»-,,* v.. ' >«■_. V,, ■ V. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIfORNIA SAN DIEGO \ I mnm ColUgt, Braiiforii. ( (■■■■ CLASS ROOM Case Shelf ^1^- £0 THE REALM OF ENDS OR PLURALISM AND THEISM CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS lonton: FETTER LANE, E.G. C. F. CLAY, Manager CFliinbureJ) : loo, PRINCES STREET ISfdin: A. ASHER AND CO. icipjig: F. A. BROCKHAUS ^eio lork: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS JSombHB anlj ffalriitfa: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. A /I rights reserved THE REALM OF ENDS OR PLURALISM AND THEISM THE GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF St ANDREWS IN THE YEARS 1907-10 BY JAMES WARD, SCO. (CAMB.), HON. LL.D. (EDIN.), HON. D.SC. (OXON.), FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY AND OF THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, PROFESSOR OF MENTAL PHILOSOPHY, CAMBRIDGE Cambridge : at the University Press 19 I I All tended to mankind, And man produced, all has its end thus far : But in completed man begins anew A tendency to God. Browning. Aber die erkannten thatsachlichen Verhaltnisse konnen allein unsere Gedanken nach diesem Mittelpunkte der Welt wenigstens convergiren machen. Lotze. PREFACE THESE lectures are intended to serve as a sequel to the course delivered in the University of Aberdeen some ten years previously. If at that time I had foreseen that I should presently be favoured with the opportunity to lecture on the Realm of Ends or PluralisDi and Theism I mioht well have entitled the earlier lectures the Realm of Nature or Naturalism and Agnosticism. There my endeavour was to establish the priority of the idealistic, or — as it seems clearer to say — the spiritualistic standpoint; and here I have tried to ascertain what we can know, or reasonably believe, concerning the constitution of the world, interpreted througliout and strictly in terms of Mind. At the outset, this world immediately confronts us not as one Mind, nor even as the manifestation of one, Init as an objective whole in which we discern many minds in mutual interaction. It is from this pluralistic standpoint that our experience has in fact developed, and it is here that we acquire; the ideas that eventually lead us be)(jnd it. I'or pluralism, though empirically warranted, w(! find defective and unsatisfactory : but vi Preface the theism to which it points is only an ideal — an ideal however that, as both theoretically and practically rational, may claim our faith though it transcend our knowledge. Such is a meagre outline of the present lectures. The summary contained in the last of them may take the place of further prefatory detail. The two lectures on Hegel [Lectures VII and VIII) are, it must be confessed, largely a digression. It was my intention to treat of Kant's philosophy in like manner — in both cases in order to substantiate the contention that anyhow, avowedly or not, pluralism is the starting point of speculation. But on second thoughts I felt that perhaps I had already done too much. In Lectures XIX, XX I have embodied portions of a paper, entitled Faith and Science, read before the Synthetic Society in 1902. This has already appeared in a volume of that Society's papers privately reprinted by the Rt Hon. A. J. Balfour in 1909. The preparation and delivery of these lectures were frequently interrupted by an illness that began soon after my appointment and continued till its close. I desire to take this occasion to thank the Senatus of the University of St Andrews for their extreme patience and forbearance then and since ; and I can- not but rejoice that now at last these lectures, all defective though they be, are through this indulgence out of my hands. Preface vii I have still to express my obligations to generous friends : first, and especially, to Professor J, S. Mackenzie of Cardift" both for his long and careful criticisms and for the arduous work which he kindly undertook of reading through all the proofs ; again to Professor G. F. Stout of St Andrews for many valuable and astute comments ; and finally to my colleague, Professor W. R. Sorley, not only for his literary help but for his continuous encouragement throughout my labours. 9 JAMES WARD. Trinity College, Cambridge. Septe7nbc}\ 1911. CONTENTS PART I. : PLURALISM. Lecture T. Introductory. The Realm of Nature and the Realm of Ends, the mechanical and the moral, as contrasted 'aspects' of the one world. Naturalism holds the former, SpiriUialisni the latter, to be fundamental Summary of the Spiritualistic position as argued in the writer's previous Gifford Lectures. The recognition of Experience as a duality in unity tends to Spiritualistic Monism ...... This, if sound, ought to furnish the interpretation of the reality underlying the phenomena that science formulates. Rise of the Historical Method and the passing of ' Physical Realism ' . . . . The idea of the Good and the course of History ..... I'ampsychism ........... The problem of the One and the Many, and the question of method PAGES I— .^ 13 13-.S 18 — 20 20 — 21 21 — 24 Lecture 1 1. The One and the Many. What sort of unity does the world imply? (i) Nature as objective not the One (2) Nor a Supreme Subject, taken alone ..... (3) Nor the unity of Subject and Object, as Absolute Self-conscious ness. The One and Acosmism. The One of Mysticism The World-Soul of Platonism useless as a mediating principle .\bsolute Object, Absolute Subject, Absolute Self-consciousness, all alike unreal l)ecause reached by abstraction ..... What sort of unity is possible without absolutely transcending the Many The oscillations of theology and speculation between I'luralism anc Singularism .......... The start from Pluralism ........ 25—28 28-30 .SO— 3.S 4'— 47 48 LkCTUKK in. I'l.URALI.SM. Pluralism as a recoil from Absolutism now in the ascendant. Its stand- point and main features to be here described ..... 49 — 50 The stand|Kiint is throughout the historical, and the l)ehaviour of indi- viduals bent on self- conservation and betterment its leading idea. Leibniz's Monadology still the type ...... 50- 54 X Contents PAGES 80- -87 87- -89 87- -94 94- -96 The pluralistic outlook illustrated from Economics, Bionomics and Physionomics .......... 54 — 59 Can the so-called inanimate world be regarded in this fashion? Stationary states, persistent types and inertia. ' Elective affinities.' ' No two indiscernible individuals.' The principle of Continuity. Uniformity and statistics. The pluralist's conclusion 59 — 67 Purposive Activity and Orderliness 67 — 69 Lecture IV. The Contingency in the World. Chaos a myth, yet orderliness and regularity the result of conduct, not its presupposition . . . . . . . . . . 70 — 72 Natura naturans and N'attira naturata ....... 72 — 75 Causal Efficiency and Causal Connexion ; Chance and Contingency ; Subjective Selection. • Heterogony of Ends' .... 75 — 80 Illustrations of contingency in the useful arts and in Nature. Fixity of Type and Variety of Conditions. The Grotesque in Nature . ' Worth ' and the natural ' Right to live ' Contingency of Species ; the gulf between Man and Brute; Contingency and Individuals .......... Contingency in the so-called physical world ...... Lecture V. Evolution as Epigenesis and Equilibration. Pluralism implies epigenesis or new formation not literal evolution or preformation .......... 97 — loi Epigenesis entails new properties which its component factors did not previously possess — hence it has been called ' creative synthesis ' . loi — 105 The prime source of this synthesis lies for the pluralist in the activity of experients. Organization the result of experience. The idea of 'potentiality' throws no light on the process .... 105 — 108 In the practical world this synthesis yields new values that are not only conserved but increased ........ 109 Interdependence of higher and lower : mechanization and direction . 109 — 112 Tendency to progression. Final Harmony 112 — 116 Lecture VL The Pluralistic Goal. In what sense is Society a unity? Two contrasted answers considered 117— 120 The transition from Man as animal to Man as social. ' Objective Mind' and Rational Persons. Meaning of 'Objectivity ' . . 120 — 124 Mutual implication of Objectivity and Self-consciousness. Kant's Subjective and Objective, Deductions of the Categories criticized Society a living reality, though a complex and 'over-individual ' one . The advance towards a higher unity. No ' law of diminishing return ' here. No ' solidarity ' of Evil ....... The Humanitarian Ideal and the Lord's Prayer ..... 124- -129 129- -130 130- -134 I.H- -1.^7 Coufeiits xi Lecture \W. The Pluralism of Hegel, I'AGES Hegel at the historical standpoint : here he recognises both the con- tingency and the routine in Nature ...... 138 — 145 But Nature to become Spirit : the Higher the key to the Lower . 145 — 147 World-history, as Mind working out the knowledge of itself, begins with ' the unconscious.' Heterogony of P'nds. The World-Spirit and its instruments compared to an architect using natural forces. But where is this World-Architect to l)e found ? .... 147 — 152 It turns out that the completed plan is the architect . . . • i.'i- — 156 Individuals not means but ends. The World-Spirit the living organiza- tion which they gradually evolve ...... 156 — 15S Lecture VIIL The Hegelian Unity. Is it a unity differentiated into a plurality or a plurality organized into a unity? Hegel's doctrine of the Trinity appealed to in answer . 159 — 160 The Kingdom of the Father is pure thought: the differences here are posited only as ideal: 'the Notion has yet to objectify itself . 160—164 In the Kingdom of the Son we come upon difference, the Objective as fact. But how are the two Others, the Son and the World, related, and how is the transition effected? Der Abfall der Idee ! The first in thought the later in existence ...... 164 — 170 Hegel's doctrine of development. The potential and the actual differ only in form. But what is first, it seems, is "the impulse that puts forth into existence '" ........ 170 — 174 So, in the Kingdom of the Spirit we find unity to lie the icsnlt of de- velopment. When, however, Hegel tells us that this result is the beginning, he does not say what he means . . 174 — 180 Lecture rX. The Limits of Pluralism. The Plurality of Worlds a problem both for pluralists and theologians. To deny it seems futile ........ Need for a .Supreme Unity as Upper IJniit. Appeal to the principle of Continuity : A. K. Wallace's arguments ..... Is the Unity a Society or a Person? Kither way it cannot be absolute; but for the theist it transcends the series williin which pluralism remains. But even so, if inunanent it cannot be absolute . The Lmver Limit of Pluralism also unattainable from within. The demands for a J'rimum tiiovens connecting both limits V(»lunlarism denies the necessity of this. But difljcullics for pluralism still remain 197—201 181- -184 184- ■189 1H9- 195 195- '97 xii Contents Lecture X. The Difficulties of Pluralism. PAGES /^jjiVa/ Ca/aj-/r(?/-4fj and the Dissipation of Energy . . . . 202—204 Psychophysical Difficulties. Birth and death cannot be what they seem to be. Phiralism committed to some form of Pre-existence. The problem of Heredity 204—212 The problem of Death : here, for pluralism, metempsychosis in some form unavoidable. A higher Spiritual Order and the Conservation of Values now seem essential ....... 212 — 215 Metaphysical Difficulties. The Problem of Interaction propounded by Lotze met by his own doctrine of ' Sympathetic Rapport ' . . 215 — 219 Teleological and cosmological arguments against pluralism : how far valid 219—224 PART II.: THEISM. Lecture XL The Idea of Creation. Metaphysics without assumptions criticized ..... 225 — 228 Practical and theoretical value of the Theistic Ideal, even though strict proofs of its reality are vinting ....... 228 — 231 Mistaken views of Creation ........ 231 — 234 God at once transcendent and immanent : creation then implies more than absolute thought or absolute self-consciousness . . . 234 — 238 Analogy between Creative Intuition and the Originality of Genius . 238 — 240 But any adequate idea of God-and-the-World is beyond us ; yet this idea meets the defects of pluralism, and is the only idea of the Absolute we can admit ........ 240 — 242 Tendency of Theism towards Singularism. But if the world is real, it stands over against the reality of God. In making it, God limits himself : apart from it we have no basis for our ideal of God at all 242 — 246 Lecture XII. The Cosmology of Theism. Theism usually occasionalistic. Earlier and later forms of the doctrine. Leibniz's objections not decisive . ...... 247 — 251 Anyhow the Realm of Ends does not imply a prior system of means. On the pamphysical view such a system not necessary at all . 251 — 254 Monads as 'the real atoms of Nature.' Interaction as 'sympathetic rapport.' Organism and Environment as implying a twofold relation of monads ......... 254 — 259 Comparative merits of Pampsychism and Occasionalism . . . 259 — 262 Contents xiii PAGES Nature as ' tlie preparation for Minil ' means only that self-conscious existence is attained to gradually from earlier stages of merely sentient life .......... ^62 — 265 Tracing this process backwards, we approach that lower limit which pluralism cannot explain. How does theism interpret it? Theism is ready nowadays to accept evolution in the literal sense. But evolution as epigenesis raises formidable problems . . . 265 — 269 Lecture XIII. Freedom. To combine Pluralism with Theism we must reconcile fmite freedom and diNnne foreknowledge. What tlo we mean by freedom? . 270 — 27.5 Meanings of Cause. Law of Causality as a postulate . . . 273 — 177 Hence two senses of determination — the one including, the other excluding, the ideas of efficiency and guidance ; yet the thorough- going ' delerminist ' identifies them ...... 277 — 283 Analysis of Voluntary Action: Motives and Forces contrasted . . 283 — 286 A Man's volitions and his Nature. Determinism and Sensationalism. Flux and conflict of motives without a Self, absurd , . . 286 — 291 Lecture XIV. Freedom and Foreknowledge. The doctrine of Kant and Schopenhauer — noum°nal liberty and empirical necessity. Opeiari scquitiir esse applied to men and things alike .......... 292 — 295 But are human characters and chemical qualities thus on a par? Schopenhauer's 'noumenal freedom' a dogmatic blunder, and Kant's ' nature-necessity ' an inconsistency .... 295 — 300 Vet Kant's distinction of homo phetwmenon and hopno noumetwn is important, the one an observed object, the other a subject per se. The phenonema of filled time produced by such subjects, which are thus not a part of the lime-order that they make . . 300 — 304 Relation of abstract time to experience. Necessitarianism fails through assuming that there is nothing but filled time ; how time is filled it does not inquire ......... 304 — 307 But if the filling of time is eternally decreed, Necessitarianism is in- evitable ........... 308-312 Attempts to reconcile freedom and ' foreknowledge.' The Pluralistic via media ........... 312 — 316 Lecture XV. The Problem ok Evil and Pessimism. This problem simple for those who first assume (iod's existence as certain. Put wc have to dispose of the i)robleni lirsi ; and so must take the defensive ........ 317—319 xiv Contents PAGES Pessimism as excessive reaction against exuberant optimism . . 320 — 322 Schopenhauer and Kallmann's faulty psychology .... 322 — 330 Hartmann's Romantic Metaphysic includes a Theogony and a Cosmo- gony 330—333 His answer to the questions he set to Schopenhauer : his ' Evolutionary Optimism ' and his Scheme of Redemption .... 333 — 338 Lecture XVI. The Problem of Evil and Optimism. The doctrine that happiness is the end, common to optimists and pessimists alike, implicitly denied by 'the Hedonistic Paradox.' The doctrine shown ' to entangle itself in a vicious circle ' . . 339 — 349 Evolution and the Relativity of Evil ....... 349 — 351 But is the evolution we find in this world ideally the best? . . . 351 — 353 Omnipotence and so-called ' Metaphysical Evil ' .... 353 — 355 Alleged ' Superfluous Evil.' Is Experience in general worth what it costs? 355—357 And what of evils not obviously due to imperfect experience? The World's Conservative Factors ....... 357 — 360 Will Progress be followed by Decline ? ...... 360 — 361 Lecture XVII. Moral Evil and Moral Order. Theological doctrines and philosophical theories that ignore evolution leave Moral Evil an ' insoluble mystery '..... 362 — 364 Innocence and Wrong-doing. The rise of Conscience . . . 364—368 This not a fall but an advance, and rids us of the doctrines of a Fall and of Original Sin ......... 368 — 371 Without the possibility of Moral Evil an evolving world could not be- come moral at all , .» . . . . . . . 371 — 374 The Moral Evil in the world not such as to justify atheism . . . 374 — 377 But this evil, it is said, is not confined to human misdeeds : the so- called Divine Government is either immoral or it does not exist at all. The objection discussed ....... 377 — 380 Evidence to replace the old belief in 'special interventions' . . 380 — 382 The tragedy of the world as a divine comedy ..... 382 — 384 Lecture XVIII. Theories of a Future Life. For Man the present life inadequate, but the difficulty of conceiving any other has grown with the advance of knowledge . . . 385 — 388 Metaphysical arguments do not meet it, for personal continuity is what we require ........... 388 — 393 The ' question of Immortality ' depends on the ' meaning of fhe world ' : apart from this we cannot decide it one way or other. Anyhow some Continuity of Memory and of Environment is essential to it . 393 — 395 Contents XV Memory implies both a subjective function and objective 'records': the organism not the sole repository of the latter. Analogy be- tween germinal soul and disembo to Faith in the Unseen ....... 448 — 450 Practical arguments: Nietzsche's natural 'Over-man ' and the Christian 'Spiritual man '.......... 450 — 453 The Absolute End .......... 452 — 453 Supplementary Notes I. The Meaning of Contingency . n. Dr Ilowison on Creation . in. The Relation of Body and .Mind IV. The Temporal and the Eternal \'. The Divine Experience Ini»kx 4.^4 461 4 68 477 481 — 490 ERRATA p. 6 1 as legend — Stationary States and Persistent Types. p. 98, line 2 from bottom — 'integration' for 'differentiation.' p. 279, note 2 — p. 8 for p. 9. PART I. PLURALISM, LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY. Mr Bradley concludes his metaphysical essay en- titled Appearance and Reality with the admission that ERRATA p. 78, line 6 from hc)llf)m, Jor do what they read what lliey do. j>. 181, footnote, /<>r 340 read 339. p. 313. line 3 from bottom, for p. 14 read p. 44. |). 334, last line but one, delete 'fit' last line, for 'nihilo' read 'nihiliiiii: p. 479, line 12 from bottom, insert us after against. p. 488, Index, /cr Rashdall, C. H. read Rashdall, Di II. W. ■CT) D A T- A PART I. PLURALISM. LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY. Mr Bradley concludes his metaphysical essay en- titled Appearance and Reality with the admission that science is a poor thing- if measured by the wealth of the real universe: he finds that "in the end Reality is inscrutable," and is confirmed in "the irresistible impression that all is beyond us." Everyone must acknowledge this to be a more honest conclusion than the pretended demonstrations of many philosophers. Nobody now-a-days — save here and there a man of science off his beat, like Haeckel for example — has the hardihood to rush into print with a final explanation of the Universe. Still without perpetrating this folly can we not attem[>L lo advance, to get more insight than at present we have ? Surely this is possible, for though ignorance be inevitable, no specific errors are necessary. But w(* must have some method: in particular we must be clear where we start from. It is a l.ivourite phrase now widely curn.-nt that \\\v universe has many aspects, and such a conception has the merit of making w. I 2 Introductory us vividly realise a source of error too often overlooked in the past — I mean confusion of standpoints. Precise orientation of these various aspects of the world is one of the first duties of philosophy, and the ascer- tainment of the supreme and ultimate standpoint is perhaps its chief concern. Now of these various aspects the two most sharply contrasted are those which lead us to speak of the world of mechanism and the world of morals, the subject-matter of the natural sciences on the one hand, and that of the moral sciences including history on the other. The one Kant was wont to call the Realm of Nature, the other the Realm of Ends ; assigning to the former as its characteristic mark the notion of ' empirical necessity,' to the latter that of ' practical freedom.' It would be superfluous to spend time in picturing out this contrast in detail^ : we have only to think of comparing some classical work of science — say Newton's Principia — with one of history — as, for example, his contemporary Clarendon's Great Rebellion — to realise impressively the complete diversity of the two realms. Regarding the scientific ideal of Nature as a rounded whole, we may safely say that the world of science and the world of history have little or nothing in common : their terminology, their categories, their problems are wholly different ; and so too are the philosophical questions to which they severally and immediately give rise. The one never reaches the individual and con- crete, the other never leaves them ; for the one spon- taneity and initiative are impossible, for the other ^ Cf. my article : ' Mechanism and Morals,' Hibbert /I, Vol. iv. 1905- PP- 79 ff- Science and History 3 inertia and rio^orous concatenation ; to the one the notions of end and value are fruitless, nay meaningless, for the other they are of paramount importance. And yet the two cannot be separated, for Nature not only provides the scenery and properties of history but the actors themselves seem to have sprung from its soil, to owe their position largely to its cooperation, and to come into touch with each other solely through its means. After all. these so-called realms are but ' aspects ' of one world ; and it is precisely this fact that makes their seeming contrariety and incompati- bility a problem for philosophy : where and how are we to find the final unification or mediation of the two? It will be one step towards a solution if we can deter- mine which aspect is the more fundamental. It hardly needs to be said that since the dawn of speculation the claims of both aspects have had, as indeed they still have, their advocates. Those who assign the priority to Nature we call Naturalists : those who contend for the priority of free agents we may call Spiritualists. In a previous course of Gifford Lectures \ which I had the honour to deliver in Aberdeen ten years ago, I en- deavoured to show the suj)eriority of the spiritualistic position. The main lines of the argument can be very briefly indicated and I trust it will seem to you fitting that I should recapitulate them by way of introduction to the further inrjuiry into the nature of the spiritualistic realm and to the discussion of some of its problems, which I i)ropose in the present course to attem{)t. Reviewing the progress of the natural sciences since the times of Galileo and Descartes we may note ' Natiiraliiin and Agnosticism, 3rd cd., iyo6. I — 2 4 Introductory two characteristics. First, in so far as the qualitative variety and the complexity of concrete things are con- sidered, we find several distinct sciences each with its own special concepts and methods, though all are more or less inductive and experimental. But all qualities and complexities whatever that natural objects present, and all the changes that they undergo, appear to involve quantitative constants and configurations ad- mitting of more or less precise determination and measurement. As soon indeed as the movements of sensible bodies were found to admit of exact description by the science of mechanics the hypothesis at once pre- sented itself that, as Newton expressed it, "the other phenomena of nature might be deduced from mechani- cal principles." And, as we all know, the hypothesis has been amply justified, though not indeed absolutely verified in every detail ; mechanical explanation has therefore long been accepted as the ne plus tdtra of what a scientific explanation can be. So much is this the case indeed that even the intractable problem of life is still generally regarded as only an outstanding difficulty and not as a veritable exception to the universality of mechanical laws. We come now to the second characteristic. For long this mechanical theory was held to furnish us with the knowledge of the empirical reality which our sensible experience was supposed only obscurely to symbolise : it bore, in fact, the name of Natural Philosophy. But as its purely formal character became more apparent, and mathematical equations enabled it to dispense with the real categories of substance and cause, physicists themselves were the first to perceive TJie Concrete and its Symbols 5 and to proclaim that this mechanical theory was after all but an abstract and ideal scheme — a pure science, which can only be actually 'applied,' as we say, with the help of the calculus of probabilities. And what diversity and irregularity the seeming simplicity and uniformity of large numbers may cover human statistics sufficiently show. In place then of the concrete world of sense symbolising this abstract scheme, it has now become clear that it is the abstract scheme itself which svmbolises the concrete world from which it set out. It also indeed reveals the law and order that there prevail ; but what the concrete world really is and what is the source of the law and order that it manifests are questions still wholly on our hands. But to call such descriptive scheme pure or rational science is to em- phasize its source in niiiul ; and when this intelligible scheme of our devising, with which the scientific inquirer greets Nature, is confirmed by Nature's response, are we not justified in concluding that Nature is intelligent or that there is intelligence behind it ? When however the physical realists — those I mean who r('gard the mechanical theory not as an abstract summary of Nature's routine but as presenting fully- orbed reality — when these realists are called upon to explain the relation of this mechanism to mind they become involved in hopeless inconsistencies. The mechanism is by definition an absolutely closed system, determinate in all its movements down to the minutest detail. Not merely does it brook no interference, but interference is strictly speaking inconceivable : the semblance of such could on!)- ni'-aii the presence of 6 Introductory further mechanism hitherto concealed. Mind then is to be interpreted as an impotent and shadowy con- comitant of brain, which is itself but a part of this mechanism inextricably linked in with the rest: we are conscious to be sure, but only conscious automata. This would seem to be the one possible conclusion from the naturalistic premises, if any conclusion were possible at all. But it also becomes a complete refutation of them the moment we raise an obvious question which Naturalism, owing to its absorption in the material aspect, has entirely overlooked : the question, I mean. How from the standpoint of consciousness is any knowledge of this independent mechanical system to be accounted for ? Or, what comes to the same thing, how from the naturalistic standpoint can it be known that consciousness is concomitant with certain mechani- cal motions ? Agreeably to its contention for the priority of its own standpoint. Naturalism terms the contents of its world phenomenal, and those of consciousness merely epiphenomenal. But now the tangible, visible, sonorous world, the world of external perception — from which the naturalist starts and to which in all his observations and experiments he appeals to verify the applicability of his theory — this world belongs entirely to the epiphenomenal series. So too does every con- cept in his theory as such ; so that his appeal to ex- perience to validate it is but an admission of its con- nexion with the perceptual, the so-called epiphenomenal. In short, awaken the naturalist from his mathematical ecstasy and the ' epi ' at once drops away from our phe- nomena, while his phenomena — since he regards them as independent existences — turn out not to be pheno- PJicuoiucua ami RpipJioioiuciia 7 mena at all On the other hand, if we leave him where we found him. obHvious of the essential implications of experience, and contemplating per iiupossibile a closed system of mass-points in motion, then assuredly the notion that these have dependent, epiphenomenal, con- comitants or 'collateral products' will never dawn upon him. or even admit of statement without contradiction. But a workable interpretation of experience compels us not only to reject this distinction of material phenomena and mental epiphenomena, but to reject also the tacit assumption that our percepts are merely subjective modifications. This whole distinction of phenomenon and epiphenomenon is but the old story of the Cartesian dualism over again. But after puzzling the world for nearly three centuries, it seems — at least as a philosophical tenet — in a fair way to disappear. Make two mutually exclusive halves out of the one concrete world : in the one you will find only your own so-called subjective states and have to become a solipsist ; in the other the organisms you would find there you could call only automata at the best. This brings us to another inconsistency in which Naturalism is involved; for, even if conscious, the automata as part of the continuous mechanism are, as already said, powerless to withstand or to control it : consciousness is only comparable to a shadow that incidentally in some mysterious way accompanies their working. To be sure we seeiii active, ever striving for ends, and the historical world would become meaning- less if we were not. We do not infer this activity : it xs /)ri)iia facie an ultimate and cons itutive fact of our daily experience and of its historiCcd development. 8 Introductory None the less we are asked to believe that it is false, because otherwise the mechanical theory cannot be upheld. Granting then for the moment that our sense of activity is illusory, we have at least in turn the right to ask how the illusion can have arisen. Pure mecha- nical science recognises neither activity nor passivity, but only mass that is inert and motions that are re- versible. But inertia is a negative term and becomes meaningless if we have no experience of activity. Such activity, however, as the historical world implies could not be found in the physical world unless that showed signs of being intelligently directed : but then such evidence could only be appreciated by beings who were themselves active. Moreover that evidence would be fatal to the mechanical theory itself — for a mechanism admitting of direction could not be a closed system — and so with the fall of the theory would fall also the objections to our common-sense conviction that were based upon it. All this however is negative argument; but positive arguments are not wanting. For instance, we say that ' knowledge is power,' and so ' to be forewarned is to be forearmed.' In proof we can point to instances innumerable in which the very knowledge of what in ' the natural course of things ' will inevitably happen is the sure means of falsifying such a forecast. To take the very simplest illustration : lifeless masses do not get out of one another's way as masses under living guidance almost invariably do. Were it otherwise, the actual course of things would be vastly more calculable but would cease altogether to be intelligible. Solely because, though inviolable, what we significantly call the Iticrf Mass and Living Ciitidaiice 9 Maws' of Nature can vet be turned to account, do they deserve the name of laws ; and what Hmits our power is not their indexibihty but our own ignorance. Or again, compare Hving organisms and their pro- cesses, on the one hand, with inanimate objects and the changes that thev undero^o, on the other. We note at once an ever-increasing complexity as we rise in the scale of life, from the a7)wcba say to ourselves ; and also in our artificial products as we rise in the scale of civilisation, say from the African kraal to the European city. The steady downward trend, the katabolic, levelling tendencies attributed to unchecked mechanism we find not merely suspended but reversed wherever there is life and mind. The notions of form, adaptation and control here force themselves upon our notice in contrast to matter and its blind, purposeless collisions. Undeterred by this amazing contrast, however, those who uphold the theory that Nature is really a closed mechanism must, and do, refuse to draw any line : living and lifeless, artificial and natural, are distinctions of no account from the point of view of the mechanical whole : life and mind are the concomitants of certain of its workings but the determinants of none. Still the prevision just now referred to and this sharp con- trast are there, and have to be accounted for sovicliow : to allow that they exactly tally with the presence of life and mind and advance continuously as these advance is but to state the problem, not to soke it. In ])(■ (oniciu with this is as veritable a specimen of what Germans call ' bctcr philosophy' as llic profound remark that great rivers run ihrough i)opLil()Us towns. In th(' first place a series of coincidences .so vast lo Introductory cannot be casual and disconnected ; and yet if the mechanism on the one side is a closed system, the living experience on the other cannot be even its ' collateral product,' as we have already seen. The hopeless impasse of dualism again confronts our naturalist, and he is fain to appeal to metaphysics ;, but the appeal he trusts is harmless, since he only asks for an Unknowable Reality to unite his mechanical phenomena with the psychical epiphenomena that run parallel with them. It is needless to enlarge on the absurdity of such metaphysics: that has been effectively exposed more than once already \ It is enough to note that all this agnostic monism comes to is the admission that there is a connexion and the confession — perhaps I should rather say, the contention — that this connexion is inexplicable. But what precisely is this connexion as a fact, and why is it inexplicable } We must turn to experience for an answer. There we find not indeed a dualism of material phenomena and mental phe- nomena, but a duality of object presented and subject affected, of subject striving and object attained : an interaction that is only inexplicable because for every finite experience it is ultimate — is its basal fact. With this fact of the duality in unity of experience before us we are at the historical standpoint, the stand- point of the concrete and individual. Tracing the gradual development of experience we can see how the distinction between the real and the phenomenal arose, how with the advance of intersubjective intercourse and the growth of language the so-called trans-subjective objects, objects that, so to say, were common property, ^ Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, pp. 127 ff. Experience a duality in unify 1 1 ceased to be regarded as property — or relative to experiencing subjects — at all, while the objects of immediate experience were regarded as the peciilium of the individual and so as not objects at all : in other words, we can see how the psychology of dualism came to shut itself /;/ and the physics of dualism to shut itself out, by sundering the one world of experience into two halves, an internal and an external, both ab- stractions and so both devoid of reality. In particular such epistemological reflexion at once discloses the abstract character of the entire mechanical scheme, to which I have already referred. Again, the light which experience on its practical side throws on the whole process and progress of knowledge is of fundamental importance. We are not simply cognitive beings : moreover, knowledge does not evolve itself, as it were by some purely immanent process, while we merely look on. Even if it may be so unfolded when acquired, its accjuisition is only secured piecemeal, by arduous effort, and many mis- adventures. All this implies motives, implies ends to be attained : we seek knowledge primarily because it proves an aid to more and fuller life. Apart from this its quest would be unintelligible : this brings it within the scope of the realm of ends, hi nail)', if we consider the main structure of knowledge, we hnd that its funda- mental principles of unity, causality and regularity are derived from this standpoint: in other words, the main structure of our concejjt of Nature is entirely anthro- pomorphic. The unity of Nature is the ideal countt-r- part of the actual unity of each individual experience, where synthesis ever j^recetles analysis, and things are 1 2 Introductory only distinguished relatively to each other so long as they are apperceived together by the one subject. The category of causality we owe to the interaction of active subjects with their environment and especially with on.e other, and we attribute it analogically to what we then call the interaction of natural agents. Then as to the regularity of Nature or the universal reign of law, this never has been, and never can be, empirically established, nor does its denial involve any contradiction : that is to say, it is neither demonstrable nor axiomatic. It is a postulate that has its root in our primitive credulity : were this a7iticipatio mentis never confirmed, knowledge would be im.possible ; but con- firmed as it is continually in our earliest experience we thus advance to an interpretatio 7iatiirae as an orderly and intelligible system, a cosmos that evinces directly or indirectly the all-pervading presence of mind. To sum up in words that I have lately used else- where : — "We are active beings and somehow control the movements of the bodies we are said to animate. No facts are more immediately certain than these, and there is nothing in our actual experience that conflicts with them. From these facts we advance to the abstract concepts on the strength of which Naturalism, by a grievous misapprehension of its own standpoint, attempts to question them. Stationed at the very outskirts of the knowable and intent only on the quantitative aspects of things — like those fabulous beings of geometrical romance, the inhabitants of Flatland — it finds impassable barriers which have no existence in the fuller dimensions of concrete ex- perience. But we, orientating from this more central spiritualistic Monism 13 position, may retort upon Naturalism with the words of Goethe, Das Unzulangliche Hier wird's Ereigniss : Das Unbeschreibliche Hier wird's gethan. Having satisfied ourselves, then, that mechanism is not the secret of the universe ; that, if it is to have any meaning, it must subserve some end ; and finding generally that increased knowledge of Nature's laws means increased control of Nature's processes, we accept the facts of experience in which subject and object interact, rather than the conclusions of dualism, that mind and matter are for us two alien worlds and all knowledge of Nature an inexplicable mystery^ " — we accept the spiritualistic standpoint and its Realm of Ends as the more fundamental. I have called this position spiritualistic monism to distinguish it from materialistic monism, which we may disregard as obsolete, and from neutral or agnostic monism, which we may fairly treat as an inept and ineffectual attempt to get round the deadlock of dualism. But if this [josition be indeed the more fundamental, it ought to be possible, it may be urged, to see directly from this standpoint how the appearance of mechanism arises, or at least to make some progress towards accounting for it in terms of life and mind. Un- questionably il ought : and in lact, as we shall presently see, attemj)ts have been specially numerous of late to mf.-et this (h^nand in a mor(; or less scientilic ' Philosophical Orientation and Scientific Standpoints^ Berkeley, California, 1904. 