union of two minute particles of Matter is the historical origin, at all events, of all conscious beings ; and at what point in the historical development can we introduce a transition from the material existence of the germs, which exists only for consciousness, to the spiritual existence of an immortal consciousness? 1 Or again, if all living beings have been propagated from living protoplasm, and if man is but the highest of the animals, but does not differ from them in kind, how can we, in the infinite gradations of spiritual evol- ution, draw a line anywhere to separate men or animals who possess immortal souls from those that do not ? It would seem that they must all be treated alike ; either all animals are immortal or none. And yet, while some might welcome a be- lief in the immortality of the higher animals, e.g. of dogs, how could any one admit the immortality of an amoeba ? And even if our generosity rose to the absurd pitch of admitting it, how could we carry this belief into practice ? how should we discern the immortality of beings which possess so little in- dividuality ? Is every leaf or cell of a tree, and every segment of a zoophyte in short, every part of an organism which under favourable conditions is capable of independent existence an immortal in- dividual ? If so, can we multiply immortal souls by dividing a jelly-fish ? Surely, when once the question is definitely raised that we must be just as immortal 1 Cp. Mr. F. H. Bradley's Logic > p. 466, for a forcible and frank discussion of this difficulty. 39& IMMORTALITY. as the germs and protoplasms from which we sprang, the answer our reason must give is that immortality is a foolish dream. 10. It is to be feared that reflections like these present almost insuperable obstacles to the belief in a future life in modern minds. But if they can be answered, their very difficulty would make the answer the more satisfactory. Yet no at- tempt at answering the difficulty can be successful which does not realize where its real point lies. Its essence lies in the fact that whereas conscious- ness and the conscious life of spiritual beings is a matter of degree, it seems impossible to admit degrees of immortality. It seems as though a being must either have a future life or not, must either be immortal or perish utterly. But if the lowest passes into the highest forms of consciousness by a continu- ous development, it is nowhere possible to draw a line of demarcation, and to assert the immortality of man without admitting that of the amceba. To assert the continuance of spiritual beings, therefore, it would be requisite to assert gradations of immortality. We must somehow distinguish between the case of the embryo and the adult, between the highest man and the lowest animal. We must, in short, discover degrees in a spiritual evolution corresponding to the degrees of the physical evolution. 11. Now, though these postulates may at first sight appear strange and impossible, yet if we dis- card ancient prejudices, they will not perhaps prove incapable of fulfilment. We require, in the first place, a careful analysis of the conditions on which a future life depends. To have a real meaning, immortality must be per- SELF-IDENTITY DEPENDENT ON MEMORY. 399 sonal immortality ; i.e., it must involve in some sort the persistence of the " I " which in this life thinks, and feels, and wills. It must preserve our personal identity, i.e., there must be continuity of consciousness between the Self of this life and of the next. The Buddhist doctrine of "Karma," of a person who is the resultant of one's actions, but does not share any part of one's consciousness, is a miserable com- promise between the desires to deny the eternity of personal suffering (for to Buddhism to exist is to suffer), and to retain the moral stimulus of a belief in a future life. But it falls between two stools, and does not satisfy the conditions of a genuine future life. For it is impossible to regard the person who inherits one's Karma as identical with oneself, or to feel a responsible interest in his fate. His con- nection with the man whose Karma moulds his character and predestines his circumstances seems purely arbitrary, and due to a tyrannous constitution of things whose procedures we are not called upon to endorse. And, to a less degree, the same defect of failing adequately to preserve the sense of personal identity in its doctrines of the future life, is observable also in the current religious eschatology, and is probably one of the chief reasons of its practical ineffective- ness. We are led to think of the breach in con- tinuity as too absolute, and feel little real concern in the angel or demon whom the catastrophe of our death produces in another world. If, then, a future life without self-identity is a meaningless mockery, let us inquire on what self- identity depends. And the answer seems plain that it primarily depends on nothing else than memory. It is only by mearis of memory that we 400 IMMORTALITY can identify ourselves with our past ; it is only by memory that we can hope to enjoy the fruits of present efforts in the future. If every morning on awaking we had forgotten all that we ever did, if all the feelings, thoughts, hopes, fears and aspirations of yesterday's self had perished overnight, we should soon cease to regard to-morrow's self as a personage in whom it was possible to take any rational interest, or for whose future it was necessary or possible to provide. We take an interest in our own future, because we believe that we can forecast the feelings of the future self, because we believe that the future self which enjoys the fruits of our labours will be conscious of its past, because, in a word, its welfare is organically connected with that of our present self. Thus, to all intents and purposes, self- identity, and with it immortality, depend on memory. 12. But memory is a matter of degree. Here, then, we have the key to a theory of immortality which will admit oi graduation. If we can conceive a future life, the reality of which depends on memory, it will admit of less or more. And if, as seems natural, the extent to which the events of life are remembered depends largely on the intensity of spiritual activity they implied, it follows that the higher and intenser consciousness was during life, the greater the intensity of future consciousness. Hence the amoeba or the embryo, with their in- finitesimal consciousness, will possess only an in- finitesimal memory of their past after death. And this for a twofold reason : not only must the im- press life produces upon so rudimentary a conscious- ness generate only a very faint memory, but the contents also of life will present little that is capable of persisting and worthy of being retained. Thus PROPORTIONED TO MERIT. 4OI the lowest phases of spiritual existence will have nothing to remember, and hardly any means of remembering it. We cannot, therefore, ascribe to them any vivid or enduring consciousness of their past lives, and yet need not deny it altogether. They have a future life, but it is rudimentary. This view will open up to us an alternative to utter extinction or fully conscious immortality, and we shall no longer be haunted with that nightmare of orthodoxy, the vision of "little children, a span long, crawling in hell." But by a self-acting ar- rangement the condition of consciousness hereafter will accurately correspond to its attainments here. Just in proportion as we have developed our spiritual powers here will be our spiritual future. Those who have lived the life of beasts here, a dull and brutish life that was redeemed by no effort to il- lumine the soul by spiritual enlightenment, will be rewarded as " the beasts that perish." They will retain little of what they were, their future life will be brief and faint. On the other hand, we need not hesitate to attribute to the faithful dog, whom the strength of pure affection for his master has lifted far above the spiritual level of his race, at least as much immortality as to the brutal savage, whose life has been ennobled by no high thoughts and redeemed by no elevating feeling. 1 Those, again, 1 For, as Goethe well says (Faust, Pt. 2, Act 3 s.f.) : " Wer keinen Namen sich envarb noch Edles will Gehort den Elementen an : so fahret bin Mit meiner Konigin zu sein verlangt mich heiss ; Nicht nur Verdienst, auch Treue wahrt uns die Person." [They that have won no name, nor willed the right, Dissolve into the elements so pass away ! But / to follow on my queen do ardently desire ; Not merit only, but attachment, keeps our personality.] R.ofS. D D 402 IMMORTALITY whose activities have been devoted to the com- mission of evil deeds, that burn their impress on the soul, will be haunted by their torturing memory. Those who have trained and habituated themselves to high and noble activities, who have disposed their thoughts towards truths which are permanent and their affections towards relations which are enduring, will rise to life everlasting, and will have actions worthy of memory to look back upon. The cup of Circe, the debasing draught of forgetful ness, which turns men into beasts, and renders them oblivious of their divine destiny, will pass from them. And they will be capable of remembering their past life, glad to retrace the -record of great and noble deeds and lofty aspirations, the promise of a spiritual progress they have since nobly ful- filled. Nor will the memory of the past fade until it pleases them to forget it in the ecstasy of still sublimer activities. Thus each of us will be the master and maker of his own self and of his own immortality, and his future life will be such as he has deserved. 13. But it may be objected that memory does not last for ever, and that hence a future life de- pending on it would endure but for a season. And the fact that this and several other objections might be brought against the views we have hinted at, should admonish us of the necessity of dropping the negative method of criticizing inconclusive arguments, and proceeding at length to a connected account of a positive doctrine. It may be a salutary and necessary discipline to begin at the beginning as it appears to us, to start with the obvious diffi- culties which a subject presents to our first attack ; but after such efforts have cleared the ground, we ITS METAPHYSICAL BASIS.. 403 must learn to discover the real root of the matter, and discuss it in its logical and not in its historical order. Hence it is necessary to supplement the results of critical discussion of perplexities by a systematic exposition, beginning with a statement of the ultimate positive ground of the doctrine of immortality. 14. The only absolutely secure basis either for the assertion or for the denial of immortality must be metaphysical. It is only the all-devouring One of Monism which can make the permanent existence of the Many impossible ; it is only the plurality of ultimate existences which can ultimately make it possible. The ultimate self-existence of spirits, the doctrine that existences are many, spirits uncreated, uncaused, that are and ever have been and can never cease to be, is the only metaphysical ground for asserting the immortality of the individual. And this metaphysical ground we have secured by the preference given to Pluralism over Monism (ch. x. 21-23), an d by our account of the Transcendental Ego as the reconciliation of idealism and science and as the explanation of the material world (ch. ix. 22, 24, 26-31). Now what is the bearing of our metaphysics on the question before us ? It follows necessarily and at once from the pluralistic answer given to the ulti- mate question of ontology that the ultimate existences are eternal and immortal, and this assertion also applies to the Transcendental Egos that underlie our phenomenal selves. In some sense, therefore to the extent to which we are to be identified with ultimate existences and- transcendental Egos it is absolutely certain that we are immortal. And further, as the whole worldrprocess is a process 404 IMMORTALITY. taking place in the interaction between the Egos and the Deity, the different stages of material evolu- tion must correspond to different phases of that spiritual interaction. Parallel, therefore, to the physical evolution, there runs a spiritual evolution, related to it as meaning and motive to outward and visible manifestation. And there is no reason why this process should not be the development, not of Spirit in general, but of particular spirits, why a single Ego should not pass through the succession of organisms and developments of consciousness, from the amoeba to man, and from man to perfection. This gives, as it were, the spiritual interpretation of the descent of man from the beasts, and at the same time assures him of his due and proportionate share in the immortality of the ultimate spirit. 1 5. But though the plurality of ultimate exist- ence affords the only safe and sure ground for meta- physical immortality, it is too remote from the phenomena of our world to be at once appealed to in settling the nature of our future life. It is neces- sary to make out the connection of the metaphysical with the physical, and it is just on the subject of this connection that considerable variety of doctrine might prevail. We may admit without derogating from the substantial truth of our principles, that our data are as yet too inadequate for us to regard speculations concerning the connection of our pre- sent selves with the ultimate spirits as more than probable guesses, to be ratified or modified by the course of future discovery. Hence, though it may be laid down generally that the ultimate spirits manifest themselves in the phenomenal, it is yet necessary to ask what is the relation of such an eternal spirit to its successive phases, which form THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPIRIT. 