1 4 Introductory fashion. Meanwhile we may remind those who demand of us an explanation of the appearance of mechanism, that, if the term be strictly taken, there need for spiritualism be no such appearance at all. The more completely we can interpret the world as a realm of ends the more completely the tables are turned upon naturalism. As this contends, in the words of Huxley, " for the gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity\" so that, for the gradual banishment of what we call inert stuff and directionless energy. To see how the case stands let us recall the contrast between science and history just now referred to. The first effect of this contrast was the extravagant common- place that history as unscientific had no interest for the philosopher. The final result may be the other extreme, that science as ijeneral and abstract has no interest for the philosopher ; since he is concerned only with reality, and that is concrete and individual out and out. At any rate the thought of the last century made a very decided advance in this direction : in the course of it what were formerly called the descriptive or natural history sciences culminated in the philosophy of evolution, while abstract physics is lapsing, as we have seen, from its old supremacy as the mechanical philosophy to the rank of a merely descriptive scheme". As compared with the nineteenth century the eighteenth — though it produced great historians — was a century devoid of historic sense. Its specula- ^ Collected Essays, Eversley edn, Vol. i. p. 154 2 C p. 166 ^ Cf. Boltzmann, quoted in Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. i. The /lis fori cd/ Method 15 tions concerning the origin of society, of language, of religion, show this. And, as the most recent historian of scientific thought has pointed out, the work of Laplace shows this too. Both his Mt^caniquc ct/estt\ " dealino' with the qreneral laws of motion and of lifeless masses," and his Thcoric dc la Probabilite, "dealing with the arithmetical properties of large numbers of units, leave out of consideration that hidden and mysterious phenomenon [fact] to which alone is attached... all that commands interest in the created world — the e.xistence of individuality\" And yet it was in the latter of these works that Laplace, brushing aside freewill as a palpable illusion, pro- claimed the implicit omniscience of the mechanical theory in a passage that I took for the text of my former lectures". In like manner the belief in fixed and immutable species prevented Laplace's great con- temporary, Cuvier, from appreciating the genetic view of nature, where the supreme importance of the individual first appears as — to quote an expression of Hegel's^ — -'involving the species and genus in itself.' where variation and heredity become the central problems of biology and where the classifications of system-makers cease to be of value save as a pre- liminary clue. I have mentioned Hegel, and — what- ever may be thought of other sides of his philosophy — its value in this connexion can hardly be over- ' J. T. Mcrz, A History of Kuropcan J'/toui^/if in the Nineteenth Century, Vol. i. 1896, p. 124. - It was reserved for ("lerk .Maxwell to point out clearly the inevitable limitation of the La[)lacean data. ('f. his Life by Canipbell and (iarnett as quoted by Merz, op. cit. \'u\. 11. 1902, p. 559. 1 6 Introductory estimated. " If the historical literature of our time," said Zeller, "no longer contents itself with eruditely unravelling or critically sifting traditions, piecing to- gether and pragmatically elucidating particular facts, but seeks first and foremost to understand the funda- mental continuity of events, to comprehend broadly the development of history and the spiritual principles that control it, this advance is due not least to the influences that Hegel's Philosophy of History has exercised^" Now for Hegel human history meant struggle for rational freedom, as for Darwin natural history meant struggle for existence : both are teleo- logical concepts, both imply individual agents and unique events, for both the physical world is pro- visionally a means to ends. The historical method, then, we may say, is altogether the product of the nineteenth century and there we find it claiming " to have invaded and transformed all departments of thought." "A belief in this method," said Sidgwick in the course of a polemic against it, "is the most widely and strongly entertained philosophical conviction at the present day-." Even the negative side of this transformation, the waning of scientific realism, is largely due to the growing conviction of the central importance of the concrete and historical. It is not merely the truth that laws imply agents, nor again the truth that scientific laws are only abstract formulae — what here becomes apparent is that scientific generalisations are an economic device necessitated by our limitations. ^ Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie, p. 824. ^ 'The Historical Method,' Mind, 1886, p. 203. The Passitig of Physical Realism 1 7 But it is to Ernest Mach, a physicist who has turned philosopher, that we owe the most impressive presen- tation of this truth. "In reality," he says, "the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole, but only that aspect of it which is important to us, the rest being either intentionally or from necessity omitted^" If we were capable of that intellectual intuition of which some philosophers have dreamt, there would be no enforced omissions, no intractable residuum, no sundering- of 'that' and 'what' in our knowledge; history would not be left outside science, but rather science be taken up into history. We should not start with the abstract and general, unable to reach the concrete and individual, but being fully acquainted with every individual we should be relieved of the incommensurability of fact and law. Omniscience of this sort would surely bring us nearer to reality than the omniscience of Laplace's imaginary spirit with its completed world-formula. Order there w^ould needs be in such a world, if it is to be a world at all. But ' Mach, ' The Economical Nature of Physics,' Popular Scientific Lectures, p. 193. This necessary Hmitation of discursive thought has led to two distinct hut more or less complementary attitudes towards concrete reality. Elated by the power and precision that generalisa- tion secures, science was encouraged on the one hand to hope that by extending its network of general relations it would at length completely encompass the individual, on the other to despise the particular as mere 'stuff of no account save as it was formed by participation in general ideas. It was mainly the former tendency that led to the phiUjsophic indifference to mere history and experience as unscientific that characterizes Descartes, Bacon and llobbes for example. The latter tendency shows itself in Schoi)enhauer's singularly inconsistent contention that history is a mere hurly-burly ( Wirnvarr), only the accidental form of the appearance of the idea. w. 2 1 8 Introauctory in a realm of ends the order and meaning would be primarily the outcome of the purposes of the active beings composing it : only to discursive intellects such as ours could this order emanating from individual agents appear as a warp and woof of external law shaping some primordial stuff. As naturalism claims to approximate to a complete formulation of this phenomenal order, so spiritualism may claim to ap- proximate to an interpretation of the underlying reality ; but it will have this advantage, that while it may be possible, setting out from mind, to account for mechanism it is impossible, setting out from mechanism, to account for mind. Such an approximation to a spiritualistic inter- pretation we actually have in the history of the living world. Here we are ever in the presence of individual things, from which science indeed sets out, but to which it can never return, individuals marked down by dates and places and actually designated or ad- mitting of designation by proper names\ individuals who have no ' doubles,' whose like all in all we never shall meet again. The events with which we have here to deal are the unique acts and deeds that have their origin in individual centres of experience, not events that seem to occur uniformly as resultants of universal and unvarying law. Further, it is not the intrinsic nature of objects but their value for the par- ticular individual that immediately determines each one's attitude towards them ; and as the individuals vary so do their interests and pursuits. But quidquid petitur petitur sub specie boni : the idea of the good, ^ To which therefore no concept is adequate. TJie Idea of the Good 19 as Plato long- ago taught, is here the supreme category ^ If however there were as many goods as there are individuals and all were disparate and independent, this would not help us much. But the individuals of history are none of them isolated, for though no two be altoijether alike no two are altogether different. So community and co-operation become actual goods, struggle a possible evil calling for readjustment, and the harmonious realisation of individual ends the ideal consummation, the "one far off divine event to which the whole creation moves." Meanwhile the course of history shows us the gradual building-up of society and civilisation and therewith the attainment at each advance of ends that were inconceivable at an earlier stage. But these ever- \videning social groups and ends of ever-increasing scope are still in every case individual and concrete. The subordinate individuals or the particular aims which the wider embrace are still to be reofarded as members or constituents of an articulate whole and not as instances of a general class, in which the content diminishes as the extent increases' ; for in these historical wholes, we must again insist, there is never comjjlete homogeneity of parts. On the contrary, the higher, over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, — politics, industry, science, literature, art — imply a differentiation among men that in spite of its significance would defy classification. The more organized the community the more diverse the individuals il includes, and the more man api^ears ' Rep VI. 505 A. * ('f. Kickcrt, J^ie Grenzen tier natunvissenscluift lichen /ici^riffs- bildung, 1902, p. 394. 2 — 2 20 Introductory as the historical animal. At the same time the reali- sation of these ends invests him, so to say, with a new environment, a metamorphosis of nature, an artificial, humanly created, medium, which throws the immediate environment of the naked and resourceless troglodyte more and more into the background. Entre rhomine et la Nature, said Comte, il fatit Vhumanitd. Still, it will be objected, beyond humanity and history, beyond, if you will, the whole realm of sentient life, Nature is there all the while, and there as no mere background but as the basis of the whole, the fundamental plasma which can only be shaped because it is itself determinate and orderly. Granting this we may yet urge that there is nothing in Nature, when we try to envisage it as a whole, that is incompatible with a spiritualistic interpretation. In the historical world we place determinate agents first, and the order and development which we observe we trace to their action and interaction. It has never been shown that we need, nor made clear that we can, interpret Nature otherwise. One problem of supreme importance to such an interpretation does however arise, and this problem the objection we are considering directly suggests. We have only to an insignificant extent shaped Nature, we have not made it ; we are not even settlers from a foreign clime but aborigines seemingly sprung from the soil. But the principle of con- tinuity is supposed to turn the edge of this ob- jection, and to this principle pampsychism appeals, though it does not rest on that alone. " Nature never makes leaps," said Leibniz. Every organism has its peculiar environment, the simpler the one is the simpler Panipsychisni 2 1 the other will be. Recent knowledge has shown the ransre of life to extend far into the region of what was once regarded as the inanimate, purely physical world, and it has further shown the lowest known orQanisms to be highly complex and extremely varied. But there is nothing- to sugoest that we have reached the limits of life : all we can say is that our senses and the artificial aids and methods of research at present available do not enable us to discriminate between yet simpler forms of life and their environment ; not that these do not exist. There is then, it is contended, no warrant for the assumption of a completely inanimate environment at all : we ought rather with Spinoza to conclude that " all individual things are animated, albeit in diverse degrees\" We ought so to conclude too, because — continuity apart — what can neither do nor suffer, what is nothing for itself, is truly nothing at all ; for — again as Spinoza maintained — every indi- vidual thing, so far as in it lies, endeavours to persist in its own being-. On this, the pampsychist view. Nature thus resolves into a plurality of conative individuals ; and the range and complexity of the correspondence between a given individual and its environment marks the stage to which it has advanced in its interaction with the rest. But to cite Spinoza is to give point l(j the difficulty that has still to be met. Will a plurality of interacting subjects account for itself antl U)x the unity which interaction im[)lics ^ This is the question which in the following lectures we shall have carefull)' to discuss. Suj)pose we decide this question in the nc.-gative, that will woX. affect the ' Ethics, II. I 5, Schol. ' Ethics, in. 6. 22 Introductory main issue as between spiritualism and naturalism : for such ground of the world of living and acting things would — if we should be led to assume it — surely be itself living and acting. In any case then we have a realm of ends, the only question is : — what is its con- stitution, how is its harmony secured ; is it, so to say, a more or less orderly democracy, is it a limited monarchy, or is it possibly an absolute one ? This is none other than the old and formidable problem of the One and the Many ; and this, it has been said, will be the philosophical problem of the twentieth century. Certainly there are few questions more to the fore at the present time. It is fitting then that with this we should begin. But with such a problem much depends on the side from which we begin and the method that we adopt. The great idealistic systems of the nineteenth century began with the One as absolute and adopted what may be generally described as a speculative or a priori method. Of the greatest of these systems, that of Hegel, even its most sympathetic critics have allowed that, however perfect its ideal may be in itself, its attainment is, and must ever remain, humanly impossible. And this verdict, I do not think it audacious to say, is easy to justify : it simply amounts to protesting that we can never transcend ourselves. The first requisite of philosophy is organic coherence : it cannot, so to say, have two independent growing points, and so long as experience is the one there can be no finality about philosophy. As experience advances its meaning will unfold itself to reflexion more and more : so further progress makes further regress possible and what is last in the order of experience brings us nearer to what is first in the TJie question of McfJiod 23 order of knowledge. On experience as it develops the ideal of the pure reason may rise to perish never, but it was certainly not discernible at first ; and if present now, its full meaning is ineffable still. The superlative, the absolute, the infinite are limiting notions, and for aught we know are notions only : ideals of the reason they may be, but then reason itself is an ideal. There seems no end to the process of rationalising experience, but — as I said at the outset — at least there may be progress, and our confidence, that, as Hegel maintained, the real is rational and the rational real may deepen as we proceed. But we must start where we are and continue as we have begun, letting knowledge grow from more to more. To say this is to imply that those idealists who have attempted to begin with the Absolute have not really done so. That they have not has been amply proved by their critics and admitted by their apologists. But at any rate in the flights of pure thought up to the Absolute the atmosphere of empirical fact by which it is sustained is too diffused to be detected, and when that summit is reached the particular, the many, of actual experience tend to disappear or to be explained away. Thus their "alleged independence" — in which we empiri- cally believe — Mr ikadley declares "is no fact, but a theoretical construction ; and so far as it has a meaning, that meaning contradicts itself, and issues in chaos.... The plurality then sinks to become merely an integral aspect in a single substantial unity, and th(? reals [the many] have vanished'." Nevertheless the iiu-vitable reaction, which the impossibility of [)hilosophical finality involves, has already set in : indeed Mr Bradley ' Appiarancc iind h'tnlily, ^rul cdn, p. 143. 24 Introductory prophesied as much: " Monadism," he says, "on the whole will increase and will add to the difficulties which already exists" Whether the second half of his forecast will turn out to be as true as the first remains to be seen. At any rate the plurality of the realm of ends is what is most patent to us at the outset : if the difficulties of Pluralism point the way to Singularism"^ they will at least serve to make the character of the One clearer than any ' cheap and easy monism ' evolved at a dialectical show — such as Mr Bradley in a famous passage has himself described" — can ever do. It will be well too as regards method to let the spirit of the time lead us ; turning aside from what has been described as " Naturalism's desert on the one hand and the barren summit of the Absolute on the other," to follow the historical method as far as possible in tracing the gradual evolution of ideas, but trusting to speculative methods only in the endeavour to divine the most satisfactory solution of the problems to which they gave rise. In the next lecture then we must try to ascertain the genesis of the ideas which lead to the problem of the One and the Many, and then we may proceed to examine the solution which those who are called Pluralists or Personal Idealists uphold. ^ Op. cit. p. iiZ, fin. ^ This term, first used by Kiilpe as the correlative of Pluralism {Einkitung tfi die F/iiiosophie, § 14), may not be happy; but it is after all better than Henism ; and it is not misleading as Monism according to present usage, i.e. with a qualitative as well as a quanti- tative sense, certainly is. Wolf, who invented the term, used it, as I have done, only in the qualitative sense as applicable either to materialism or to spiritualism. ^ Principles of Logic, p. 533. LECTURE II THE ONE AND THE MANY. It is very commonly assumed that idealism or spiritualism is synonymous with theism, or at least inseparable from it. It is true that idealists are rarely atheists, but it would be dogmatism to assert offhand that they cannot be. Still less can we say that if not monotheists, they must be pantheists, in the sense of denying the reality of the w^orld altogether as Spinoza is commonly credited with doing, and so was called by Hegel not atheist but acosmist. Panth^xsm in the sense of identifvincr the world with God is but 'a polite atheism,' as Schopenhauer has said, but such a pantheism is not compatible with idealism. So '' from a world of spirits to a Supreme Spirit is -^l pos sid /e stQ^,'' is all I ventured to say in my former lectures at Aber- deen'; for it is not straightway evident that it is a necessary one. Many of those called pluralists or personal idealists deny the necessity, and some even question the possibility of any such step. — We cannot, of course, admit a multij)licity without any imity. A One of some sort is obviously imj)Ii('d in talking of a world at all ; but may not the Many account for their own unity instead of requiring a One, an individual of ' NatKialiim and Ai^noslicisni, X'ol. ii. |>. 202. 26 The One and the Many another order, to account for them ? May not the unity of the world be analogous to that of a society, so presupposing- the individuals associated ? Or must we assume beyond and above the Many and their unity an Absolute One, of which they are somehow the appear- ance ? This is the problem of the One and the Many to which we have now to turn. A^s an essential pre- liminary to any attempt to deal with it we have agreed first of all to ascertain, if we can, how the ideas of the One and the Many arise in the course of advancing experience and thought. The correlation or duality involved in all experience, that namely of an individual subject and its objective environment, is often described as a duality of Ego and Non-Ego, of Self and Not-Self, But it is important to note, on the one hand, that this objective Not-Self is not presented as another self, but simply as an ' Other,' Also it is equally important to note, on the other hand, that this objective 'Other' has always for ex- perience a certain continuity or unity, which — though it differentiates more and more as experience develops — - never completely disintegrates into a discrete manifold or mere plurality. Again the relation of the subject to this objective continuum is always one of more or less dependence. But the subject, as we have already seen, is not wholly inert : it is always active and selective to some extent ; otherwise, indeed, it could never be aware of its dependence. As experience extends and the objective differentiates, the subject too advances in initiative and acquires new powers ; but never, so to say, overtops and outstrips the Non-Ego. On the contrary, increasing knowledge though it secures in- Nature as the One 27 creasing power also deepens this sense of dependence. Primitive man attempts to subjugate or circumvent Nature bv maL-ic, but science has lonfj since tau^'ht us that our ends of self-preservation and physical better- ment are only to be attained by such adaptation and adjustment as Nature allows. But the advance of Science, it is said, does not merely deepen this sense of our ultimate dependence on Nature, it also tends increasingly to emphasize Nature's complete independence of us. We talk of our life as a struggle, but at least Nature does not deign to struggle with us. We talk of shaping and selecting ; but the further our knowledge of this in- terminable Other confronting us extends, the more inevitable to many seems the conclusion that in truth it is we who are shaped and selected by Nature. Such in brief is die gcliiutertc Naturbet^'achtung dcs denkeiiden N^ahirjuenschcn, as Haeckel calls it ; and the only Absolute One, in which Naturalism believes, is the result. And what ultimately is this Absolute which Haeckel's clarified vision discerns ? It is per- manent substance ; more definitely, it is the kinetic world-ether, whose mass and energy are eternally con- served, and whence the Many result as atomic souls by an inexplicable condensation or concentration. This world-ether is the only 'creative divinity' that Haeckel allows. And Herbert Spencer comes very near to this when, in the recent revision of his First Principles, he suggests that " the only supposiiioii having consistency is that thai in which consciousness inheres is the all- pervading ether'." We have- then here that form of so-called pan\.\\v'\'^\w — in which all lh<- stress is on the ' J'trst J'rincip/ts, 1900, j). 201. 28 The One and the Many 'pan' — the pantheism that maintains — as Schopen- hauer put it — " that the world is there in virtue of its own internal energy and through itself" — a world in which consciousness, according to him, is a secondary and unfortunate episode. But this polite atheism, as I have already said, we cannot accept. Though but a reed, to use Pascal's words, man is a thinking reed, and cannot be merged in or emerge from such a world, however vast it be. Man only knows the world as it faces him and he inter- acts with it, and he knows it only so far as he finds it intelligible. And finding it intelligible he can only con- clude that it is not after all an alien Other but has its ground and meaning either in another self or in a com- munity of selves. This much we are taking as already clear. Let us turn then to consider the idea of the Many, which in fact we reach first and which leads to a concept of the Absolute still older than that of objective substance. The individual subject soon learns to distinguish certain objective differentiations or bodies, in form and behaviour resembling that particular differentiation which is present in all its own experience as the body or organism that it is said to animate. These other bodies it regards as each one animated by a self, and it often finds that it is itself so regarded by them. But such other selves only tell on the individual's experience, because their bodies form parts of the one objective whole that is so far common to them all, and through which all their intercourse and interaction are mediated. That is to say, only the bodies and their movements are presented as objects, the indwelling selves (or souls) and their experiences are not thus The Many as Ejecfs 29 presented. To mark tliis difference we may adopt Clifford's term and call these other selves and their experience 'ejects.' In the infancy of the human race this ejective analogy ran riot : primitive philosophy, if we may credit the untutored savage with such a luxury, found life and mind everywhere. But it was still life or mind set in the matrix of a common environment, pos- sessing always a definite embodiment and location there- in and manifesting itself solely by this means. We can imagine other selves transcending ourselves indefinitely, as we can imagine them indefinitely lower than our- selves, in what we call the scale of being. But if we hold to the continuity which a scale of being implies, we must imagine them all — hicrher and lower alike — as subjects in correlation with objects and not as in them- selves absolute or complete. As Hegel's unfortunate colleague, Beneke, was fond of maintaining in opposition to him : — "The human mind is incapable of devising or excogitating anything absolutely ; on the contrary it must derive either from external or from internal experience the essential elements of all that it imagines or thinks'." ^ {)\\ the lines then of that experience which brings us into communication with our fellow-creatures, the experience that underlies the animism, mythology, and polytheism of primitiv(,' culture, we can at best only imagine an experient who is primus inter pares, at any rate so far as the duality of subject and object is concerned : we cannot reach on these lines the thought of an Absolute One. Even the li\'ing and true (iod, who is the object of worshij; in monotheistic n'ligions, cannot be identified with the Absolute, for worship ini- ' System der Metaphysik, 1840, \^. 496. 30 The One and the Many plies mutual distinction and mutual interest. Moreover the history of religion shows clearly that the idea of a supreme and only God has been developed through polytheism, and has so far an anthropomorphic basis. For "pure monotheism," as Dr Caird has said, "God was merely one subject among other subjects ; and though lifted high above them, the source of all their life, was yet related to them as an external and inde- pendent wilP." But the point on which we have to insist is rather that to be a subject at all, in any sense that we can understand — so long that is as the term subject carries any meaning for us — is to be confronted by an Other as object. A supreme subject then taken alone, no less than the objective World so taken, is y but a one-sided abstraction and cannot be veritably an absolute reality. Certainly, it will be said, the true, the absolute Absolute is not exclusively subjective, still less ex- clusively objective : it is the unity of both. — Mythology had its cosmogony and even its theogony, but in rising towards the idea of a Supreme Spirit, speculative monotheism, at all events, has tended to conceive both God and the World sub specie aeternitatis. The entire*, objective world and the many finite subjects which interact with it or within it, in all their totality and in all their distinctness, are, it is said, to be conceived as eternally present to God as His own creative intuition and self-manifestation. The world is for God too, but not as for us, merely as given fact, but entirely as thought or deed. This sublime ideal is again a limit towards which our thought can only approximate ; and the history of thought shows not only how gradually ^ The Evolution of Religion, 1893, Vol. 11. p- 72. A)iciciit Ideas of Creation 31 the advance towards it has been made : it shows also that difficulties emerge as this ideal is more distinctly conceived. But let us note the steps. All finite beings, we have found, are in part passive and only in part active ; but they appear as increasingly active the higher in the scale of being they stand : God as the Supreme is then to be regarded as purely active and wholly free from external constraint. Whereas ive can only shape and arrange so far as the elements and forces of nature permit, for God there is no nature ; no need for mechanism to transform ' chaos without form and void ' into a cosmos teeming with purpose and life : for him there is only his own creation. But this idea of creation, creation ' out of nothing,' is hard to seize. Not only does the Mosaic account — with its void and formless earth, its primeval darkness and the spirit of Elohim brooding over the waters — fail to reach it ; but the philosophic specu- lations of Plato and Aristotle failed to reach it too. Both recognise a 77iateria prima as a sort of half-real, indeterminate, potential stuff — wholly receptive and yet more or less recalcitrant — to which form and life are imparted, but which itself was never made. All this suggests a generative process, nature but not creation ; indeed Plato, in the Tirnaens at all events, compares this primary matter, as Aristotle called it, to a nurse ox receptacle of all generation'. Such ideas point to a dualism not to an Absolute unity : God and Nature are distinct. And, in fact, both Plato and Aristotle in different ways explicitly separate Nature as the sensible ' (Jf. Timaeus, 49 flf. 32 The One and the Many world from an intelligible world which is the direct object of the divine thought and contemplation. Between the two worlds they fail to establish any satisfactory connexion^ ; but if we leave the sensible world out of account, we have in the Platonic world of ideas and in the divine vor^crt? poijaeco^ of Aristotle a unity of subjective and objective which we may fairly call the Absolute, since it is perfect and complete in itself. Of this the sensible world is a superfluous and imperfect — nay an impossible — replica, that can neither really be nor be really known. And if we are to be in earnest with the notion of creation out of nothing does it not equally eliminate any idea of generation or of reproduction, does it not suggest that sort of eternal ' static perfection ' which such processes as producing, impressing, or in-forming, exclude ? A subject who is achis purus, clear there- fore of all the limitations pertaining to space and time, who apprehends not by sense and comprehends not by discursive thinking, what object can he have which is not himself? Must we not say then that he does not make even out of nothing, for what is made cannot be its Maker ? and yet if the Maker is absolute, what else can it be ? He acts, but his acts are immanent not transeunt : he becomes his own Other only that he may be conscious of himself, and so we call him catisa sui, and interpret this as meaning an absolute self-consciousness. Such at any rate has been the usual outcome of philosophic monotheism : it tends to end in acosmism. Aristotle's position, for example, is summed up by Dr Caird as "the pure self-conscious- ' Cf. Caird, The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, 1904, Vol. II. pp. 238 ff. The One and Acosniis))! 33 ness of God. in which subject and object and the activity that relates them to each other — vovn, 11. i)|». 7^ f. 36 The One and the Many The world-soul is really one term in an emanation to which the very fulness of the Absolute somehow gives rise, but which as little concerns it, as the chance reflexion of its beams affects the effulgence of the sun itself This ingenious analogy of emanation suggested by the solar radiation, though common in ancient thought, is most fully elaborated by Plotinus. As it is the precise converse of the modern doctrine of evolution, this process might be conveniently called devolution ; for as that is a progress from the lower to the hiorher this is a decline from the higher to the lower. With every remove there is not only less perfection but seemingly also more plurality, more diffusion. The vov%, which proceeds immediately from the One, is already beset with the duality that even intuition implies ; the world-soul, which follows next, is necessarily pluralised into particular souls ; each of these in turn is resolved into higher and lower faculties by its relation to the body which it shapes and informs, while this body again is infinitely divisible. Beyond all is matter as mere indeterminate emptiness, dark- ness and evil, the utter contrary in all respects of the absolute fulness, light and perfection of the One. In a word plurality and separation with their broken lights are the marks of imperfection and unreality : our very birth, i.e. the assumption of a body, is in part a sin, in part a punishment ; and the only remedy for this evil lies in a mystic reunion with, and absorption in, the One. We have thus passed in review several ideals of a supreme Unity which speculation, regardless of expe- rience, has elaborated — an Absolute Object, an Absolute Subject, an Absolute Self-consciousness, and various TJie Absolufc as Object or Subject 37 attempts to transcend such duality as consciousness implies. The first two we reject not as being on^ but as being one-sided : since subject and object are essentially correlative, neither alone can be absolute. Still even these ideals point the moral that our whole review suggests — Nulla vestigia retrorsuvi. An absolute reached In' way of abstraction is the lion's den, where all plurality disappears. In what- ever sense you say absolute in that sense you cannot say many. If there were an absolute substance or an absolute subject there could not be many substances or subjects, unless these terms were equivocally used ; as substance for example was by Descartes, and subject by Fichte. And if absolute means perfect and com- plete, why should — nay, how can — what is in itself absolute become splintered up into infinite modes that are neither perfect nor complete .'* We can imagine them as mutually determining each other, but for it they are but ' invulnerable nothings ' with which it has no concern. This is the difficulty that has been specially emphasized by critics of Spinoza. It recurs in a more concrete form, but then as illustrating the one-sidedness of an absolute object, in the naive pro- cedure of such thinkers as Spencer or Haeckel when they jump from a homogeneous plenum or uniform all-pervading ether to the discrete atoms into which it somehrnv has to be, and yet nohow can be, resolved — unless some directing agency or prime mover be forth- coming from without. Similarly the Absolute Ego of Fichte can on!)' be got under way with the help ol an unintelligible Ansloss (or imj^act) determining il to I>osit its non-Iigo. 38 The One and the Many We come then to the ideal of an absolute ex- perience as the unity, it might seem, of Absolute Subject and Absolute Object, an Absolute that is no longer one-sided and without distinctions. But again there can be only one such consciousness, and it must be transparently clear, a light, so to say, in which is no darkness at all. In our experience the contemplation of what we sometimes call the eternal truths of reason and again the intuitive certainty of our consciousness of self come nearest to this ideal. We find accordingly that ancient speculation laid more stress on the former, as in Aristotle's v6-r](Ti% vor](jeoi% ; and modern on the latter, as in Hegel's sich selbst denkende Idee: though both aspects are always present. Outside such an Absolute there can be nothing at all, and within it nothing that is imperfect, mutable or obscure. The more clearly we realise this ideal the more inevitably three conclusions force themselves upon us: (i) Here there is nothing wanting : this intelligible world is perfect and complete in itself, (2) from this tran- scendent standpoint the existence of the finite Many — the sensible world — seems impossible, and (3), granting its existence, the connexion between the two worlds is inexplicable — inexplicable at least apart from assump- tions incompatible with the character of such an ideal. The way upward to this by abstraction and idealisation is comparatively easy — though such methods cannot pretend to yield knowledge ; but the way back has in fact only been possible by means of myths and metaphors, which are not even logically consistent. Not-being or the non-existent is always endowed with some sort of potentiality or receptivity, which Absolute Sclf-Coii scion sjiess 39 ...the One Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through Torturing the unwilling dross, that checks its flight, To its own likeness, as each mass may bear. We talk of creation out of nothinj^. But if the qualification 'out of nothing"' has any meaning at all it implies a transeunt activity on the part of the Creator and a certain lack of reality on the part of the creature — a lack of reality which sinks back to complete unreality when the creature is compared with the Creator, as Meister Eckhart, for example, maintained. But on the other hand what possible meaning can we assign to transeunt activity on the part of the Absolute.-^ If then we emphasize the notion of creation simply and regard the creative activity as purely immanent, then as with Spinoza causa is the same as ratio ; what is said to be created is the intelligible world, where, sub specie aeternitatis, all things follow from the 'nature' of God "in the same way as from the nature of the triangle it follows from eternity and for eternity that its three interior angles are equal to two right angles'." I have referred to the method by which such ideals of the Absolute are reached as a method of abstraction and as, therefore, necessarily defective. It will be well, it possible, to make this clearer. What we may call the three unities of experience, the unity of the subject, the unity of the object, and the unity of both in self-consciousness, are hardly to be questioned. Now the objective side of experience, to begin with that, is always a com[)le.