405 our phenomenal existences, and in what sense can* these be said to have a future life ? Upon the- answer to this question it will 1 depend 1 whether we can continue to speak of our future life in any ordinary sense. Now, that the insufficiency of our data renders the question a difficult one, it would be affectation to deny. And the reflection that with a little more knowledge the greatest obscurities would seem plain and self-evident fails also to assist our fainting imagination. But we may perhaps convey some idea of the facts by the aid of a simile. If the world-process aims at impressing the divine image upon the hard metal of the Ego, then each phenomenal life may be supposed to stamp some faint impression on its substance. And as the im- pressions are multiplied, they gradually mould the Ego into the required shape, and each successive impress, working upon material already more com- pletely fitted into shape, produces a more definite impression of itself, and also fashions more definitely that which it impresses. As the material comes nearer to its final shape its resistance becomes less,, and each impress produces fewer features which must be erased as divergent from the ideal. Or, in other words, the spiritual value of the lower stages of consciousness is small ; they produce their effect only by their repetition and multiplication. But as the higher grades of individuality are reached, the spiritual significance of a single phenomenal life is intensified, and it leaves a more enduring mark upon the nature of the spirit. If, therefore, we ask. in what sense the phenomenal phases of the spirit's- development persist and continue, we must answer, generally, that they persist as factors in the develop* 406 IMMORTALITY. ment. The future lives of the spirit are the result- ant of its past. But the individual impress of a single life persists only in so far as it has coincided with the course of spiritual development. So, too, the impressions produced by single blows upon a coin persist only in so far as their shape coincided with that to be ultimately produced ; the individual divergences and eccentricities of a single impress are obliterated by their multiplication. Thus in a way, the good, .i.e., the action in the line of upward development, would be immortal, however humble the sphere in which it was enacted : the good char- acter would persist even when it was absorbed and included in a higher stage of development, for such development would only be the natural and neces- sary development of the highest aspirations of the lower life. And this mode of spiritual progression is not an arbitrary conjecture of our fancy concerning a tran- scendent sphere of which we know nothing ; it is the law of all life even now. It is the law whereby all organisms take up and assimilate what they can utilize, i.e., what serves their purposes, and reject what they cannot ; it is the law whereby the world- process preserves what promotes its purpose, viz., the good, and dissolves the rest away. And this law may be traced throughout all individual and social progress. To be impressed by any experi- ence requires the previous attainment of a certain .correspondence between the agent and the patient ; to be persistent, the impression must be not only congenial to the nature impressed, but consonant with the line of its development. A lasting impres- sion, in other words, is one which is important to us, .not only for a moment but for the course of our THE IMMORTALITY OF THE GOOD. 407 history ; if it runs counter to our nature and our history, its influence is rapidly obliterated. And so with events that had little intrinsic importance, i.e., little spiritual significance, they are forgotten and their effect is evanescent. For memory is not in- discriminate : it selects what is significant and thus preserves it : and yet again all the experience that moulds the character, though it may be forgotten, has not wholly perished, for it persists in the result- ant habits. And what is true of impressions is true also of persons and of actions ; in social progress also it is emphatically not true that " the evil that men do lives after them. " Like a polluted stream, the course of history runs itself clear of the errors and crimes of the unconscious or unwilling human instruments of the divine purpose : the blindness and perversity of its champions cannot stop the progress of a good cause. On the other hand, it is vain to struggle against the spirit of the ages and the neces- sities of evolution ; neither virtue nor genius can prop a falling cause. Christianity triumphed in spite of the murder of Hypatia ; but Demosthenes could not save Athens, nor Hannibal Carthage, and Cato could not recall the ghost of Roman freedom by the blood of his self-sacrifice. Force may effect reactions that run counter to the course of things, but they soon pass away, and leave no trace behind. How much remained of the constitution of Sulla, or of the restored rule of the Bourbons, twenty years after its institution? Thus all the elements of the lower phases of life that are capable of development are transformed into the higher, and the continuous thread of con- sciousness is never broken. And this continuity of the phases of consciousness is really sufficient 408 IMMORTALITY. to secure also the identity of the self, for though self-identity depend on memory, it is not neces- sary that the memory should be perfect. It is not necessary that we should remember all we did ten years ago in order to feel ourselves the same persons now as then, nor need we expect to re- member all we feel now, in order to identify our- selves with ourselves ten years hence. The con- tinuity of the chain of consciousness suffices to constitute the identity, even though from any given point the remoter links have passed out of sight ; and hence a future life may in a sense be ascribed to all conscious beings. Nevertheless it is not until the higher stages of individuality and spiritual development are reached that the phenomenal self of any single life, i.e., the memory of its past, can be supposed to form a pre- dominant, or even an important, factor in the total or final consciousness of the Ego, or one that can display any great permanence. The lower phases of Evolution do not generate sufficient psychical energy to attain to any considerable degree of immortality. For as we saw ( 12), the continuance of life depends on memory, and memory on the intensity of the im- pression thoughts and feelings make upon the soul, and on the whole the capacity to receive impressions corresponds to the degree of spiritual development. But how does all this apply to man ? Shall we assert that man has reached a sufficient height of spiritual evolution so that the human soul, the phenomenal self of our earth-life, persists as human ? Certainly man has in many cases shown such capacity for thoughts more than human, for a " love that is stronger than death," that it would seem monstrous to deny him the intensity of conscious- THE SURVIVAL OF IMPERFECT PHASES. 409 ness which substantially preserves his personality. And yet, when we look upon the sordid lives of others, whose outlook is limited to the grossest features of this world, we cannot but feel that the persistence of their personalities would be only an obstacle to the development of their spirit. And so it will perhaps seem a probable compromise to make the aspirations of the soul, i.e., the fitness of the phenomenal self to adapt itself to the conditions of a higher spiritual life, the test of immortality, and to suppose that the desire of continuance, whether widely or exceptionally felt, affords a fairly adequate measure of personal survival. We need not suppose that personal immortality will be forced on those whose phenomenal self has not desired it nor pre- pared itself to survive death, and who make no effort to preserve the memory of their past, nor yet that those should be baulked who have really and in- tensely desired it. And for these latter the practical outcome of this doctrine cannot be formulated more truly and more concisely than in the maxim of Aristotle, o ^dAio-rcc a6>ai/ar/eti', 1 bidding them " as far as possible to lead the life of immortality " on earth, i.e., to live constantly in communion with the ideal, and in co-operation with the aim of the world's evolution. 16. Such are the outlines of a theory of im- mortality which would meet the main difficulties of the subject, and explain how a future life can admit of gradations proportioned to the grades and con- ditions of consciousness. But our account would be incomplete if it did nothing to elucidate several points not yet touched upon. The easiest miscon- ception, e.g., to fall into would be that of regarding 1 Ar. Eth. Nich. X. vii. 8. 4IO IMMORTALITY. the Ego as a reality different from the self. It has already been remarked, and must here be em- phasized again, that the Ego is not a second and alien consciousness concurrent with and distinct from the selves (cp. ch. ix. 22). The self or selves (ch. ix. 23) are simply the actually conscious part of the Ego, which represents the potentialities of their development on the one hand and their primary and pre-cosmic condition on the other. The Ego is both the basis of the development and its end, but within the process the selves alone are real. For as will be shown in the next chapter, both the pre- cosmic basis and the post-cosmic end, though neces- sarily implied in and inferred from the cosmic process, belong to a radically different order of things from our present world of Becoming, and the Ego does not as such enter into the cosmos. Even if, therefore, we adopted a supposition which may per- haps commend itself from a moral point of view, that after death, in the intervals, as it were, of its incarn- ations, the Ego recovered a fuller consciousness and the memory of all its past lives, these lucid intervals, though they might produce great moral effects, would not in themselves form part of the phenomenal de- velopment, and the latter would appear to be continu- ous from phase to phase of phenomenal consciousness. 17. Secondly, we must consider some of the objections likely to be made to a doctrine involving \h& pre-existence of the soul, although no apology should really be needed. For no rational argument in favour of immortality can be devised that will not tell as strongly in favour of the pre- existence as of the post-existence of the soul, and this has been fully recognized by all rational defenders of im- mortality from the time of Plato downwards. It PRE-EXISTENCE AND TRANSMIGRATION. 41 I would in fact, as we saw in 4, be hard to defend the only alternative theories of Traducianism and Creationism without a high degree of either moral obliquity or intellectual obtuseness. And in addition to the somewhat negative merit of being the only possible theory, it is one which has been becoming progressively more credible. In early times, while our earth was regarded as the centre of the universe and the only abode of in- telligent beings, the theory of pre-existence and transmigration was liable to be discredited by very homely objections. The limitation of the total number of available souls would either limit, or be refuted by, the increase of population, while their confinement to a single world precluded the idea of anything like a real progress of the individual souls. They had to be reincarnated in our world, until, as the history of the Hindus and Buddlfism showed, the doctrine of transmigration, with its endless round of purposeless re-births, became a terror such that men eagerly grasped at the idea of annihilation as a release from the vicissitudes of life. But now the knowledge of the plurality of worlds has relieved the doctrine of the first difficulty, while the theory of the ascent which is strangely nick-named that of the descent of man, and of the transformations of animals into men, shows that the process of transmigration is not devoid of the elements of progress. Is it not curious, again, that whereas nothing has brought more ridicule upon the belief in metempsychosis than its inference that the souls of men had pre- viously animated the bodies of animals, this very pedigree of the human soul should have been rendered credible and probable by the discoveries of modern science ? If the Darwinian theory of 412 IMMORTALITY. descent compels us to assert that the soul of man has been developed out of the souls of animals, what difficulty remains in the supposition that each individual soul has passed through the stages of this same development ? And again, the objection to pre-existence, on the ground of our failure to remember anything about our past lives, has distinctly diminished in cogency. We have learnt too well what a curiously uncertain thing memory is to attach much weight to its dis- abilities. For, in the first place, the absence of memory may be perfectly accounted for ideologically on grounds of adaptation. The memory of such a past as we should probably have had would have been a most troublesome equipment, a most disab- ling burden, in the battle of life. For the recollec- tion of our past faults and past failures would, in the present state of our spiritual development, be a most fatal obstacle to the freshness and hopefulness with which we should encounter life's present problems. Whatever, therefore, may be the case hereafter, it seems clear that the cultivation of a wise forgetful- ness was the condition of spiritual progress in the past ; a short memory was necessary, if the burden of unbearable knowledge was not to crush our spirit. Secondly, in the face of the growing evidence of how the right manipulations may revive the memory of what seemed to have perished beyond recovery (cp. ch. ix. 28 s.f.), it would be rash indeed to assert that the progress of experimental psychology should not, by some as yet undiscovered process, enable us actually to remember our past. And lastly, it should be observed that whatever the evidential value of our obliviousness of our past lives, it applies equally to the earlier portions of our PRE-EXISTENCE AND HEREDITY. 413 present life. No one has any but second-hand evidence of the earlier stages of his existence on earth ; our belief in our birth rests upon testimony, and is confirmed by inference ; we believe the tales of our entry into the world, because we perceive that we must have come into it somehow. And the inference as to our pre-existence is of a precisely similar kind, though, it may be, of inferior certainty (cp. ch. x. 29). So also we believe the testimony of our reason as to our past existence, because there is no other mode of accounting for our present exist- ence ; we believe in pre-existence, because it is the only reasonable inference from the observed facts. 1 8. But there remains one very real and seri- ous objection to our eschatology, as to all theories of pre-existence, and indeed to all belief in a future life. This is the conflict between it and the con- ception of heredity. If our parents fashion our bodies for us, and if our souls are the souls of our particular bodies, how can the immortal spirit enter them from without ? If our character and circum- stances are the inherited results of the past action of our parents, how can they be the result of the past action of our Ego, and the reward of conduct in a previous life ? The difficulty is a real one, and must not be trifled with or evaded. It will not do to deny the fact of heredity, and still less to limit its scope by distin- guishing that part of the soul which is inherited from that which pre-exists. The one device would display only our scientific ignorance, the other our metaphysical incompetence (cp. 6). But perhaps, we may say, the dilemma in which the objection seeks to place us is a false one, and 414 IMMORTALITY. the alternatives of " either fashioned by our parents or by our spirit " are not so exclusive as they might at first sight appear. For why should we not be fashioned both by our parents and by our own past, in different ways ? The possibility of this solution appears at first somewhat of a mystery, but we ought by this time to have acquired a sufficient dis- trust of pseudo-mysteries not to jump at the con- clusion that any difficulty we can formulate is beyond the bounds of the human reason. For, admitting the general doctrine that the char- acter of the offspring is inherited from the parents, we may raise the question of what determines the particular mixture which constitutes a particular character. The parents possess an indefinite number of potentialities that may possibly be inherited, and these, again, may be commingled in an indefinite number of ways. But the character actually in- herited is a definite combination of these potential qualities, and what determines the way in which it is actually combined? It is not enough to know generally that the parents supply the materials of the new combination ; we must know also what arranges the materials in a definite order. Now if we supposed that this proportion in which the various dispositions of the parents entered into the character of the offspring was really determined by the character of the spiritual entity which the parents were capable of providing with a suitable organism, we should at all events have devised a method which rendered pre-existence compatible with heredity. For there is no apparent break in the chain of natural causes : the whole character of the offspring is inherited from the parents. But as the limits within which heredity is possible are very TRE-EXISTENCE AND ACCIDENTAL VARIATIONS. 415 wide, the spiritual selection is supposed to work within them. And as no direct evidence can ever prove that an indefinite number of other combin- ations would not have equally well satisfied the conditions of all the physical factors, it is clear that our theory can never be disproved by the facts of heredity. On the contrary, it might perhaps serve to explain some of its most perplexing physical aspects, such as the origination of the so-called "accidental variations" which play so important a part in biological history. At present the vari- ations which produce a man of genius or generate a new species, are to science utterly inexplicable ; for that is the meaning of "accidental." The constitution of the parents no doubt renders them possible, for else they would not occur, but it in no wise explains them. For they are cases which border upon the impossible, and what is wanted is some explanation of how and why these exceptional possibilities are occasionally realized, and how the forces which resist any divergence from the normal combinations are occasionally overcome. And we delude ourselves if we suppose that we have cast any light upon the subject by adducing the parallel of exceptional combinations in the realm of mathe- matical probabilities. For in throwing dice, e.g., no one combination is in itself any more probable than any other, nor is there any force acting so as to make the succession of i, 2, 5 any easier than three sixes. It is only because there are so many more of the combinations we call ordinary possible, that they occur more frequently, and no greater energy is required to throw ten sixes in succession than to throw any other series. But a case of heredity is totally different. The 4 1 6 IMMORTALITY. forces tending to reproduce in the offspring some- thing like the average character of the race must preponderate so enormously, that the resistance to any marked divergence from it must be incalculably great, and increase in geometrical proportion the more marked the divergence becomes. That is to say, it is immensely more difficult to throw the rare combination, not merely because there are so many more of the ordinary ones, but because far more force is required, because the dice are so cogged as to make it nearly impossible. Hence it is useless to appeal to the calculus of probabilities as to a deus ex machina to help us out of the difficulty : we must recognize that every case of variation re- quires a definite and relatively very powerful force to produce it. But where is this force to come from ? Surely not from the physical conditions of generation ? For these do not vary greatly in the generation of a genius and of a duffer. And besides, how should minute differences of times and seasons and temperature and manner, etc., have such dis- proportionate psychical effects ? But let us indulge science in these a priori pre- judices, and admit that in some way, not to be further explained, the physical circumstances at the time of generation determine with which out of an indefinite number of possible characters the off- spring is to be provided. Even so the question we have raised will only recur in another form, and we must ask what determines generation to take place at the particular moment when it will result in a particular character of the offspring. For here again the field of selection is extremely wide, and it would surely be an immensely impressive fact that a moment's delay or precipitation may make all the DOUBLE CAUSATION. 417 difference, for good and for evil, in the natural endowment of the offspring. So we must, from the strictly physical point of view, answer, that the circumstances which deter- mine at which out of all possible moments gener- ation shall take place, depend on another set of ulterior circumstances. And if the questioner perti- naciously inquires again on what these circumstances in their turn depend, he must be told, on another set of circumstances, and these again on another, and so on indefinitely, until we realize that we have unwittingly launched forth "into an infinite regress of causes, which deludes us with a semblance of explanation, but baffles all attempts to arrive at a real and final answer. And then, if we have the courage really to think out the question, and do not give up the pursuit of truth faintheartedly as soon as our imagination wearies and our attention is re- laxed, the perception may begin to dawn upon us that physical causation in the phenomenal sphere is not, perhaps, the only, nor ultimately the most satisfactory, mode of explaining a fact. 19. It is quite possible for the same event to be conditioned in two different ways, ideologically and historically, by a reason as well as by what we somewhat ambiguously call a cause. And it is only human inconsistency which sees any difficulty in this. For it is nothing but inconsistency, to limit teleological causation by reasons to conscious human action, and to refuse to extend it to all things, i.e., to deny the complete parallelism of the processes of nature and of our minds, while we yet assert their partial parallelism by asserting the existence of physical causation. For the assertion of the reality of causation assumes this similarity of mind R.ofS. E E 41 8 IMMORTALITY. and nature to some extent ; and if we must assume it in some form to make science possible, why should we not assume it in its complete form, and thereby do away with the difficulties in which our inconsis- tent assumptions involve us ? If cause is a category of the human mind which we attribute to nature, why should we not, while we are about it, attribute it in its complete form as the final cause, in which it is no longer a category which refutes itself? There may be some ground for objecting to final causes from a thoroughly sceptical point of view, which does not admit that the world of appearances is commensurate with our thought (cp. ch. iii. 1 1) ; but from the standpoint of science, which admits this assumption, such an objection surely strains at gnats while swallowing camels (cp. ch. vii. 6). 20. And it would be ridiculous affectation to assert that we are not perfectly familiar with several such instances of double causation. Our daily life supplies abundant examples of actions which are physically caused by one set of persons and teleo- logically by another. The man who publishes a report of the discovery of fabulously rich gold mines, with the purpose of attracting immigrants, is at least as truly the cause of the resulting " rush " as the leg-muscles of the gold diggers. And so every- thing in the nature of a plan, plot, or device for influencing the action of others implies agents who consciously or unconsciously give effect to the pur- poses of others. But the phenomenon can be studied most clearly and unmistakably in post- hypnotic suggestions. It is suggested to a hypno- tized subject that he is to do a certain action on awaking : when he awakes, he has no memory of the suggestion, but executes the order, if it be not DESCENDED FROM ANGELS AND FROM APES. 419 one palpably absurd and repugnant to his habits, without the slightest suspicion that it has been in any way determined by any extraneous cause : on the contrary, if inquiries are made, he will even proceed to give reasons fordoing what he did; which would satisfy every one who was not aware of the real cause of the action in the hypnotic suggestion. 1 And such examples should make us realize, however much we may struggle against the admission, that our causes are always reasons? and must be so from the constitution of our minds, and that with a moderate amount of ingenuity a great variety of reasons can be given for any action. It is therefore a mere superstition to suppose that we ever arrive at the knowledge of a physical cause so absolute that it does not admit of an alternative. Hence, as . soon as any considerable interests are involved, it will always be possible to support them with a show of reason, and the only error of such reasonings often is that they are esteemed mutually exclusive. And it is not merely in the phenomena of daily life and of psychical science that we are familiar with the reality of double causation, but no less in the religious doctrine of an over-ruling Providence, i.e., of an agency which shapes the course of natural causation in accordance with a preconceived purpose. 1 The evidence for this is not very abundant, but sufficient. But then experiments have hitherto aimed chiefly at establishing the fact of suggestion, and hence the actions suggested have been intentionally made repugnant to the subject, and such as he clearly would not perform of his own accord. But even though the experiments were specially calculated to arouse suspicion as to their source in the subject's mind, the absurdity of the suggested action may reach an alarming height without arousing any sus- picion of an extraneous origin. Cp. Proc. Psychical Soc., vol. III. p. i. 2 Cp. Mr. F. H. Bradley's Logic, Bk. III., pt. 2, ch. 2. 42O IMMORTALITY. But the philosophic truth which underlies all these facts and all these beliefs is one and the same that of the ultimate supremacy of the final cause. It is this superiority of the final cause which preserves the conception of causation from self-refutation, and which can alone give a real explanation of the world-process. For it is only as the gradual reali- zation of some pre-existent purpose that the process has any real meaning. 21. These considerations open up several ways in which pre-existence is compatible with heredity. In the first place, as the ultimate explanation of everything is teleological, i.e., relative to the end of the world-process, the parents must be in the last resort held to transmit certain qualities to their offspring in order to further the development of the pre-existent spirits. For the parents are such as they are, their parents are such as they are, and so on, everything is such as it is, until the metaphysical or first cause of the world-process is reached, which is also its final cause, and acts in a certain way in order to promote that process. And secondly, it is possible to conceive that just as the hypnotic operator can affect the will of his subjects without their knowledge, so the spiritual entity influences the parents so to fashion the organ- ism of the offspring as is required by its nature and its needs. Thus the assertions that we are descended from angels and ascended from beasts, that we are, (a) phases in the development of ultimate spiritual entities, (b) the resultants of the historical develop- ment of our ancestors, do not clash, for they formu- late the process from different points of view. And not only do they not clash, but they supplement HEREDITY AND THE SOLIDARITY OF BEINGS. 421 each other: they are both of them, in their own way, valid and indispensable. The second statement will continue to be the most serviceable for most of the ordinary purposes of life, and in the view of a physical science which is not concerned to raise the question of the ultimate nature of things and the final meaning of its own assertions. But the first will be the truest and completest, because meta- physical statement, and that most expressive of the highest aspirations of our moral nature. And it will enable us not merely to accept heredity as a fact, but also to understand it, to give a rational interpretation of the part it plays in the scheme of things. 22. For when heredity is considered, not in abstract isolation as a scientific fact, but in its con- nection with the totality of things, it will be found to be only an extreme manifestation or illustration of the metaphysical principle of the solidarity of things. This principle, of which the highest generalization of physics, the all-sustaining force of gravity, forms one of the lowest instances, may be traced in its manifold applications throughout the sphere of sociology. The present throughout depends on the past, alike in the case of the social organism col- lectively and of its members individually. We inherit the institutions, the material and intellectual products of the labours of our ancestors collectively, just as surely as we inherit their bodies individually, and posterity in its turn will inherit the conditions of life such as we have made them. And perhaps the spiritual inheritance of the social environment is hardly less important than the physical heritage which is directly transmitted. And thus the signifi- 422 IMMORTALITY. cance and .raison d'etre of heredity would lie in its emphasizing in the most impressive way, in a way that none can fail to -feel, this solidarity of all living beings, this continuity of .the world-process, and in forcing us to realize what we saw in chapter viii. is the great law of that process, viz., that the individual must be developed in and by a social medium, and is in every way dependent on it, dependent on it for his very existence in the world. But though we regard the teleological significance of heredity to be its assertion of the solidarity of the spiritual uni- verse, this is no reason why we should deny that there may also be spiritual affinities of a special and personal nature, underlying and inspiring the physical fact of relationship. For it seems probable that the grouping of men in their social environment is as little accidental and devoid of spiritual signifi- cance as the vvvhole process of that environment, and if so, our relationship to our family, nation, race, etc., points to more intimate spiritual connections than those which exist with beings who are excluded from these ties. The ties of kindred and our whole position in the social world, we may be sure, result from the hidden action of spiritual affinities, and are as little the work of lawless chance as the grouping of the stellar spheres in obedience to the attractions of the physical universe. 23. And .this hint of closer and more exclusive spiritual connections may serve to introduce the subject of the last difficulty in the relation of the Ego to the phenomenal self which it will be neces- sary to discuss. We recognized in chapter viii. ( 14) that the idea of individuality was scarce distinguishable in the lowest grades of being, and that even in man it was far from being completely 423 realized (ch. viii. 18). We admitted further, in 9 of this chapter, that the indistinctness of individu- ality, especially in the lower organisms, was a serious obstacle to the attribution of immortality to them. Hence the question presents itself whether a single Ego corresponds to each ^K&tt-individual, or whether several phenomenal organisms may not be the concurrent manifestations of the same Ego? The answer given to this question is not of course a matter affecting ultimate metaphysical principles, and it would be quite admissible to answer it by a non liquet from a scientific point of view, but it yet seems preferable on (esthetic grounds to deny that in beings with a scarcely developed consciousness an ultimate spirit need correspond to each phenomenal quasi- individual. And the analogy of the "secondary selves" within ourselves (cp. ch. viii. 18) will enable us to understand how several relatively-separate streams of consciousness can co-exist within the same entity, and how unsafe it is to argue from temporary exclusiveness to ultimate distinctness. We may hold, then, that the individual cells of a tree or the individual polypes of a zoophyte are the "secondary selves" of the lower organisms; nor need the fact that they possess distinct physical organizations and are under the proper conditions capable of spatially separate existence, perplex us when we reflect that Space was not found on analysis to be an ultimate reality (ch. ix. 10). It is more interesting to consider to what extent this equivalence of a plurality of phenomenal exist- ence to a single ultimate existence may be traced in human beings. That it affords a plausible ex- planation of the perplexing phenomena of multiplex 424 IMMORTALITY. personality has been already mentioned (ch. viii. 1 8, ix. 23). 