\ or difft^nnitiatcd whole : llu; more ' Ethics^ I. xvii. note. 40 The One and the Many primitive the experience the fewer, the simpler, and the vaguer the differentiations ; but an objective continuum wholly devoid of diversity would yield no experience. Yet such a homogeneous whole is just what we reach by abstracting first from all the quali- tative differences of particular bodies, and then from their particularity or discreteness : in place of an ordered cosmos there then remains only a continuous plenum, as in the Cartesian concept of matter or the modern concept of a primordial ether. Mistaking abstraction for simplification, we call that absolute which is really only above all relations because it is completely indeterminate. As we have already seen, the cosmos or concrete whole cannot be called absolute, if we regard it as what is experienced, that is as ob- jective; but this abstract resolution of it into an aireipov escapes such one-sidedness, only because this cannot be objective. Turning to the ideal of an Absolute Subject, we find that this again is reached by an abstract pro- cedure, though a different one. Generalisation up to an ideal limit is out of the question here ; instead of that we have one phase of the empirical subject selected and made absolute. Ignoring the receptive side of experience altogether we try to conceive a pure activity. In Fichte's phraseology, Gegenstand implies Widerstand, object implies opposite : a subject then for whom there can be no opposition is one for whom there can be no object, no other. It again escapes the charge of one-sidedness only because such an Absolute, though called by Fichte an Ego, is no subject in any sense that we can understand, as Fichte was careful to maintain. Finally, the ideal of an The Absolufc reac/icii by Abstract ion 41 Absolute experience is reached by abstraction, whether we regard its contents as the intelhgible world of eternal ideas or as the identity of subject and object in self-consciousness. The Platonic system of archetypal ideas or eternal patterns is after all for our experience not independent of the many nor \W\or to them, but is simply a systeni of abstractions resulting from such comparisons, generalisations, and analogies, as the sensible world itself sufjcjests to us. A consciousness again which is self-consciousness and nothing more, which is solely and completely a 'self-revelation.' whose whole content is self — self explicated in self and through self and for self, such a consciousness is from the point of view of experience an abstraction. A part of such experience as we can understand is taken for the whole ; for we are never conscious of self save as we are conscious of not-self. The two factors are analytically distinct but not actually separable : so far then self-consciousness alone seems to be an abstraction. If we nevertheless elect to reijard this ideal as the sole and ultimate reality there seems no place left for finite experients and the sensible world, as I have already urged. And not merely so, but the impulse to pass beyond multiplicity to unity, to which we have so far yielded, carries us on to a final simplicity beyond all explication, where mysticism hails ' Naught as every- thing and everything as Naught' If on the other hand, keeping U) ex{jerience, we admit the abstract character of this ideal, then we have the i)roblem of the unity ot the many still ow our hands. liui what s(jrt of unity can we reach if we refrain fnjm all attempts absolutely to transcend the Many } 42 The One and the Many A mere totality or aggregate is obviously no true unity, even though we could know — which is, in fact, im- possible — that it was an absolutely totality. Some community or reciprocity there must be : the question is how little will suffice. It seems clear that either each must be connected with all in at least one way or that all must be so connected with some one. There must be either a universal principle directly relating all or a supreme, though not absolute, individual, to whom all are related. The latter will imply the former, so far as through their common relation to the Supreme One all would be related — though it were only indirectly — to each other. But the converse will not hold; that is to say, the direct relation of all to each other will not necessarily imply a Supreme One. Of such a funda- mental and universal relation we have an instance according to the atomic theory in universal gravitation. But of course in a realm of ends the universal relation can only be analogous to this in the one aspect of being universal : the two cannot be identified — though they may be related. Empirical evidence of such a universal relation there can hardly be : we are left then to assume it and to frame some more or less hazardous hypothesis as to its nature. I say nothing for the present of any difficulty besetting the idea of an absolute plurality of any sort, a plurality of beings only relatively dependent and therefore relatively independent — independent, that is, so far as their bare existence is concerned. This, on our present supposition, has to be taken as a fact. The idea of a Supreme One cis, primus inter pares again can hardly admit of empirical verification : the very supposition seems to involve an empirically unattainable The vacilliifiou of Theology 43 limit. If we nevertheless make believe that in 'pure thoLU'ht " this limit is attained and ask how we are to represent the relation of all to this Supreme One, the old ideal Absolute again looms upon us and threatens to absorb the Many altowther. We may recoil from this and say : There might have been an Absolute, provided there had been no Many, but holding to the reality of these we can regard God as supreme, but not as absolute : then we seem to save the Many, but we have only a ' finite God,' or rather the idea of one. Thus we seem shut up to what looks like a choice of evils. Without an Absolute One it seems hopeless to attempt to account for, and hazardous to attempt to unify, the Many ; and with such an Absolute it seems as hopeless to attempt to retain what independence and freedom the Many 2o^y^ifdiX pi'wia facie to possess. And this seemingly inevitable perplexity shows itself throughout the history of religion in a constant alter- nation between first claimino: and then abdicatin^r a distinct position for Man over against God. Think. for example, of the counter doctrines of Augustine and Pelagius and the controversies to which both in ancient and modern times they gave rise. Or again take the vast literature of religious mysticism, from which one instance may suffice: — Rckhart who said: Couldst thou annihilate thyself for a moment thou wouldst possess all that God is in himself, also said, " I am as necessary to God as God is necessary to me." In this connexion I am glad of an opj)ortunity of quoting Mr I'radh-y, fnjm whose main position I ain toned to dissent. "Religion," h(; says, " prefc-rs to put forth statements which it feels are untenable, and to correct 44 The One and the Many them at once by counter-statements, which it finds are no better. It is then driven forwards and back between both, Hke a dog which seeks to follow two masters We may say that in religion God tends always to pass beyond himself. He is necessarily led to end in the Absolute, which for religion is not God. God, whether a ' person ' or not, is, on the one hand, a finite being and an object to man. On the other hand, the con- summation, sought by the religious consciousness, is the perfect unity of these terms [the Absolute and God]. And, if so, nothing would in the end fall outside God. But to take God as the ceaseless oscil- lation and changing movement of the process, is out of the question. On the other side the harmony of all these discords demands... the alteration of their finite character. The unity implies a complete suppression of the relation, as such ; but, with that suppression, religion and the good have altogether, as such, dis- appeared. If you identify the Absolute with God, that is not the God of religion. If again you separate them, God becomes a finite factor in the Whole. And the effort of religion is to put an end to, and break down, this relation — a relation which, none the less, it essen- tially presupposes. Hence, short of the Absolute, God cannot rest, and, having reached that goal, he is lost and religion with him\" In the history of philosophy again we find the same perplexing alternation between asserting and denying a position for the Many incompatible with the absolute- ness of the One : we find this not only in the form of a reaction from absolutism to pluralism in successive ' Appearance and Reality, pp. 446 f. Altenuitious of Speculation 45 thinkers but what is more remarkable we tind it — and find it invariably — within systems of philosophy that are avowedly philosophies of the Absolute. And yet in truth it is not remarkable, for it could not really be otherwise. Ex vi tci'mini, there can be no reality distinct from the Absolute. But if A', J' and Z assert this absolute Reality they must thereby distinguish themselves from it, and even distinguish themselves the more the more distinctly they seek to realise their own inclusion within it. To deny their own individual reality at such a time is out of the question further, because only through this have they any notion of realit)- at all. But at other times they easily forget it ; as the naturalist, for example, forgets the subjective implications of experience when engrossed in its objects. Nay, they even assume, once the summit of their speculation is attained, that their necessary starting- point, the distinct reality of the Many, is transcended and annulled. But the feat of kicking" down the ladder by which you have climbed is logically possible only when the conclusion reached is at once a necessary consequence of the premises and also in itself absurd. No doubt there is always the semblance of a purely a ^r/i7rz procedure in most philosophies of the Absolute: the entire construction claims to be the work o{ pure thought, true independently of all finite e.xperience. But l^escartes' Cogito ergo sum, the proposition round which, as Hegel said, the whole of modern philosojjhy revolves', is in this connexion past all cjuestion. And hitherto all attempts, starting from the Absolute to respect the Many as this proposition demands, have ' Encyclopaedia, % 64. 46 The One and the Many proved unavailing. The reality of the Many is either flatly contradicted as by the Eleatics ; or it remains inexplicable as with Spinoza or Hegel. Thus Spinoza, who begins with an absolutely infinite, that is inde- terminate, Substance, ends with a conative Many mu- tually determining each other. Again with Hegel, the Absolute seems at one time to be a perfect Self with no hint of aught beside or beyond its own completed self-consciousness, and at another not to be a self at all, but only the absolutely spiritual, — art, religion and philosophy — the over-individual ends, as they are sometimes called, which become realised in subjective spirits : not self-conscious Spirit but simply the im- personal Spirit in all spirits. Thus, as it has been said, "both philosophy and religion bear ample testimony to the almost insuperable difficulty of finding room in the universe for God and man. When speculation busies itself with the relation of these two, each in turn tends to swallow up the other. The pendulum of human thought swings con- tinually between the two extremes of Individualism [or Pluralism] leading to Atheism, and Universalism [or Absolutism], leading to Pantheism or Acosmism^" This reaction is most pronounced when, as has continually happened, the defects of an absolutist philosophy have given rise to an avowed pluralism or even naturalism. Such after Hegel's death was conspicu- ously the case in the speculation of the Hegelian left, as Strauss called it. So Feuerbach describes his seces- sion from the Hegelian school by saying "God was my ^ Pringle-Pattison, Hegelia?iism and Personality, ist edn, p. 153 fi>i. TJie Start from Ptura/isin 47 first thought, reason my second, man my third and last." For him afterwards however Man is the beginning, the middle and the end of religion : theology is thus at bottom anthropology: through social intercourse man attains to self-consciousness, to reason and morality, and the divine is but the idealisation of the best and highest. Hegel's positions then are to be inverted : we must sav not that the Absolute is self-consciousness, but that self-consciousness is the Absolute ; not that God is love but that love is God, and so forth. — The rii2:orous pluralism of Herbart again is to be regarded as in lartre measure a rebound from the absolutism of his teacher Fichte. Still more markedly was the Monad- ology of Herbart's forerunner, Leibniz, a recoil from the pantheism or acosmism of Spinoza. Spinoza's one substance, essentially indeterminate — every determina- tion being for him a negation — is incompatible with even the imagination of finite things severally striving for self-conservation and mutually determining each other ; incompatible with the drama of man's bondage and eventual freedom, for example, which is the main theme of Spinoza's Ethics. Leibniz then takes his notion of conation in thorough earnest and defines "substance as an individual agent." "Were it not for the monads," he allowed, " Spinoza would be right." The mediaeval controversies about universals and the principle ol individuation are at bottom instances of the same reaction, and finally the ancient atomism of Leucippus and Dem(jcritus was a revolt against the Eleatic singularism. ()lni()usl)- ihc pcrciniial renewal (jf this conflict Is a sign that pluralism has e(|ually failed lo reach a 48 The One and the Many satisfactory solution of the problem of the One and the Many. We must allow, as Adamson has said, that no philosophy has ever managed to reconcile these two notions of an infinite power and of an infinite variety of limited individualised expressions of that power\ But at all events as regards method the teaching of history seems clear : the solution is not to be obtained by passing over the Many at the outset trusting to deduce them afterwards from an absolute one that is reached a priori. This method has proved itself illusory : the seeming attainment of the One has meant the disappearance of the Many. Against pluralism it can only be urged that it fails or has so far failed to account for the unity that it in fact involves — the unity of individual experience as enlarged by inter- subjective intercourse. But at all events it is, I trust, clear that we cannot begin by ignoring pluralism altoofether. 't> ^ The Development of Modern Philosophy, 1903) i- P- io7- LFXTURE III. PLURALISM. The most striking characteristic of the nineteenth century, so far as philosophical speculation is concerned, was, as we have already noted, the predominance of what we may call Absolutism or Singularism as presented by such different thinkers as Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and others less distinguished. In the lull which followed upon the common collapse of these various forms of Absolutism the rapid advance of scientific knowledge brought Naturalism or Physical Realism for a time to the fore. But the insufficiency of this physical realism to bear the strain put upon it is at length becoming apparent ; and so the necessity of interpreting nature in terms of mind is again widely recognised. But the recoil from Absolutism still per- sists ; and accordingly the twentieth century opens with the attemijt to work out the idealistic interpretation not in the old way as essentially a devolution of the One, but rather — as far as possible — to represent it as an evolution of the Man)-. In England, in America, in France, even in Ciermany — once the stronghold of Absolutism — systems of pluralism, more or less pro- nounced, are rife. It is hardly practicable and would certainl)' be tedicnjs to examine ihem scparatel)' .iiid in detail. We shall get a bdicr insight iiUo the new movement il we try to secure distinct ideas of its main w. 4 50 Phtraiisju standpoint and its salient features, even though in so doing we have to play the dangerous part of eclectics and attempt to frame a composite synopsis of the toiU ensemble, a sort of Galtonian portrait or generic image of the group. The pluralistic standpoint in the main is that historical standpoint which we have already contrasted with the naturalistic. But the ordinary historian is content to recognise Nature as indispensable, so far at least as it is the scene and provides the properties of the drama. But this contrast pluralism claims altogether to transcend. To the distinction of person and thing, of nature and history, it allows only a relative value. — Still we shall best realise the position of pluralism by first attending exclusively to the interaction of living agents in the world commonly recognised as historical; and then, as far as we can and as well as we can, attempting to apply the concepts we derive from this to the interpretation of the world commonly regarded as physical, the phenomena of which science has succeeded in abstractly formulating in terms of matter and motion. Of these concepts perhaps the most characteristic is that of behaviour or conduct. Be- haviour is a term appropriate only to what is individual and unique, and is not a mere instance of law and uniformity. No one would ordinarily speak of the be- haviour of falling bodies ; for, in merely gravitating, bodies display no special character. But we might speak of a ship or a balloon as behaving well or ill : such things have a certain individuality and so receive a proper name. /^^r^{?/?/r^ the term individuality always implies behaviour. Indeed whenever it is worth while hidiviiiiiality am/ Behaviour 51 to give a proper name it is possible also to assign a definite character. Thus Goldsmith talks of "the lazy Scheldt" and the ''wandering Po." Now pluralism assumes that the whole world is made up of individuals, each distinguished by its characteristic behaviour ; but ot course it does not find its real individuals in the rough and ready way of popular impersonation : it would not regard a mountain or a river as a person. Conduct or behaviour implies always some objective or external situation as the occasion for every mani- festation of activity, but never as its sole and complete dctei'minant. There is always some subjective spon- taneity or initiative, but there is never any absolute or unconditional activity. Thus, in spite of the ety- mological identity of atom and individual, pluralism has nothing in common with atomism beyond the bare fact that both recognise a many ; for the atom is credited with no spontaneity and is completely deter- mined from without. Atom and individual or monad are then contraries and cannot be identified or really combined. The so-called interaction of atoms will not account for the contingency displayed in the world : l)ut what we know as the conduct or behaviour of cognitive and conative individuals may, it is contended, explain both the contingency and the uniformity that we find there. But, before we proceed to consider at more length this attempt of pluralistic spiritualism thus to interpret the world, it will be w(;ll first to incjuire what we are to understand by an individual or one of the man)-, and what by the unit)' that even their plunilit)' implies. Of course we cannot start at llic beginning, for that 4—2 52 Pluralism is not where we are. How far towards a hypothetical beginning the principle of continuity will reasonably carry us is just one of the questions we have to decide. But we must start, where alone reflexion on experience can arise, at the level of self-consciousness. We have already seen that singularistic spiritualism or absolutism really commenced its speculative flight from this level, and pluralism is in no better position. I n self-conscious- ness we attain to the explicit knowledge of that duality of self and not-self, of subject and object, without which experience ceases to have any meaning for us. The self of which we are conscious, then, furnishes us with our first paradigm of what we are to understand by the individuals of our plurality. It is assumed that there exists an indefinite variety of selves, some indefinitely higher, some indefinitely lower than ourselves. But even the highest, if there be a highest, will, it is assumed, be only primtis inter pares, one among the many, and not an Absolute reallv includinq- them all. Even the lowest also will possess whatever be the irreducible fjiininiuni essential to being in any sense a subject or self at all. Such minimum implies behaviour directed towards self-conservation or self-realisation. An individual no doubt is often defined as something that cannot be divided without being destroyed, as a clock for instance. But such things are not true individuals or selves: a clock has no interest in, or impulse towards, its own conservation. — Self-conservation alone however, strictly taken and re- garded as everywhere realised, would result in nothing better than a static world, in which there would be no new events and no history. Such a state as final would Self ami Self-consenuifion 53 correspond to the complete rest and quiescence with which, according to Spencer's law of equilibration, the drama of evolution must close. As an initial state it would correspond to Leibniz's pre-established harmony contemplated from without, if that were possible: there would be no interaction between individual and in- dividual. But the actual world, as our own experience teaches us, is full of cross-purposes ; and therefore self- conservation in general calls for effort and perseverance. — But though self-conservation implies the viininmm to be striven for, self-development or realisation is still the aim of many, and was perhaps at the beginning the aim of all. Any advantage gained, though it be merely the result of good fortune, will not usually be passively surrendered : its loss would be a painful con- traction. Thus a new standard, so to say, of the self to be conserved would be reached. It is plain then that when we talk of self-conservation the main stress is not to be laid on the bare conservation of some metaphysically simple entity, such as the soul of the old rational psychologists. \\'hat is meant is rather the maintenance of the most advantageous position attained by the actual .self in relation to the world as a whole. This implies that each one is in touch with all the rest collectively and w ith some more specially. As I have expressed it elsewhere, there is for every subject one totiim objectivu7n, which, save in the limiting case, which would answer to an inconceivable beginning of ex- j>erience, will be more or less difft^rentiated. liy way ot summar\' it may suffice to say that the well-known Monadoloi^y of Leibniz may be taken as the type, to which all modern attempts to construct 54 Pluralism a pluralistic philosophy more or less conform^ But the theology on which Leibniz from the outset strove to found his Monadology, is, in the first instance at all events, set aside ; and in particular his famous doctrine of pre-established harmony is rejected altogether. The positions retained are first, that every monad 'perceives"^ every other, secondly, that every monad is appetitive, seeking pleasurable situations, or at least shunning painful ones. In other words, for every monad the totality of the remaining monads constitutes its objective world, in which continuously changing situations result through the persistent endeavours of each to conserve or improve its position. Each, so far as in it lies, is to be conceived as 'proving all things and holding fast that which is good.' Finally, every system of thoroughgoing pluralism accepts the Leibnizian prin- ciple of continuity, at least to the extent of maintaining that there is no infinite gap, no complete diversity be- tween, one monad and another, a principle against which the Leibnizian theology itself offends. We may now proceed to consider the pluralistic schemes as exhibited in the world we ordinarily call ' historical.' Let us imagine a great multitude of human beings, varying in tastes and endowments as widely as human beings are known to do, and let us suppose this multitude suddenly to find themselves, as Adam and Eve did, in an ample Paradise enriched sufficiently with diverse natural resources to make the attainment of a high civilisation possible. At the outset each ' Cf. his Nouvemix Essais, iv. § 21, and the excellent summary in Hoffding's History of Philosophy. ^ In the Leibnizian sense, that is to say. The Historical ll'orhl 55 must needs fend for himself, selecting the vocation and habitat best adapted to his liking and capacity which chance or his superior competitors left open to him ; though liable to be afterwards ousted by others less favoured in their first lot, but more capable of turning their experience to good account. "On all hands adventure and misadventure," so at the outset we might sum up the whole : the chapter of accidents would seem to be the first chapter of this history, and Fortune with her rudder or wheel the only power to be clearly discerned. In other words, to a reflective spectator at this stage nothing would be more impressive than the contrast between the stability of their natural sur- roundings on the one hand and the instability of this striving multitude on the other. But gradually this contrast would become less striking. The fittest would tend to rise in the struggle and partly to exploit and control, partly to educate the rest. Custom and imitation would more and more determine the be- haviour of the less gifted majority, while the inventions and discoveries of the gifted few would tend in the end to improve the condition of all. Cooperation and division of l;il)f)ur would compass results impossible to individual enterprise, and would at the same time entail a more intimate dependence of each one on his fellows. — The ever accumulating traditions and products of the past would afford a steadily progressing vantage ground f»f wisdom and w(.'alth for each succeeding age and a corresponding security against th(.' vicissitudes of earlii-r times. in short, in j)lac(; of an incoherent iniiltitudc, all seemingly acting at random, we should ha\'e a social .md economic organization, every member of which 56 Pluralism had his appropriate place and function, while the ever increasing coincidence of private ends and public ends would tend continually to enhance the unity of the whole. Turning to the biological world, and regarding the several species of living forms as so many plastic individuals, we should find at an early stage a similar contrast between the continuity and stability of the physical environment and the mutual isolation and ceaseless variation of an indefinite multitude of more or less elementary organisms. And again we should find this contrast gradually diminish ^js,, pari passu with the advance of certain forms of life to a higher level of development, what are known as bionomic adaptations came more and more into play. — The primary forms of life apparently are the so-called prototrophic bacteria, lowly organisms which have the power of working up non-living into living materials. But these have no such direct relation to, or concern with, other living- beings as all the higher forms of life have and have to an increasing extent the higher in the scale they stand. It would be tedious to attempt to describe, for example, the wide range of such dependence even in the case of :?/«civilised man : the bare enumeration of the many plants and animals indispensable to man in the present state of civilisation would be practically impossible. And all these plants and animals, it must be remembered, depend in turn and in manifold ways on others. Half 'the romance of natural history' lies in such bionomic facts. Think of the many curious adjust- ments between special plants and special insects on which the very existence of both depends, the plant preparing food for such insects as are fitted to pollinate The Biological JJ\^yh'l 57 its flowers. Or agrain take the wonderful instances of mimicrv bv which animals make shift to evade their enemies or delude their prey ; or the complicated division of labour prevailing among certain colonies of ants and bees ; or, finally, those intimate partnerships between distinct species to which the name of symbiosis has been given, where In numerous cases the association is so intimate that the very life of both participants depends upon it. Readers of the Origin of Species will recall how Darwin illustrates the wide range of this correlation of organisms from the connexion of cats and red clover through the intervention first of mice and then of bees. The humble-bees fertilise the clover but "the number of humble-bees in any district depends in great measure on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests," but again ''the number ot mice is largely dependent, as every one knows, on the number of cats": and thus the cats by keeping down the mice promote the increase of the clover. Similar illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely. Perhaps the most impressive of all is the great length of what are called ' nuiriti\e chains'; under which head we may include the reciprocity that is maintained between plants and animals. Plants alone are able to assimilate inorganic matter : hence in a physiological .sen.se it is true that ' all flesh is grass,' for the food of all animals either consists of vegetables or is ultimatcl)' derived from them. On the other hand plants decom- pose the carbon dio.xide which animals e.xhale, and thus restore to the atmosphere th(; o.xygen which animals need to breathe. " .Some of the fresh-water fishes in a pond," one naturalist points out, "depend upon the 58 PlMralisni supply of small crustaceans (copepods, etc.), and these again [depend] on much minuter organisms (infusorians, diatoms, etc.), and these again, to some extent, on the bacteria which cause the putrefaction of the dead organic matter." Another "has shown that even on the high seas bacteria are present, playing their usual part of 'middlemen between death and life' by transforming dead organic matter into inorganic substances which can be used again by plants^" We may then fairly allow that there is a close parallel between the develop- ment apparent in the economic aspects of human history and that apparent in the bionomic aspects of natural history. As in the former so in the latter we find a multitude of comparatively isolated and independent units gradually advancing, by the survival of the fittest among innumerable random variations, towards the realisation of ' a vast and complex web of life,' whose myriad fibres are all intertwined, though every one is unique. If now, from the external correlations of organisms to each other, we pass to the internal correlations within each organism, or from bionomics to what might possibly be called physionomics, we note again the same progress from relatively independent parts, barely conjoined and hardly differentiated, to highly specialised organs intimately associated together in a single living whole. ' Loose colonies ' of sinHe-celled oro-anisms are supposed to bridge the gulf between separate uni- cellular, and individual multi-cellular, organisms ; the transition beginning with diminished competition and in- creased co-operation among the relatively unspecialised ^ J. Arthur Thomson, The Scktice of Life, p. 1 93. Biouoiiiics ciihi F/iysiononiics 59 cells of each colony'. But the specialisation of function and consequent individuality to be found at first is very slight. The common hydra may be halved with im- punity so that each segment will restore its missing half, but we cannot in this fashion make two bees or two froijs out of a sincrlc mature one. Or aoain the hydra may be turned inside out and, unless forcibly prevented from resuming its natural shape, will even- tually right itself and once more become normal. Ob- viouslv no such liberties could be taken with an animal in which more definite sense-organs, limbs, and viscera had been developed. As in bionomics then so in physionomics: every advance entails greater restriction and specialisation of function, but also greater perfection — a more intimate mutual dependence and a closer consensus of members in a more complicated whole. Though the facts of bionomics and physionomics are most readily described as they are presented, that is to say in objective terms, they are, we may hold, only to be intelligibly interpreted like the facts of economics and social interaction ; as implying, that is to say, percipient and conative subjects behaving as severally or jointly intent on self-conservation and betterment. It is easy throughout to recognise more or less striking evidence o{ experiences discriminated, retained, and turned to account. lUit now the problem has to be faced of interpreting the inanimate world in like fashion. There we can discern, prima facie at all events, no signs of active striving or selective preference or pro- gressive organization ; there wv, liiid no unicpie indi- ' Cf. (iLcJdts and 'I'homson, 7'//<' Evolutiun of Sex, pp. 57, SS fT., 3'off. 6o Pluralism viduals, no competing purposes to be adjusted, no tentative efforts to be followed at length by success. First and last, everywhere and always, there seems to be only fixity and uniformity. This is a serious crux for the pluralist, let us see how he may deal with it. First it is to be noted that in the historical world the progress and development of some societies, species and individuals halt at a certain point, so that a stationary state is reached in which custom, instinct and habit are supreme. Among societies we find savage peoples still as backward as the primeval men of the stone age, and we find others as advanced as the Chinese, who nevertheless have remained stationary for thousands of years. Again some existing forms of life, — such as the Nautilus or the Lamp-shell — so-called ' persistent types,' have remained practically unaltered almost from the beginning of the geological record, while others — as the horse or the dog, for example — have progressed remarkably within a period that is by comparison recent. And as there are some individuals who are restless, enterprising and inventive to the end of their days, so there are others who early become supine and contented, the slaves of custom and hide- bound with habits, individuals whose chief concern is to avoid disturbance and let well alone. The simpler their standard of well-being and the less differentiated their environment the more monotonous their behaviour will be and the more inert they will appear. Now it is to be noted that the environment, resolved into its ultimate constituents, is by the pluralist assumed to be, as Leibniz taught, substantially the same, for all percipients, consisting, in fact, of the percipients them- B ion on lies and P/iysiononiics 6i selves. But the degree and the extent to which clcar and distinct perception is reached and retained, in other words the differentiation of the environment for a particular monad, will be proportionate to the organi- zation which it possesses and controls. It is thus not unreasonable to suppose that the gradation found within the known world of life extends indefinitely below it. If then certain of the simplest forms of life that we can detect have persisted throughout the gradual evolution of higher and higher forms ; and not merely so but if, further, the existence of such higher forms depends on that ot lower, may we not fairly suppose that beyond our ken there are still simpler and more primitive forms capable of existing independently of the lowest that we know, and yet at the same time essential, and therefore prior, to the existence of these ? Such an assumption is akin to the bold hypothesis so confidently advanced by Leibniz in a well-known passage of his Monadology. " Each portion of matter," he says, " may be conceived as a garden full of plants and as a pond full of fish. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its juices is also some such garden or pond. And, although the earth and the air separating the i)lants of the garden or the water separating the fish of th(' pond, be neither plant nor fish, nevertheless they also contain plants and fish but [these] for the most part tO(j minute l(j be perceptible by us'." On ih(; important point just mentioned, Leibniz however does not insist. Though the elements, earth, air and water are essential U'> \.\\v plants and ih<- |)laiits ' Monadolo}^^ ^ 67, 68. 62 Pluralism to the animals, the converse does not hold. Apart from parasitic and symbiotic forms, low-grade organisms do not require the presence of more developed organisms within their environment; and even if these are present, they do not bulk as differentiations of the environment for them, as they do for others higher in the scale. But at every stage the correlation of percipient and environment will still be found ; every order of plants or fish will have their appropriate garden or pond, which over against them is by comparison passive, whilst they over against it are by comparison active. It is this activity, this more or less spontaneous be- haviour, that according to Leibniz determines the character of every monad. From the physical stand- point it seems frequently possible to isolate special forms of matter, so that they remain chemically un- altered for an indefinite time. According to Leibniz's view what is done is only on a par with what the biologist might do by isolating a number of Protista in a globe of water. Let all the water evaporate and the life of its inhabitants is suspended and perhaps ex- tinguished. That some analogous change would not befall the said substances if all the rest of the universe should disappear, I take it no physicist would venture to say. The pampsychist, holding fast to the principle of continuity, maintains — I again repeat — that at all events there are no things wholly inert, devoid of all internal springs of action, and only mechanically related to each other. In a world of such things motion, that is to say change, would be impossible save through the intervention of a transcendent cause or prime mover. This difficulty, which the physicist allows, is, it is /s there an Iiimiiiiiafe J J 'arid? 63 contended, only to be escaped by regarding matter in more or less Leibnizian fashion, as but the manifestation of the interaction of perceptive and appetitive monads or entelechies. The attractions and repulsions of which the physicist speaks only metaphorically are, so the pampsychist maintains, to be taken literally, that is as implying impluses initiated and determined by feeling. Empedocles speculating in the fifth century B.C. is to be hailed as 'the Newton of organic nature,' for his principles of love and hate, Nature's W^ahlvernjandtschaften, or 'elective affinities,' have made the whole world kin'. Now, if we are prepared to admit that this pam- psychist or monad istic theory is hi itself at least per- fectly conceivable and consistent, of a piece with and analogous to what we know and understand best, then it is contended in the next place that the facts which s^itxw prima facie to make against it can be readily and reasonably explained. First of all we can all think of numberless instances in which what is sensibly simple and homogeneous is really extremely complex and heterogeneous. In fact we may fairly say that there is perhaps no case in which — either directly by closer inspection or indirectly by inference — we do not find some difference between objects that seem to be (juali- ' Haeckcl, Die ire/iriU/isel, 1900, pp. 259, 454. ( "f. Rcnouvier, Le Personnalismi\ 1903, p. 500. Also ZoUncr, Die Natw der Kometen, 3"= Aufl. pp. 1 13 ff. "All the work performed by natural being.s," says Zollner, "is determined by feelings of pleasure and pain, and that too in such a manner that the motions within a closed field of phenomena are related as they would be if they were carrying out the unconscious purpose of reducing the painful feelings to a minimum " (p. 1 19).— A view adopted by biologists, such as Niigeli, and probably Keinke and Driesch, and by jihilosophers such as Paulsen and \\ iiiidt. 64 Pluralism tatively and quantitatively the same. There seems then to be ample warrant a posteriori for the principle ad- vanced on a prio7d grounds by Nicholas of Cusa and afterwards endorsed by Leibniz. "There is nothing in the universe," said the former, "that does not enjoy a certain singularity, which is to be found in no other thing\" In his correspondence with Samuel Clarke Leibniz wrote : — "There are no two indiscernible in- dividuals. A clever gentleman of my acquaintance, talking with me in the presence of Madame the Electress [of Hanover], thought that he could easily find two leaves entirely alike. The Electress challenged him to do so, and he went up and down a long time seeking in vain. [Even] two drops of water or of milk looked at through a microscope will be found to be diverse. This is an argument against atoms, which not less than a vacuum are repugnant to the principles of true metaphysics"." But the modern pluralists do not usually follow out the principle of continuity as rigorously as Leibniz did. They hold with him that "there are never two beings which are perfectly alike and in which it is not possible to find an internal differenced" But they do not usually maintain and indeed from their purely em- pirical standpoint they could not maintain that there is an actual infinity of monads. In particular they are in no way bound to assume that there are real beings corresponding to any concepts the physicist may find ^ On Nicolaus Cusanus as a precursor of Leibniz see Latta, Leibtiiz, The Monadology, etc., 1898, p. 222 n. and the references there given. ^ "Quatrieme Ecrit a Clarke," Opera, Erdmann's edition, p. 755. ^ Monadology, % 9. The Principle of Confijiiiify 65 it convenient to frame regarding the ultimate consti- tuents of matter. Otherwise indeed, should the theory that matter is but a modification of the ether beconie established, that, it might be argued, would put an end to pluralism altogether, ether being real and not phe- nomenal. Pluralism in fact, as we have already seen, has no status at all save as a form of idealism or spiritualism : for it matter can only be phenomenal, it cannot be real. The tendency of science is to diminish the seeming variety of the world and ultimately to eliminate it. Qualities in the end are to be resolved into diverse arrangements of prime atoms, corpuscles, or electrons, differing in nothing but their positions and motions. For pluralism, on the other hand, quality, even haecceity — ^to use an old scholastic phrase — is vital. If there are real beings answering to the physicist's concept of ultimate atoms then indeed, if personal pluralism is to stand (I use the word 'personal' in the widest possible extent), this atomic pluralism can only be the outside appearance of so many active beings, each of which is something for itself. But all that the pluralist does is to appeal broadly to the principle of continuity and that, said Leibniz, "destroys atoms." In the real world we can nowhere find that exact similarity which the mathematician can readily conceive ; and the contention is that it nowhere exists. Ai)pearances suggest it, it may be. Bui that leads us to a second point. There are statistical facts in plenty to show that, where large numbers are concerned, the conduct evt:n of human beings [)resents aggregate results that are tolerably constant, in spite of \\\v. variety of the motives w. 5 66 Pluralism determining the individual agents and the absence of any concerted action among them. Now many of the constants of science are of the nature of statistical averages, and involve — as science interprets them — numbers enormously in excess of those of social statistics, while at the same time the individuals con- cerned must be indefinitely simpler. Starting from the statistics available in economics, the most scientific branch of sociology, and supposing that instead of trade returns from a score or two of countries we had returns from one or two thousand, the inhabitants of each being increased a myriad-fold and being also severally vastly more the creatures of habit than men now are, we can imagine such statistics would approxi- mate still more closely to those of the physicist. The physicist, like the statist, is always dealing with aggregates, but unlike the statist he finds the con- stituent individuals to be beyond his ken. The statist is aware that individual variations underlie his aggre- gates, but they do not interest him : the physicist is ignorant of those underlying his, and assumes that they do not exists Accordingly he rests content with abstract and general concepts that turn out in the end to be simply quantitative. But it is impossible to deduce quality from quantity or exhaustively to present concrete experience by means of any scheme of mathematical co-ordinates. Briefly then the pluralist at this juncture insists upon three points : — (i) We know that the appearance of uniformity and regularity is compatible with the ^ On the features common to Nature and History, cf. Les Lois de V Imitation^ by the late G. Tarde, 3"^^ edn, 1900, ch. i. Uuiforiuify and Statistics 67 spontaneity of living agents : (2) the uniformity and order which the physicist ascertains avowedly pertain to matter as phenomenal, i.e. as appearance — to the viateria sccunda, which Leibniz referred to confused per- ception: (3) some adequate ground for this appearance there must be. It is reasonable to assume, the pluralist then concludes, that this ground is analogous to that which we know to underlie the law and order of the historical world. Regarding this last point we ought to notice, in passing, that a two-fold interpretation is possible, the pluralist's is one possibility, the theist may prefer another. The mutual relation and the possible conciliation of these two views is a problem that still lies before us. Just now it is only important to observe that 'the theistic hypothesis' affords /rm^ facie a more satisfactory explanation of Nature's laws — which, Laplace notwithstanding, are not self-e.x- planatory — than pluralism at first sight seems to do. For we should expect the acts of a Supreme Being to show a more exact uniformity than the conjoint results o{ the actions of myriads of lowly monads severally and half unconsciously striving after mutual adjust- ment. We here come u[)on an aspect of pluralism, which — though referred to in the foregoing exposition — it will be wi.