24. And perhaps we may discover indications tending towards the same conclusion in the deepest and most momentous distinction of the social life, the distinction of Sex. Sex is in itself a mark of imperfect individuality, for neither men nor women are sufficient for them- selves or complete representatives, either physically or spiritually, of humanity. A distinction, there- fore, whereby the unity of the human spirit is rent in twain by the antithesis of contrary polarities, presents a problem well worthy of the deepest philo- sophic thought, and one which physiological ex- planations do little to elucidate. Historically, Sex is a differentiation of digestion (cp. ch. iv. 1 2), but even a biologist will sometimes find it hard to regard it historically. Hence it has, at all times and from the most various principles, seemed to men, from Plato down to the late Mr. Laurence Oliphant, that in the fact of Sex they were face to face with the traces of a disruption of the original unity of the human spirit, or, as we might perhaps amend it, of a unity not yet attained. But the significance of Sex and the metaphysics of Love form a subject too large and too conten- tious for an essay like ours, and our discussion of it is only intended to elucidate its relations to the doctrines we have propounded, and not to contain a full and scientific account of the matter. It may be that the distinction of sex will pass away in a higher stage in the evolution of spirit than the present, even as it came into being at a lower, and that in the kingdom of heaven there will be no marrying or giving in marriage. It may be that the feelings A METAPHYSIC OF LOVE. 425 themselves afford the surest evidence of the lack of unity in their longing for union, and that the desire of perfect love of transcending its self and " at one with that it loves in one undivided Being blending "* is the metaphysical ideal of which vulgar passion is but a feeble reflexion and caricature. It may be that this desire for the merging of one personality in another (Verschmelzungs-sehnsucht, as v. Hart- mann calls it) is the specific differentia which, by the consentaneous testimony of poets and philosophers, distinguishes love from other forms of affection, and that it is the emotional impulse which foreshadows the formation of coalesced existences of a higher order than our present partial and imperfect selves. It may be that there is truth in such speculations, and even that they explain points which would otherwise have remained obscure, such as, e.g., the great development of romantic love at the very time when the growth of reason might have been sup- posed to render its stimulus even more unnecessary than it is among animals and savages for the main- tenance of the race, and to make its essential illusion, the fusion of two spirits into one, seem more of an impossibility. On all these points there will be great differences of opinion, arising largely from the facts that most people feel even more confusedly than they think, that they mean very different things by the term love, and that love is generally, and perhaps necessarily, a very mixed feeling (including very often, e.g., an element of that aesthetic feeling which in its purity manifests itself as the worship of the Beautiful) ; but it will hardly be profitable here 1 Fitzgerald's translation of Jami's Salamau and Absal. We have quoted from an Oriental, because he is perhaps the least likely to be suspected of taking too idealist a view. 426 IMMORTALITY. to combat the objections which easily suggest them- selves, and which make up by their obviousness for what they may be lacking in profundity. Thus to dismiss the philosophy of love by saying that " they shall be oneJfesA," and that this is the whole mean- ing of the desire to be one spirit, is to appeal to a coarsely physical method of explanation, which is as good as explanations of the higher by the lower usually are (cp. ch. vi. 3) ; but it should at this point be unnecessary to show in detail why it is mislead- ing. The essential points for which we must now con- tend are that such a metaphysic of love will not in any wise affect either the practical value of our doctrine of immortality or the metaphysical prin- ciples on which it rests. It does not affect its emotional value, because ex hypothesi the basis of the evidence for the explanation suggested is emotional, and it is our desire for the coalescence of imperfect personalities which makes us think it possible. Hence there is no loss, but gain : what- ever we may lose of individual immortality is lost because it is our soul's desire, is lost because we gain in return a higher good which we desire more intensely than what we sacrifice. And, moreover, it is not even true that the self is lost by being absorbed and growing one with what it loves : it is lost as little as our earth-life is lost by passing into a higher phase of being ( 1 5). And similarly this theory contains nothing that need modify our metaphysics and our view of the world-process, but rather confirms them. We can- not argue from a possible fusion of imperfect into perfect persons to an impossible confusion of all things in the absolute One. We need not therefore LOVE VERSUS FRIENDSHIP. 4^7 abandon our view of the personality or individuality of ultimate existence; indeed, the very fact that human personality is still imperfect is the best testimonial to the value of personality as the ideal (cp. ch. viii. 19). It is only at first sight that the metaphysic of love can be regarded as conflicting with the universal principle of the development of individuality ; for it also aims at completing a personality. But though such an apparent exception ultimately proves the rule, it must yet be admitted to do so by exceptional means, forming a certain antithesis to the other aspects of the evolution of perfect in- dividuals in a perfect society. For it is undeniable that love in its higher developments is an anti-social force, and that its exclusive attraction contradicts the ideal of a universal harmony of all spirits. Whatever services this passion may have originally rendered in bringing men together, and forming the basis of the social life, it is now antagonistic to the social ideal. A society of lovers would be a ludi- crous impossibility ; % for it is the chief symptom of their condition that they are entirely wrapped up in each other, and that the rest of the world does not exist for them. From the social point of view there is something awe-inspiring and terrible in the madness of a passion which teaches men to forget all other ties, the claims of country, friendship, duty, reason. And this exclusiveness of the attraction which holds together the human atoms of the sexual dyad becomes particularly clear when we compare love with friendship ; i.e^ with the feeling which forms the bond of the social union. The charm of friend- ship lies in the play of difference, in the free inter- 428 IMMORTALITY. course of spirits who preserve their own centres of activity, in agreement amid diversity, in the sym- pathy of kindred souls which is desired just because it is the sympathy of others ; it aims not at union in the sense of effacement of individuals, but in the sense of harmony ; it respects the individuality of the friend, and values it because of its very dis- tinctness. In love, on the other hand, if we have interpreted aright the indications of feelings which dimly prognosticate its inner essence, there is none of this : the union it desires is absolute, and requires a complete sacrifice of self. And again, to consider them with respect to their attitude towards extraneous influences : the harmony of friendship resents the intrusion of uncongenial elements, but is not in itself hostile to any widening of its sphere ; on the contrary, the natural impulse of a sociable nature is " to be friends with all men," the ideal of social harmony is all-embracing. And it is not as such prone to jealousy : we wish that our friends should also be friends of one another, and labour to effect this. LOVQ, on the other hand, is distinguished from all the other forms of affec- tion by its exclusiveness ; jealousy is part of its essence, and is the repulsion which will not brook the intrusion of any foreign force upon the intimate attraction of the human molecule. A pair of lovers are sufficient for each other ; they require no one else, and will not admit others into the intensity of their mutual feelings. Would it not be the height of absurdity to suggest to lovers what is the desire of friends, viz., that they should love the largest possible number and be loved by them ? For does not love desire wholly and solely to possess that which it loves, and resent the intrusion LOVE AND THE SOCIAL IDEAL. 429 of the most solemn social obligations as a desecra- tion of its sacred rights ? 25. The above discussion of the metaphysic of love may be taken as in some sort the supple- ment of the physical treatment which was so con- ducive to Pessimism (ch. iv. 17); but whether we regard the subject in its highest or in its lowest aspects, the result is the same. From either point of view it is a momentous fact ; from neither point of view is it the road to happiness or the ideal of life. It is not fitted to be the ideal of life because it cannot be made to include all existences, because a pair of lovers as the culmination of the world- process would be a conclusion equally bizarre and impossible. We cannot abandon for such amorous fancies the ideal which has been our lode-star in the pursuit of truth, the ideal which first revealed itself to us in the search for an adequate formulation of the world's process, the ideal of a harmonious inter- action of individual existences ; for it is an ideal which all our subsequent progress has only con- firmed and deepened. The conception of a com- munity of perfect persons was the efficient cause of the wondrous evolution of individual existence (ch. viii. 6-19), the final cause of the material universe (ch. ix. 26-3 1 ), and the formal ground of our plural- istic answer to the ultimate questions of ontology (ch. x. 23). And now it has successfully stood the severest of its tests : in spite of the most powerful objections, it has been shown that there is nothing impossible in the continuance of personality ; in spite of our strongest feeling, it has been shown that friendship is a more universal principle than love, that the concord of harmony is a higher ideal than the ecstasy of love. 43O IMMORTALITY. Thus we have at length reached an eminence whence the eye of faith can clearly discern the features of the Promised Land which this ideal holds out to us ; and though we may not enter until the far-distant end of the world's process, we can already grasp its nature and describe its charac- ter, and it is to this completion of our task that the following chapter must be devoted. CHAPTER XII. CONCLUSION. i. WE have arrived at the end of our inquiry, and at a point where it seems merely necessary to gather together the converging clues that resulted from our discussion of the problems of man's past, present, and future environment, into a single and connected solution of the Riddle of the Sphinx. And though the principle which guided our steps throughout was one and the same, viz., faith in the world-process and the metaphysics of Evolution, we have yet to answer explicitly the question, which so far we have answered only by implication, as to what is the final meaning and end of the world- process, the nature of that " far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." and in what sense the world can be said to have a beginning and an end. And this is in some ways the most crucial and difficult of all questions ; for our speculations will have availed us nothing if we ultimately fail to prove how the conception of a world-process can be attributed to ultimate reality. We must consider then, (a) what is the ultimate meaning of the world- process, (6) what were its beginning and previous or pre-cosmic conditions, (c] what is its end or post- cosmic state, (d] whether such an end is possible, i.e., capable of actual realization. 2. The answer to the first question follows 432 CONCLUSION. almost at once from the formula of the world's evol- ution. In chapter viii. Evolution was found to be the development of the individual in society, and it is easy to interpret by this formula of what Evolu- tion actually is, what it must be intended to be. If Evolution is the process of the gradual perfection- ing of the individual in society, its purpose and its meaning must be the adaptation of the individual to the social environment. And in the light of chapters ix. and x. the individuals to be adapted or perfected by social harmony are the ultimate spiritual existences or Egos which underlie our phe- nomenal selves. The ultimate aim, therefore, of the world- process is a harmonious society of perfect individuals, a kingdom of Heaven of perfected spirits, in which all friction will have disappeared from their interaction with God and with one an- other. 3. But if this be the ultimate end or aim of the world- process, light is at once thrown on its starting- point. If the individuals are as yet imperfectly harmonized, but tending towards harmony, the pro- cess must have begun with a minimum of harmony. That is to say, at the beginning. of the world-process lies a state in which the individual spirits formed no world or society, and did not interact with one an- other. Their interaction was as yet a mere possi- bility (cp. ch. x. 23), and each existed for and by himself in a timeless solitude. But this spiritual chaos forms a complete antithesis to the world or cosmos, and so may be called a pre-cosmic condi- tion of the world-process. It is precosmic because a world or cosmos could not come into existence until some sort of connection and interaction had been established among the ultimate existences, PKECOSMIC CONDITIONS OF THE PROCESS. 433 even though of the most imperfect and rudimentary kind. Thus the pre-cosmic conditions of the world- process lie beyond and outside the process, and form u limit to the world and our thought about it, a parte ante. For when our thought travels back to this point, the subject and the means of our inquiries alike disappear. We cannot ask what the world was before the world was, what was before Time was. For without an interaction of the Many there is no world to explain, and as neither Time nor Causation apply to the changeless (cp. \ 4), there are no means of explaining it. We cannot answer questions as to what the pre-cosmic is in itself, be- cause they cannot be validly asked, i.e., formulated without a reference to cosmic conditions which are ex hypothesi inapplicable to the pre-cosmic. Our thought is silenced because all its questions hold good only for the world-process, and become un- meaning in face of the pre-cosmic. Yet the pre- cosmic is the presupposition of the world-process (ch. xi. 1 6), hence we have already had occasion to anticipate it in several ways. Thus it represents the hypothetical state of the absolute independence of the individual atoms, which was implied as the logical ideal in the theory of the development of matter (ch. viii. 1 7). And again it forms the condi- tions which limited the Deity (ch. x. 2), the ultimate nature of things which was not identical with God (ch. x. 24), the resisting Egos whose consciousness could not be destroyed but only depressed (ch. ix. 27-28), the immortal spirits of the development of which all living beings are phases (ch. xi. 14). But though the conception of a pre-cosmic state is a logical inference from that of a real world-process, it must be admitted that our imagination has no R. ofS. E F 434 CONCLUSION. little difficulty in picturing it, and that it can claim little support from previous philosophy. But then we recognized that for various reasons the concep- tion of a time-process and of a real history of things was alien to philosophy, 1 until the scientific doctrine of Evolution boldly affirmed the reality of history (ch. vii. 2). On the other hand, it is interesting to find that our account of the pre-cosmic receives substantial confirmation from religious tradition, which in preserving its memory has shown no less superiority over profane thought than when it was the first to assert the reality of the world's beginning. For only the preconceptions of a mistaken ex- egesis can blind us to the fact that though the first chapter of the Book of Genesis professes to give an account of the creation of the world, it does not assert its creation ou( of nothing. It does not pro- fess to give the origin of all existence, but only of our material and phenomenal world. It clearly re- cognizes the pre-existence of good and evil and of spiritual beings, which were presumably uncreated, and certainly pre-cosmic, like our ultimate spirits. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil demon- strates that even before the Fall evil was potentially existent in the world, and the obvious inference is that the world was created in order to remedy this pre-existent and pre-cosmic defect. And the nature of this defect is further elucidated by the religious tradition of the fall of Satan and his angels. Their 1 Ancient philosophy lacked the evidences of progress (ch. vii. 1 6) ; modern philosophy rested on an epistemological basis, and so was congenitally incapacitated from asserting the reality of the process (ch. ii. 17; Hi. 15), although Hegel made a bold effort to transcend the limitations of his standpoint by confusing the logical with the real process and identifying the connexions of logical categories with the development of real existences. THE END OF THE PROCESS. 435 fall, we are told, was due to pride, a term which would describe not unaptly the defiant resistance of ultimate spirits to the attempt to induce them to submit their selfish and intractable wills to the har- mony of cosmic order. All this agrees excellently well with the conclusions we have independently reached ; we also were led to ascribe Evil to the agency of superhuman forces, viz. the Egos (ch. x. 25), and to find the source of its all-pervading taint in the region of the pre-cosmic ; in short, to regard the nature of the world as conditioned by what existed before its production and before the begin- ning of its process. On the other hand, the fall of the angels must not be interpreted as a lapse from an initial harmony, in view of the fact that harmony, once attained, would necessarily be eternal and un- changeable ( 10), and it seems preferable to regard ourselves as angels in course of development out of isolated and unsociable spirits. Thus the beginning of the world-process, i.e., of what we call the world, may be conceived as taking place in consequence of the union of the individual spirits into some sort of whole, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, and the object of the process will be attained when that spiritual whole or com- monwealth can be rendered completely harmonious. 4. But though the pre-cosmic conditions of the world-process enable us to understand much that would otherwise remain mysterious, they are not of such direct interest as the question of \^& post-cosmic condition and end of the world-process. If our speculations have not entirely missed their mark, the world-process will come to an end when all the spirits whom it is designed to harmonize have been united in a perfect society. Or, to put it 43 6 CONCLUSION. in the language of chapter viii., when the individual has become a perfect individual, and has been deve- loped to the utmost of his powers, and is in perfect harmony with and completely adapted to the whole of his environment. This attainment of the end of the world-process may be described by the most various formulas, for it would represent the perfection of all the varied activities of the process. We may call it in the language of physics a state of perfect equilibrium, or in that of biology, a perfect life or adaptation to environment, or in that of sociology, the perfection of the individual in the perfection of society ; or again, we may describe it psychologically as perfect happiness, goodness, knowledge and beauty. But though it is the perfection and aim of all the activities of life, it is yet contrasted with them by its metaphysical character. For it would be opposed to the changing Becoming of our world of Time as a changeless and eternal state of Being: In it Becoming would be no longer possible, for all would be all they could be ; the actual and the potential would be co-extensive, for all would have realized their highest ideals. And as all would be in perfect equilibrium, perfectly adapted to their environment, and in perfect correspondence with it, there could be no more change : neither within nor without the universe would there be left a cause of disturbance or change. Nor would there be any more Time, for Time, as we saw (ch. ix. 1 1 ), was but the measure of the impermanence of the imperfectly-adjusted, and so it would pass away together with the changes by which alone it could be estimated. For without consciousness of change there can be no conscious- Till: NATURE OK PERFECT BEINC. 437 ness of Time, and the sceptical objections to a Time independent of our measurements of Time (ch. iii. 6) should have cured us of the fancy that absolute Time could exist, which was not relative to change of some sort. And so the case we antici- pated in an earlier chapter (ix. 1 1) would have been realized, and Time would have passed into Eternity. And in that state all difficulties would be solved, and all discords harmonized. There would be in it no change, Becoming, or death, but life eternal. The problems of our imperfect life would have been either answered or seen to be unmeaning. Pain and Evil would have ceased to be actual, and their past actuality would be approved of as the necessary means to perfect harmony. The infinity of Time and the infinity of Becoming would have ceased to perplex beings who would see how the absence of the perfect equipoise of Being dissevered the union of Eternity into the discordant trinity of Time. The discrepancy between thought and feeling (ch. iii. s 13-17) would have disappeared ; our interpretation of Becoming by means of Being would have been justified when all beings had become perfect. For all would appear as they really were, we should think them such as they were, think them as we perceived them, and perceive them as we thought them ; reality would have realized the ideals of our thought, and so our ideals would no longer be un- real, and our thought would no longer need to idealize realities' with which it was in perfect corre- spondence (ch. v. 2). And whereas the pre-cosmic put an end to further inquiry by destroying the mean- ing of the questions asked, the post-cosmic would put an end to inquiry by making it impossible to ask them. For how could the endless regress of cans- 43 s CONCLUSION. ation perturb a spirit conscious of the self-evident and self-sufficing order of the All in the fruition of a self-supported harmony that suggested no question and admitted of no doubt, of a life of light that could not be borne until the last dark shadow had vanished from the soul ? 5. But from the ecstatic contemplation of such a state of Being we should be apt to be rudely recalled by the objection that it was inconceivable and impossible, and incompatible with conscious existence. There would be quoted against us a psychological " law " of Hobbes', that sentire semper idem et nil sentire ad idem recidunt, that a con- sciousness in which there was no change was no consciousness at all. And doubtless there would be truth in this objection if by being "always con- scious " of a feeling consciousness in Time were indicated. Our present nature cannot react inde- finitely upon the same stimuli. Or rather, the stimuli being the resultant of constantly-changing factors, cannot remain the same. The nature and the stimulus are both changing from moment to moment, and can generate only an imperfect and impermanent consciousness. But it is only on account of the imperfection of our nature that our activity cannot endure. God, as Aristotle says, 1 eternally rejoices in a single and simple pleasure, and our case would be very different if we also had attained to perfect harmony and eternal Being. For, as all Time and change would have been transcended, whatever ecstasy of bliss accompanied the first consciousness of the attainment of perfect adaptation, would per- sist unimpaired, timelessly and without change. 1 Eth. NicJi.\\\. 14 (13), s.f. PERFECTION NOT SELF-CONSCIOUS. 439 It is true, however, that though perfect Being would be conscious, it would not be self -conscious, if by self-consciousness is meant the power of con- sciously distinguishing oneself from one's state, of contrasting what one was with what one is, of proving one's happiness to the satisfaction of others or of oneself, in short, of arguing about it. For all such operations and states of consciousness are in- delibly stamped with the mark of change and im- perfection. But why should any one wish to be self-conscious in this way ? For though argument and philosophic self-consciousness maybe a salutary and even a neces- sary discipline for imperfect spirits, Milton is surely right in regarding them as permanent occupation^ appropriate only to devils. 1 For while they might assuage the lot of lost spirits, whose anguish they might charm for a while with a pleasing sorcery, they would only fruitlessly disturb the blessed denizens of Heaven. Even now self-consciousness is a necessary evil rather than a positive good and a fatal alloy to unreflecting enjoyment. It is possible to feel without consciousness of a contrast, and it is only to self-conscious thought that every- thing suggests its logical contrary. But pure feeling, too entirely absorbed in its present reality to point to anything beyond itself, is far from being less real and vivid than feeling which is accompanied by the uneasy reflections of self-consciousness. On the contrary, we can see even now that the happiness that reflects is lost, that comparisons are odious, and creep into the soul upon the wings of the Harpy Doubt when it has sullied the unsuspecting transparency of its virgin feelings. 1 Paradise Lost, II. 566. 44 CONCLUSION. What need then of self-consciousness in Heaven, and what could cause it in a state of perfection ? What could there be doubtful to dispute ? Who would raise a question about the reality of bliss such that it could arouse self- consciousness to refute its absurdity ? Would happiness be any the more real for being re-asserted against denial, or would not such assertion ipso facto destroy its perfection ? And if all were blessed, there would be no tempter to raise the question. The idea that consciousness is impossible without self-consciousness is merely a pernicious example of the fallacious tendency to suppose that all reality must be capable of being expressed in terms of discursive thought, and this idea it was found neces- sary to reject long ago (ch. ii. 21, and iii. 14-19). 6. There is, however, a kindred error more deep-rooted even than that of regarding conscious- ness as dependent on change, and even more fatal to a proper appreciation of the nature of perfection ; the idea, to wit, that a state of Being is a state of Rest. Our ideas of activity are so moulded upon activities involving motion and change that Rest is regarded as the natural antithesis to change, and so we are wont to speak of Heaven as a changeless state of Rest. Or if the ethical inadequacy of this treat- ment strikes us, we sometimes rush into the opposite extreme, and still more absurdly regard perfection as a state of work, i.e., of imperfect activity, which is not its own end. In either case the effects upon the conception of Perfection are disastrous, and the failure to grasp the true alternative to work has gone far to banish it from philosophy and to render it ridiculous in religion. And yet nothing could be PERFECTION NOT REST. 44! more erroneous or more fatal to all true philosophy than the idea that Rest is the only possible alter- native to Work. The conc'eption of Rest stands, it is true, in an- tithesis to Becoming, as much as the conception of Being. But its analogue is Not-Being rather than Being ; it is beneath, rather than above, Be- coming. And this becomes evident if we suppose that, one by one, a being rests or ceases from all its activities. As it ceased to affect the rays of light, it would become invisible ; as it ceased to resist penetration, it would become intangible ; as it ceased to produce vibrations in the air, it would become inaudible; as it ceased to attract other bodies, it would cease to be material, etc., until, with the cessation of its last activity, the last quality that distinguished it from nothing, would pass away, and it would vanish utterly. And thus we see that qualities are activities, and that existence without qualities is impossible, and so that existence de- pends on activity, and that non-activity is tanta- mount to non-existence. Rest, therefore, is non-existence, it is the negation of motion or activity, it is not : Being is the per- fection of motion, it is more than motion. And, whereas Rest in our world is an illusion, that which seems to exist but does not, Being is the Ideal, that which ought to exist, but does not yet. Being, as perfect activity, is at the opposite pole to Rest or Not- Being, and they are separated by the whole extent of Becoming, i.e., of the world with its im- perfect activities. The question therefore arises at which of these the world is aiming, whether at an absorption into Nothingness, or at the consti- 44 2 CONCLUSION. tution of an eternally active and adjusted whole. Which of these diametrically opposed ideals is being realized by our world of Becoming? is it tending towards Being or Not- Being, towards Rest or Perfect Activity ? And, according as we decide for the one or the other of these, we shall arrive at radically different theories about the world- process, resulting in totally different views of life. The one, which is the view which Pantheism can escape only by a sacrifice of consistency, regards the world-process as ultimately and essentially illusory : the fitful struggles of the individual and of the race alike are in the end absorbed again into the restful quietude of non-existence : the Absolute that was before the world began, and will be after it has ceased, is All and Nought, unchangeable and untouched by the phantom worlds which an inexplicable fate produces, and inexorably sweeps away. So Quietism becomes the ideal of life, and Nin'ana its end : the highest and the only good is reabsorption into the Absolute, in which life and suffering cease together. Such is the ideal of Rest, the ideal which from time immemorial has lurked beneath the whole life of the East, for all its creeds and all its mysticism ; and a strange and doleful ideal it seems to put before us as the end of all the activities of life ! The other ideal is an ideal of Activity, enhanced and intensified until it becomes perfect and constant and eternal, and transcends the motion and change of imperfect effort. It asserts that life is essentially activity ; that perfect life and perfect bliss are but the consciousness of the harmonious exercise of an activity that meets no check, and is broken by no obstacle. And so it is an ideal not of Nirvana but THE IDEAL. OF PERFECT ACTIVITY. 443 of Heaven, not of non-existence but of harmonious existence, of individuals who are not annihilated but united. And if the one ideal has the support of common prejudice, of the more or less avowed consequences of the majority of philosophic systems, and of the dreamy despair of the East, the other may appeal to the religious tradition of Heaven, and confidently rely on all the healthier instincts, on whatever hope and strength remains in man. And it is not without support even in past philo- sophy ; indeed, its clearest description is found in the writings of the greatest of thinkers. Aristotle, in a passage all too brief for the correct guidance of his successors, speaks of the divine activity as being one and changeless and invariable, because it is an activity that involves no motion. 