-ll to consider in more detail and apart. Purposive action, it is commonly held, presupposes an established order, a reign of law, presupposes in fact that exact uniformity which naturalism formulates in mechanical terms. This is the physical basis which is sup|josed to furnish teleology with its indispensable TTou fj-Toj. lint pluralism att(!mpts to get behind all this. .\() doubt a man deliberating how to comjiass 5- 2 68 Pluralism some definite end, on which he has decided, may think out a chain of practical syllogisms in the way long ago described by Aristotle ; beginning with the last term in the causal series he works backwards till he reaches the first, some act that is which he is in a position immediately to perform \ But the practical syllogism, * acting on principle ' as we say, is an ideal ; we do not always act — above all, we do not begin acting— in this fashion. The earliest activity is apparently alto- gether impulsive, determined not by desire for future satisfaction but by aversion to a present ill. The stimulus of pain, as a veritable goad, leads to random efforts for relief. And relief, if it comes at all, may come in either of two ways. The situation may itself change for the better, or at length a fitting attitude or move- ment may be hit upon. In the former case the result might be attributed to pure chance : if the situation should recur the sufferer will be practically as ignorant and as helpless as before. But in reality all changes in the environment will be the result of conative im- pulses somewhere ; and from such of these as succeed, the agents, if we credit them with any retentiveness, learn something. A successful adjustment concurring with the release from pain will be specially impressive. In this way the evil and the remedy will be so far associated that on each repetition of the former the many tentative movements will become less, and the one effective movement more, pronounced, till at length it becomes an immediate, habitual, and eventually even a mechanical response. ij But this gradual development of purposive activity ■* Nicotnachean Ethics, iii. iii. Purposive Activity aiui Orderliness 69 is mere psychological detail, upon which it is not necessar\- to eniars^e here". True, it will be said, but all such development presupposes ' the orderliness of things,' and pluralism, we understand, undertakes to explain how this orderliness has itself been developed. Order is heaven's first law, we say, but pluralism essays to get back of all this and to start from chaos, where we can count on no repetitions and therefore on no progress. This is unquestionably a formidable ob- jection, and what we shall have in the next lecture to consider is how the pluralists may attempt to meet it. ' Cf. the article, 'Psychology,' Eticy. Brit, nth edn. LECTURE IV. THE CONTINGENCY IN THE WORLD. We left Pluralism charged with the hopeless attempt of bringing order out of chaos. But the notion of chaos is after all altogether a myth : as much a bugbear as a chimaera. " No one," says Lotze, "who means to think clearly can form any idea of the existence of such an infinite agglomeration of countless possibilities.... [Such an] abyss of in- definiteness is unthinkable, and any attempt to set distinctly before ourselves the origin of natural forms must start from some definite primitive state, which — because it was this and no other — from the very first excluded from actuality much in itself possible, while of much else on the other hand it contained not merely the bare possibility but a more or less im- mediate and urgent positive ground for its realisation \" It is precisely such a definite primitive state that pluralism postulates, a totality of unique individuals each bent on self-preservation. But self here, we must remember, implies, not as in atomistic pluralism, a simple, unchangeable element that ex hypothesi must be conserved, though it does nothing and suffers nothing. What is here implied is a true self, whose ' Microcosnms, Bk iv. Ch. ii., Eng. trans. Vol. i. p. 432. TJic Bcgi/niini^ of the J I 'or/ci/ not Chaos 7 1 feeling and action vary with, though they are not ex- clusively determined by, its situation relatively to the rest. Such a definite situation will, as Lotze points out, then and there exclude certain possibilities and lead on immediately to the realisation of others. The mechanical theory too must postulate a primitive col- location of atoms which its laws can never explain ; but, these atoms being unalterable, the laws that for- mulate their successive changes of position are re- fjarded as also determinate and fixed. The individuals of spiritualistic pluralism, on the other hand, are held to be plastic and capable of development ; and the new relations that become established among them are therefore regarded as the direct consequences of such development. At the start then the order that is to be has still to become : everything is inchoate, but nothing chaotic, unless inexperience and innocence are the same as anarchy and original sin. The pluralists, we must remember, take all their bearings from the historical standpoint and endeavour to work backwards from the facts of human personality and social intercourse. Their mode of thought is franklv, though not crudely, anthropomorphic : hence such titles as Personalism. Personal Idealism, Humanism and the like, wliich one or other has adopted. \ow in this personal domain, whether individual or social, we find orderliness and regularity in jjlent\-. I'rom this orderliness and ntgularit)' we may derive premisses, at once general and definite, for practical syllogisms : it affords an ample basis of reliable means for the realisation ol the most \aried ends, and it mak('S education and further experience 72 The Contingeiicy in the World always possible. But the whole of such development is the result of the conduct and behaviour, severally or collectively, of the persons concerned : none of it existed previously as the presupposition of such conduct. Other forms of order and regularity — we may call them lower forms — no doubt there were, but not these. Of such lower forms we may say that they were indispensable conditions of the higher forms that followed — indispensable conditions indeed, but not sufficient. The future is grounded on the past, it may be, but we cannot in history, as in science, infer the one from the other : we cannot anticipate the super- structure from a knowledge of the foundations, or prophesy whenever we can remember. Looking back then on the career of an individual or on the progress of a community we may distinguish, at any given point, on the one side the habits, tastes and dexterities already acquired or the customs, institutions and polity already established, and on the other the new and often unexpected development that followed upon these. We may express the relation between the two by adopting — and adapting — the old scholastic distinction of iiatnra naturata and natura naturans. What is done forecloses some old possibilities and opens up new ones : Vulcan, who had spent his youth at the forge, could hardly hope to charm Olympus with Apollo's lyre, though he made a suit of armour worthy of the god of war : the Semites worsted in their struggles with Rome could no longer aspire to the supremacy of the world ; though, scattered everywhere and yet united, they still remain its masters in finance. What is done, natura naturata — the decisions made, Xatura naturans ami Natura naturata 73 the habits formed, the customs fixed — constitutes at any stage the routine, the general trend of things, within which future possibihties He. What is still to do, natura naturans, implies further spontaneity and growth ; new decisions to be taken, fresh experi- ments to be made, with their usual sequel of trial and error and possible eventual success ; happy thoughts or inspirations occurring to the individual ; and the rise of great men inaugurating new epochs for their race or for the world. Even Bacon, who was certainly sufficiently impressed by the supremacy of law, we find saying : Super datum corpus novani naturani, sive novas naturas generarc et superinducere, opus ct intent io est humanae potentiae\ How little this generating of new natures is to be regarded as the inevitable con- sequence of the antecedent routine is shown by the myths which attributed the earliest arts to the inter- vention of gods and heroes, Triptolemus, Prometheus, Athene, Apollo. If now we were to contemplate an individual's career or a nation's progress at a later stage the same distinction could still be made, only that the line dividing the lifeless routine from the ' increasing purpose ' would be drawn at a new point. The painful efforts and strange experiences of the past are now re- placed by such masterly facility and perfect familiarity as can serve as 'stepping-stones to higher things'; the reforms and liberties, so hardly achieved, are now ' Novum Orjj^anum, Vol. ii. i. Kitchin's edn, p. 132. On tliis whole topic sec the brilliant article, 'tireat Men and their lOnviron- ment,' by that thorough-going pluralist, W. James, 'J7ie U'i/l to bilicve, pp. 216 {L 74 The Contingency in the World unquestioned, and so open up possibilities of ' nobler modes of life, with sweeter manners, purer laws.' If, on the other hand, we contemplate things at an earlier stage than that with which we began, the converse will hold. What we then found consolidated into habit or custom, as so much fixed routine, would still be fluent and so to say adolescent ; alternatives then finally determined would still be pending ; and much that later will be commonplace, still a marvel beyond the range of present surmise. Now this characteristic of the historical world the pluralist boldly generalises to the utmost. " All nature," to repeat a summary I have made elsewhere, " is regarded as plastic and evolving like mind : its routine and uniformity being explained on the analogy of habit and heredity in the individual, of custom and tradition in society ; while its variety is attributed to spontaneity in some form\" " The one intelligible theory of the universe,'" a prominent pluralist tells us, "is that of objective [i.e., I take it, personal] idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws^." Evidence of such mechanization — that is, of what originally was spon- taneous and tentative becoming eventually automatic and regular — is forthcoming up to the very verge of our knowledge of whatever can be regarded as individual and unique at all. But though individuals other than conceptual ones are beyond the physicist's ken, evidence has long been accumulating even here ^ ' Mechanism and Morals.' Adamson Lecture, Hibbert Jourftaly 1905, p. 92. ' C. S. Peirce, 'The Architectonic of Theories,' J/}-'. 6 2 84 The Contingency in the Worhi work for the greatly extended patagiwn or elastic membrane, the original function of the hand being sacrificed almost entirely. The origin of the insect's wings is, I understand, still something of a problem. Professor J. A. Thomson writes about them : — " It seems plausible to compare them to the tracheal out- growths seen in some aquatic larvae, and to regard them as primarily respiratory, and secondarily loco- motor. One may venture to suggest that the additional respiratory efficiency derived from such outgrowths would increase the total activity of the insect, and more or less directly lift it into the air'." And so, mutatis mutandis, other instances of biological develop- ment may be explained. "It certainly is true," as Darwin has said, "that new organs appearing as if created for some special pur- pose, rarely or never appear in any being-." Imagine that a clock had been the first machine invented by men and that all other machines had to be modelled on this type. As it is, mechanisms for very different purposes are formed on this type, and human efforts, if necessarily restricted to it, would doubtless in time gradually devise many more by means of modifications analogous to those which Nature displays in adapting a given type of structure to very various conditions of life. Or again if we imagine that instead of a clock some other machine, say a loom, had been that from which the start was made, all subsequent machines being modelled on that. Many varieties of this form of mechanism too already exist, and it is not too much to assume that if necessary it could be indefinitely ^ Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Vol. vi. p. 167. ' Origin of Species, 6th edn, p. 156. f^ixlfv of Type ami I^jn'cfy of Coiidifioiis 85 varied. Such is in fact the picture that the organic world presents to us. As Darwin puts it : " All oro-anic beines have been formed on two p^reat laws — Unity of Type, and the Conditions of Life. By unity of type is meant that fundamental agreement in structure which we see in organic beings of the same class, and which is quite independent of their habits of life'." Let us consider for a moment two such types — say the arthropod and the vertebrate. Widely as these two types differ we find some species of each adapted to every condition of life in every variety of climate and locality, mountain heights or sub- terranean caves, the surface of the earth or the depths of the sea. We find creatures of each type flying, swimming, diving, or burrowing, active by night or by day, some sociable, some solitary, some preying upon specific living animals, others feeding more or less indiscriminately on the corpses of the dead ; or vegetable feeders, some confined to specific plants, others to particular parts or tissues, and so on ; for an exhaustive specification of the conditions ot life to which these two types are alike adapted is impossible. Even when we take one of the leading modifications of each type — insects and birds, for example — the range of conditions is l)ut slightly restricted. A collateral consequence of this adaptation of a fixed type t(j various conditions of life is perhaps worth notice in jjassing. I refer to the awkward aiul grotescjue, even the ludicrous and hideous forms of some plants and animals. The graceful shape and agile movements (jf the horse, the gazelle, the scjuincl, ' Op. at., p. i(>0. 86 The Contingency in the World for instance, have been universally admired. Com- pared with them such creatures as the camel, the sloth and the wart-hog have been reckoned among Nature's abortions. But among less familiar animals there are many more ungainly or ill-favoured than these, as such scientific names as Diabolus ursinus, Moloch horridus, Chimaera monstrosa, suggest. These seeming anomalies did not escape the notice of the earlier naturalists. Buffon, for example, after the manner of Leibniz, imagines Nature setting before herself all possible forms and selecting first of all the most beautiful and harmonious, but " into the midst of this magnificent spectacle," he tells us, "some unfinished {negligees) products and some less happy forms, thrown like the shadows in a picture, appear to be the remnants of those ill-assorted designs and those disparate compositions which she has only allowed to remain in order to give us a more extended idea of her projects^" Theologians too have been exercised by these blemishes which seem everywhere to obtrude themselves, marring the beauty and de- tracting from the perfection of Nature. After an enumeration of a whole string of these ' veritably hellish shapes,' as they have been called — toadstools, thorn-apples, scorpions, rattlesnakes, &c. &c. — it has been asked : — " Can such an appalling, Callotesque fancy be attributed to God : can he be held capable of creating the hateful" ? " The true cause of such ^ Histoire naturelle; Des Oiseaux, t. viii. 1781, a propos of the Stilt {Himantopus candidus). "^ Cf. Rosenkranz, ' Die Verklarung der Natur,' B. Bauer's Zeitsch. f. spekulative Theologie, 11. 1837, p. 262. The Grotesque in Xafiire 87 deformities certain theologians have preferred to hnd in man's alienation from God and the consequent reaction upon nature, of which he was the crown and keystone, that his fall entailed. Whatever may be thought of their explanation of the fact of Nature's aesthetic defects, the recognition of the fact itself In- such thinkers is noteworthy Hut the contingency in the world presents itself in a still more strikinof liijht when we follow out the con- sequences of the pluralist theory of the world. Accord- ing to that, as we have seen, the world consists solely of finite individuals primarily dominated by private ends and for whom self-preservation is the first law of life. Each species develops for itself and never directly either for the advantage or the detriment of others ; though such incidental consequences to one species may arise continually from the development of another, as we have already seen. In fact, evolution in large measure consists in adaptations to meet these consequences, so as to avoid or counteract as tar as possible those that are harmful and as far as possible to avail of, or cooperate with, the rest. But such processes in the main and for long — so long, thai is, as they are natural processes — are purely egoistic, not altruistic. Moreover the apostolic saying, God is no respecter of persons, turns out to be true of Xaturc in a way which seems entirely to disproxc the cartlinal maxim of the old natural theology that all the lower creatures exist for the sake of man. Man is un- doul)tedly ' the |jara;.';on of anim.ils,' the highest link in a vast chain, but il is a chain in which one and the same right to live belongs t(; all. 1 recall a revolting 88 The Contingency in the PVorld sight that I saw in my youth, which rudely shocked my preconceived notions of the fitness of things. That man should slay and eat creatures lower in the scale than himself, that the song-thrush should feed on worms and snails or the gorgeously tinted kingfisher dart into the thick of a shoal of silly minnows to secure food for himself and his brood — all this seemed reasonable enough ; for here the lower subserved the higher. But once I chanced to see three young rabbits playfully gam- bolling, heedless of a cold clammy snake who stealthily glided forward, and struck first one and then another till after a few momentary convulsions all lay stretched and dead ; whereupon the sluggish reptile, without the faintest show of emotion, pleasurable or otherwise, proceeded slowly to suck down one after another these pets of my childhood — then indeed I felt that the world so far was neither well nor wisely nor beautifully ordered. Such an incident, however individually im- pressive, is, of course, utterly trivial compared with the terrible ravages, formerly regarded as the scourges of an offended deity, which we now know are wrought by the lowest forms of life with which we have any exact acquaintance, whereby not only our flocks and fields are continually devastated but millions of our fellow-men are painfully swept away. It is not however the physical evil, the dysteleology of all this that is now in point, but simply the fact that there is no necessary connexion between worth of life as we estimate it and fitness to survive in the evolutionist sense. In the physical struggle for existence worth does not count : distinguished men like Raphael, Howard, Keats and Hegel succumbed to microscopic The Xafural Right to live 89 bacilli, and it is conceivable that the whole human race might thus ignobly disappear. Such anomalies seem even a prioi'i to be an obvious, almost an in- evitable outcome of pluralism, and though perhaps not insuperable, still as far as they go, they are an argu- ment in favour of the pluralist's and a difficulty for the theist's position. But further the contingency in the world in general seems to involve that the existence of mankind at all is itself but a special contingency. In the case of other living kinds few persons would hesitate to admit this. According to the psalmist indeed God " causeth the grass to grow for the cattle... the high mountains are for the wild goats, the rocks are a refuge for the conies." But what is at all events immediately evident is rather the pluralist position, that these creatures are adapted to their conditions of life, not their conditions of life to them. The existence of grass does not depend on that of the cattle or goats or conies that browse upon it', but contrariwise these creatures are variously modified to derive their sustenance from the grass, according as it is found on plains, on crags or in hollows. SimilarK it is argued that trees came into existence and continue to exist independently of the l)irds that there make their nests or of the various other creatures that live among their branches. So had there been no forests there could ha\c; bci-ii no apes, but the existence of forests is due primarily to the conditions of vegetable life and not to the nccnls of animals. Assuming man's simian ancestry— and assuredly, as Daruiii has said, "if man had not l><-ut we may perhaps find a helpful illustration by re- calling the development of the Metazoa or multicellular animals from so-called 'loose colonies' or aggregates of Pi'oiozoa or unicellular animals, already referred to in an earlier h-cture' — though the parallel is not exact, since .'iociety is not a biological organism. The several cells of a comj)lex organism still retain their id(MUity and continue their indixidual lives; but if this wcic all they would remain a mere aggregate ; nor would lliey ' < 1. Lecture MI. |). 58. 122 The Pluralistic Goal be more, if they differentiated independently. When however they differentiate, as it were in touch with each other, they become mutually complementary. In and with such consentient action there emerges that higher common life, which constitutes them into organs and the whole into an organism. As the unicellular organisms of the protozoan cluster become organs, the cluster becomes a new organism, a metazoan ; and vice versa as the cluster becomes an organism, the primitive unicellular organisms become organs. In other words the more intimate the unity of the whole the more complete the differentiation of its members. The two in short are strictly correlative, reciprocally cause and effect, means and end to each other. We should accordingly regard it as simply absurd to grant that the cells had become organs while hesitating to recognise that ipso facto the cluster had become an organism. If it does not seem equally absurd to allow that the individual man as a social unit is a rational and moral being — and stop there, that is only because familiarity has blinded us to what such an admission implies. Let us then pass on to its explication. What now do reason and morality imply } It will suffice to go at once to what is for us the main point : they imply what since Kant it has been usual to call 'objectivity.' The sensory and appetitive experiences of a given individual are altogether immediate, be- ginning and ending with himself, not merely exclusively and inalienably his, but also in their particularity peculiar to him and different from the immediate experiences of all others beside. Such are the charac- teristics of experience logically included together as subjectivity. Experience as objective is the precise 'Objectivity' 123 opposite of this : it is never immediate, determined that is by sense or appetite ; nor is it either confined to the individual or contingent to him : on the contrary it is or it may become an unreservedly common possession by virtue of just those factors which we call reason and moralitv ; for these are alike for all and bindincr on the thought and action of each. In experience as sub- jective we find only the particular and contingent : in experience as objective we find always the universal and necessary. To subjective experience as such Leibniz's description will apply; it mirrors the universe from a particular and unique standpoint ; to objective experience as such on the other hand that description is not applicable. Objectivity cannot then be a characteristic of a purely individual experience, and to say that it is universal or common to all cannot mean that — like the blackness of crows, to use a trivial illustration — it is singly and separately developed in each. To God, it is true, Leibniz applied the old saying "that as a centre He is everywhere, but His circumference is nowhere'." Such language may be taken to imply an experience that is at once completely subjective and completely objective, at once altogether individual and altogether absolute. But such an experience entirely transcends our conception. — With this we may couple a well-known quotation from Aristotle's Politics; "He who has no need of society because he is sufficient for himsell, must either be a brute or a god." No wonder the transition from brute to man, from sense and ap[)etite to reason and law, seemed inconceivable apart from special divine interfcrcnrf. so long as it was regarded ' Priihiples 0/ Nuliirr alebit \ there are truths that wake to perish never, but errors never harmonize and tend inherently to refute one another. The memory of the just is blessed, but the name of the wicked shall rot. Obviously if the hindrances to progress were insur- mountable, there could have been no progress at all. But it mi^ht still be that the hindrances increased as progress advanced, that sooner or later a sort of ' law of diminishing return ' would begin to operate. We are told however that even in the economic sphere of man's activity the law of diminishing return holds only of "the part which Nature plays in produc- do immaterial things subsist always, but also their lives, progress and changes are regulated so as to attain to a definite goal, or rather to approximate towards it more and more, as asymptotes do. And though the movements are retrograde sometimes, like paths that have bends in them, yet the advance prevails finally and the end is reached." Letter to Queen Charlotte, J'hilusophischt: Si/iri/tf/i, (ierhardts edn, vi. pp. 507 ff. ' That the essence of religion is ' faith in iIk- conservation of value' is the main theme in Professor lloffding's original and interesting Philosophy <>/ Religion. 132 The Phtralistic Goal tion," while "the part which man plays conforms to the law of increasing return " and this part " tends to diminish or even override any increased resistance which Nature may offer to raising increased amounts of raw produced" There is then, we may say with some confidence, no a priori ground for any analogy between spiritual culture and agriculture in respect of cumulative hindrances to progress. We have indeed only to look closer at the two most serious obstacles to social advance to see that they tend to be less formid- able, in proportion, the further the advance proceeds. I refer, of course, to ignorance and selfishness. It may suffice to consider the last and worst — for society and selfishness are in their very essence opposed. The conflict of self-interest and duty to others has long been a commonplace with ethical writers ; and it has even been maintained that without extra-social sanctions there is no means of bringing that wholly imaginary person, the consistent egoist, to work for the general good. Yet after all what keeps the selfish man most in countenance is the selfishness of others : he does to others as they in general do to him, not as he would that they should do. But at least he cannot will that the egoistic maxim should be a universal law. He approves such examples of public spirit and phil- anthropy as he may see, though he does not follow them ; and he is ready perhaps to support beneficent schemes of legislation to promote ends for which he is unwilling to make private sacrifices. This fortunate, and — we might add — inevitable, inconsistency permits ^ Prof. A. Marshall, Principles of Economics, vol. i. ist edn, P- 379- No 'solidarity^ of Evil 133 social sanctions to stand out clearly and to become more efficient with every advance that better men effect. Probitas landatur ct alget, the satirist has said, yet in truth even bare commendation and approval do their part in quickening virtue into life. In short the objective mind or reason, in which the selfish share, divides them, as selfish, against themselves both indi- vidually and collectiv^ely, and leads them in their own despite to further its coherent ends : eo"^Ao(. /Mtr yap ajrXco?, Trai'ToSaTTws 0€ KaKOi. " This may be called the cunning of reason," said Hegel. " that she permits the passions to work for herself so that what they produce [for themselves] is forfeited and lost'." So again T. H. Green : — "Where the selfishness of man has proposed, his better reason has disposed. Whatever the means, the result has been a gradual removal of obstacles to that recognition of a universal fellowship which the action of reason in man potentially constitutes'." .Such at least is the broad teaching of history so far. Extreme as the selfishness of many may still be and rare as is any whole-hearted enthusiasm for humanity, yet the progress already made is amply sufficient to show that the direction in which it has moved and is still moving points towards the ultimate conciliation of self-interest and the common good. This progress may .seem small, partly because to us the time it has taken kxjks immense, and p.ully because it still falls indefinitely short of the ideal that we entertain. liut ' Philosophie der Geschic/iir, 1 840, p. 41. - Green, Prolci^onwna to Ef/iics, p. 230. 134 The Pluralistic Goal the problems that time Involves do not much concern us in this connexion. Der Weltgeist hat Zeit genug, as Hegel once said, and in contemplating the world historically we have to accustom ourselves to regard a thousand years as one day. Compared with the age of the earth itself man's appearance upon it began but yesterday, and he has hardly yet emerged from the stage of infancy. And now what has been the direction of this pro- gress on its moral, that is its highest, side '^ We start from a state of natural selfishness, in which the life of the individual man, to use the memorable words of Hobbes, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"; and we find ourselves in the era of Christian civilisa- tion, where — to quote T. H. Green again — "'the recognition of the claims of a common humanity' is a phrase that has become so familiar... that we are apt to suspect it of being cant. Yet this very familiarity is proof of the extent to which the idea... has affected law and institutions\" This humanitarian idea then is operative now, though its full realisation is our still distant ideal. But if it is fully realisable, the fact that this realisation is a ' far-off event ' does not, I would say again, very directly concern our present inquiry : for that, such eventual realisation is enough. " To any ethical student who finds its realisation difficult, I recommend," said Stuart Mill, "as a means of facilitating it, the second of M. Comte's two principal works, the Systeme de Politique Positive... \\. has superabundantly shown the possibility of giving to the service of humanity, even without the aid of belief in a Providence, •" Prolegomena to Elides, p. 228. The Hiniianifaria)i Ideal 135 both the psychical power and the social efficacy of a religion ; making it take hold of human life, and colour all thoufjht. feelincT and action, in a manner of which the greatest ascendancy ever exercised by any religion may be but a type and foretaste'." Kant, like Words- worth and Coleridge, was inspired with a like confidence by what he describes as the moral enthusiasm for the ideal displayed in the French Revolution"-. It cannot be said, however, that either Kant or Mill attempted anything like a philosophical deduction of this faith in human progress and perfectibility. Other modern philosophers in plenty have attempted this, no doubt — for example Lessing, Herder, Krause, Hegel, and many besides ; but always on grounds more or less definitely theological. But to the pluralist this tendency is clear in itself so soon as we allow that all at least seek the good and therefore tend to replace an initial state of com- parative isolation and conflict by progressively higher forms of unity and cooperation. When the level of society and reason is reached, this tendency is no longer a blind impulse, it has become a conscious ideal. We emerge from the darkness, where we could only grope, into the light where we can see at least in which direction our ideal lies. " The practical struggle after the Better... makes the way by which the Best is to be more nearly approached plain enough " for further advance and also more feasible. This point has been worked out at length by T. H. Green. To the objection that it does not precisely define the course in which th(! advance is to be made we mav rei)lv in the ' Utilitarianis,m, p. 49. ' '.Streit der Kacultaten,' Wcrke, Hartenstcin's cdn, vii. ])[). .^9<; f. 136 The Pluralistic Goal words of Professor Bosanquet : — "The difficulty of definino- the best hfe does not trouble us, because we rely throughout on the fundamental logic of human nature qua rational. We think ourselves no more called upon to specify in advance what will be the details of the life which satisfies an intelligent being as such, than we are called upon to specify in advance what will be the details of the knowledge which satisfies an intelligent being as such. Wherever a human being touches practice, as wherever he touches theory, we find him driven on by his intolerance of contra- dictions towards shaping his life as a whole\" Reason makes man master of his fate, and though slowly, yet surely, urges him onwards to the accomplishment of her perfect work. We come at length then to the question, stated at the outset, what sort of unity will the realisation of the rational ideal secure } The answer may be very brief. " Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." To imagine this petition answered is to imagine humanity animated by a single wise and righteous will : every citizen would work harmoniously with every other, each one doing the highest and the best of which he is capable. The will of the Many and the will of the One would accord completely. But on the pluralist view the Divine will would only be a reality as it was the ideal towards which the whole creation moves, attained at length. The Kingdom would take the place of the ideal King: there would be a perfect commonwealth, but strictly no monarch, ^ Cf. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, Bk in. ch. iii. ; Bosanquet, The Philosophic Theory of the State, p. 181. TJie Lonfs Pmyer 137 other than ' the objective mind ' sov^ereign in every breast. Such is, I beheve, in the main a fair presentation of the pluraHstic IVeltanschaiiung. The time it has occupied may I fear have tired the patience ol many of you. It still remains to consider the objections to which it is liable — many of which will no doubt have occurred to you already — and the replies to them which the pluralist can make. But first it will repay us, I think, to take account of some underlying affinities between the pluralist position and that of certain philosophers commonly regarded as singular- ists, which seems to be directly contrary to it. LECTURE VII. THE PLURALISM OF HEGEL. The Standpoint of pluralism in our day is, as we have seen, fundamentally historical. It is a philosophy of becoming rather than of being. It holds — as has been said of the philosophy of Aristotle — that "the ultimate metaphysical explanation of existence must be sought not so much in a priiis out of which things emerge as in the goal towards which they move\" That goal, so experience seems to show, is indeed an ultimate unity, which however presupposes a real plurality : but no attempt is made to conceive the plurality as due to a differentiation of a unity pre- existing ' before the world was ' and anterior to any conceivable experience. The three great singularistic philosophies of the nineteenth century however did venture on this bold enterprise, and it is, as we have seen, largely their conspicuous failure that has brought pluralism into vogue again. Now the last and chief of these, the philosophy of Hegel, is by common consent a philosophy of history in the widest sense, whatever it may be besides ; and mainly, if not solely, as such is it generally acknowledged to be of great positive value. It will then be interesting as well as instructive to compare Hegelianism with pluralism in respect of their common historical ground. Such a ^ Pringle-Pattison, Hegelianism and Personality, ist edn, p. 82. Hegel at the Historical Staiutpoiiit 139 comparison will become more significant when it is re- membered, as Hegel's critics urge and his exponents allow, that the so-called dialectical development of thought as such, in which he attempts to find the unity that transcends the seeming plurality, is only distinct from the historical dev^elopment by being abstracted from it after reflexion has revealed its presence there'. Regarding things historically Hegel found develop- ment everywhere, he found not a statical world like that of the Eleatics but a dvnamical one like that of Heracleitus. His leading ontological concept was more akin to the active subject of the pluralist Leibniz than to the indifferent substance of the sino^ularist Spinoza. No doubt he reached in the end a unity which he called absolute ; but in his Philosophy of Nature and of Mind, where he first comes into touch with the real world, it is plurality that chiefly obtrudes itself. Yd, while recognising the "spectacle of a con- tingency thai runs out into endless detail," Hegel treats it in the most contemptuous manner. The starry heavens that filled Kant with awe he thinks it fitting to call a "luminous rash. ..as little deserving of wonder as the rash on a human skin-'." The wealth ' Hegel has himself described philosophy as 'thinking considera- tion of things' {denkende Bctrachttnii:; dcr Dim^c, Encycl. § 2), and in his first systematic work, the Phenomenology of Mind, he undertakes to provide ' the ladder ' by which the beginner may ascend into the 'ether' where the dialectic transfiguration enacts itself. But he so far overreached his purpose that, like theatrical managers at a fair, he ha.s given us on the boards outside, as it were, a preliminary and more or less tentative outline of his whole system. Hence he also called the Phenomenology his voyage of discovery : in this l)ewil(l(.ring adventure psychology and history play the leading part. - Nalurphilosophie^ % 268, p. 92. 140 The Phiralism of Hegel of forms, organic and inorganic, that Nature presents, ought not as such, he maintained, "to be rated higher than the equally casual fancies of the mind surrender- ing itself to its own caprices." "Contingent deter- mination from without has," he says again, " in the sphere of Nature its right placed" But such language is mere bravado in the face of a serious difficulty, with which Hegel had not the patience to deal — or rather a difficulty with which a philosophy such as his could not have dealt at all. As Professor Pringle-Pattison has well said: "A system of rationalism which talks of what ' is determined not by reason but by sport and external accident' [as Hegel has done] must fairly be held to acknowledge a breakdown in its attempt to grasp the whole of existence''." The first point we have to notice then is, that in admitting our inability to eliminate contingency Hegel has also admitted our inability to eliminate the plurality which it implies. " This impotence of Nature sets limits to philosophy " he tells us. Whether ' impotence ' is the right name for the fact may well be questioned ; but the one point that concerns us meanwhile is Hegel's recognition of the fact itself. Nature is for Hegel historically the first stage of the real world, and here at the outset he finds himself confronted and limited by the very plurality and contingency from which the pluralist too makes his start. What he calls the ' impotence of Nature' is historically just that inchoate state of things which the progress of history is sup- posed gradually to straighten out. 1 Op. cit. § 250, p 36. " Hegelianism and Persona/ity, ist edn, p. 138. The CoJifiiigciicy of X at it re 141 Taking this progress in its widest extent, the pro- cesses of what we call nature fall within it, and are to be regarded, Hegel himself tells us, as a system ot stages leading up to Mind, which emerges from Nature like the phoenix from its ashes'. But though one of the stages proceeds from the other, it is not, Hegel goes on to insist, ''naturally generated out of the other ; on the contrary it [is generated] in the inner Idea that constitutes the ground of Nature-." In other words his meaning seems to be that the process is really timeless, or as Goethe put it Natur hat weder Kern Noch Schale, Alles ist sie mit einem Male^. Accordingly in a lecture-note to the passage quoted he adds: "The notion puts all particularity in a general way into existence at once." In saying all this Hegel seems plainly to be trying to take back with one hand what he has yielded with the other. Or. to put it otherwise, he oscillates between two different kinds of development — the dialectical, which is timeless as well as abstract and iieneral, and the historical which involves time-process and deals primarily with the concrete and particular. For us at any rate the ex- perience of this latter development is essential to our knowledge of the former, which — according to Hegel's ' Naturphilosophie, % 247, p. 24, § 376, p. 695. ■' Op. cii. § 249, p. 32. " This we might perhaps translate : Nature has neither shell Nor kernel. She's all at once in liic eternal. 142 The PI II rati sin of Hegel own teaching — belongs to its subsequent and latest phase. Indeed he has said more than once of philo- sophy in general what in his introduction he has expressly said of the Philosophy of Nature in par- ticular : — both as regards its origin and its elaboration it has experience for its presupposition and condition'. We might here fairly remind Hegel of a caution he has himself uttered : — " In respect of Mind and its manifestations [just as in the case of Nature] we must be on our guard lest we be misled by the well-meant endeavour after rational knowledge into attempting to represent as necessary or, as the phrase is, to construct a priori, phenomena to which the mark of contingency pertains'-." Even if it turn out that the dialectical method holds good for the timeless development, yet it is not a heuristic method ; at the outset philosophy as ' the thinking consideration of things ' has to begin with its 'voyages of discovery.' The greater part of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature and of Mind is of this sort^ And here in common with the pluralist he finds, as we have already seen, plurality and contingency every- where, and we have now further to note that he finds also a gradual historical progress from nature to spirit, from nature as a ' bacchantic God ' to ' free spirit — the truth that knowing knows itself — a progress that in all essential points corresponds with that which in the exposition of pluralism I have already attempted to describe. All this, we have to insist, antecedes for us the timeless notional development which Hegel ^ Cf. Encyclopaedie, §§ 6, 7, 12, 38, 246. 2 Op. cii. % 145- ' Cf. such categories as Mechanism, Chemism, Life, &c. A'litures Routine 143 attempts to blend with it. The problem of time in relation to the dialectic is one of the many that Hegel left wholly to his successors : it is perhaps the most serious aspect of that ' ugly broad ditch ' with which Schelling taunted his c^uondam friend in a phrase em- bodying the most trenchant criticism the Hegelian philosophy has ever received. We come to a new point. Things are not alto- gether contingent or progressive, though there is con- tingency and progress everywhere : what we find is ' uniformity flecked with diversity.' The uniformity in eeneral we refer to nature as mechanical, and the diversity and progress to life or mind. This contrast too Hegel has noticed. "The changes in nature," he says, " indefinitely manifold as they are, exhibit only a routine that is ever repeated: in nature there happens nothing new under the sun — It is only in the changes taking place on the spiritual platform that novelty comes to the fore." Again he speaks of nature as " a system of unconscious thoughts, as an intelligence that, as Schelling said, is petrified'." Such language at once reminds us of the distinction between iiatura natiirans and natiira naturata as the pluralist inter- prets it. The former answers to nature as full of con- tingency, which is the very opposite of routine; the latter to nature as mechanical and devoid of novelty, in itself but the 'corpse of the understanding,' as Hegel calls it; the dead self on which we rise to higher things, as the pluralist maintains. The mechanization of habit, dexterity as consisting in making the; body the uncon- ' Philosophie der Gesc/iic/Ue, 1837, p. 51. /■'.iicyclopaedie, % 24, Lecture Note i. 144 T^^^ Phiralisiii of Hegel scious instrument of the soul, in and through which it expresses itself as if the body were the soul's work of art, and so forth — all this Hegel recognises to the full and describes in detail. It cannot indeed be said that he expressly traces back these psychological facts as far as the pluralist attempts to do ; but it might be fairly maintained that his view of nature justifies such a procedure. In the first place Hegel was no dualist: the whole process of nature is to become spirit, and spirit it is in itself or potentially from the beginning. But actually at the outset it is infinite isolation or dis- memberment ( Vereinzelung), and its unity is still to seek. It advances from this to the natural individuality or particularity of physical bodies and finally to the subjective individuality of organisms^ At this level sentience emerges and we pass over into the realm of mind, the individual existing for itself. The earlier, so-called inorganic processes pluralism explicitly inter- prets, in Leibnizian fashion, as also in some measure sentient and conative. In his PJiilosophy of Nahire Hegel was too much under the influence of Schelling and dominated by his ' polarity myth ' for this. But occasionally he comes very near to the Leibnizian standpoint. Thus he describes a soul as such, as "in itself the totality of nature ; as individual soul it is a monad; it is itself the posited totality of its particular world, so that this is shut up within it, is its content." And again : " In contrast to the macrocosm of Nature as a whole, the soul can be designated the microcosm, in which the former is compressed {zusammengedrdngt) ^ N^aturphilosophie^ § 252. N^afurc to become Spirit 145 and its externality thereby overcome^" This meta- phorical language, by the way, looks very like non- sense : how the soul is uoino- to condense the world or how compression is to put an end to externality is not evident. But what Hegel means, we may suppose, is what Leibniz also meant: the world is for every soul a presented, or — in the language of the first passage — a 'posited totaliiy ' — or continuum. Now all this, it must be remembered, is said, not of the higher stages of mental development, which Hegel distinguishes as spirit {Geist)\ it is said of what he calls the natural and the sentient soul, the stage of obscurity {Dunkel- heit) before the soul has attained to a conscious and intelligible content^ — the stage, in a word, of Leibniz's 'confused perception.' And who is to say how far back this obscurity extends? All we know of it we know because we do not begin with it but approach it from the light and interpret it in terms of what it has become. And this is the method of pluralism. But now, it may be said, in the second place — indeed it has been said by a thoroughgoing Hegelian — that this principle of interpreting the lower on the analogy of the higher was recognised by Hegel too. Comparing the opposite processes of evolution and emanation — or, as I have proposed to call it, devolu- tion — both of which have been employed in the inter- pretation of nature, he expresses a preference for the latter. " To proceed from the more perfect to the less perlect is more advantageous," he says; "for tluMi we have the type of the completed organism before ' Philosophy of Mind, Encycl. in. ^ 391, 403. Q{. also ^; 352, Zusatz, Encycl. 11. - Op. cit. § 404. w. 10 146 The Phiralisin of Hegel us": albeit he held both methods to be 'one-sided and superficiaP.' How then should we proceed, how, in fact, do we proceed? "It is clear," said G. H. Lewes, " that we should never rightly understand vital phenomena were we to begin our study of life by contemplating its simplest manifestations in the animal series ; we can only understand the Amoeba and the Polype by a light reflected from the study of Man." In quoting this passage the late Professor Ritchie, the Hegelian I just now referred to, adds the remark: "What makes it seem possible for the scientific investigator ' to begin at the beginning ' is the fact that he is not doing so. The student of the Amoeba hap- pens to be, not an Amoeba, but a specimen of a highly developed vertebrate, and knows at least something about the differentiated organs and functions of his own body"." What we do then is by means of our knowledge of the higher to interpret the lower, while at the same time recognising that the actual process has been a development of the lower upwards towards the higher. With all this we may fairly say that Hegel was in complete agreement, once we have dis- allowed his attempts to play fast and loose with the two distinct kinds of developments — the historical and the dialectic. He does interpret the lower by the higher, he does admit an actual historical evolution, and he does insist that Nature is potentially mental from the first, so that the historical evolution is no ^ NaturphilosopJiie, Encycl. 11. § 249, p. 35. - G. H. Lewes, Study of Psychology, p. 122; D. G. Ritchie, ' Darwin and Hegel ' in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. I. p. 59. The Ilig/icr the Key to the Loieer 147 gefieratio cquivoca. " The appearance," he remarks, "as if [the existence of] Mind were brought about through an Other, is disposed of by Mind itseU" ; for this — so to say — has the supreme ingratitude to resolve and mediate that through which it seems to be pro- duced, to reduce it to dependence on itself and to establish its own complete independence'." Let us now look at Hegel's handling of this evo- lution a little closer. His Philosophy of History is professedly little more than a philosophy of political history. The progress that it traces is the progress of freedom as realised in the objective mind or society; but freedom, it should be observed, is regarded as identical with spiritual perfection generally; and so he describes 'world-history' as "the exhibition of mind as it works out the knowledge of what it is in itself." The realisation of this ideal, he explains, is the final end, the working principle, the informing notion of history. But. as such, a principle is only general, abstract, and potential ; in order to its realisation a further factor is essential : in history proper this factor is the activity of human beings. But an end for which I am to be active must be in some sense my end : even if it have other aspects that do not concern me, still it is my own satisfaction that makes it interesting to me. He concludes then " that absolutely nothing is brought to pass without lh(: interest of those who actively co- operated in it:... that nothing great in the ivorld is accomplished withc^wl passion'." Reason the card, but passion is tlie gale. ' Phiiosophy of Mind, Encycl. in. § 3hie, 1. p. .\(). 1 54 The Pluralism of Hegel Hegel's explication comes to then seems to be this : Nature is ' Mind out of itself from the abstract stand- point of the Logic; but it is Mind not yet 'come to itself from the concrete point of view of historical development. Seeing that in the Logic we have not actual mind, not knowledge but only its possibility, it may well be questioned whether this mere possibility can become actual by passing out of itself: it may even be doubted whether mind out of itself can be called mind at all. No wonder, then, that thinkers largely in sympathy with Hegel — as, for example, von Hartmann, and still more, Volkelt — regarded his system as really a philosophy of the unconscious ; or that others, trained in the Hegelian school, like Strauss and Feuerbach, resolved it into a refined naturalism. From such constructions there seems to be no escape unless we take Hegel's unconscious nature in the Leibnizian or pluralistic fashion. And the continuity of the Hegelian historical evolution, which we have already noted, may be held to favour such an inter- pretation. No doubt the objection will at once occur, that for Hegel Nature is essentially a unity that only appears as a plurality. But is that after all so clear as at first sight it seems — assuming, of course, that we ignore the desperate leap from the Logic to Nature, in other words disallow any continuity between the dialectical and the historical evolution ? Not only does the con- tingency of Nature imply plurality, as already said, but Hegel repeatedly lays emphatic stress on what he calls the externality (Atissereinander) of Nature, not simply in relation to mind, but to itself; and on Xafurc as Plurality 155 its infinite separation ( l^ereinzehmg) where the unity of form is still ideal, potential, and therefore still to seek, Nature remaining meanwhile an ' unresolved contradiction.' "Its differences...," he says, "are existences more or less independent of each other ; throuij^h their original unity indeed they stand in relation with one another, so that no one is con- ceivable without the rest ; but this relation is for them in a higher or lower deQ^ree external \" Even when he has advanced so far as the Philosophy of Mind he represents the soul as at first only natural, not yet sentient or actual ; and a propos of this earliest stage he remarks : — " As the light breaks up into an infinite multitude of stars, so also the general Nature-soul breaks up into an infinite multitude of individual souls ; only with this difterence, that, whereas the light has the appearance of existing independently of the stars, the general Nature-soul attains to actual existence only in the separate souls-." This comes very near to presentationism or the 'mind-dust theory' and would more than satisfy the pluralists of our day. So far we have been considering Hegel's interpre- tation of that heterogony of ends which in common with the pluralists he recognises throughout the course of the world's history. He attributes it to what he was fond of calling ' the absolute cunning of reason ' or the world-spirit in ensuring that the contmgency of all things fmite shall subserve its own supreme v\\(\. This end so far we have; found him regarding as ' Cf. Philusophic dcr Naiin\ "i^ 247, 248, 252; Pliilou>p/iy of Mind, ?; 381, /usatz. - P/ii/oso/y/iv of Mind, § 390. 156 TJie Pluralism of Hegel external to, and independent of, its instruments ; and even as directed against them, as a house is built by means of the forces of nature in order to set them at defiance. But we have been unable to find in Hegel's philosophy any evidence of this world-spirit in its 7'6le of superintending overruler. We have found the house in progress, but no architect ; or rather we have found the whole metaphor bursting its bounds, as Hegel would say ; for the completed house is to be the architect. Does the house then build itself? So the pluralist would say ; in so saying, however, he refuses to regard the finite agents in history as simply means and instruments to purely alien ends. And Hegel after all does likewise : as instance, the following : — "If now we are content to see individuals, their ends and the satisfaction of these, sacrificed, their happiness generally abandoned to the dominion of chance, to which it belongs ; if we are content to consider them in general, as falling under the category of means, still they have one side which we hesitate even in com- parison with the Highest to regard only in this light... viz. their moral and religious side." But he goes much farther, and presently continues: — "If we speak of a means we imagine it in the first instance as only external to the end and as having no part in that. In fact, however, natural^ things generally, let alone what is higher, — nay, the commonest lifeless objects that are used as means — must be so constituted as to answer to the end or have something in them that they share with it. Men least of all stand in that entirely external relation as means to the end of reason. ..on the contrary they have a part in that end IiuHviihials (ihcuiys Ends 157 of reason and are, just because of this, ends of them- selves \" Now we must here, I think, admit that a very close approximation to the pluralist's theory of evolution is at least implied. Such approximation appears still closer when we take into account what Hegel has said a propos of the 'absolute cunning of reason' — how it stands aside and leaves things to inter- act according to their own nature ; rubbing together and frustrating each other, while it never itself directly interferes — how it allows full scope to human passions and interests, paying the tribute of transient existence [Dasein nnd Vergdnglichkeii) not out of itself but out of these, while it foresees the result to be not the accomplishment of our designs but of its own". This very deistic account of an assumed spectator of the world's history, whether called reason or God or Provi- dence — and Hegel in turn calls it all three — we may leave entirely aside, for we have been able to find it only as the culminating Idea of the dialectical develop- ment and as the goal of the historical. All that immediately interests us is the near approach that Hegel here makes to the pluralistic position, which — as we have seen — is that all the agents at work in history, from the lowest to the highest, arc not primarily means to external ends, not primarily things but persons in the widest sense'; that by their mutual interaction and striving — since all seek the good — ' Phihsoplik tier CJcschic/ite, 1837, p. t,t^. • Encyclopaedie, i. § 209. ' In saying this I have in view an interesting book written mainly from the pluralistic standpoint, which 1 have only just come across— Person und Sadie by I,. W. Slcrn, 190C. 158 The Pluralisni of Hegel gradually eliminate the contingency, which their com- parative isolation — Hegel's primitive Ve^^einzehmg — at first entails, and gradually bring about the reign of reason and right. And this position could hardly be more concisely stated than in words that are Hegel's own : — " The history of the world shows only how spirit comes gradually to the consciousness and will of the truth : this dawns upon it ; [then] it discerns the chief features ; eventually it attains to the full consciousness of it\" The long introduction to his Philosophy of History is full of similar passages which suggest not a preconceived plan steadily carried out by a single overruling mind employing passive instru- ments, but a living organization slowly and tentatively achieved by the long and painful efforts of generations of struggling individuals. Der Tried der Perfecti- bilit'dt ist die Bestinmiung der Menschen, Hegel has said, and all that history shows is this Trieb at work. But the unity of the whole is the last word of philosophy: "All philosophy is nothing else than the study of the determinations {^Besti7mmingen) of unity... always unity, but in such a way that this is always further determined" said Hegel. And so too says the pluralist to-day : how far the two agree about the determination we must consider in the following lectures, when we shall have to look closer into this aspect of pluralism itself. ^ Philosophie der Geschic/ite, 1837, p. 51. LECTURE VIII. THE HEGELIAN UNITY. We have seen that there is a strong undercurrent of pluralism running through the whole of Hegel's philosophy regarded as ' the thinking consideration o{ IhiJigs' in distinction from his attempted 'dialectical development of pure thought' But of course every philosophy must recognise both plurality and unity in some fashion, the important question then still remains : Is the unity with Hegel, as with the pluralist, result, or is it ground and presupposition ; historically is it the starting-point or is it the goal : in other words Is there a unity differentiated into a plurality or is there a plurality organized into a unity ? Here again I think we shall find much to justify us in affirming the second alternative. No doubt there is something to be said on the other side ; of that the disruption of the Hegelian school within five years of the master's death is sufficient evidence. The thinkers on the Hegelian right held that Hegel had taught the abso- lute priority of the unit)' as personal Creator ■m\(\ Providence. It is true that he had said in so many words that the content of i)hilosophy aiul ol religion is the same, the difference lying onl\- in \\\v\\- form ; the form of the one being logical {J^t-'grijj ), liiai of i6o The Hegelian Unity the other beinor figurative i^Vorstellung). It is true that he had found speculative interpretations for the Christian dogmas of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and even the sacraments. Nevertheless the verdict of succeeding generations has been given almost unanimously in favour of the thinkers of the Hegelian left. But they disavowed altogether Hegel's attempt to incorporate the leading tenets of Christianity into his philosophy of absolute idealism, and main- tained its essentially pantheistic structure. Indeed it would nowadays seem needless to refer to any other interpretation, were it not that the leading exponents of Hegel amongst us have been till lately members of the right. The appeal to Hegel's doctrine of the Trinity as evidence of the theistic character of his philosophy is particularly unfortunate. So long as the Christian dogma is- — so to say — read into it between the lines, it might pass as such. But taken, as it ought to be, with the context of the Hegelian philo- sophy as a whole, the doctrine is obviously and trans- parently pantheistic. In place of a triple personality there is no personality at all. The Trinity is simply equated to the main triad of the Hegelian system, Logic, Nature, Spirit as severally Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. Let us briefly consider each in turn. In an important and often-quoted paragraph de- fining the nature of Logic, Hegel concludes :- — " Logic accordingly is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is the truth as it is unveiled in and for itself. We can therefore say that this content sets God before us as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of Hegel s Doctrine of fJie Trinity i6i Nature and finite spirit \" God the Father then, or rather what Hegel describes as the Kingdom of the Father, answers to this realm of pure thought, this ' realm of shadows,' as he proceeds a few pages later to call it. All the unity we can expect to find here then is an ideal unity. But no, the orthodox Hegelian may reply, within the Kingdom of the Father we find, according to Hegel's own teaching, the generation of the Son and the procession of the Spirit : we have the archetype of all community, divine love. " In friendship, in love," Hegel himself has said, " I give up my abstract personality and by so doing win it back as concrete personality. The true in personality then is just this, to gain personality through this absorbing and being absorbed in the other." Yes, but in the case of the Trinity what exactly is this other .•* Had Hegel been content to leave this 'silent mystery ' as he calls it still fermenting in the thoughts of men as he professed to find it, or had he been content on religious grounds to accept it as the directly revealed truth, which Christian theology proclaims it to be, we should have nothing to say. Nothing- at least, unless it were to protest against a philosopher meddling with what is avowedly either mystical or 'revealed.' But he essays to explain it. "The relation of father and son is taken from organic life and is only figuratively used... and so never entirely corresponds with what ought to be expressed." IMiilosophy alone is competent lo put the truth in adecjuate form and this form is the dialectic developnuiu through the moments or functions of the so-called Subj(x-tive ' Loi^ik, I- I'- 35- W. I I 1 62 The Hegelian Unity notion, through universaHty and particularity to indi- viduality. In Hegel's fearfully laboured expositions this is the only thing that stands out clearly. The so-called Kingdom of the Father is, it is true, itself a triad within the first moment — universality ; and though the notion becomes increasingly adequate and concrete as we advance, still the whole movement falls within the realm of pure thought. Even this triune God, if we like so to call it, is still without the world and so not God, as Hegel himself has said in so many words. The terms which in the course of a few pages he applies to the first person of the Trinity are con- clusive so far. " The eternal Idea that is not yet posited in its reality but is itself still the abstract Idea"; "God as simply the Father is not yet the true"; "The abstract God, the Father, is the universal" ; " This universal implies the complete Idea, but also only implies it, is only potentially Idea." In keeping with such language are the various — chiefly neo- Platonic — attempts to reach the truth, which Hegel thought deserving of recognition ; in the course of which we come across such phrases, as for example, the ^Ov, the Abyss or Deep, that is as good as to say, what is as yet empty ; the irpoTrdrcop who is a Father only mediately, the Trpoap^rj, He who was before the beginning; and so on'. The 'process' within this universal Hegel describes pardy in biological, partly — as we have already seen — in ethical, language, partly, that is to say, as life, partly as love. " Life," he says, ' Philosophie der Religion, 2te Aufl. 1840, Bd 11. p. 244, Eng. trans, by Speirs and Sanderson, in. p. 30. Though references are given to this the translations in the text have been made independently. The Kijigdoiii of the Father 163 " preserves itself, preservation means passing into difference, into the struggle with particularity, means finding itself to be distinct over against inorganic nature. Life is thus only a result, since it has gene- rated itself; is a product that in the second place again produces :...\vhat is produced is already there from the becrinninor. The same holds true in love and love returned\" Obviously this is the figurative language appropriate to religion, which for Hegel was but one remove from art : for philosophy such forms are still inadequate. Accordingly Hegel has no sooner elabo- rated his comparisons than he proceeds to tone them down. For the divine life there is no external ; and so here, " the process," he says, " is thus nothing but the play of self-preservation, of making sure of one's self''." So again, having described love as between two persons, he then characterizes the divine love, as involving " this distinction and the nullity of this distinction, a play which is not in earnest, the dis- tinction being just posited as abolished^" In the end then we find Hegel coming back to the realm of pure thought as alone furnishing an adequate account of this process as he all along maintained. Here, he says, it is manifest "that every definite notion is this — to set itself aside {sick selbst au/hcben), as being its own contradiction, consequently to become its own difference and to posit itself as such. And thus the Notion itself still retains this one-sidedness or finitude,that it is some- thing subjective; the detc-rminations, ihc differences are posited only as ideal, not in fact as differences. This ' Op. cii. 11. p. 241, E.i. 111. p. 26. ' C*/. r/V. II. p. 241, E.t. III. ]). 27. * 6>/. r//. II. p. 227, i:.t. III. p. II. I I 2 164 The Hegelian Unity is the Notion that objectifies itself\" But again the question recurs : What exactly is this objectification ? Passing so to the Kingdom of the Son we come upon the Other, Difference, the Objective, as fact and not merely as thought : this is the region of ' infinite particularity' not of 'total particularity' or universality. Here plurality precedes unity. Referring back to the Kingdom of the Father — wherein the differentiation "is only a relation of God, of the Idea to itself, only a play of love with itself, in which it never attains to the seriousness of Other-being, to separation and dis- union [Bnizweiung)'^ — Hegel remarks "that we have not yet got to difference in its completeness, in the form that peculiarly belongs to it [in seiner Eigenthilm- lichkeit)....\n order then that difference may be, and in order that it may come to its rights, Os^x^'c -being is requisite, so that what is differentiated may be Other- being as beent (Seyendes)^" — to use Dr Hutchison Stirling's term. This Other, let go as something independent, is the World in general, that is Nature and finite minds. But now comes the difficulty : how are the Son and the World related 'i How does the playful, ideal differentiation, which amounts only to abstract difference in general, stand towards the com- plete and actual differentiation of a World let go in deadly earnest, in such wise 'let go' that Hegel, like Schelling, can even refer to it as der Abfall der Idee, wherein the Idea is 'estranged from itself'.'* This is again the question we raised just now : what exactly is the Other } ^ Op. cit. n. p. 232, E.t. m. p. 16. ^ Op. cit. 2nd ed. 11. p. 249, E.t. ni. p. 35. The K'nigdojji of tJie Son 165 If we stop at the Other in the Kingdom of the Father, we have not gone far enough ; but if we ad- vance to the Other in the Kingdom of the Son, we seem to have gone too far. In the one we have merely what, stripped of all more concrete metaphors, Hegel can only describe as ' a movement ' in the realm of pure thought : in fact, however, when we look closer, it is hard to see how we can have even this. For though it be true that every ' definite notion ' implies negation, it is not easy to see why or how the ' pure notion, the notion apart from all limitation,' should imply it \ However even granting that this dialectical movement is in itself conceivable, the only point that interests us is that in it difference does not — to use Hegel's own phrase — "get its rights, the right of diversity {Ver- se hiedenheit) " or plurality, as, in view of the context, we may I think render it. Now it is in the Kingdom of the Son, he tells us, that this "advance to further determination takes place :... We thus enter into the sphere of determination, i.e. of space and the world of finite mind'." And here Hegel, as I have said, has too much on his hands. And he is far from oblivious of the fact. ' We may talk of 'subjective need' in a finite life, a finite friendship; but to suppose that the content of the 'divine notion,' the first person in the Hegelian Trinity, implies anything analogous to this must surely appear meaningless, when we recall how that content is described. Well, then, may a critic describe this " life in the categories as the most inconceivable thing in the world " (A. Drews, Die dftitsche Speculation seit Kant : das Wesen des Absolutm und die Personlichkeit Gottes, 2te Ausg. 1895, Bd 1. j). 248). It is certainly the veriest travesty of the Christian doctrine of the 'IVinity. ' Op. cit. II. pp. 250 f., I">.t. III. p[). 37 f. 1 66 The Hegelian Unity Two very different ' movements,' or processes, are clearly implied, but Hegel feels bound to show that these two are somehow one. So he refers to them as two moments in the analysis of the Son, which are kept apart and yet both contained in Him. The difficulty is really the old one of getting across the famous ' ditch.' How much at a loss Hegel is is shown by the fact that he thinks it illuminating to refer to Jacob Boehm's description of ' the transition ' between the two moments of the Son : how " the first only- begotten Lucifer imagined himself in himself, advanced to being and so fell ; and how immediately the eternally Only-begotten took his placed" On the strength of this piece of utter mysticism Hegel proceeds to refer to " a state before time was when the angels, God's children, sang his praises," and then more exactly defines this ' state ' as the relation of thought to its object. Apparently then not only was there a Trinity in the eternal realm of pure thought, the Kingdom of the Father, but a complete and harmonious choir of ideas as well, reminding us of Plato's ideal world. Apparently too the world in space and time was after all not ' freely let go ' but, in advancing to its rights of Other-being and plurality, really revolted and fell. Without attempting to resolve this difficulty as to the Abfall der Idee and two Only-begotten, we may con- tent ourselves with noticing that it furnishes Hegel with an additional reason for distinguishing the two ' This passage calls to mind Goethe's account of his early theological speculations, in Dichtung und Wahrheit^ bk vii. He too speaks of Lucifer 'believing that he found himself in himself and of the creation and fall that resulted. The two forms of 'flic OtJicr' 167 and keeping them apart ; for otherwise the false position would arise "as //^" to quote his words, ''the eternal Son of tJie Fathei\ the Godhead existing objectively' for itself, were the sa7uc as the world, as if by that only this were to be understood'." And yet, notwithstanding all, he still maintains that the two are implicitly the same : the Idea, that is to say, is in itself the same, merely the form is different : it is only figurative thought { Vorstcllung) that holds the two apart as two wholly diverse spheres and acts. More explicitly, Hegel's final solution of the difficulty — in spite of all that he has said about divine history as the process of self-differentiation, of God without the world not being God, and much beside — is simply to sweep away time and declare the world of finitude to be only the erepou, limited, negative etc., that as such has no truth. Regarded from the point of view of time, "it is merely an instant [Au^e^ibiiek), like the gleam of the lightning-flash, which in its appearing has immediately disappeared. But what we have really got to do is to get rid of every time-determination, whether duration or the now The world as temporal is just the region of contradiction, the Idea in a form inadequate to it\" The one Other then has two forms, one true and the other untrue ; the unveiled, eternal Other of the realm of pure thought, the Kingdom of the Father, and the phenomenal, half-concealed, half-revealed Other of the Kingdom of the Son ; the Other that makes no dif- ference in the unsullied light of the divine self-identity ' But has Hegel ever made this 'objective existence' clear? ' Of>. at. II. p. 251, E.t. III. [). 39. * Op. cit. II. p. 252, K.t. III. p. 40. 1 68 The Hegelian Unity and the Other that refracts and disperses it in endless particoloured beams ; God in his eternal essence and the world of infinite particularity, of subjective con- sciousness and ordinary thought, that is the world of experience, the historical realm of ends. Now surely in all this we may say that one thing at least seems clear : what Hegel undertook to ex- plain — the transition from the Kingdom of the Father to the Kingdom of the Son — "how this Idea passes out of its universality and infinity into finitude " proves to be inexplicable. The Kingdom of the Father, then, to which the Son as the eternally Only-begotten be- longs, is thus — as I attempted to show in the second lecture — the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns. The Absolute cannot be the startingpoint of real knowledge, — it may be the ulti- mate goal of philosophical speculation. Experience may lead us to frame the idea of the Absolute, but it will not enable us to deduce the world of the Many from it. Among the opening sentences of his ex- position of the Kingdom of the Son, Hegel has the following which comes near to admitting the truth of all this : — " First there was the Idea in the element of thought : this is the foundation and with it we have begun ; [for] the Universal and therefore more abstract must precede [all else] in science^" ; but in fact "it is the later in existence ; it is the potential {das Ansich) but it comes later to consciousness and knowledge"." That is to say the Idea in the element of thought, to ^ Hegel uses 'science' here in a Fichtean sense, that is as equivalent to philosophy. ^ Op. cit. II. p. 247, E.t. III. p. 33. TJie tyaiisition to the Kiiigdoni of the Son 1 69 which Hegel has relegated the persons of the Christian Trinity, lies behind existence and experience : as he goes on immediately to say, "the for7n of the Idea comes to appearance as result, which however is essentially potentiality [das AnsicJi)!' Clear in itself, such language is nevertheless not a little confusing in view of the context, that we were just now discussing, in which it occurs. For there the whole finite world of our conscious experience is declared to be illusory, inadequate, and untrue, and the movement within the realm of thought to be verily reality, truth, infinity. But there still, of course, remains the Kingdom of the Spirit, in which this estrangement of the Idea, which constitutes the inadequacy of the finite world, is finally overcome. This estrangement is puzzling not only for the reasons we have already considered, but also in yet another respect. Thus, at the end of the Lo^ic, Hegel describes the Idea as impelled to realise itself beyond the confines of pure thought and pictures it as freely but with absolute self-confidence taking the plunge into another sphere. This, as we have seen, is a difficult situation to conceive, but the result is equally bewildering. For the plunge, when made, has at once to be undone: the Idea, dissipated and out of itself, has painfully to collect itself again and rise anew to its pristine unity. Fortunately it was not let go as a whole: it is only the second element or inoniciit, that ol particularity, that answers to Nature, aiul the externalisation which was the work of the first moment is internalised anew through the third. This Kingdom of the Spirit we have presently to consider: I ;uiticipate I JO The Hegelian Unity it here because the continuation of the sentence just now quoted is somewhat clearer when this is taken into account. The whole sentence runs : — " T\i^form of the Idea comes to appearance as result, which however is essentially potentiality ; as the content of the Idea is such that the last is the first and the first the last, so is what appears as result, the presupposition, the potentiality, the foundation^" This is the cardinal principle of Hegel's doctrine of development, to which I have already several times referred : the end is the beginning, for the beginning is its presupposition, and out of this nothing comes but what is already there. There is a sense in which this paradox may be true and have a meaning : there is a sense in which it is not true but self-contradictory. It may be justifiable when we are dealing with essence and its explication, with a dialectical movement : it is not true of existence and of historical evolution. The plausibility — but also the falsity — of Hegel's position lay in identifying the two. Bare potentiality, the bare idea of an end to be ac- complished, however sublime, however completely explicated in respect of its essential import, will never become actuality. But is it so certain, it may be urged, that what according to Hegel philosophy places first of all is not the supreme reality } Unquestionably if we could suppose that what he meant was simply that — though we only gradually attain to a knowledge of God, yet when we do — we may believe that God is not merely the ratio essendi, but is also the personal creator and conserver of all, we should have less difficulty. But ^ Op. cit. II. p. 247, E.t. III. p. 33. Hegefs Doctrine of Development 1 7 1 the whole trend of his system is against such an interpretation. Now Spirit for Hegel, it will be remembered, falls into the triad of subjective, objective and absolute Spirit. In keeping with such an inter- pretation, then, as Lotze has remarked, " we should have expected that absolute spirit... would have re- turned,... only with greater depth of meaning and perfection, to the form that spirit possessed in the first stage of this development, the form that is to say of personal, individual Spirit \" But as we are aware, Hegel's Absolute Spirit, the counterpart of the Abso- lute Idea in the Logic, was something wholly different from this. What Hegel places first is then neither a single substance nor a single subject. As the latest and one of his ablest commentators, Kuno Fischer, has said, " the main theme running through t,he whole of his philosophy is the development of the world in accordance with reason. What is developed is rational consciousness, spirit, the self-knowledge of humanity." All actual development of course presupposes its own possibility, and it is just this that Hegel places first as potential end and aim. He declares thought and being to be identical and yet places abstract thought at the beginning and then fails to effect its union with actual being again. Let me quote another commentary : " It may be all very well to declare that the life of ' "Of course," Lotze adds, "we could then properly regard the whole- series of philosophical notions, that were to lead up to this climax, not as furnishing a history of the development of dod himself, but only as the history of our ideas concerning his nature. In so far as this interpretation of it is impossible the dialectical exposition must be changed." Geschichte der ., vol. I. i)p. 260 ff. and in McTaggart's Studies in tin- //ci^clian Cosrno/ogy, pj). 