1 And it is as such an wepyeia aKiv)](ria9 that we must conceive the perfect activity of Being, i.e., as an activity which has become so perfectly adjusted that no an- omalies or variations exist in it which could produce the consciousness of change, and serve to measure Time. And if the activities of life are ever tending towards more perfect adaptation and adjustment, such must be the ideal to which they point, and to which they will approximate until the goal is reached, and Becoming is merged in the equable and harmonious but changeless activity of Being. 7. And perhaps we may illustrate the case of perfect activity by that of perfect motion. Per- fect, i.e., unimpeded motion is, according to Newton's second law of motion, unchanging, undeviating, and eternal motion in a straight line. But is such motion ever realized ? And what are the conditions of its realization ? It is never realized because the mutual 1 'Ere/jyeia a.Kivr)(ria<; (Eth. NlC. VII. xiv. 9). 444 CONCLUSION. attractions of bodies produce deviations from the rectilinear motion. It could be realized, therefore, only by the union of all the bodies in the universe. Supposing this to have been accomplished, the motion would go on with equable velocity to all eternity. But though the body thus formed would be in motion to the highest and most perfect degree, it would yet be impossible for us to detect this fact unless we knew it beforehand. It would be an impossibility for one not in the secret to discover any trace of this motion. For there would be no inequality or distinction in Space, by which it would be possible to determine its motion, and hence to an outsider it would appear to be at rest. And yet it would be in motion, regarded from inside. Now supposing it were conscious ; it would be conscious of being in motion, and conscious also that its motion was perfectly equable and rectilinear. And the case of the perfect activity of a state of Being would be precisely analogous. It \vould be an activity so perfect that the ordinary modes of measuring activities would be no longer appli- cable to it. And yet there would be an internal consciousness and fruition of activity. But, again, as in the case of physical motion, that consciousness could not be transferred to an outsider. We saw above ( 5) that the consciousness of perfection did not involve self-consciousness, that it was neither capable nor in need of reasserting itself against out- side criticism : this would be as impossible in the case of perfect activity as it would be to prove that the body was in motion. We may look forward, then, to a future in which activity, i.e., life, becomes ever more intense, more sustained, and more harmonious, and finally cul- PERFECTION CONCEIVABLE NOT IMAGINABLE. 445 minates in a perfect activity, which sums up and includes all the activities of life, and realizes in actuality all the powers of which we are capable. 8. The claims of the Being, which is the end of the world-process, to be regarded as perfect activity having been vindicated, the question natur- ally arises, of what this activity consists, whether, e.g., it takes the form of a perpetual oratorio, or of eternal buffalo hunting ; whether eternity is spent in the society of Houris, or in the fighting and feasting of Walhalla. The question is a natural one, but the mistaken mode of answering it has perhaps done more to discredit the conception it was intended to elucidate than all the attacks of its adversaries. For nothing is in the long run more fatal to the interests of an ideal than the attempt to identify it with the sensuous imagery of an in- adequate presentation. Such a procedure confuses the presentation with the conception, 1 and leads to the rejection of the latter as soon as men become conscious of the absurdity of the former. Now it follows from the very nature of the conception of perfect activity that we can imagine no adequate content for it in terms of imperfect activities. For that activity is immeasurably exalted above our present state of existence, and, as we saw (ch. vi. 12), the lower can never anticipate the actual con- tent of the higher life ; it can at the most determine it as the perfection of the forms in which the lower is cast. 1 "Conception" in English is very ambiguous, and corres- ponds both to " Vorstellung " and " Begriff " in German. The possession of this distinction would have spared us a vast amount of bad logic, bad psychology, and futile dispute about the " incon- ceivable." 446 CONCLUSION. And, moreover, the demand that we should de- termine the content of the ideal of perfect activity involves a forgetfulness of the method whereby we found that ideal. If it is ah ideal of our thought, it cannot for that very reason as yet be realized in the sensible world, and the attempts to imagine it in terms of the sensible are not only fruitless, but wrong in principle. We must avoid, therefore, with equal care the contrary errors of regarding the conception of perfect activity either, as unthinkable or as imaginable. It is not imaginable, because the real world presents us only with activities which are essentially imper- fect. It is pre-eminently thinkable, because it is the ideal towards which the Real tends, and the standard to which it is referred, the conception by which it becomes intelligible. And this conceivability of Perfection, in spite of the inadequacy of the sensuous content our imagin- ation essays to give it, is a point of such importance as to warrant a brief digression in order to realize precisely the cardinal affirmation on which the pos- sibility of Being rests. It affirms that if we are right in interpreting Reality by our thought, i.e., if knowledge is a reality and not an elaborate illusion, then reality must realize the ideals of that thought. Now in all knowledge we use the category of Being, we describe all things as being or not being, and assert that everything must either be or not be. Without the standard of Being to refer to, the Becom- ing of the world would be utterly indescribable and unknowable (ch. iii. 13 ; iv. 22). But if we mean to assert that our standard is a true one, that the real world is really subject to the laws of our think- ing faculty, we must assert also all that is implied in THE UNION OF ALL. IDEALS. 447 the meaning of that standard. If we know that the real world aspires, and as yet aspires unsuccessfully, to be in the strictest sense of the word, if as yet reality only becomes and contains an element of Not- Being, we must assert that eventually it will really be, and really realize the ideal whereby we know it. We must assert, in other words, the reality of perfect Being in order to justify the.assertion of the reality of knowledge, And so the conditions and nature of such Being which may be determined by our thought (for Being is a category of our thought) must be binding on all reality. Being, then, is an ideal which the world-process must realize, and as one of our ideals and like all our ideals, it must as yet be a mere form, the real content of which can be filled in only by the con- summation of the process of Evolution. It must be experienced to be understood, and we can determine only the formal aspects to which it must conform. Perfect activity can be described only as the perfec- tion of the activities of life, and most of these are so imperfect that their attainment of their ideal and their realization of perfection would absorb them in something more divine but different. 9. Thus, though we may describe the perfect activity of complete adjustment as the supreme End of the process of Evolution, as the all-embracing culmination of all the activities and ideals of life, we must yet not overlook the fact that, strictly speaking, it would transcend them. If we regard Knowledge, Goodness, Beauty and Happiness as the supreme ideals of life, as the ideals respectively of the intellectual, the moral, the aesthetic, and the sen- sitive consciousness, we must say that the perfect activity of Being includes all these, and yet is some- 44$ CONCLUSION. thing more. It is perfect knowledge, perfect good- ness, perfect beauty and perfect happiness, because it is that into which they all pass and are united. And in it they are so absorbed that they no longer exist in isolation and in opposition to one another. They are fused in a whole which reconciles, unites and transcends them. And so it would inadequately represent the reality to say that perfect activity was either knowledge, or goodness, or beauty, or happiness. It could not, strictly speaking, be knowledge. For perfect knowledge, the knowledge of all that is to be known, the highest activity of reason in which reason were fully master of its subject-matter, would be a state radically different from anything we now call thought. To a perfect reason, to which all knowledge is an ever-present actuality, the exercise of anything like thought seems needless and degrad- ing. For all our thinking involves change and transition from thought to thought, and therefore Time ; and in this case, moreover, it could discover nothing that was not already known. And so with perfect goodness. The perfection of the moral consciousness would issue in the supra- moral. Goodness which has become so perfect, so ingrained in nature, that the suggestion of evil can no longer strike a responsive chord, that wrong- doing can no longer offer any temptation, is no longer goodness in any human sense. And more- over, not only does wrong action become " a moral impossibility " in the perfectioning of the moral consciousness, but the occasion for moral action gradually vanishes as the moral environment ap- proaches perfection. As Mr. Spencer so well says, self-sacrifice becomes an impossibility where each is HAPPINESS A RESULT OF PERFECTION. 449 animated by an equal and altruistic zeal to prevent the other's sacrificing himself to him. 1 And so with perfect beauty : what sphere would remain for the exercise of the aesthetic consciousness in a state in which material form has perhaps long been transcended, and where no ugliness remained to set off beauty by its contrast ? And if we say, and say rightly, that our sense of the beautiful may rise above the appreciation of the physical points which at present almost engross it, and that beauty would remain as the reflexion in consciousness of the perfect order and harmony of Being, and the perfect adjustment and correspondence of its factors, this would yet be a use of the ideal of Beauty in a superhuman sense. The ideal of Happiness is perhaps less inadequate to describe the activity of Perfect Being than any other, but the reason lies in its very vagueness. It does not directly suggest to us any mode of being perfectly happy, and rather insinuates that the means of attaining happiness would be indifferent so long as the aim was attained. And this is profoundly true, in the sense that no one can be more than happy, and the perfect attainment of any of the other ideals, e.g., either of goodness or of knowledge, would necessarily draw perfect happiness in its train. But even the ideal of happiness is liable to objec- tion as suggesting an exclusion of the other activities rather than the culminating crown and final perfec- tion of an all-inclusive adjustment of all the activities 1 It is to such a metaphysical ideal of a supra-moral state that Mr. Spencer's "absolute ethics" refer, and they are justly obnox- ious only to the criticism that he does not seem to realize what a radical difference from the conditions of our present world they would involve. K. <.fs. G G 450 CONCLUSION. of life. It is only if we remember to regard perfect happiness as the resultant harmony of perfect good- ness and perfect wisdom that it will serve as an un- objectionable popular statement of the formal nature of Perfection. 10. And as the attainment of Perfection de- pends on the attainment of a complete harmony of the whole environment, it must include all beings. The happiness of each is bound up with that of all. For if there remained any portion of the environ- ment, however humble and however remote, excluded from the harmonious adjustment of perfection, there would be no security that it might not enter into active interaction with the rest and destroy the harmony and changeless eternity of the perfected elements. And from this necessity not even God is exempt. To deny this is equally impossible on philosophic and on religious grounds. Philosophically its denial involves a denial of the category of Interaction, for if there is any interaction between the Deity and the world, the former also must be affected. If God acts upon the world, the world must react upon God : if God is conscious of the Time-process, then God also is not eternal while the process lasts ; if God realizes His purpose in the world, then its attainment involves a change in God. And God must be conscious of the existence of the world, if the world is to be conscious of his existence, for it is only by his action upon us that we are led to infer the existence of a God. The Aristotelian account of a Deity totally unconscious of the world's existence and unaffected by it, who yet is its prime mover, by a magical attraction he exercises upon it, is utterly impossible, though it GODS SYMPATHY WITH THE WORLD. 451 implies a perception of the difficulty which is lack- ing" to those who glibly repeat their belief in the eternity and immutability of God. Aristotle clearly saw r that any connection with the imperfect must involve a sympathetic imperfection in the Deity, and to avoid what he considered a degradation of the divine nature, he denied that God could be con- scious of anything less perfect than himself. And then, lest this denial of the sympathy of the perfect with the imperfect should cut away the ratio cognos- cendi of the perfect, he devised his extraordinary doctrine of the Deity as unconsciously the object of the world's desire ; i.e., as he could not deny the connection of the perfect with the imperfect, without denying the existence of the former, he denied that the connection was reciprocal ; just as though one could build a bridge over which men could not pass in either direction. But the revival of such a denial of the necessary implication of action and reaction, by modern Pantheism, is impossible : an unrespon- sive Absolute, as we saw in chapter x. ( 10), which is unaffected by the world-process, is nothing, and certainly not God. And from the standpoint of religious emotion, it is equally certain that the struggle of the imperfect must be reflected in the consciousness of God. God also cannot be happy while there is misery in the world, God cannot be perfect while evil en- dures, nor eternal or changeless, while the aim of the world-process is unrealized. If we suffer, He must suffer ; if we sin, He must expiate our sins. The conception of a Deity absorbed in perfect, unchanging and eternal bliss is a blasphemy upon the Divine energy which might be permitted to the heathen ignorance of Aristotle, but which should be 45 2 CONCLUSION. abhorred by all who have learnt the lesson of the Crucifixion. A theology which denies that the imperfection of the world must be reflected in the sorrows of the Deity, simply shows itself blind to the deepest and truest meaning of the figure of Him that was " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," and deaf to the gospel of Divine sympathy with the world. Thus the world-process is the process of the redemption alike of God, of the world, and of our own selves. To promote the attainment of Perfec- tion, therefore, must be the supreme motive and paramount obligation of conduct, the supreme prin- ciple of life, in comparison with which all others sink into insignificance. And to have risen to the consciousness of the fact that they can, and ought, and must co-operate with the Divine Purpose in order to accelerate the attainment of Perfection, must surely be equivalent to doing so with all the strength and insight they possess, in all beings worthy of the name of rational. ii. But can the purpose of the world be real- ized, not merely in theory, but in practice ? What if the world-process prove a failure ? What if the constitution of things be such as to make a complete harmony of all existences impossible ? To such doubts the most obvious answer is that it is not likely that the divine wisdom should attempt the impossible, and that therefore the fact that the world is in process contains the assurance that the end of its process may be achieved. But the objection may also take the form that though the end of the world-process is finite, yet the approximations to it are infinite, and hence it will never be reached. Progress may be compared to CAN THE WORLD-PROCESS FAIL ? 