20H ff. 176 The Hegelian Unity becomes apparent when we remember that, according to Hegrel, God before this reaHsation in the finite, this existence as the community, this self-consciousness in man, this return to Himself, is only this very result ideally regarded as its own presupposition. God comes to consciousness only in humanity, and otherwise is not God, not Spirit, but only Idea. But an Idea is not conscious, though it implies consciousness : hence God as Idea is either the unconscious, as Schopenhauer and von Hartmann maintained, or an abstract essence that 'comes later to existence,' as Hegel himself by turns concedes and denies as he alternates between the historical and the dialectical. But much more impressive than any string of quotations is the whole drift of Hegel's Philosophy of Religion and especially of the long section devoted to the so-called Kingdom of the Spirit. In the latter referring to the divinity of Christ he says it is "clear that the Community of itself produces this faith Whereas grateful peoples have placed their bene- factors only among the stars, the Spirit has recognised subjectivity as an absolute moment of the divine nature. The person of Christ has been decreed by the Church to be the Son of God'." Miracles, the words of the Bible, Councils and such like have no- thing to do with it. " The true Christian content of faith is to be justified by philosophy, not by history." Not by history as ordinarily understood Hegel means, but taking the philosophy of history in its widest sense, then by that and nothing else. It is all 'divine history,' 'development in conformity with reason,' ' Op. cit. II. p. 328, Eng. trans, iii. p. 121. The ' Phoioueiwlogy of Spirit' 177 Hegel affirms. Yes, but chequered and distorted by contingency to an indefinite extent, emerging gradually out of superstition and phantasy, out of sorrow and disappointment. " The sorrow of the world," he has said, "was the birth-place of the impulse of Spirit to know God as spiritual in universal form and stript of finitude. This want was begotten through the progress of history and the development of the world- spirit." Hercules was deified by the Greeks, the Roman Emperor was revered as God ; and Christ was decreed to be the Son of God only by the same effort of Spirit as that which lies at the basis of those earlier forms and can be recognised as present in them. "Out of the ferment of finitude as it changes into foam Spirit exhales its fragrance^" When we pass from Hegel's Philosophy of Religion to the Phenot)ienology of Spirit we find there a record of the same gradual process and the same ultimate result — an account which runs closely on all fours with that which the pluralist would give. It starts with mere sentient experience, which advances towards self-consciousness, as the subject, in shaping and con- trolling its environment, realises its own independence as an agent. Finally it reaches the stage of reason, as such incipicntly self-conscious agents enter into social relations and become fully self-conscious ; then too they develop a system of law and order and also begin to realise the spiritual world of art, religion and philosojjhy. I know ol no better summary of this wonderful but terril^ly intricate work than the follow- ing given by W'indelband in his I fistory of Modern ' Op. at. 2iid cd. II. p. 330, Eng. trans, in. 124, w. 12 178 The Hegelian Unity Philosophy. — "Hegel's aim is to. ..build up the whole of philosophy out of the continuity shewn in the historical development of the human mind. Man's self-conscious- ness is the world-spirit that has come to itself. The evolution of the human mind is the conscious self- apprehension of the world-mind, and the essence of things is to be understood from the process which the human mind has passed through in order to grasp its own organization and thereby the organization of the universe itself The Hegelian philosophy regards itself as the self-consciousness of the entire development of the culture attained by the reason of the human race, and in this it sees at the same time the self-conscious- ness of the Absolute Spirit as it unfolds itself in the world. Thus this philosophy becomes on the one side a thoroughly historical view of the world ( Welt- anschauung) but on the other lapses over into a completely anthropocentric speculation about the world {Weltbetrachtung\ that is to say, it looks upon the development of the human spirit as the development of the ' world-spirit' \" In the light of this summary the famous sentences with which Hegel concludes his Pheno?nenology become more or less clear: — "The way to the goal, absolute knowledge, or spirit knowing itself as spirit, lies in the memory of minds " — the solidarity of heredity and tradition, I suppose we might say — "as they are in them- selves and as they accomplish the organization of their realm. Their conservation on the side of their free existence manifesting itself in the form of contingency is History, but on the side of their organization in notional ^ Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, 4te Aufl. 1907, 11. p. 329. TJie ' Hisfoyy of Philosophy ' 1 79 form {begriffenen) it is Science manifesting itself as knowledge. Both together, Jiistory in notional form, constitute the memory and the Golgotha of the Absolute Spirit, the actuality, truth and certainty of his throne, without which he would be the lifeless Solitary ; only ' From the chalice of this spirit realm Sparkles his Infinitude'*." The reference to Calvary recalls the negative element, the sorrow of the world that spiritualises it, on which Hegel had previously dwelt. With this we may compare a similar passage giving the 'result' of the History of Philosophy : — " The struggle of the finite self-consciousness with the absolute self-consciousness, which appeared for that to be beyond it, ceases. [For] the finite self-consciousness has ceased to be finite ; and therebv on the other hand the absolute self-consciousness has acquired the actuality, which it jjreviously lacked. In general the entire history of the world so far, and in particular the history of philosophy, is simply the exhibition of this struggle. And now they seem to have reached their goal, where the absolute self-consciousness, of which they had a presentation ( Vorstellnng), has ceased to be some- thing foreign, where, that is to say, the spirit as spirit is actual The Spirit j>roduces itself as Nature, [and] as Society {Staa/). The former is its unconscious action,... in the deeds and life of history as also [in the works] of art it brings itself forth consciously,... but only in science" — i.e. in j)]iI]()soj)hy — "does it know itself as absolute spirit, and this knowledge alone is spirit, is its veritable existence'*." ' An inaccurate fjuotation from Schiller's poem Die Freundschaft. ' Geichichtf lier r/iilosophie, ill. pp. 689 f. 12 — 2 i8o The Hegelian Unity Everywhere, then, in all his works, Hegel reaches unity as the result of a development, and everywhere emphatically declares it to be a result. Surely there- fore it is reasonable to believe that he means what he says. When, however, he adds that this result is itself the beginning, he does not say what he means. What he means is itself result — the speculative inversion of the concrete development in the mirror of the so-called Logic : he himself compares it to standing on your head\ Even the Absolute Idea itself is so far a result that the notion of it is described as ' an object in which all differentiations have coalesced".' As to the actual unity that is its correlative — in spite of occasional passages in which Hegel refers to it as ' having personality,' it can hardly be called a person in the strict sense. This, I think, is evident from Hegel's account of the State or Society. Much the same language as he used in describing the religious com- munity is repeated here. The state is "the ethical spirit, the substantial will that thinks itself and knows and what it knows accomplishes"; "it is the spirit that is stationed in the world and there consciously realises itself, whereas in Nature it is only actualised as its own Other, as sleeping spirit." He even calls the idea of the state 'the actual God I' But we have still to see how far Hegel's actual unity is from de- serving the title Absolute ; and this will brino- us round again to Pluralism, in which there is the same shortcoming. |i ' Phnenomenologie, p. 21; E. t. p. 24. ^ Encyclopaedic, § 236. " Philosophic des Rechtes, iste Aufl. § 257, pp. 312, 318, 320. LECTURE IX. THE LIMITS OF PLURALISM. W^hat after all, we have now to ask, was Hegel's actual unity ? It was entirely geocentric and anthro- pocentric. The earth, he says, is the truth of the solar system, just as animal nature is the truth of vegetable, and this the truth of the mineral. The earth is /Ac planet : the sun has neither produced it nor thrown it off; but sun, moon, comets, and stars are only conditions for the earth iyFh'dingungcii der Erde) which they serve. Among the continents of the earth. Europe, in virtue of its physical characteristics, forms its consciousness, its rational part, and the centre of Europe is Germany'. With his own philosophy, he had the sublime assurance to think, the history of philosophy closes ; and in the restoration of Prussia under Stein he thought the culmination of the world's history was attained. It is however not so much this unique anticlima.x that now concerns us ; but rather the general position that there are not ' more worlds than ours,' which Hegel shared with the fifteenth century ecclesiastics. The)', il will be remembered, had burned (Giordano Pnuno alive, who w.is oxw, of the first in modern times to proclaim this doctrine ; and ' Encyciopatdia, ^ 241;, 280, 340. 1 82 The Lhnits of Pluralism they regarded even Columbus as verging on heresy. "As the planet, the earth is the body of individttal totality... its characteristic as organic is to digest the entirely general astral powers, which as heavenly bodies have the illusory appearance of independence, and to bring them under the control of its individuality, in which these Titanic members sink to moments From a quantitative standpoint one may regard the earth as 'a drop in the sea of the infinite,' but magnitude is a very external determination." The earth "is our home, not as physical, but as the home of spirit^" This seems to be about all that Hegel had to say concerning the existence of a plurality of worlds. He appears never to have thought seriously of controverting it : it was too completely beyond his purview for that. The question : — To what end then all the rest of the universe '^ which vexed the soul of old Bohme — why, Hoffding asks, did it never trouble Hegel ? His contempt for Nature was too extreme, we reply : the man who compared the starry heavens to a Might-rash' or ' a swarm of flies ' was hardly likely to have troubled his head further about them. Had he done so, facing the facts with an open mind and without parti pris, he would have found the realisation of the Absolute Idea as the Kingdom of the Spirit a far more serious problem than from his purely geocentric and anthropo- centric standpoint it proved to be. It would have been impossible then to call the earth ' the home of spirit' par excellence. Now this is precisely the problem with which pluralism is on one side confronted. So far as our experience goes we seem unable to ' Op. cit. % 280. t The Plitralify of Jl'orlds 183 conceive how a plurality of worlds can ever become a single Realm of Ends, such as might fitly be called absolute. But the plurality of worlds seems not only to stand in the way of that complete consummation of the will towards a higher unity, which is the pluralist's ideal : it also presents difficulties for the Christian theologian. The continuity between natural and moral evil is so close that it can hardly be seriously maintained that the advance from a state of merely animal innocence to a ' knowledge of good and evil ' has not frequently, perhaps invariably, entailed actual sin and error and misery. If so, then for other worlds as for ours, what Heofel has called a ' Golgotha' would be essential; and thus, if we are not to charge God with the arbitrary partiality of an oriental potentate, we seem driven to assume that 'the plan of salvation,' the divine progress from the manger to the cross, has been reenacted in worlds innumerable. Sir David Brewster apparently was prepared, if need be, to assume this; but theologians, so far as I know, have been less presumptuous. Iwo other alternatives then present themselves. I he existence of a pluralit\- of worlds might be simply denied, as it was 1)\' John Wesley, by Whewell — in his famous anonymenis essay — and as it has l)een denied again recently by Dr Alfred Russell Wallace. Both these later writers rely mainly on a use of the argument from probabilities, which scxmiis clearly fal- lacious. II a given effect can only result from the cooperation f;f a single grouj) of indcpcndeiu causes we ma) proceed lo iiKpiire about the |)robability of their concurrence elsewhere ; but if ihe given effect 184 The Liniits of Pluralism can result in manifold other ways, then the absence of all the conditions present in a given case proves nothing. It may be true that a fauna and a flora analogous to ours are possible nowhere else, that human beings could only exist on this one planet. But metabolism, stimulation, and spontaneous direction may be possible in a protoplasm very different from that with which we are familiar, and evolution might progress indefinitely on quite other lines than those that have obtained for us\ Viewed from such more general standpoint the probability is not against, but enor- mously in favour of, a plurality of worlds, as men of science almost unanimously allow. We come then to the other alternative. Granted that in the one universe there are many worlds, the Christian theologian has the strongest grounds for believing that they are spiritually and historically, and not merely physically, interconnected. It was 'the infidel Tom Paine,' a quondam Quaker, who first made the plurality of worlds a serious stumbling-block for Christian believers by his once famous work, the Age of Reason. To meet his ob- jections without denying his premises, Andrew Fuller and afterwards Chalmers — mainly on the strength of isolated texts from the Old and the New Testament — sought to establish "the position," as the latter puts it, " that the history of our redemption is known in other and distant places of creation, and is matter of deep interest and feeling amongst other orders of ^ The protoplasm of our planet has determined once for all the possible foods and the possible senses of all its organisms ; but quite other protoplasms are perfectly conceivable. The Upper Limif of Phiralis)ii 185 created intellioences'." The nature of such a connexion is the problem that pluralism in our da)' has to consider. We may call it the upper limit of pluralism. It seems obvious that unless some supreme spiritual unity is found the universe will remain in the highest sense an absolute plurality, if such a term is allowable. Such a universe would be a merely sporadic manifold of realms of ends having" a common physical basis but devoid of all teleolocjical continuitv ; like so many village communities without a supreme federation, geographically neighbours but strangers politically. As society lifts the individual to a hio-her level, so we feel that a supreme unity would increase the worth of this universe both intellectually and morally. Such a unity is an ideal that we feel ou'dit to be real. Can we conceive it more definitely or find any evidence of its existence ? The theoloyfical writers — as the words just quoted from Chalmers show — rely on the Christian doctrine of a hierarchy of angels to render the con- nexion of a multitude of otherwise isolated workls intelligible. Angels are to be regarded not only as the ministers of Providence but as spectators of uni\ersal history. Such a conception is entirely in keej)ing with the general standpoint of pluralism, as I ha\e tried to describe it. The principle of continuity indeed almost forces us to posit higher ord('rs of intelligence than our own ; and the fact" that ive are able to control ami modify the course of evolution susriiests that it there are high(!r intelligences they can exercise this power in a still higher degree. ' Chriitian Revflation in connexion with Astronomy, I )isc. i\". isl cdn, J). i.t5. ' Cf. I^ccturc V. p. III. 1 86 The Limits of Pluralism This latter possible function of intelligences of a higher order does not directly concern our main problem, that of an ultimate and supreme unity ; but it bears on it indirectly, in so far as any evidence of such control would be evidence of the existence of those superior beings ; and their existence again would strengthen the assumption of a still higher unity in the plurality of worlds. Is there then we may inquire any evidence of this sort? Evidence, I mean, of a purely objective and scientific kind, not merely evidence which could satisfy only persons with certain sub- jective convictions lying outside the purview of science proper. For on the lines of our present inquiry it might be held that we cannot fairly appeal, for example, to the specially Christian evidences in support of theophanies, incarnation, inspiration and the like. At the same time it should not be forgotten that spiritual- istic pluralism, unlike naturalism, can have no a pjHori objection to the 'supernatural' in this sense\ We have an instance of the sort of evidence we are seeking in Dr Russel Wallace's arguments, already ^ These remarks will of course suggest to everybody a topic which is in fact fundamental to the whole subject we are considering — the question, namely, of religious faith and religious experience. Such an experience implies a consciousness of the presence of a higher spiritual being — a consciousness which is wholly distinct from the belief in other selves which we reach by the ejective interpretation of what is externally presented. It is in such wise that to earnestly religious minds 'the evidence of things unseen' is certain, immediate and practically verified. For them the problem of the unity of the many is already essentially solved. But their certainty after all is primarily subjective : it is faith, not knowledge. It cannot compel assent on purely scientific or merely speculative grounds. Hence I think we do well to follow Kant's example and for the present to leave it aside. Dr RusscI If ^(7 1 laces Arguiuciifs 187 noted in an earlier lecture, to show that man's appear- ance on the earth is due to such supernatural interference. After enumeratino^ a number of human characteristics, such as naked skin, a brain largely in excess of animal needs, musical voice, moral sense, etc., he proceeds : — " The inference I would draw from this class ot phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just as man guides the develop- ment of many animal and vegetable forms. The laws of evolution alone would, perhaps, never have produced a grain so well adapted to man's use as wheat and maize ; such fruits as the seedless banana and bread-fruit; or such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the London dray-horse. Yet these so closely resemble the unaided productions of nature, that we may well imagine a being who had mastered the laws of development of organic forms through past ages, refusing to believe that any new power had been concerned in their production, and scornfully rejecting the theory... that in these few cases a controlling in- telligence had directed the action of the laws of variation, multiplication, and survival for its own purposes. We know, however, that this has been done ; and we must therefore admit the possibility that, if we are not the highest intelligences in the universe, some higher intelligence may have directed the process by which the human race was develojjed, by means of more subtle agencies than we are accjuainted with." In a note he adds: — "Angels and archangels... have been so long banished from our b(.-llel as to have become actually unthinkable as actual e.\istences, and The Limits of Phtralism nothing in modern philosophy takes their place. Yet the grand law of ' continuity,' the last outcome of modern science... cannot surely fail to be true beyond the narrow sphere of our vision, and leave such an infinite chasm between man and the great Mind of the universe. Such a supposition seems... in the highest degree improbable \" As I have already said^ there is no denying the formal soundness of this reasoning, even if we hesitate to go further. It at least serves to set the continuity argument in a telling light. A similar, if less impressive argument is perhaps to be found in the prodigality in nature of beautiful colours and forms, which natural selection on grounds of bare utility seems altogether unable to explain. Take for example the gorgeous coloration of humming- birds or the so-called ' ball and socket ' ornament in the secondary wing-feathers of the Argus pheasant^ In reply to the late Duke of Argyll^ one of the few writers who have dwelt at any length on this particular •mystery of creation,' Darwin admitted that natural selection was powerless to account for such facts, but he thought that sexual selection would suffice. Dr Wallace, who at first agreed with him in this, has since recanted ; and now, I take it, he would agree rather with the Duke of Argyll that " love of beauty is equally ^ Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, 1891, pp. 204 f. "- Cf. Lect. IV. p. 91. ^ Of Tennyson his friend Edward Fitzgerald relates that "picking up a daisy as we walked and looking close to its crimson-tipt leaves he said: 'Does not this look like a thinking Artificer, one who wishes to ornament?'" In Memoriam, A. VV. Robinson's excellent edition, P- 255- ■* Reign of Laiv, ist edn, p. 236. TJie Aesthcfical in Nature 189 a purpose which we see fulhlled in Nature," and so imphes some superior control. At any rate he con- cludes his chapter on the colour-sense by sayino; : — " The emotions excited by colour and by music alike seem to rise above the level of a world developed on purely utilitarian principles^" This whole subject of what we mieht call Natural Aesthetics seems to be a fruitful held of inquiry that, so far as I know, has been strangely neglected'. The subject no doubt is beset with difficulties, and there are many pros and cons to weigh before the intervention of such superior and disinterested principles can be maintained with any confidence. Still, if their presence were credibly ascertained it would add greatly to the antecedent probability that, to repeat Dr Wallace's words, " the grand law of continuity cannot fail to be true beyond the narrow sphere of our vision." This 'grand law' then encourages the pluralist to assume, though lacking sufficient direct evidence, that there exist individuals of a higher order, or rather a hierarchy of such orders — a speculative view with which Leibniz and Fechner have made us all familiar. But human beings owe their pre-eminence on this planet to social organization, which we regard as not merely an aggregate but as an over-individual unity. The law of continuity then would seem to suggest that individuals of a higher order in like manner are organized into over-individual unities, and so on — possibly ad indefinitnui. This view would thus k.id • Op. cit. \). 415. • August Pauly is an exception. Cf. his Danvinismus uti,/ Lamar ckismus, 1905, p[). 272 ff. 190 The Limits of Pluralism up to a society rather than to a person as the Supreme Unity of all. But apart from other difficulties that we shall have presently to consider — it might readily be brought into line with the Christian doctrine of a tri-personal God. The objections that have recently been brought against theism by Dr McTaggart — from the standpoint of what may fairly be called a Hegelian pluralism — might perhaps in this way be met. It is noteworthy that it is the theologians who have been most influenced by Hegel, who insist the most on what is technically called the ' essential trinity ' {rp6TToerfect 198 The Limits of Pluralism state. Even for Leibniz activity was dependent on perception in such wise that confused perception and complete passivity were synonymous. What is called Voluntarism however inverts all this. Conation, not cognition, is regarded as funda- mental to life : it is the blind impulse to live that leads on to knowledge, just as it is for the sake of life that knowledge is valued ; not vice versa. This doctrine of the primacy of the practical first definitely announced by Kant, repeated and extended by Fichte, was still more emphatically proclaimed by Schopenhauer, the very title of whose chief work, Die Welt als Wille und als Vorstellung, is but the complete formulation of the doctrine already adumbrated by Kant. The things per se in the world are will, the things we know are but their appearance. For voluntarism an ' unconscious ' world would not be either a dead material world or the bare potentiality of a living world only to be made actual by some fiat from without. On this view experience does not begin with sensation as a purely passive state ; it presupposes activity ; and cognition with its distinction of subject and object is a conse- quence of this. In the absence of that distinction this activity is called unconscious. To be sure Fichte and Schopenhauer were singu- larists. But so far as the assumed relation of will to presentation is concerned, this seems more readily conceivable if there is a multiplicity of wills which interact, than if there is only a single will and nothing beside. In fact we seem then driven to assume a really inconceivable fractionation of the one unconscious will into many, in order that consciousness may arise Voluntarism 1 99 Modern pluralists are, I think, almost invariably voluntarists. or as some of them prefer to call them- selves, pragmatists. As such, while they admit the impossibility of regressing to the beginning of evolu- tion, they deny that evolution requires a transcendent Prime iNIover distinct from the Many : for the Many they hold are all prime movers, and so far causer sui. I say ' so far,' because the term causa sui is generally construed as equivalent to absolute ; but what is here meant, I take it, is only that each has an unconditional existence over against the rest while none has an unconditional experience. They are aware of each other in virtue of their own interaction : they interact in virtue of their inherent spontaneity. Will is the 7'atio essendi of presentation, presentation the ratio cognoscendi of will. Will is the logical priiis, but as absolute beginnings are beyond us there is no question of chronological priority. The efficient causation in the world then is just this totality of prime movers, its final causation their organization into a higher unity. Bearing this distinction in mind, an obvious ob- jection made by von Hartmann. which would otherwise be a fatal objection, loses some of its force. " The aseity of the [one absolute] Substance," he says, is " for our discursive understanding, restricted [as that is] to the category of causality, the i^roblem of problems ; because it implies only the negative statement that this being is no more the effect of an other. When however the understanding still persists in applying the usual cau.sal categor) in this case too. then it terms the [absolute] Substance its own effect and its own cause, — the und(,-rstanding thereijy only making a mockery of itself. That the [absolute] Substance groundlessly is 200 The Limits of Pluralisfn and not is not, that is for us the wonder of all wonders." A system of philosophy, he then goes on to urge, which multiplies this wonder innumerable times, as pluralism in his opinion does, stands self-condemned \ It might perhaps be replied that wonderfulness is inversely proportional to frequency. So far then V. Hartmann would be convicted of subtly begging the question. But pluralism, in fact, does not maintain that a world of n monads is a world of n absolutes. The totality may be called absolute, if there is nothing to condition it from without, but no one individual within it can be called absolute. Whether in the abstract an absolute totality of individuals or an absolute individual be the greater problem or the greater wonder is surely an idle question. The only real question is the question of fact. If pluralism is self-consistent and self-sufficient it does not become a problem, merely because it is wonderful. And the like again, of course, would hold true of singularism. But there is this difference between them, we start with the Many as given: so far they do not need to be 'deduced.' With the One we do not thus start. At the same time it must be allowed that pluralism cannot furnish, has never attempted to furnish anything de- serving to be called a philosophical justification of itself — it is, as William James called it, radical em- piricism ; whereas for singularism in the abstract there have been ontological and ^/r/^^rz arguments in plenty. Pluralism, as Kant long ago remarked, is confined exclusively to cosmological arguments'. It starts with a discrete Many, severally related and therefore severally ^ Kategorienlehre^ p. 528. ^ Cf. his remarks on the thesis of the fourth antinomy. Pliiyalisin to be rejected oy transcended 201 comparable, and beyond this its cardinal principles of continuity and evolution will not enable it to go. Neither by regressing- can it reach a lowest limit or origin, in which all diversity is latent; nor by progressing can it reach a highest limit or goal in which all plurality is transcended. This, the pluralists extremity, will doubtless be regarded as the singularist's opportunity. But the latter so far has never succeeded — without doing violence to the facts — in advancing beyond a more or less covert dualism of the One and the Many, of God and the World. The connexion of these two, that is to say, remains a problem. Thus in the latest and one of the most important expositions of singularism, its author, Mr Bradley, tells us: — "The fact of actual fragmentariness, I admit, I cannot explain. That experience should take place in finite centres, and should wear the form of finite ' thisness,' is in the end inexplicable. But" — he adds — "to be inexplicable and to be incompatible are not the same thing'." Here we have the whole matter in a nutshell. If pluralism is 'infected with contradictions,' as Mr Bradley affirms, we must turn, he contends, to singularism, that is to say, to Absolutism. If such an Absolute Being as he supposes, is possible, then, in view of the said contra- dictions, it must be declared actual. If, as we maintain, it is not possible, then we are reduced to scepticism, un- less the asserted contradictions can be resolved. Even though not compelled by contradictions altogether to abandon pluralism, we ought to prefer Theism if that sy.stematizes more and disapijoints less. The tlitficul- ties of pluralism ihlnralist may fairh' be expected to come ' Thaniide, pt i, J? 91. ("f. I -(.ct. iv. pp. <;o {{. 2o6 Difficulties in Pluralisiii to closer quarters with the problem of heredity than Leibniz either did or could do. Here in the first place one point seems clear: what is metaphorically described as heredity — as if there were a bequest from one organism to another — is rather so much habit or memory, which pertains to the offspring in virtue of its original continuity with the ancestral stem. The process of regeneration, whereby an organism restores a lost part, and the process of budding, whereby it produces a new whole, are simply instances of such continuity. Even sexual reproduction, in spite of the important preliminary preparation that the maturation of its two constituents requires, seems to be essentially nothing more than the union of two buds. But in none of these processes, so far, is there any individual to be found that can be called the heir, and therefore no ground for calling their result a heritage. All we can say is that what has been clone myriads of times is done once more : in regeneration or asexual reproduc- tion the old routine is repeated precisely ; and in sexual reproduction there is the joint result of two compatible routines that are similar but not entirely identical. As evidence of the continuity of the process and the completeness of its routine we may appeal to the so-called biogenetic law or principle of palingenesis — that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. But is the new individual nothing but 'a chip off the old block,' nothing but a new specimen of the species regarded as self-repeating ? The lower the form of life that we consider the less ground have we for assuming more : there seems to be almost as much routine in the con- duct of the simplest organisms as there was in their The Pyoblcm of Ilcrcdity 207 construction. Contrariwise the higher the form of hfe we take note of, the more we seem driven to assume that the org"anism has a director, and is not a mere automaton. It is here that we are led to talk of an heir and to regard the body as his heritage. This heir is the soul or dominant monad. But where does it conie from and how does it get possession of this body ? These questions however implicitly contradict the pluralist's assumption, that souls do not get bodies but always have them. The biogenetic law is then a psychophysical law ; in other words, it has a psycho- logical side ; hence to say that the genetic history of the individual summarizes the life-history of the race would better express this. One essential difference between the two is. of course, that the life-history of the race is original, is a long process of gradual acquisition by way of trial and error, in short, answers to what we have identified with natu7'a 7iatiirans ; whereas the genetic history of the individual is a derivative, rapid and, so to say, substantially invariable process, in a word, is routine or natura naturata. This difference is apparent again in the dependence of the primary process on immediate commerce with the environment and the independence of the derivative process of any such intercourse. The eye which in the race has been developed in contact with the light is reproduced in the individual in dark- ness. The higher vertebrates, whose history has led them through the most varied environments — first water, then land, then water again, as in the case of the whales — complete their embryonic life directi)' shut off frf)m environmental changes altogether. 2o8 Difficulties in Phiralism According to Haeckel the life-history of the human race can be biologically marked out into sixteen stages of steadily increasing complication. "The entire suc- cession of men, throughout the whole course of ages," Pascal has said, "is to be regarded as one man always living and always learning\" I have myself, to meet the needs of psychological exposition and yet leave aside the problem of heredity, made use of a similar idea. It will help us forward, I think, if I may be allowed to quote a passage from what I wrote years ago on this point:— "We know that in the course of each individual's life there is more or less of pro- gressive differentiation or development. Further, it is believed that there has existed a series of sentient individuals beginning with the lowest form of life and advancing continuously up to man. ...But what was experience in the past has become instinct in the present. The descendant has no consciousness of his ancestors' failures, when performing at once by an ' untaught ability ' what they slowly and perhaps pain- fully acquired. But, if we are to attempt to follow the genesis of mind from its earliest dawn, it is the primary experience rather than the eventual instinct that we have to keep in view. To this end, then, it is proposed to assume that we are dealing with one individual who has continuously advanced from the beginning of psychical life, and not with a series of individuals, all of whom, save the first, ' inherited ' certain innate capacities from their progenitors. The life-history of such an individual, then, would correspond ' Pens'ees et Opuscules, edit. Brunschvicg, p. 80: quoted by Prof. Sorley, Ethics of Naturalising 2nd ed., p. 249. The Prob/c/ii of Heredity 2og with all that was new in the life of a certain typical series of individuals, each of which advanced a stage in mental differentiation\" Let us now suppose our imaginary immortal to be set back once more to the beo:innino- but to retain the memorv of his former experiences. We may be sure that in that case he will make good the ground lost in much less time than he required at first, and also without follow- ing all the windino-s of the tentative route into which his previous inexperience had led him : his route the second time will be routine. Illustrative instances in plenty will occur to everyone at once. But the situation we have supposed is exactly that of a new organism. It does repeat with no hesitation or uncertainty so much of the ancestral experience as had become habitual, secondarily automatic or organ- ized, and it does so because it is continuous with the organisms to which this work had been previously delegated". To understand this we must regard the organism, in Leibnizian fashion, as an orderly hier- archy of monads and not as merely a vastly complex physico-chemical mechanism. The acquisition of new experience by commerce with the environment, the process that is to say of development through * Article 'Psychology,' Ency. Brit, iith edn, vol. xxn. PP- 555 <"• ' Hut, it may be objected, between the new organisms and the old there is always more or less 'variation': the two then are not strictly continuous. This we must allow, but on the other hand we may not assume that variation is ever independent of experience taken in the wide sense which the pluralist gives to it. In this way we can understand the fact that variations are vastly greater in sexual as compared with asexual reproduction. w. 14 2IO Difficulties ill Pluralism experience — in which clearer and distincter percepts, wider and exacter adjustments are attained — is to be conceived as a process in which subordinate monads are drilled and manoeuvred : here it is that, as we say, function perfects structure. We may call it biotic as distinct from genetic organization. We know directly by observation that the memories and dexterities that are acquired latest are the least engrained and the first to fail. Entirely in keeping with this we observe too that it is specific characters rather than the generic characters, upon which they are superposed, that are liable to variation\ The transmissibility of acquired automatisms is then proportional to their persistence. To say that no acquired characters are transmitted would be tantamount to saying that nothing is trans- mitted ; and to say that the automatisms accomplished in a single lifetime are not in any degree transmissible is to say that transmission can never begin. In this gradation in the persistence of organic differentiations we have, it would seem, the key to the genetic history of the individual or ontogeny : till the lower and earlier automatisms are evolved there is no metier for the higher and later, which depend upon them, to which they stand in the relation of matter to form. But a viable organism, after it has developed, con- tinues to grow or augment. It thus becomes possible •at length not indeed mechanically to divide it, but still to divide it, so to say, selectively. Herein seems to lie the possibility of a new organism. In what way the sifting out, collecting and enrolling of supernu- meraries is effected we can at present hardly even ^ Cf. Darwin's Orighi of Species, 6th edn, pp. 121 f. Tlie Problem of Heredity 2 1 1 conjecture. The pluralist must at all events maintain that these processes depend in some way on the sentience and appetition of the several monads con- cerned and also on the affinities and antipathies which their natures determine. Provided some procedure on these lines is conceivable, that is sufficient to make his position tenable. Now that far at any rate we are able to go, helped, as in other cases, by the analogy of what we know of the higher phases of living inter- course. Indeed it is not too much to say that on these lines a far simpler hypothesis is conceivable than W^ismann's of the continuity of germ-plasm, for example. But there still remain difficulties. Thus it is assumed that the supreme monad or soul of the system is within it from the first, but its dominance is manifest only towards the close of the genetic process ; but how is it attained } How in particular, in sexual reproduction, when two colonies unite ? Is there here a rivalry or conflict between two potential monarchs ? Or is there possibly after all, as some psychologists suppose, no unity at all beyond that of the system : is that only a common- wealth and not a monarchy } But such a view, though by no means devoid altogether of justification, seems inconsistent with pluralism; for, rigorously followed out, it would altogether destroy the notion of dominance on which the entire doctrine of monadism is built'. C)\\ the whole it seems best to regard the organism on its psychical side as simply the Anla [a^R); that is to say he regards the Absolute as compensating one change of state, that of A into a, by the other, that of B into ^ ; the rest of the universe, represented by R, being, for simplicity's sake, regarded as in the particular case remaining unaffected. But considering so-called 'things' apart, this doctrine of Lotze's seems very closely to resemble Berkeley's ^ It was long assumed that this difficulty only applies to 'action at a distance' and not to 'contact action.' And so far as perception or the constructions of abstract mechanics are concerned this may be true. But actual bodies are not ideal solids ; they are more like clouds, or swarms of particles in motion. Moreover absolute contact implies a common point or surface (interface), in fact no longer contiguity but continuity. Cf. NaturaHs77i and Agnosticism, 3rd edn, I. pp. 122 ff. The Pyoblou of Itifcracfioii 217 well-known doctrine of sense-symbolism. The entire physical world, ' the whole choir of heaven and furni- ture of earth,* is but the medium, divinely constituted and sustained — as it were the lantTuaQfe and the instru- mentality — whereby finite spirits communicate and interact. Now it sqqiws pri?)ia facie perfectly possible to adapt this doctrine to the pluralistic standpoint : in fact in some way or other the pluralist must regard all perceptual objects as the manifestation of subjects or ejects. There would be important differences ot detail, no doubt ; for example, as we have already said, we should begin with a Babel and have to achieve 'one language and one speech.' In short the equation by which Lotze typifies the 'self-conservation' of his Absolute seems so far to answer simply to what we might call its behaviour in sustaining the intercourse of free agents, if such a medium were necessary, as he for the most part inclined to doubt : his equation amounts in fact merely to the doctrine of physical conservation. When however A and /> are not things but per- sons, can we still say that they are merely modifications of the Absolute? When A changes to a — wlun the child, feeling hunger, wants food, let us say, and J) his father, let us suppose, thereupon changes to ^, that is, gives him bread — are we to believe that the persons here are not beings for themselves but only so-called things, that they are nothing but modifications ol an Absolute, that adjusts one to ihc ollu-r solely on us own account?" Such an interi^relaiion of personal intercourse is clearly untenable and i.ot/e did not seriously entertain it. The description that h<- has 2i8 Difficulties in Pluralism given of personal intercourse, regarded from the side of the Many, differs entirely from the conceptual framework by which science summarises what is called physical interaction. There is here no constant equa- tion involving rigidly concatenated variables, no net- work of relations of which individuals are but the termini, no lines of direction subsisting between them along which in some mysterious way actions and passions are interchanged. The spatial metaphor of influences, energies or forces transferred and trans- formed, which makes up the concept of transeunt action, is no longer applicable even as a figure to personal intercourse. The doings and sufferings of persons are both alike immediate : what brings them into relation is a ' sympathetic rapport ' or interest that rests upon cognition. All that is strictly personal in social intercourse is of this nature. It entirely consists, in the first place, of the apprehension or the know- ledge on the part of one person of the ' attitude,' the feelings and intentions displayed or announced by other persons ; secondly, in their cooperation or opposition, actual or prospective ; and finally, following on this, in the new feelings and intentions of the person in- terested, to which this knowledge leads. We can readily imagine situations in abundance that are al- together of this sort, into which — even when life itself is at stake — no physical constraint whatever directly enters. Think, for instance, of all that the phrase ' noblesse oblige ' implies, of Regulus returning to Carthage, of Socrates refusing to fly, of the Hindoo suttee, which means, I understand, 'virtuous wife,' or of the Japanese 'hai'i kari or 'happy despatch'; or again ' SyjiipafJicfic Rapport' 219 ot the wiles of the hunter and the angler, who have to count simply on the behaviour of their game till it brings itself into a position to be dealt with, so to say, as a thing. It is, however, as needless as it would be tedious to picture out such cases in detail. But usually in these cases there is, in addition to the conduct of those primarily concerned, that of sub- ordinates and accessories, upon which they can safely count — the law and the police, impartial spectators, servants and retainers; and again dogs, decoys, stalking horses and the like. All this we may call social environ- ment in a wide sense : upon it we rely and depend, much as we rely and depend upon what we call the physical environment. And we have seen already that this social environment, so far as habit and custom enter into it, tends to approximate to the character of the physical environment : nay that very character, which we express by such terms as law and order, subject and attribute, is, we know, so much metaphor borrowed from the world of persons. For the pluralist, however, it is more than metaphor. If the Leibnizian as- sumption, that there are no beings entirely devoid of perception and spontaneity — which Lotze too accepted — is otherwise sound, then the objections to transeunt action between things become irrelevant. For these objections do not apply to personal interaction based on mutual 7'apport, which is all that the pluralist requires. On the contrary the \'ery fact that this suffices for his view of the world is so far an argument in its favour. But there is still another objection to pluralism, likewise urged by Lotze, thai is more serious. 