453 an asymptote, always approaching the state of Per- fect Being and never attaining it. But here again our fears would be unfounded. In thought, indeed, any process is infinitely divis- ible into infinite gradations, but in reality this is not the case. It is a natural error to suppose that because the infinitesimal can be thought it can also be felt, but were it true, all sorts of absurdities would follow. Thus, e.g., Zeno would be right in asserting that Achilles would never catch up the Tortoise, if the Tortoise had a start. The demonstration of this most ancient and ingenious fallacy is quite irresist- ible, if we admit that the endless divisibility of Space and Time can be applied also to the experi- ence of Space and Time. If Achilles could run first ten yards, then one, then one-tenth, then one- hundredth, and so on indefinitely, and be conscious of each step and each moment he required to tra- verse it, he really would require an infinite time to catch the Tortoise. For he would be conscious of an infinite series of events before he caught it, sub- jectively at least he would never complete the infinity of infinitesimal steps required (cp. ch. ii. 6). Really, of course, real Space and Time are not infinitely divisible (ix. 9), Achilles would soon come to a minimum step no longer capable of subdivision, and he would require a minimum time to traverse it. And so in the case proposed ; the approximations to perfection could not go on indefinitely : they would sooner or later approach so nearly to per- fection, that the discrepancy between the real and the ideal would be too minute to enter into con- sciousness. A precisely similar instance, moreover, of this impossibility of endless approximation in 454 CONCLUSION. reality, occurs daily in the case of motion. In theory the gradations between velocity i and ve- locity o, i.e. rest, are infinite, and so bodies ought to pass through them all before arriving at velocity o. And as they are infinite, a body ought to require an infinite Time in arriving at rest. But as a matter of fact, nothing of the sort happens. The motion gradually diminishes, and finally ceases entirely, at least with respect to the body relatively to which it exists. 1 Hence we may rest assured that just as real bodies can return to a state of rest in a finite time, so the real world-process can attain in a finite time to the perfect adjustment of Being, the eternity of which delimits Time. 12. And with this defence of Eternal Being, which the Becoming of the cosmos slowly evolves out of the timeless Not- Being of acosmic apathy and isolation, with this vision of a Heaven and a Peace surpassing all imagination, which for ever obliterates the last traces of the pre-cosmic discord of which the struggle of life is but an attenuated survival, we must close. And we may close with the assurance that the truths of which we have caught a glimpse do represent a real and complete answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx, an answer which is rational and capable of realization. We have thus achieved the undertaking we proposed to ourselves (ch. v. $ 2), and vindicated life and knowledge by showing that after all it was possible so to manipulate our data 1 The argument, of course, is vitiated by its use of infinity in a false, mathematical sense (cp. ch. ix. 4), and supposes that rest is a reality (cp. ch. iii. 8). But it does so only to accept the basis of the objection it controverts ; for the whole difficulty arises out of the mistaken application of the mathematical doctrine of infinity to reality. THK SUPREME ALTERNATIVE. 455 as to supply a complete answer to all our problems. And if this answer be thought unsatisfactory because it is too dependent on ideas, and is true only if our ideas are realized, we may reply that according to the terms of our bond, this is all we undertook to prove. We did not undertake absolutely to predict the facts, but only to discover what would happen if our ideas were valid. And yet it may perhaps afford some consolation to such objectors to be as- sured that the realization of our ideas by reality is by no means a rare or unheard-of fact, inasmuch as every advance of knowledge proves an idea to be a fact 1 13. It is not, therefore, any failure to fulfil his promise, nor any defect human science could avoid, that fills the philosopher's heart with apprehension, as he goes forth to his last dread encounter with the Sphinx. It is the consciousness that he can never transcend the supreme alternative of thought, that though he have grasped the truth, truth always leaves him with an if. What though his reasoning be forged, link by link, an adamantine chain of logical necessity, it will yet be hypothetical (ch. iii. 15, 17, 1 8); what though he show what truth must be, if truth there be, he cannot show that truth there -is. The Terror of the Threshold, the Pessimist's fear of the inherent perversity of things (ch. iv. i), the dread lest the Veil of Truth should conceal, not the loving countenance of a pitying Saviour, but the fiendish grin of a Mokanna, deriding our miseries with malicious glee, or the fantastic nightmare of an insane Absolute, forms a spectre no reasoning can exorcize. And so a revulsion of feeling seizes upon the philosopher in the very hour 1 I.e., shows that a thought determination holds of reality. 45 6 CONCLUSION. of his triumph : the prophet's mantle falls ; the fiery chariot, that uplifted his ardent soul to the Empyrean, bears him back to earth ; the divine enthusiasm that inspired his answer to the riddle of his being, has left him, and, as a child, he cries aloud to the spirit that has forsaken him, " An infant crying in the night. An infant crying for the light, And with no language but a -cry." And when he finds the Sphinx, enthroned amid the desert sands far from the pleasant paths of life, he cannot read the ambiguous smile that plays around her face. It may be much that she is not grimly unresponsive to his plea, but he cannot tell whether he have answered her aright, whether her smile betoken the approval and encouragement of a goddess to be won by toil and abstinence, or the mocking irony of a demon whom no thought can fathom and no sacrifice appease. And even though he abide to sit at the feet of the Sphinx, if so be that his steadfast gaze may read the signs of her countenance in the light of long experience ; yet anon will the wild storms of fortune tear him away, and the light of life fade out, the rushing pinions of Time sweep him along into darkness, and the bitter waters of Death engulf the questioner. For life is too fragmentary and experience too chequered wholly to dissipate a dread that springs from the heart rather than from the reason, and shrinks too vehemently from the cruelties of the world's ways to be consoled by the subtleties of a metaphysical demonstration. 14. Thus the end of philosophy is to confess its impotence to make the supreme decision be- FAITH AND BELIEF. 457 tween two alternative interpretations, each of which is intellectually warranted by the facts of life. The faith in the rationality of things, in the light of which we must read the ambiguous indications of reality, is to be acquired by no reasoning. Hence the final rejection of Pessimism is the highest and most difficult act of Faith, and to effect it the soul must draw the requisite strength from itself, it may be, gather courage from the very imminence of despair. If, therefore, we have at this point emphasized the possibility of Pessimism once more, and pointed out the necessity of Faith, it has been with no intention of depreciating the value of reason or of casting a doubt upon its conclusions. For in appealing to Faith we are not appealing to anything that takes the place of reason, and still less to anything hostile to it, but to that which perfects it, and perfects it by making it practically efficacious. It is thus that we must emphasize again at the close the conviction with which we started (ch. i. 4) ; viz., that philosophy is practical. It is a mistake to suppose that when all has been said all has been done ; on the contrary, the difficult task of translating thought into feeling, of giving effect to the conclusions of reason, and of really incorporating them with our being, still remains. And it is this incompleteness of mere thought which philosophy recognizes when it leaves us with an alternative. This guards us against the delusion that intellectual assent is sufficient for life. Because philosophy is practical, mere demonstration does not suffice ; to understand a proof is not to believe it. And in order to live rightly, we must not only assent that such and such principles are conclusively proved, but must also believe them. 45 <( ^ CONCLUSION. But belief is not solely, nor perhaps even pre- dominantly, a matter of the reason. It is a compli- cated state of mind, into which there enters a large element of will and a considerable element of time and training. We cannot believe unless we will, and we cannot believe new truth until the mind has long been habituated to it. And it is to effect this transformation into belief that speculative philosophy in the end requires the stimulus of fear and the help of faith. For it is keenly conscious that without faith knowledge edifies not, and that the Temple of Truth is upreared in vain if wor- shippers cannot be found to enter it. APPENDIX. FREE WILL AND NECESSITY. I. THE dispute about the freedom of the will is so famous and is considered by many so important, that it seems advisable to discuss the principles which have been assumed concerning it. We have throughout used the ordinary language about human action, and so may seem to have supposed something like free-will. And this is true in the sense that human conduct cannot be stated except in terms implying freedom in some sense. But our ordinary usage does not really touch the metaphysical controversy between Freedom and Necessity, Indetermin- ism and Determinism. These difficulties only arise when we are not content with stating the facts in a practically sufficient form, but begin to argue about them, and desire to see how we are free or determined. And, as usually stated, the difficulty is an insoluble one ; it seems on the one hand impossible to assert that we do things without motives, i.e., irrationally, and on the other, false to the facts of our inner consciousness to say that we can never choose between two courses of action, both of which are equally possible, but are necessarily deter- mined by " the strongest motive." 2. And the reason why the question is in its ordinary form insoluble, is that neither party has sufficiently analysed the terms it uses. Free-will may mean a great many things, the power and the feeling of choice, the capacity for determination by rational motives, etc., as well as indeterminism. So also the Determinist confuses, or at least uses, in " necessity" a word with many different meanings. Thus, physical, logical and moral necessity are very different things. When a man falls over a precipice and exclaims, " I must be killed," the physical necessity which compels him is quite different from the logical necessity he recog- 460 FREE WILL AND NECESSITY. nizes when he says, " It must be so, Plato thou reasonest well," and also from the moral necessity he feels when he says, " I must speak the truth." Indeed, if we construed the last of these assertions in terms of physical necessity, it would manifestly be nonsense, for if it were physically necessary to speak the truth, lying would be impossible. Perhaps, however, we may dismiss logical and moral necessity from the present discussion, as they do not often enter into the determinist argument, like physical necessity. But the latter is itself hopelessly ambiguous. It signifies not only compulsion but also calculability, and is applied not only to the overpowering of a conscious being by superior force, but to the supposed causal con- nection between phenomena. And while it is in the former sense that it is fatal to morals and productive of fatalism, it is in the latter that it sustains a successful combat with libertarianism. 3. To say that the will is free, it is urged, is to make it an exception to the universal law of causation. The argument is a crushing one until it strikes us to examine into the credentials of the " universal law of causation," and its application to the case. As soon as we do, it appears that the difficulty lies not in the nature of the will at all, but in the conception of causation, and that liber- tarians and determinists, so long as they uncritically accept it, are bound to assert precisely the same thing at the end, viz. indeterminism. And the only difference between them is that while the indeterminist frankly admits this at the outset, the determinist refuses to confess that he succumbs to the same difficulty until he is driven into a corner. 4. Thus the indeterminist asserts that motives do not determine the will, they are not the only factors which enter into an act of will. There is in such an act an ele- ment of freedom, which is not subject to the principle of causation, and of which no further account can be given. Whereat the determinist grows indignant and talks of the infraction of universal laws, etc. But if pressed he will be found ultimately to assert the very same thing. Granted that motives cause acts of the will precisely as any other physical cause causes its effect, it is yet no real explanation of a thing to say that it is caused by A DIFFICULTY OF CAUSATION. 461 something which in its turn is caused by something else, and so on indefinitely. For the necessity which each cause transmits to its successor is a hypothetical one, and de- pends on the assumption that the initial cause had origin- ally any necessity to transmit. But if none of the supposed causes is a cause in its own right, if they are all effects of anterior causes, then their necessity is wholly hypothetical, dependent on a condition which is never fulfilled. Either, therefore, determinism must admit that the regress of causation is infinite, and that a necessity infinitely remote is no necessity at all, or it must assume a First Cause. But concerning the First Cause the same question must be raised. Was the First Cause, which determined all else, itself determined by motives or not? If it was not, then determinism ends in indeterminism ; if it was, then these motives are the real cause of the world, for they alone ex- plain why the First Cause generated the world at one time and not at another. And these motives in their turn must have been pro- voked by something within the First Cause, or without it, or by nothing at all. If by nothing at all, the indetermin- ism of motives uncaused and unprovoked stands confessed. If the motives were provoked by something without it, this constitutes a First Cause higher than the First Cause, which is absurd ; if by something within it, a change must have taken place in the First Cause. This change again must have been either caused by something or by nothing. If the former, we have a re- currence of the infinite regress ; if the latter, of indeter- minism. And the result remains the same whether we say that the First Cause was determined by nothing or by itself. If by nothing, the indeterminism is once more avowed ; if by itself, we require to know why its nature determined it to be the First Cause at the time it was and not before. In short, whatever excursions into the realms of unmiti- gated nonsense determinism may undertake in its retreat, it can find no resting place until it reaches indeterminism. And one may naturally inquire why it was necessary to lead us so far afield. Why is indeterminism a worse account of what happens when it is avowed frankly at 462 FREE WILL AND NECESSITY once, than when it is confessed to after a tortuous course of prolonged evasion, and what is the advantage of a. round-about path in coming to a result which indeter- minists saw to be inevitable from the first ? 5. This result is a serious one. It is a serious shock to our confidence in the power of reason to discover that the contrary theories of the nature of the will both involve the same absurdity. Shall we then draw the agnostic con- clusion that the question is insoluble, and indicates a per- manent debility of the human intellect ? Or rather, that the question has been wrongly put, and that the absurdity of our conclusions indicates some flaw in our premisses ? Nor is such flaw far to seek. The whole method of applying the conception of caus- ation to the will is radically invalid. For let us remember the origin of causation. The cate- gory of causation, in its application to the world, is a bold piece of " anthropomorphism " originally, and springs from the animistic theory of physical action (ch. iii. 11). It is an attempt to construe the Becoming of nature upon the analogy of the working of our own wills, and the will is thus the original and more definite archetype, of which causation is a derivative, vaguer and fainter ectype. To explain the will, therefore, by causation is a simple con- fusion, literally an explanation of ignotuin per ignotiiis t and the only answer to the assertion that conduct is neces- sarily caused by motives is the question what is meant by causation and necessity ? 6. And whenever these terms are examined it appears that so far from being an exception to the universal law of causation, the freedom of the will is the only case in which causation denotes a real fact and is more than a theory, an assumption we find it necessary to make, if the world is to be regarded as intelligible. And similarly with necessity, it turns out that strictly speaking necessity and freedom arc correlative, and apply only to the will. For necessity, in whatever way it is taken, is something subjective, an affection of our minds, and to attribute it to nature is a boldly optimistic and anthropomorphic assump- tion, which ignores the possibility that the operations of THEIR MEANINGS. 463 nature may be such that no efforts of our thought can ever understand them. For (i) if by necessity we mean logical necessity, a necessity such as that with which the conclusions follow from their premisses, then we do not find it in nature. That necessity exists in thought alone and does not ex- tend to perception. We cannot demonstrate that one fact is logically involved in another, and so generate an inde- finite series of facts from our initial basis. A fact in the sensible world can never be more than a fact, and qua fact is never necessary, i.e., never dependent on a previous fact. The categorical judgment is that which comes nearest to the sensible fact, and is most successful in concealing the logical necessity which is inherent in all thought, and yet the apodictic judgment ranks higher in the realm of thought. For whenever a mere statement of fact is doubted, we proceed to give reasons why it must necessarily be so (cf>. ch. iii. 15). (2) If, again, we mean by necessity the power of pre- dicting or calculating events, we imply something so dif- ferent from the ordinary associations of necessity as to be terribly confusing. There is much conduct representing the highest and freest action which is eminently calculable, much conduct whicn is as remote as possible from freedom, which is quite incalculable. Is it not a paradoxical result of this use of necessity to assert that the deliberate exe- cution of a well-considered purpose is unfree and necessary action, while the maniac impulses of insanity are free? And yet the former is calculable and the latter arc incalculable. (3) If we are to mean anything definite by the use of necessity in connection with causation, we must imply something analogous to the feeling of compulsion which we experience when we use the word " must." If necessity does not imply a reference to our feeling of compulsion, it either means nothing, or two very different things, and the question of the relations of free-will and necessity can- not be profitably discussed. If, on the other hand, neces- sity is taken in this sense, it becomes evident that both freedom and necessity apply primarily to the will. 7. Both freedom and necessity are psychological modes 464 FREE WILL AND NECESSITY of describing certain states of consciousness. Freedom is the consciousness of choice, the feeling that we can do either one thing or another ; necessity is the consciousness of compulsion, the feeling that we cannot help doing some- thing. Thus they are correlative states of our will, neither of which can without more ado be applied either to all states of will or to the behaviour of things. For the consciousness of either freedom or necessity is an extreme and comparatively rare state of our will, and does not extend over the whole of life. On the contrary, by far the larger and saner portion of our lives is accom- panied by no consciousness either of necessity or of free- dom. In any properly constituted and situated human being it is only rarely that he feels he " must " or " ought." Gen- erally he simply acts, and no consciousness obtrudes as to whether he might have acted differently, or could not have helped acting as he did. We live by far the greater part of our lives in accordance with our habits and our principles. But as such conduct is not accompanied by the consciousness either of freedom or of necessity, it can- not properly be called either free or necessary. The category of necessity and freedom does not apply to it, and we must not delude ourselves into fancying that it does, merely because ex post facto we can bring our actions under that category, should occasion arise. And when there is any inducement to interpret the neutral action of ordinary life as either necessary or free, it is noticeable that we can generally interpret our past action indiffer- ently as having been either necessary or free. We can colour our record to suit either view, and represent it either as the free expansion of our nature, or as the com- pulsorily determined result of previous habits. But both these accounts are equally sophistical, and false in the same way. They both invert the true relation of the extremes to ordinary conduct. They attempt to force the original and undissevered whole of normal conduct into the scheme of abnormal divergences, and instead of regarding " free " conduct and " necessary " conduct as special cases of normal conduct, which is conscious neither of freedom nor of necessity, they try to explain the latter as either free THEIR CORRELATION. 465 or necessary. This is as though we misunderstood the relation of the limbs to the body, and fancying that the body belonged to the limbs, instead of vice versd, pro- ceeded to dispute whether the body was all leg or all arm. 8. And if we consider concrete cases of a maximum and minimum consciousness of freedom and necessity, it becomes quite clear that they cannot be regarded as normal. The maximum consciousness of freedom is possessed by the man who is most vividly conscious of his capacity of choosing to do one thing or the other. I.e., he hesitates between several possible courses ; intellectually he is irre- solute, while morally he feels all the temptations to do wrong, i.e., he lacks the principles which make conceivable crimes " morally impossible/' And whether he finally acts well or ill, 1 his capacity to feel his freedom is due to the defects of his reason and his will. If he could see more clearly what course was wise, if he were impelled by stronger and more unhesitating habits to act rightly, his consciousness of freedom of choice would disappear. It is the mark of the imperfection of his nature, of the lack of stability and harmony in the interaction of its elements. Taking next the maximum consciousness of necessity, we arrive at a similar result. The man who always feels that " he can't help doing " a thing, that he is compelled against his better inclinations, is also a man in a high state of internal tension. His nature is so ill adapted to the functions of life that there is much friction between the higher and lower elements, just as in the man who felt at liberty to commit every imaginable crime and folly. Only in this case he is a/epar???, he succumbs to the temp- tation and is enslaved by it, and so feels unfree. But though he represents a lower grade of moral development than the man who felt " free," he is yet far from having reached the lowest depth of degradation. If he were thoroughly degraded he would no longer feel his slavery. His action would cease to be " necessary," be- cause it would have sunk beneath the level at which consciousness of necessity exists. Thorough wickedness 1 In ancient Greek phraseology, is fyKpdrrjs or a R. ofS. H H 466 FREE WILL AND NECESSITY (aKo\acria) and thorough ignorance have lost sight of the ideals of goodness and wisdom, and so are no longer troubled by the attraction of what is unseen as well as unattainable. There is therefore no consciousness of necessity or freedom in the infra-moral stage, in which it is impossible to say either " I can," "I ought," or " I must." The capacity to feel the last of these at all events does not indeed seem to vanish wholly until we sink beneath the threshold of conscious existence, but it is the normal con- dition of inanimate nature. 9. For it is wholly erroneous to ascribe necessity to the action of the inanimate in the sense in which we feel it. It is erroneous not because of its anthropomorphism, for all our explanations are anthropomorphic (ch. v. 6), but because of its bad anthropomorphism. The falling of a stone over a precipice is not necessary, for we cannot, without personifying it, attribute to it the feeling of " not being able to help falling," which we should experience if launched forth into the air. These feelings we know to be false in the case of the stone : the stone simply falls, and feels nothing. We might as truly (and as falsely) represent what happens as the free expression of the stone's inner nature as as a reluctant submission to the external law of gravitation. It would be as correct to say that the stone fell because it wanted to, as that it fell because it had to. In each case we interpret the fact in terms of our thought ; it makes no difference in principle whether we regard the Becoming of unconscious nature as analogous to human freedom or to human necessity. In inanimate nature events simply happen, A is and then B is ; but we, interpreting this anthropopathically, say A is the cause of B. But herein lies a double error ; for when we say, " When A is, B must necessarily follow," we go beyond our evidence in several ways. For we not only assume a connection where none need exist, except in our fancy, but imply a feeling of compulsion which we cannot seriously ascribe to B. And then it turns out that after all our conception of causation cannot be applied to the Becoming of nature in the way we insist on applying it, that it leads either to an infinite regress of conditioned causes ( 4 and ch. iii. n), or to a first cause which is AS TRANSITORY IMPERFECTIONS. 467 unmeaning if it is not a final cause (ch. xi. 21), and which thus inverts the order of succession in time which we set out to explain. Should we not from these facts infer rather that the becoming of inanimate nature lies beneatJi tJie category of freedom and necessity, that it is as yet in itself merely an undifferentiated happening, without necessity, either logical, moral, or physical, and not yet either necessary or free ? Should we not infer that it is only when it has risen to consciousness, and only as a psychical phenomenon, that the sequence A B appears at one time necessary and at another contingent ? T 10. We say appears : for just as there is a stage in the evolution of the world previous to the appearance of freedom and necessity, which are not yet applicable to the Becoming of things, so there is a subsequent stage when they have disappeared, to which they cease to be applicable. And certainly our confidence that this evolution of the infra-conscious, infra-free, and infra-moral into the con- scious, moral and free is the correct account of the matter, and contains the true solution of the difficulty, is confirmed by the higher developments of consciousness. For just as it is possible to sink below the consciousness of freedom and necessity, so it is possible to rise above it. Compared with the lower stages of mental and moral development, the good and wise man (the crwfypwv} sees his course clearly. He does not doubt which is the right alternative to adopt, he is not tempted, and still less over- powered by circumstances to do evil. Arid so it is only in rare and distressful crises that disturb the harmonious equipoise of his existence, that he feels he might have acted otherwise than he did, or that he was compelled to act otherwise than he wished. Thus here again, it appears that the intense consciousness of moral freedom and necessity is the characteristic only of the mixed characters, of the intermediate phases of imperfect adaptation, to which the thoroughly good, like the thoroughly bad, are not susceptible. Only, of course, they are less conscious of it for a wholly different reason, 1 The contingent that which may either be or not be. 468 P^REE WILL AND NECESSITY. not because they sink below it, but because they transcend it. In a perfectly good and perfectly wise being, therefore, both freedom and necessity would be impossible, and would be seen to be ultimately unmeaning, illusions incidental to imperfect development. For how could there be any alternative of action for an intellect which infallibly per- ceived the wisest, and for a will which unswervingly pursued the best course ? For the best course is one and single, and admits no competition from a pis aller. Or would it not be ludicrous to represent a being whose whole nature was attracted towards the best, as obeying a law of necessity ? There can be no change then or wavering in the action or the purpose of the Deity, in the conduct which is as completely determined by Reason from within, as that of the unconscious is determined by external law front 'without. But change and doubt, hesitation and incon- sistency, struggle, victory and defeat befit the intermediate phases of existence : the consciousness of freedom and necessity marks the lives of beings capable of rational action, and yet not wholly rational. We can perceive, more or less clearly, what conduct is required by the pro- gress of the world, and yet we have continually to struggle against the survivals of lower habits (i.e., adaptations to earlier stages in the process, cp. ch. iv. 10) within us and around us. And it is this consciousness of ill-adjusted elements which generates the consciousness alike of freedom and of necessity. But as the consciousness of freedom accompanies the victory over the obstacles to progress, over the foully-decaying corpses of the dead selves of the individual and of the race, freedom is a higher ethical principle than necessity, and is rightly brought into in- timate connection with morality. The phrase " I can because I ought " may not express the connection of both freedom and morality with the essential character of the world-process in the clearest way, but it at least bears witness to their kinship. Butler & Tanner, The Sehrood Printing Works, Froine, and London. r University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. A 000 025 987 an i m