220 Diffi nil ties in Pluralism Granted that sentient and conative beings can shape their conduct relatively to each other — in so far as they are clearly aware of each other's presence and attitude — without the need of another being distinct from them all to play the part of a go-between, still the fact that such 'sympathetic rapport' exists is in Lotze's opinion nothing less than an ' inexhaustible wonder.' Nay the mere fact that all the Many are comparable and commensurable, that no individual, however unique, is altogether disparate and isolated from the rest, though undeniable, is such a wonder : only extreme familiarity leads us to take it for granted as a matter of course. Lotze is content to press only this second broader and simpler issue, which he regards as a form of the cosmological argument^ The first which approximates rather to the teleological argument he seems content to waive. Still it may be well to look at both. Let us begin with the argument in its more de- tailed form. We can readily imagine a case sufficiently analogous to bring out the point of the argument, how very far the actual relatedness of things is from being self-evident or self-explanatory. Let us suppose that we had a sack of type continually shuffled, which differs however from ordinary type in one respect. When letters forming syllables come together we will suppose that their arrangement remains comparatively stable, that when syllables forming words come together this arrangement is still more stable, and similarly of words forming sentences and so on ; that generally the more meaning the more stability. Under such ' Microcosmus, Eng. trans, vol. ii. pp. 668 f. TJie Iiiiplicatioiis of TJicoIogy 221 circumstances the more 'sense' the final arrangement presented the more we should be inclined to believe that we had been dealino- from the first not with a random collection but with a definite selection, with what, in fact, was all along- really a whole and not merely an aofsrrecrate. And should the final arrange- ment be complete and perfect without one redundant or deficient letter, this presumption would amount to certainty. No doubt the better fitting arrangements of our world are to be regarded as the more stable arrano^e- ments. The Many however are not, like type, moulded unalterably once for all : on the contrary they must be regarded as more or less plastic and adaptable, as mutually moulding each other in a greater or less degree. The round man, to be sure, avoids the square hole ; and vet if circumstances force him into it, he usually contrives to adapt it or to adapt himself. The limpet shapes its shell to fit the rock, the Pholas shapes the rock to fit its shell. And after all, the teleological harmony to be found in the world is not such as to force on us the conviction that it is due solely to a single underlying or overruling principle. "Taken alone," Lotze himself allows, "it would more easily lead to the polytheistic view of a plurality of di\ine beings, each dominating a special department of nature as its special genius, their diverse modes of adminis- tration agreeing too so far as to attain t(3 a certain general compatibility but not to a harmony that is altogether complete'." But then is il not strange to maintain that the pluralistic view, which is ailmiltetUy suggested directly by the facts of the world, is yet ' Op. at. vol. II. i». 667. 222 Difficulties in Pluralism really inconceivable, and that the opposite view, which the facts seem at first sight to negative, is nevertheless the only view that is not self-contradictory ? This, however, is what Lotze does : let us next examine this position somewhat more closely. The Many are all related : they interact. This interrelation is at once the ratio essendi and the ratio cognoscendi of their comparability. No two are al- together different, for all are conative and cognitive to some extent. Such is the familiar pluralistic doctrine. And now, says Lotze, because all this is so, the Many are substantially one, are only different modifications of a single Being that we designate the Absolute \ The Many are either severally comparable or they are not. If they are not, there can be no knowledge of their plurality : if they are, then they are funda- mentally and ultimately one. Such is Lotze's short and easy method with pluralism. It yields, I fear, only a 'cheap and easy monism.' There can be no experience of a plurality, whether of beings, qualities or events, that are absolutely disparate and discon- nected — that is certain. All experienced diversity implies some identity ; and, for the matter of that, all experienced identity some diversity. All this is so much logical commonplace. From this it follows that to every known or knowable Many there will be some common term applicable to them all, which logically unifies them all. But it leaves the question of their real unity untouched. Ice, water, steam, is a plurality which turns out to consist only of varying states of one substance. Gold, silver, copper, is a plurality which has not been thus unified : logically it belongs ^ Cf. Grundzilge der Metaphysik, 1883, § 48. The Many and the One 223 to the one class, metal. The class is logically one, but we do not say there ?)iusi be a single prime and ultimate metal. The Many of pluralism are in like manner a logical whole : they constitute the class of entelechies or persons in the widest sense, beings, that is to say. who are something for themselves, conative and coirnitive individuals bent on self-conservation and seekino- the gfood. To resolve the loo-ical universal itself into a personal individual, of which the several persons that it denotes are but modifications, so far from explaining the facts denoted, seems fiatly to con- tradict them. Yet this is what Lotze does. To be sure the Many are more than a logical whole : they are a real unity, but a unity of another order, just as a regiment is a unity though it is not a soldier. This other unity answers to the fact — a fact, it is important to notice, which perception and appetition imply — viz., that the Many are severally related by their mutual interaction : for each, as subject, the rest constitute an objective continuum. We have not, I repeat, two distinct and separable facts, first the Many existing in isolation, and then their interaction, either subse- quently intervening as a real muhium commercijim for them or else preestablished as a merely 'ideal' harmony independently of them : the former answering to the Herbartian, the latter to the Leibnizian pluralism. F"or modern pluralism the universe is the totality of monads really interacting; and this is one fact. The plurality implies this unity and this unity implies the [)lurality. Hut this fact, says Lotze, is an inc-xhausiible wonder. Unc^uestionably the iini\'(.'rse is an inex- haustible wonder. Still after all a wonder is not a contradiction. Reiiirniii'> iheii i<» i-olze's lormula, 224 Difficulties in Phtralisin M=^[ABR) or i^i^ABR) = M, for the mere equation gives no priority to one side over the other; if it can be shown that M is more than the name we give to a plurahty of reals A, B, C,..., whose functional relation is symbolised by ^ — that M is in fact itself the one absolute reality, and the relation which ' its individuality as a self-conserving unity ' imposes upon its several differentiations or modes A, B, C... — all well and good. But the mere formula will not accomplish this. Taken as an abstract formula it may suggest either alternative, but taken as a description of the universe or mundiis, M, regarded empirically or a posteriori, it is no longer equally ambiguous. From this immanent standpoint M does not resolve the wonder, it merely names it. If we are to get any further we must assume that M is transcendent, an ens extramundammi, to use Kant's phrase ; and this all theism does that is worthy of the name. Then, however, A, B, R will no longer be merely modes or states of this M. But to express the relation of this transcendent Being to the world of experience no equa- tional formula seems either appropriate or adequate. Theism, however, promises to effect much in resolving the difficulties of pluralism, and to the careful discussion of theism I propose to devote the second part of these lectures. Meanwhile I think we must insist that the way cannot be cleared in any summary fashion by convicting the pluralist's Weltanschauung not merely of incompleteness but of actual contradictions. In fact, if it were radically infected with contradictions, we have seen, I trust, that the way to theism would be hopelessly barred ; for from pluralism speculation really always has and always must begin. PART II. THEISM. LECTURE XI. THE IDEA OF CREATION. We have seen that modern plurahsm is, on its own confession, 'radically empirical.' It makes no attempt to deduce the universe from a single absolute principle, or indeed to deduce it at all. The world is taken simply as we find it, as a plurality of active individuals unified only in and through their mutual interactions. These interactions again are interpreted throughout on the analogy of social transactions, as a niutuum C07nme7'ciu)u ; that is to say, as based on cognition and conation. To the speculative mind piir sang there is nothing satisfactory about such a view unless perhaps its frankness. Hut then, on the other hand, there are objections to all attempts to proceed altogether a priori. It seems obviously puerile to ask, for example, for a sufficient reason why there is something rather than nothing. This notion of being absolutely thoroughgoing, of building up a metaphysic without pr(.*suj)positions. one that shall start from nothing and exj)lain all, is. I repeat, futile. Such a metaphysic has its own w. 15 226 The Idea of Creation assumption, and that an absurd one, viz., that nothing is the logical prms of something. Well at any rate, it may be said, if we must start from something, let us at least start from what is absolutely necessary, or rather let us not stop till we reach it : let us not rest in what is merely actual, for that can only be contingent. But, paradoxical though it may sound, necessary being is but another aspect of contingent being ; for within the limits of our experience only that is called 7^eaUy necessary which is inevitably conditioned by its cause, and is thus contingent on this, that is to say, follows from it. In other words real as distinct from formal necessity is synonymous with causation ; and moreover, as Kant said, this real or causal necessity " extends no further than the field of possible experience, and even then does not apply to the existence of things as sub- stances ; because such substances can never be looked upon as empirical effects or as something that happens or comes to be\" Thus to talk of absolutely necessary being as the foundation of the universe, so to say, is only to be guilty of the fallacy of Locke's poor Indian philosopher, the fallacy of applying to the whole a concept that is applicable only to the part. " The favourite notion of the philosophers," said Schopenhauer with wonted bitterness, "of 'absolutely necessary being ' involves a contradiction : the predicate ' abso- lute,' which means ' dependent on nothing else,' removes the characteristic through which alone 'neces- sary' is thinkable and has any sense"." The absolute totality of being has no cause, it simply is. To attempt ' Critique of Pure Reason, M. Miiller's trans, p. 198. ^ Vierfache Wurzel, u.s.w. § 49. JMcfapIiysic i^'if/ioiif pycsiippositioiis 227 to retlect causation back on itself as in such phrases as causa sui, aseit\', or being through self, reall)- adds nothing to our bare recognition of this being. But if there is no sense in callin^: the absolute totality of being necessary, there is none in calling it contingent. Within it there is necessity and contingency in plenty : every part is related to the rest : but the whole, we have again to say. simply is. If then the whole simply is, those philosophers have only deluded themselves, who have essayed by the royal road of pure thought to determine a priori what it must be. The only a pi'iori statements con- cerning the world that are beyond challenge are purely formal statements ; yet the entire body of logical and mathematical truths would not yield us the faintest anticipatory gleam of what the actual world would be, even if it were possible to know such iruihs in advance. But this supposition too is only a delusion : for validity implies reality and is otherwise meaningless. The two are distinct but they are not absolutely separable. The notion of a sort of antecedent logical fate determining all subsequent existence is [jsycho- logically explicable as the result — not of the supremacy of our reason — but of the limitations of our imagination. We distinguish relatively to a particular case between form and matter. But when we make the distinction absolute, pure form and pure matter both alike become empty abstractions. W^.- find the logical lo be in evr-ry case necessary, th(! (Mnj)irical in (.-very case contingent ; but we are guilty of a sort of fallacia composiiionis when we imagine that the totality of the empirical on the one side is conditioned by the totality 15—2 228 The Idea of Creation of the losfical on the other\ The enormous labour that Kant is known to have spent in deducing his table of categories from his logical table of judgments is perhaps the most disastrous instance of mistaken ingenuity to be found in the whole history of philo- sophy ; for to that in very large measure may be traced the daring but hopeless enterprises of his idealist suc- cessors, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Nobody ever has, nobody ever will, derive the categories of sub- stance, cause, end, or any other concept concerning reality, from any source altogether independent of experience. All ontology alike then has to begin with the question : What is Reality' ? And nowadays pluralist and singularist alike answer : It is Experience. But the difference between them is that the pluralist is content to stop at the totality of finite experiences, whereas the singularist, or at all events the theist, with whom we are now primarily concerned, maintains that beyond the universe of the Many there is a single transcendent experient, who comprehends the whole. The superiority of the theistic position, if it can be sustained, seems indisputable : it will then be, to use Kant's words, "an ideal without a flaw." Well, in the first place, it is superior in respect of its unity. On the pluralistic view every one of the finite individuals is related to all the rest but only for himself. In ^ Cf. Lotze, Microcosmus, Eng. trans, ii. p. 705 and Metaphysic, § 88 >. ^ This may entail a preliminary inquiry into the nature of knowledge, but epistemology is after all only a preparation for ontology. The TJicisfic Ideal 229 Leibnizlan language each mirrors the whole from a unique standpoint, and therefore 7iot the whole, but only an aspect of the whole. The pluralistic whole, then, is a whole of experiences, but not a whole ex- perience, a whole of lives but not a living- whole, a whole of beings but without a complete and perfect being. Is such a whole really a unity at all : is it more than a totality ? We have a type of a higher unity than this in our own experience as self-conscious subjects. Here there is a unity which is more than the related objective continuum, a unity to which all this belongs and refers. Now remove from such an experience the relativity which ' standpoint ' implies and you approach the theistic ideal of an absolute ex- perience, the experience of a living and acting Spirit whose ' centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere,' an experience complete at all points and including every one. The pluralist's universe in the light of this transcendent Being would thus have a unity which it would otherwise lack. Not only so, but in the second place the pluralist's universe would itself be immeasurably enriched if the theistic idea of God's relation to this universe were accepted. For according to that God is not simply a transcendent Being, existing aloof and apart from the world, he is also immanent, and active within it. And such active presence of the One Spirit, ulio aloni.- knows all, affords — manifestly — an assurance that the pluralist's ideal will be attained, an assurance which we have had to allow must else be w.miing. I'Or it woulil be extravagantly arbitrary to assume that this one transcendent Being alone would be more tlevoid of 230 The Idea of Creation benevolent purpose than finite beings are. At any rate the theist beheves that this God who knows all loves all. And so in the third place it is evident that the theistic idea not merely adds to our confidence in the eventual realisation of the pluralist's ideal but it enhances the character of that ideal by all the ineffable blessedness that the presence of God must yield. But to determine what is reality, we have agreed, is the first business of philosophy. Can we then prove the existence of God ? Attempts innumerable to prove this have been made — as of course we know — all of them reducible to one or other of the three forms called respectively the ontological, the cosmological and the teleological argument. The fatal defects of all these have, it is almost universally conceded, been clearly exposed once for all by Kant. The ontological argument, as he has shown, involves the common metaphysical fallacy of hypostatizing an idea ; the teleological argument does not carry us beyond pluralism ; and the cosmological only does so by implicitly assuming the ontological. — But though de- monstrations of the existence of God are unattainable, it by no means follows that the idea is theoretically worthless. It has even in this respect — to say nothing of its practical value — a ' regulative use' as what Kant called a focus imaginarius, a use which he declared to be not only admirable but indispensable. What Kant meant by a focus imaginarius, it may be worth while to illustrate by an example. Suppose the earth were wrapt in cloud all day while the sky was clear at night, so that we were able to see the planets and observe Theoretical value of Theism 231 their movements as we do now, though the sun itself was invisible. The best account we could o-ive of the planetary motions would still be to refer them to what for us in accordance with our supposition would only be an imaginary focus, but one to which was assigned a position identical with the sun's position. The pluralist's universe, according to Kant, answers to the wandering orbs that we see and God to the sun, which we are supposed not to see, but merely to conceive as giving to their motions both reason and unity. It behoves us then, especially in view of the acknowledged difficulties and incompleteness of the pluralistic scheme taken alone, to examine this sublime conception with reverence and with care. Is the theistic ideal verily without a flaw ? One thing is at once clear: theism is not simply the possible crown and completion of pluralism : such a transcendent addition will, it may be expected, change all. It introduces one essential modification, at [my rate, viz., the idea of creation. It does not, that is to say, assume merely that one transcendent Being exists above and beyond the whole series of the Many, how- ever extended ; but it assumes further that this one Being is related to theni in a way in which none ol them is related to the rest : they do not simply coexist along with it, they exist somehow in ii and ihroiiLjh it. In this idea of creation there arc two sides to consider, its relation to the world and iis n-huioii in God. As to th(! first — it cannot be said liiat the workl as we know it involves the idea of creation as a lact. If il did, we should have direct and tangible- evidence 232 The Idea of Creation of God's existence. " The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handiwork," sang the Psalmist long ago. Possibly it is so, but there is nothing in all our physical experience that compels us to admit it : on the other hand there is nothing that would justify us in denying it. Further, the metaphor of making, of handiwork, which is the sole empirical content of the term 'creation,' is in- adequate : making out of nothing, in short, is a contradiction. But then this is not the meaning of creation : it is not a making or shaping at all. The idea is, in fact, like the idea of God, altogether trans- cendent. It is impossible therefore that experience should directly give rise to it at all. But, it has been urged, the universe cannot have existed for ever, since in that case, at any assigned moment, an infinite time would be completed, and that is impossible. The universe must then have had a beginning and so must have had a First Cause. Well, if this argument were valid, it would apply equally to the existence of God. If per impossibile we could transcend experience and contemplate the world from without we might, it has been thought, find that the world had a beginning : but then we should be there and as what should we have to be reckoned ? Keeping within experience we can only endlessly regress with no prospect of ever reaching the beginning or of forming any concept of what it was like. On the contrary, say certain physicists, we have empirical evidence of a beginning. But in all cases it will be found, I think, that the beginning affirmed is a purely relative one ; and moreover that its affirmation assumes Mi stake 1 1 vie7;.'s of Creation 233 modern science to be exactly and absolutely, and not merely approximately, true'. There is equally little to support the view of creation as an event that occurred at a finite date in the past, when we attempt to regard it from the side of God as creator. Whatever the reason or motive for creation may have been — and some motive or reason the theist must assume — it seems "absolutely inconceivable," as v. Hartmann put it, " that a conscious God should wait half an eternity content without a good that ought to be." If creation means anything, it means something so far involved in the divine essence, that we are entitled to say, as Hegel was fond of saying, that '' without the world God is not God." In calling God i the creator then it is simply the world's dependence on 1 Him that we mean to express. If so, it seems clear that this dependence is not, as commonly maintained, a causal dependence strictly understood. For causation relates to change in existence ; but creation regarded from the side of the created is not a change in anything existing. To speak of it as a change in nothing, whereby nothing becomes something, is once again — it seems hardly needful to say — mere thoughtless absurdity. Creation in other words is not to be brought under the category of transeunt causation, Xor can we, regarding it from the side of God, bring it under the category ol immanent causation, as being a change in Him, unless indeed we abandon the ' Cf., e.g., The Unsan Universe, 2nd (jtln, .^ 116 ami Clifford's criticism, Lectures and Essays, 2nd cdn, p. 156; also the article by Professor .Arrlienius, 'Infinity of the Universe,' Monisl, vol. x.xi. 1911, pp. 161 fl". 234 J^^^^ Idea of Creation position that God is God only as being creative. To say that the world depends on God is tantamount to saying that could God cease to be, the world too would cease to be ; or that if the world should cease to be, it would be because God had ceased to be. In other words God is the ground of the world's being, its ratio essendi. The notion of ' ground,' it will, I assume, be conceded, is wider than that of cause, which is only one of its special forms. But we have not yet brought out the full meaning of creation as the theist conceives it. Spinoza, for example, also conceived God to be the ground of the world, but interpreted this relation in a way which the theist cannot accept. Spinoza, as his phrase Deiis sive Natui'-a shows, identified the world and God as completely as he identified the properties of a triangle with the triangle itself: the reality of the One meant so much that there was no reality left for the Many at all. For pantheism God is the immanent ground of the world, for deism he is the transcendent ground, for theism he is both. How are we to conceive this twofold relation ? The most hopeful attempt perhaps is that which is nowadays associated with the name of Kant, though it is really, I believe, as old as Plato and recurs continually in ancient and modern philosophy alike. I may call it the theory of intellective intuition. Our knowledge according to Kant has two stems, both requisite to complete our experience. The one, sensi- bility, is receptive and passive ; but taken alone it is blind, that is to say it furnishes only the material of knowledge. The other, understanding, is active but yields only the form of knowledge : taken alone it is God as trauscc]hiciit and ijuniaiiciif 235 empty, its content is abstract. But together these two sources yield what we call phenomenal knowledge ; so far we may, according to Kant, be said to shape Nature though we do not create it ; our objective knowledge, in other words, is the joint result of the manifold data that we receive and of the discursive synthesis of these which our thought achieves. Reality is first there, is given, and our work — all we are capable of — is to understand it. But now we are to imagine our sensory and passive perception replaced by an active, in- tellective ' position,' our discursive synthesis by an original thesis or intuition. The Being to whom this intellective intuition belongs will be creative ; its ob- jective experience will contain nothing that is merely given to it, but only what is ultimately ' posited ' by it : its objects will be not phenomenal but noumenal, not independent manifestations of an Other but the creation of itself But the world as presented to us is \critably an Other ; hence the passivity in our perception : we know the world only in this its external relation to us, not as it is in itself; hence it is phenomenal. Here the distinction, the duality, of subject and object is real. But in intellective intuition all real difference between Ijeing and knowing, thought and thing, seems to have vanished. Such intuition, in fact, implies far more than we ordinaril)- understantl even by onmiscience'. h'or as our relative and imperfect knowledge does not partially constitute the being of its object, so absolute and pc'rfect knowledge, if merely knowk'dgr, wouKl not, we seem entitled to say, constitute its object completely. ' Omniscience, literally taken, is still science, not intuition. 236 The Idea of Creation Our partial knowledge of a thing is knowledge of its utterances, attitude and behaviour as they are for us : hence we call this relative knowledge. But a know- ledge of all such characteristics of all things in all their interactions would still only be absolute as knowledge : i.e., it would be as absolute or complete as knowledge can be, which, by its very nature, is essentially relative. It would leave the things themselves still independent as regards their existence, and so would fall short of this intellective intuition wherein, it is supposed, they are not merely known but whereby they exist. Thus then the idea of a transcendent experient, whose stand- point, so to say, is ubiquitous, does not reach to the still more transcendent idea of a creator, of one who is the ground of the objects that he 'knows.' Moreover immediate experience of another subject is beyond any knowledge that we have or can conceive : in fact it might, I think, be fairly maintained that the very idea involves a contradiction. If now it be further allowed that the actions of free and advancing intelli- gences make new beginnings possible, imply real initiative, it would follow that even complete and absolute knowledge (or omniscience), as knowledge is ordinarily understood, would still leave every finite subject in the position of an eject : each would be known completely as regards its utterances, its objective relations with the rest, but not as it is in itself. But more than this, it will be said, is implied in the divine so-called omniscience as theism understands it : " the Lord seeth not as man seeth ; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart." And why ? " He that keepeth thy soul doth not he God as fyauscoidcjif and ifuiiiaiiciif 237 know it'?" Such 'omniscience' in a word presupposes creation ; thus it is only for creative intuition that the knowing and the being of objects could be said to be in any sense the same. But then, so far — on the principle of the ideniiiy of indiscernibles — is not this so-called knowledge or in- tuitive thought of the object as such itself just the object, and is not the object just this so-called knowledge or intuition ? In that case what becomes of the divine transcendence on which theism lays such stress? Do not theism and pantheism after all come to the same thing: God is the world and the world is God ? But identity, if it is to mean anything, must imply some difference : there is no point, for example, in saying ' This is the same ' unless I refer to something experienced pre- viously. The bare, and therefore meaningless, identity of God and World simply leaves us with God only, as in the acosmism of Spinoza; or with World only, as in the ' polite atheisin of Schopenhauer. But, it is urged, there is, after all, a difference and one which our own self-consciousness enables us to understand. Here the knower and the known are one and the same, and yet are distinct in so far as the subject is its own object. Moreover self-consciousness is the only form ol know- ledge that can be in a sense absolute. Knowledge of an Other, so long as the Other is veritably such, must ever be relative and incomplete ; whereas we cannot call our consciousness of self merely phenonKiial. True, but — as I have already urged in the second lecture'-' — throughout our experience the consciousness of self iinolves the consciousness of not-self: iln- two ' I Sam. xvi. 7 ; Prov. xxiv. 12. - Lcct. 11. pj). 30, 41. 238 The Idea of Creation being always correlative and coordinate. It does not surprise us then to find certain of the philosophies of the Absolute represent it as coming to self-consciousness in and through consciousness of the world. From such a view it is but a step to a philosophy of the Unconscious, such as v. Hartmann and others have constructed mainly on a Hegelian basis. And we may note by the way, as an odd illustration of extremes meeting, that v. Hartmann's ' clairvoyance of the Unconscious' or 'Over-conscious' is but a bad set- ting of the old idea of intellective intuition\ The attempt, therefore, to equate creation regarded as intellective intuition with a pure or absolute self-con- sciousness — if this were conceivable — will not avail for theism : it leaves no room for the divine transcendence and without this the distinctness of God and the world and the dependence of the world on God both alike disappear. Our result so far then is simply this : neither absolute knowledge nor absolute self-conscious- ness can take the place of the idea of creation ; and therefore, if the notion of intellective intuition or in- tuitive understanding is to help us, we must find more in the activity which it after all implies than thought or knowledge of any sort will cover ; and also more than such identity as self-knowing and self-known implies. We may discern perhaps a faint and distant analogy, one suggesting a better interpretation, in what we are wont to style the creations of genius. We never apply this phrase to the most marvellous dis- coveries in science or the most fruitful inventions in ^ Perhaps too Bergson's elan vital is but another variant of this idea. Creation ami the Oyignialify of Genius 239 the technical' arts : nobody, I fancy, would say that Newton created gravitation or that Gutenberg created printing. If Newton had not discovered gravitation some one else would, and as for printing we know that it was invented more than once. But it is common to speak of such works as the Antigone of Sophocles, Shakespeare's Hanilet, Michael Angelo's MoseSy Raphael's Sistine JMadonna or Beethoven's Ninth SympJiony as creations; and we feel pretty confident that if their authors had not produced theni they would never have been produced. This approximation to the divine that we find in the originality of genius leads us often to speak of its ' creations ' as inspired. In the case of discoveries and inventions we realise that sense and intellect, the receptive and active factors, are both concerned ; but the immortal works of art, the things of beauty that are a joy for ever, we regard as rather the spontaneous output of productive imagi- nation, of a free spirit that embodies itself in its work, lives in it and loves it. \'ct however much the man of genius loves his work and lives in it, he is still dis- tinct from it, still greater than it. On the other hand, however dependent on him is his production, though he knows it through and through, yet it too is distinct from him : from its first inception, even in the full tide of his activity, he feels that it is working itself out and sees that it is good ; in other words he finds himst-lt expressed in it and he respects his work. Yet after all, as we have allowed, this analogy is very imperfect, and ii is jiisi in iIk; imijortant point where it fails that our difficultii:s with the idea ol intellective intuition begin. lictwciMi what wi- may A 240 The Idea of Creation call relative creation, the origination of something re- latively new within the world, and the absolute creation of the world itself there is an impassable gulf. The one presupposes experience previously acquired, the other is coeval and identical with the divine experience itself. God in short is the Absolute Genius — the World-Genius, as he has been called. Any analogy drawn from our experience must then be inadequate to such an experience : God's ways are not as our ways nor his thoughts as our thoughts. But the difference lies simply in transcending the limit to which our experience points but can never attain : it need not imply utter disparity. We may perhaps safely assume that the distinction of will and presentation is appli- cable to the divine experience as well as to our own ; and also that there too they are equally inseparable. At any rate we cannot say that volition precedes presentation nor that presentation precedes volition ; that the subject is first nor yet that the object is ; nor finally that both are originally undifferentiated \ If so, we cannot then represent creation as starting with a blind will to create followed by a discursive selection of the best possible plan of creation ; nor as starting with a dialectic development of the only possible plan followed by the resolve to let it be. It is at once 'pure activity ' and ' original insight,' idea and deed, life and light. God is transcendent to it, for it is not God, but his utterance and manifestation ; and yet, because it is his utterance and because he ever sustains it, he is immanent in it, it is his continuous creation. So then at last the theist is bound to admit that ^ Cf. Lect. IX. p. 199. TJicisni and Pluralism 241 this conception of God-and-the-world is beyond us : we can assign it no beginning and so we say it is 'eternal': we can find no ground for it and so \\v. sav it is the Absolute. At the same time we have to remember that the pluralist's position is no better, nay we must acknowledge, I think, that it is not so good. He too has to assume an endless regress for the world. For him too there is something groundless and therefore absolute, but it is the totality of a Many in their inter-' action regarded as the ultimate reality. Of this plurality in unity he can give no account beyond saying that it is just this, and that it is there. As I have already said this position cannot — so far as I see — be charged with inherent inconsistency ; but it is incomplete and un- satisfying. A plurality of beings primarily independent as regards their existence and yet always mutually acting and reacting upon each other, an ontological plurality that is yet somehow a cosmological unity, seems clearly to suggest some ground beyond itself. The idea of God presents itself to meet this lack. The Many depend upon God for their existence though still dependent on each other as regards their ex- perience. The idea of God would then be meaningless, unless God were regarded as transcending the Many ; so there can be no talk of God as merely primus iutcr pares. On the other hand it would be equally meaning- less to talk of God apart from the Man)-. A God thai was not a Creator, a God whose creatures hatl no independence, would not himself be really a ( lod. Herein theism differs from thorough-going singularism or absolutism. A theism that is reached ihnnigh pluralism can never end in an Absolute in which God w. 16 242 TJie Idea of Creation and the World alike were absorbed and lost : the only Absolute then that we can admit is the Absolute which God and the World constitute. And yet the tendency of theism to pass over into singularism is notorious and we have noted it again and again. How may we account for this ? It follows partly, no doubt, from the besetting sin of speculative thinking to hypostatize abstractions — hence the so- called ' abstract monism ' or acosmism, of which Spinoza furnished the type. Partly it is the result of a religious spirit of self-abasement, self-abnegation, as in certain forms of Indian and Christian mysticism. But in large measure it is due to the difficulties in the idea of creation itself. We say God and the World constitute the Absolute ; but if God is the absolute ground of the World is not God alone after all the real Absolute ^ In this question there lurks perhaps the error of concreting abstractions just now mentioned. If there were no world, God would cease to be the ground of it. He would still be the potential ground, it will be replied perhaps. But if he were only this, do we not require some further condition — some restraint to be withdrawn or some external impulse to supervene before the world can become actuaP? Or, if not that, are we not then driven to conceive God as not actually being all that it is his nature to be — if such an expression is allowable ? But no, the ^ '"Tis an established maxim... that an object which exists for any time in its full perfection without producing another, is not its sole cause ; but is assisted by some other principle, which pushed it from its state of inactivity." Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, Green and Grose's edn, vol. i. p. 378. T/ieisin ami Absolittis)}i 243 objector may persist, if God is the absolute ground of the world — even granting that his creation has no time limits, still — the world cannot possibly, without ceasing to be created, share with him the title of Absolute. The more clearly we realise the entire and complete dependence that creation implies the more flagrantly absurd will such a claim appear. Even the potter may find the clay not ideally plastic; indeed the artistic creator at his best meets with some limi- tation in his material. For God there can be none, which is all that is meant by the phrase ' creation out of nothing.' To this we may reply : — No theist can pretend that the world is coordinate with God : the divine trans- cendence is essential to the whole theistic position. No theist again assumes that creation involves ex- ternal limitation. But the point is that if creation is to have any meaning it implies internal limitation. It is from the reality of the world that we start : if this is denied, the divine transcendence becomes meaningless, nay, God, as the ideal of the pure reason, sinks to a mere illusion within an illusion. On the other hand, if the realitv of the world be admitted, then this reality stands over against the reality of God. God indeed has not been limited from without but he has limiteil himself. I'ui nr)w new difficulties emerge. Self-limitation seems to imply a prior state in which it was absent, whereas a limitation held to be permanent — as we hold creation to be — suggests some ultimate dualism rather than an ultimate unity. Such an objitclion is in kei.'ping with our ordinary experience confmed as that is to 16 — a 244 ^-^^^ Idea of Creation temporal processes, but it is not applicable to the notion of an absolute ground ; as a trivial example may suffice to show. The sides of a triangle are independent of its angles only if regarded merely as lines, and yet they are the ground of the angles ; also in forming these they limit themselves in so far as they thereby determine their several ratios. We do not say that God comes into being with the world, but only that as ground of the world he limits himself : duality in unity is implied here as in all experience, but not dualism. But how, it may be asked, can self-limitation be involved in creation, if creation is pure activity and original intuition, if God is all life and all light ? How can God be omnipotent, as theism ordinarily assumes, and yet be limited ? Well, in the first place, we might reply, an omnipotent being that could not limit itself would hardly deserve the name of God; would, in fact, be only a directionless energy of unlimited amount. At the same time the Mosaic notion that God must needs rest from his labour and even Tertullian's bold assertion that his glory was the greater on this account, nobody nowadays, I suppose, would seriously defend. It is not any limitation of this sort that we have primarily in view, ^//determination is negation, that is limitation, we must say with Spinoza. But if God were what Hegel described Nature as being, ein bacchantischer Gott, der sick selbst nicht ziigelt und fasst, then indeed we might regard him as the Absolute notwithstanding possible creational vagaries, but he would be the absolutely Indeterminate. But God according to the theistic idea does not repudiate but Creative and Diviue Liniitatioii 245 owns and respects his world, a world that is cosmic, not chaotic, from the first, and through which we may believe that one increasing purpose runs. Even men abide by their pledges, cherish their offspring, show steadfastness and consistency in their purposes, and in manifold other ways limit and determine themselves by their own deeds. By their deeds, yes ; but not by their dreams. We surely then cannot suppose that God is less earnest, less steadfast than his creatures : rather we regard him as without variableness or shadow of a turning. Again, to argue that unless the world is merely a divine phantasy, God is determined by its existence, does less than justice to the pluralist's position : it is from the reality of the world that we start. Apart from this, I must again insist, we have no basis for our ideal of God at all. There still remains of course the difficulty, which from the outset we have allowed to be insuperable : how God creates the world and thereby limits himself we can never understand'. The idea of creation, like the idea of God, we admit is altogether transcendent. 13ut — paradoxical though it may seem — this admission in a sense explains and removes our difficulty, liven il the idea of creation be valid, we must necessarily fail to understand the process, just because that cannot fall within our experience; on th<: other hand any process that we could understand could not hv. the creative pro- cess, because it would fall within our experience. This may sound very like a fmal surrender ; for what, it may be urged, is the use of a hypothesis that can never be directly verified ? Nevertheless this objection rests on ' See Supplementary Note II. 246 The Idea of Creation a complete failure to understand the function of philo- sophy. A scientific hypothesis is directly verifiable ; because the facts which it is framed to unify, simplify, or explain, fall within experience, and this is sure therefore sooner or later to furnish a crucial test of its validity. But philosophy is not science — though it is bound to be systematic and methodical — for it deals not with parts or aspects of experience in isolation but with experience as a concrete whole. To this whole it must appeal to justify its * ideas ' ; and they are justified in proportion as they enable us to conceive this whole as a complete and systematic unity. The pluralist halts at the Many and their interaction : he declines to go further because he finds no direct warrant for so doing. But if the idea of creation will carry us further, and if nothing else will, then that idea, it is maintained, is rationally justified though it be not empirically verified. LECTURE XII. THE COSMOLOGY OF THEISM. The idea of creation, we have allowed, must in any case lead to modihcations of the pluralistic JVc//- anschauuug. But it is questionable if these modifications need to be as radical as most theists assume. To these differences and their possible reconciliation we have now to turn. Pluralism and theism are — nowadays at all events — both monistic : for neither, is the distinction between person and thing, matter and mind, an ultimate dis- tinction. For both alike, material phenomena are only the manifestation of minds, of so-called ' things /tv sc! These however are not literally things at all, l)ut beings that are beings for themselves, i.e. — in the widest sense of the term — persons, who arc conative and cognitive in varying degrees. Hut whereas pluralism regards all material phenomena as due to the direct interaction of such persons or monads, reduces the entire course of the world, in short, without reservation, to such interaction ; theism usualK attributes material phenomena to the dirc-ct and orderl\- inlervenlion of God, who in this way provides a medium and instru- mentality for the mutual intercourse and understaiuling of his cn-atures, ( )f the former position we have taken 248 The Cosmology of Theism the Leibnizian monadology as the type, discarding however the doctrine of ' pre-estabHshed harmony,' as Wolf and others did, who attempted to systematise Leibniz's philosophy. Of the latter position we have typical instances in the occasionalism of Berkeley or of Lotze in his later views ; they agree in referring matter or the so-called mechanism of nature to the immanent activity of God himself. Such theism then, it will be readily seen, assumes two apparently quite distinct forms of divine activity: first, the creative and sustaining activity, whereby the finite Many exist, and secondly the continuous mediation whereby they are brought into living relation with each other. In proceeding then to examine what we might call the Cosmology of theism, the general theory of occasionalism comes up for consideration first of all. This theory, originated to bridge over the gulf that the Cartesian dualism had made between mind and matter, contributed in the end to that denial of the in- dependent reality of matter altogether, which is common to all forms of spiritualistic monism or idealism and was in fact implicit in the teaching of Descartes himself. At first all that was asserted was, that since the utter disparateness of matter and mind rendered any direct influence of one on the other impossible, their seeming interaction must be due solely to the ' assistance ' or intervention of the Creator of both. It was however still assumed that bodies causally and immediately affected each other. But as the consequences of the entire inertness assigned to matter came to be realised, and our own voluntary activity came to be regarded as the prime source of our sense of power, the theory Occasiofia/is/n 249 ot occasionalism underwent a corresponding chanq-e. The idea of God as mediating between mind and matter gave place to the simpler idea of God as mediating between finite minds, the so-called material world being regarded no longer as the means by which this mediation was effected, but rather as the actual fact of this mediation itself. This is the form of occasionalism that was maintained by Berkeley and Lotze. This also we find already in germ within Descartes' own system' ; and it was so far developed by the Cartesian INIalebranche that a disciple of his, Arthur Collier, is said by his biographer to have anticipated the Berkeleian position by several years". At the outset too, as its name suggests, occasionalism implied the continuous interposition of the Deity in each and all of the innumerable cases of apparent interaction ceaselessly occurring throughout the entire universe. Against such a view Leibni/ brought the charge of perpetual miracle, of irrational recourse to a Deiis ex machina ; and the objection is commonly regarded as fatal. Well, no doubt intervention in the affairs of a multitude of distinct and unique beings does for us imply a corresponding multiplicity of separate acts ; and the thought of such a multiplex — so to .say discursive — intervention is to us utterly bewildering. Hut for God. who is to be conceived as omniscient, the case is altogether dilferent. lor God, as its common Creator, the world is one whole : how- ever much differentiated, it nev(-r for him loses its meaning and therefore never lacks its intuited unity. ' Cf. e.g. his sixth Meditation. * Cf. Eraser's edition of JJerMey's IVor/^s, i.st cdn, vol. i. |). :;53. 250 The Cosmology of Theism For God there is no exclusive standpoint and there- fore no need to hurry hither and thither, attending now to this, now to that. Further, since continuity is the common characteristic of the growth and de- velopment of all his creatures alike\ his compensatory adjustments, the supposed means of their interaction, will also be continuous and orderly. They may exhibit the regularity of increasing purpose rather than the rigidity of fixed mechanism, but at least they will be compatible with the idea of Law, of orderly control. But to talk of a Deiis ex machma in such a case is to assume that there is some independent system to get tangled up into knots, to forget that Nature for the theist just is this continuous mediation of the Divine and not a mechanism independent of it. Again to call this a perpetual miracle, if that means more than a subject for perpetual wonder and admiration, is equally absurd. The fact is that Leibniz's own theory of pre-established harmony does not differ so much from occasionalism as is often supposed. Bayle pointed this out long ago and the resemblance has often been ^ Thus it cannot be objected that a man might, for example, will to fly, and that therefore there could be no orderliness in the world if God simply gave effect to whatever might be willed. In truth, however, a man cannot will to fly, and the mere wish to fly entails no change of attitude, no actual conation. Still he might possibly try to fly ; but then his first attempt would start from his status quo. But what can a finite being will to do, more generally what is such a being always striving for? For self-conservation and self-betterment, we say ; but this again carries us back to the status quo. There will then be a certain continuity in the actions of each and all such beings, and so there will also be a corresponding continuity in that mediating activity of God which we ordinarily summarise as the uniformity of Nature. Natura non facit saltus. Leib)iiz on Occasionalism 251 noticed since. I f we figure to ourselves two badly- made clocks i^ Jiorloocs ni(fchautes'\ and imagine the clockmaker continually interfering to correct their faulty adjustment — and this is Leibniz's caricature of occasionalism — then indeed the objection to miraculous meddling would be in place. But the whole point is that there are not two clocks. To call Nature — the only clock there is, if there is a clock at all — a perpetual miracle is to ignore the fact that a permanent miracle is a contradiction in terms. For theism, when it is thought out, there is however not even one clock : to attribute to God the need or even the use of organs or instruments is but childish anthropomorphism'. "II n'y a point d'autre nature, je veux dire d'autres lois naturelles, que les volontes efficaces du tout-puissant," said Malebranche. Nevertheless the term occasionalism will always tend to suggest the part played by a broker, middleman or 'go-between' in human affairs; and this, it will be felt, is no worthy 7'6le to assign to the dixinc being. And yet such an objection is due simply to misunder- standing. It would be just as reasonable to maintain that to create finite beings at all is unworthy of the Infinite. So long as creation implies mediation — and this is the usual theistic position -the two activities, ho\vev(;r distinct, are in fact inseparable, the: one being consecjuential on the other, and both together resulting In one complete cosmos. W'l- find the life and inter- course of finite beings to depend on two things, tirst on their organisms, and secondly on their (in iidinnents: these together make up the one whole we connnonly ' Cf. Naturalism grid Af^nos/icism, 3rd cdn, vol. 11. pp. 274 f. 252 The Cosmology of Theism speak of as the physical or material world. And so in virtue of the continuity between any given organism and its environment — that is, eventually, the whole material world — we may regard this as itself the organism common to all living things alike, the uni- versal matrix within which their several individual organisms are differentiated but not separated. Again, as the several individual organisms, as the very term itself implies, constitute the instrumentality of the sentient agents or persons to whom they belong ; so we may say that the entire material world is in like manner the common possession or medium of life and intercourse for them, the only truly active beings. According to the cosmology of theism, in short, the physical world is simply a system of means provided for the sake of the realm of ends : it is only to be understood as subservient to them, and apart from them is alike meaningless and worthless. But thouorh the existence of the material world is not dependent on us but is rather on this view the medium on which we ourselves depend, though it is indispensable as a system of means for us, we cannot from this conclude that it is in the same sense indis- pensable for God, We are not, in other words, justified in assuming that the realm of ends is created conform- ably to a prior system of means, life being primarily adjusted to matter, not matter to life. The creations of finite minds are, it is true, subject to material trammels, the exigencies of rhyme and metre, the small range of luminosity in pigments, the intractable nature of marble or bronze, and so forth. But we cannot suppose either that the divine creation is Creative ami Mediating Aetivity 253 necessarily beset by limits of this kind or that God has arbitrarily limited the world of living forms by a pre-ordained world of lifeless stuff. The creative activity is then, the theist holds, only the condition of, not at all conditioned by, the mediating activity ; and the unity and purpose of the former as a realm of ends involves and determines the law and order of the latter as a system of means. But do we need thus to distinguish between ends and means, between creative activity and mediating activity ? Does the idea of creation necessarily imply what we may call a unified and systematic occasionalism ? If the interpretation of interaction towards which pluralism seems to tend is possible and sufficient, we certainly may answer this question in the negative. There may, in fact, be such a divine system or economy embracino: and encirclino- the livino- aofents of the world, furnishing, as it were, the properties and the scenery in which these dramatis personae of history enact their parts. Such subsidiary aids, I say, may e.xist, but according to the pluralist view they are not necessary. But can the [pluralist position be thought out ? \\' hy can it not, it may be replied, if it re([uires nothing more than the sort of mutual understanding or rapport which we daily observe in the personal intercourse of our fellow-men '^ "As in water face answereth to face so the heart of man to man." Of course such mutual understanding is approximately complete only between persons similarly situated and similar in ihcir interests and pursuits, who can thus become — as we aptly say — intimate with each other. It tails off rapidly in our intercourse with strangers, and tends to dwindle away 254 T^^^ Cosmology of Theism altogether as we pass to creatures further and further removed from us in the scale of being. You may train a dog to fetch and carry, but it is useless to tell a fly not to settle on your nose : like Milton's mariner dis- embarking on the leviathan's back, he takes you to be terra firma. Yet the flies understand each other and glide about in airy mazes without colliding. But it will be said, both flies and men have organisms, and without these their mutual adjustments of behaviour would be altogether inexplicable, and it is just this interaction by means of physical organization that is the problem \ This is true and the pluralist is fully aware of it. It was Leibniz himself, the founder of modern pluralism, who said that "a disembodied soul would be a deserter from the general order, which implies matter and movement and their laws"." But the question is: What is matter? More exactly stated: What is the simplest concept of matter to which we are led, setting out from the realm of ends as the reason of its existence ? We note then, first, that for Leibniz, as for his modern successors, any given organism itself consists of organisms, which for it are organs, having special functions and working consentiently together as members of this one whole. This however implies an indefinite — Leibniz even said, an infinite — reo-ress. But for the modern pluralist all it means, I take it, is that we cannot assume any given organism that seems simple, to be so really ; but that, none the less, since the complex involves the simple, bare — or as Leibniz called them, naked — monads must exist. And now ^ See Supplementary Note III. * Cf. Philosophische Schriften, Gerhardt's edn, vol. vi, p. 546. JJliaf is the simplest concept of Matter? 255 how are we to conceive such a bare monad ? It cannot be a dominant monad, for this would imply subordinate monads : it cannot therefore have a body distinct from itself. In some sense then, it would seem, it must be its own body or disappear altogether from the universal connexion of things. Hut w c must not understand this to mean that apparently all mental characteristics are gone and only material characteristics are left. The true solution seems rather to be that we have reached the limit of both. The physical concept of such a limit is the dynamical concept of a mass-point as a centre of force. The corresponding psychological concept answers to what Leibniz happily described as mens momentanea seu carens recordatio7ie^ . Some elucidation of both these concepts is requisite before we can attempt to formulate the conclusion to which this regress points. Leibniz spoke of monads generally as "the r^^/ atoms of nature, and in a word, the elements of things." Such language, which seems specially appropriate to his naked monads, should be sufticient to put us on our guard against identifying them with the mass-points of the modern physicist — which Leibniz held to be onl\' phenomenal. They are more analog(jus to i)(>scnvich's centres of force-': ' Tluoriiie motus abstracti Definitiones, Gerhardt's edition of his philosophical works, vol. iv. p. 230. ' It is worthy of remark, that notwithstanding this analogy, to which lioscovich himself refers, he was so far from identifying monads and centres of force as to maintain that the 'seat of the soul' is more or less extended, ('f. his Philosophiae naturalis Tfuoria, Venire, 1763, Appendix, De Anima et Deo, ij^ 53'» ff- It is also worthy of passing notice that it was through lioscovich that I'rieslley was led to his so-called materialism. 256 The Cosmology of Theism although they differ from these in being all qualitatively distinct, or unique, like Herbart's reals, not all qualita- tively the same, as Boscovich's elements were\ But they resemble these in another respect and that a very important one. Boscovich conceived his simple atoms as acting at a distance, which — paradoxical though it sounds — really means interacting directly without any intervening medium, doing, in fact, what according to the Newtonian mechanics is inconceivable. This immediacy of interaction is held to characterize the bare monad of the modern pluralist, the monad that is, so to say, its own body. Such interaction implies what Lotze called a sympathetic rapport. This brings us to the psychical nature of the bare monad, and here again immediacy is the thing we have specially to note. This immediacy answers to what psychologists now call pure sensation, an ideal limit to which 02ir simplest experiences never descend : our sensations correspond rather to complexes or syntheses of the elemental sensations or 'petites perceptions ' of Leibniz. Moreover, for its it is true that all cognition is recognition, implies assimilation, and therefore memory in the widest sense, i.e. the retention of what has been either inherited or acquired. Pure sensation or cognition is the ' momentary consciousness ' of some datum, the perception or recognition of which, on the other hand, would presuppose previous experiences that still in some sense endure. Clear evidence of such a ' psychical ' or enduring present is only found in connexion with comparatively complex organisms, and 1 Cf. op. cit. % 3, quoted also by Fechner, Atomenlehre, 2nd edn, p. 240. Intcnicfioji as * synipafJictic rapport ' 257 this ranQ-e in time is found also to increase as the biological differentiation of the organism increases. When then, on the contrary, we imagine this complexity decreased without limit, we reach the concept of the bare monad whose organism, so to say, reduces to a point, and its present to a moment ; which can only react immediately and to what is immediately given. In other words such monads deal only with their environment and. so long as they gain nothing by experience, so long, that is, as they remain bare monads, they severally deal with it always in the same way. The existence of an indefinite number of such monads would provide all the ' uniform medium ' for the intercourse of higher monads that these can require, without anv need for such divine intervention as occasionalism assumes. The precise details of this psychical intercourse the pampsychist is unable to specify. But it is questionable whether- — notwithstanding this — the occasionalist with his apparent psychophysical interaction is not in a worse position ; for he only dispenses with the need for any specification by assuming what we may call a ' dualism ' in the divine activity, and that to many minds will always appear too cumbrous and, so to say, unscientific, to be intellectually satisfactory. And after all the main outline of the pampsychic alternative can be ch-arly stated. The relation of a dominant monad (. /) to any monad of its organism (or of its ])r.iiii, when its organism is so far differentiated,) is different in kind from the relation to the same monad of the doinin ant monad (/i) of another organism. The one relation wc may call an inl(,'rnal, functional, or vital, the other an w. 17 258 The Cosmology of Theism external, foreign, or physical, relation. The totality of these internal relations at a given time answers to y4's objective experience at that moment. Certain changes in this whole are, so far as A is concerned, initiated by certain of the subordinate monads : these changes answer to A's sensations, and as to these it is receptive or passive. Certain other changes, on the other hand, are due to ^'s active initiative : these entail sensations in certain subordinate monads, and their response is what we call ^'s movement^ But the monads of y^'s organism are not, we have said, related exclusively to it and to each other. If that were the case, the organism would fail altogether of its purpose and meaning : its existence at all would be inexplicable, unless it were an absolute whole and self-maintaining. In fact, however, these subordinate monads are related also to the environment, which we have called the common organism or matrix of all monads. This in the last resort is conceived as con- sisting of bare monads, which have only external relations to one another, or rather for which, as the limit of our regress, the distinction of internal and external ceases to hold. What is true of ^'s organism is true also of ^'s, and so we can understand how A's acts may give rise to sensations in B through this double mediation of organism and environment and how ^'s acts in turn may give rise to sensations in A. Presently as like sensations (or recepts) recur they become gradually more and more assimilated with previous experiences of them and the advance to definite percepts ^ See Supplementary Note III. OrgaNism and Efivirofinieiit 259 is made. What were originally only immediate sensory data have now a meaning' ; A and B, that is to say, are e?i rapport. Pari passu with advancing experience we find also increasing complexity of organization : functions originally controlled by the dominant monad then devolve upon subordinate organisms or organs, and so habitual or secondarily automatic processes, which lor the dominant monad lapse into subconscious- ness, arise and extend. Thus the process of mediation, once begun, tends continually to increase ; and so, as the range of an individual's experience extends, he knows more and more of the external world, and yet is ever further removed from that immediate relation with it which psychologists call pure sensation. Both the pampsychist and the occasionalist alike agree, as we have seen, in holding all real existence to consist in experients and their experience ; they agree too, we may assume, in accepting the current psycho- logical analysis of experience into presentation, feeling and action. Hut in interpreting presentations as sub- jective modifications, assumed to be due directly to the divine activity, occasionalism becomes hampered with all the epistemological difficulties of what is known as subjective idealism, difficulties which made the exist- ence of the external world such a hopeless problem for modern j>hilosophers till Reid began to clear the way by his criticism of the Cartesian ' theory of ideas.' ' Thanks to the ' creative synthesis ' which the jirocesses of recognition and perception imply. (Cf. Lcct. v. pp. 104 f.) lint in so far as they affect their subject even bare sensations always have a meaning, i.e. a value as pleasurable or painful. This is ' meaning' in a most vital sense. 17 — 2 26o The Cosmology of Theism Leibniz's famous paradox that, although they mirror the universe, the monads have no windows, is but another way of stating this theory. Modern pluraHsts on the other hand maintain that all monads have windows — more literally stated, that presentation is a relation among monads not a subjective state in a single monad. And this 'natural realism,' as Hamilton called it\ is so much the simpler hypothesis — ^if that can be called a hypothesis which claims to be the bare statement of the facts — that we may say with some con- fidence that occasionalism would never have been heard of but for the Cartesian dualism of matter and mind and the Cartesian theory of ideas as subjective states. That God should have created the monads without windows and taken on himself the function of supplying their place — whether continuously, as the occasionalists assumed, or once for all, as Leibniz held — seems then a needless complication. Nevertheless, since we cannot actually verify the indefinite regress which the existence of bare monads implies, and since we cannot show that the indirect mediation of our finite intercourse is not a fact, we have no m.eans of deciding empirically between the two alternatives. The most we can say is that the pluralist alternative is the prior as well as the simpler, and it seems adequate. To the objection that it reduces theism to the level of mere deism and leaves the world once started to go of itself, it is sufficient to reply that this supposed tenet of deism is really inconceivable. As we have already seen, the idea of creation by simple ^ Albeit in his own version of it he halts and trims in very half-hearted fashion. Panipsyc/iism and T/icisni 261 ' fiat ' at a definite epoch will not work ; but deism on any other view is reduced to atheism. If there is a Creator at all he can never stand aside and wholly apart from his world. As Lotze has well said, such a proceeding " is intelligible in a human artificer who leaves his work when it is finished and trusts for its maintenance to universal laws of Nature, laws which he did not himself make, and which not he, but another for him, maintains in operation"; but " the picture of God withdrawing from the world," the sole ground of which is himself, is incomprehensible\ But, it may be urged further, the sense-symbolism of Berkeley serves not only as a medium of intercourse for God's sentient creatures but it is also at the same time a revelation of God himself, is the language wherein he addresses us". Granted that as an in- dependent argument the appeal to the teleology of Nature is not decisive, still if there is a Creator, as we are now assuming, he must surely somehow manifest himself. But may we not reply : Surely if there is a Creator, the world of his interacting creatures will itself be a clearer manifestation of him than a mere medium of intercourse, alike available for very diverse ends and alike indifferent to all .-^ Tlie iwo seem to stand in ' Hut the ascription of such a tenet to deists generally — to the English deists of the i8th century, for example — is a grievous misrepresentation. What they denied was not the divine immanence in toto, but only such occasionalistic interference as miracles, special revelations and special providences im[)ly. They were in fact what we should now call rationalistic theists. ' Physical catastrophes are a serious difficulty for the theist on this view. Cf. a striking article by Professor llowison, 'Catastrophes an. yy. 272 Freedom thence reflecting it back again, they denied the very source of the idea of fate itself by denying real freedom or personal initiative altogether. But quite apart from the difficulty of reconciling finite freedom with divine foreknowledge, the reality of true self-determination is questioned on more em- pirical grounds. It is obvious then that this question concerning the so-called ' freedom of the will ' must engage our attention first of all. This phrase, freedom of the will, however, is a very misleading one : Locke long ago protested against it, and we shall do well, as far as possible, to avoid it ; though it is so firmly estab- lished in common thought that its complete elimination from controversy is hardly practicable. And yet it will not be denied that whenever we talk of freedom or liberty, we always — unless these words are meta- phorically used — refer to a person or persons. Again it will not be denied that by will we mean not a person but a faculty or power that is attributed to a person. Finally it will not be denied that this concept of a power or faculty called will — like all such concepts — is but a generalisation based on actual instances of volitions or acts of willing. There is thus no will that wills but only a person or subject that wills. To quote Locke : "We may as properly say that it is the singing faculty sings, and the dancing faculty dances, as that the will chooses \" The real question then is what is meant when it is asserted or denied that in willing- a man is free ? Again this question is not clearly stated when de- scribed, as it often is, as concerned with the alternative ^ Essay concerning Human Understanding, vol. n. ch. xxi. p. 17. Dcfcnni/iis/// and Iiidcfcniiifiisni 273 issues, determinism or indeterminism; when the ques- tion, that is to Sciy. is supposed to be, whether a vohtion has a cause or trround or has not. The determinist, confident that for every event there is a cause, assumes that he must therefore deny that the person in wilHncr is free. The indeterminist, confident that this freedom is a fact, supposes that he must therefore deny that a vohtion has a cause. It is possible that each may be right in what he affirms, and wrong only in what he denies — possible that volitions have causes though these causes are free. That in some sense a volition is caused can only be disputed by one who is prepared to allow a positive reality to absolute chance,, and to regard praise and blame as entirely meaningless and out of place ; to deny in fact at once, if he is an idealist, the existence alike of order and morality altogether. On the other hand, that in willing the agent is in some sense free can only be disputed by one who is prepared to maintain that a like necessi- tation applies both to the events of the so-called physical and to those of the moral world ; but that would be tantamount to denying any distinction between them. It seems plain then that there is some com- plexity in the subject-matter of this perennial con- troversy, which the bare antithesis — either determinism or indeterminism — does not resolve : in oLJur words it seems still possible to maintain that a volition is in one sense determined antl in an(jther not determiiud. I o ascertain and analyse this further complexity is what we must now attemjjt. We may begin with the concept of cau.se. Its source and primary meaning wc liiul un(iuestional)l) in w. 18 274 Freedom ourselves as active or efficient. Hence we derive the phrase ' efficient cause,' to which ' effect,' the name we give to the result of our activity, is strictly correlative ; so that, without an efficient, an effect is meaningless or impossible. To the question how an efficient or deter- mining cause produces its effect no answer has been, or seemingly can be, given that will enable us to resolve our sense of activity into simpler elements. The title bestowed by Aristotle on this form of causation, o.pyj] Tr]<; klvtJ(T€co<;, is perhaps instructive here : it is not itself a movement but what produces movement^ Again we find efficient causation used in two senses : we speak, that is to say, of a transeunt cause and also of an immanent cause. Thus we say a man eats his dinner and smokes his pipe ; and we say too he wakes, he breathes, he walks, and so forth. Metaphorically we also apply the concept of immanent causation to inanimate objects, as when we say that the sun shines or the tide rises. But inasmuch as whatever is inanimate is regarded also as inert and therefore incapable of changing of itself, the supposed immanent causality of mere things is resolved into transeunt causality. The sun's shining is resolved into molecular motion, the result of preceding mass motions ; and the tide is found to rise only because of the motions of the earth and the moon. Once more, even if we can give no answer to the question how we are active, we find that an answer to ^ In the case of physical causation, on the other hand, the so-called cause is itself a motion, consequent on a precedent motion and so on in indefinite regress; so that the notion of efficiency also recedes indefinitely. Meanings of Cause 275 the question why in any special case we act at all, can usually be given. This reason for acting is what Aristotle called the final cause, and identified with the good as the end alike of all process and all motion. But science does not and, it may fairly be said, cannot take so wide a view. In dealing severally with the; facts of the so-called material world, such ideas as final causes and the good are out of place : like vestal virgins, as Bacon said, they are here fruitless and so useless. Summing up then as regards the concept of cause, we may say that in the case of conative subjects it implies both immanent efficiency and purposiveness, but that in the case of inanimate things it implies neither. What it does imply in this case is still in large measure to seek. And so we come next to the idea of necessary con- nexion according to law, or the uniformity of nature, as it is otherwise called, for it is this, nowadays at any rate, that is meant first of all when the term causality is scientifically used. Thus Helmholtz, for example, says "the principle of causality is in fact nothing more than the presupposition that in all natural phenomena there is conformity to law {Gesetzlickkeity ^ Ikit now in what sense can this regularity or uniformity of nature be called also a case of necessary connexion } There is no logical necessity about a law of nature : it is neither in itsdt intuitively certain nor is it logically deducibh.* from j)remisses that are themselves intuitively certain : to doubt or deny it (Mitails no contradiction. (}ranted, it may j)erhaps be replied, the necessity is not formal or logical, it is xva\\ or natural necessity. ' Ueber die Erhaltuttg der Km/t, Ostwald's cdn, p. 53. 18— a 276 Freedom But what does this mean ? When we speak of a fact or event as real what we primarily intend to assert is its presentation to sensory perception. Such assertorial or categorical judgments are for the percipient not less necessary and inevitable than so-called apodeictic judgments^ I am quite as little able to deny the fact of daylight, when at noon my eyes are open, as I am at any time to deny the truth that 2 + 2=4. The grounds of the necessitation in the two cases are different, no doubt ; but that for the present does not concern us, save as it may lead us to repeat that causal necessitation is not of the apodeictic sort. The same real necessitation, so to call it, which constrains me to affirm that it rains, when I am caught in a thunder-shower, constrains me also to affirm that the thunder-clap followed the lightning-flash ; for all this is perceived. What I am not constrained to affirm, for that is not perceived, is any real connexion between the two events. But though all that we perceive is \\\^ post hoc we no doubt frequently assert the propter hoc as well, and that too on the strength of a single instance. Such a venture is however purely anthropo- morphic : it rests entirely on the analogy that we observe between our own behaviour and what we regard as the behaviour of some inanimate thing. The primitive and popular concept of transeunt causation is altogether anthropomorphic in this wise ; as the whole structure of human speech amply shows. Thus the more completely thought is confined to the standpoint of immediate experience, the more causality implies the connexion of efficiens and effectmn, or real necessity ; ^ Cf. on this point Sigwart's Logic, § 31. C(7Nsa/ify as a postulate 277 but then the less, in the same proportion, does it imply of Liniiormitv or law. The transition from the one standpoint to the other falls almost entirely within the period of modern thought, and in our day may be said to be at leni^th complete. Hut as I have discussed this at some length elsewhere it is needless to enlarge upon it here'. If then neither logical necessity nor necessity in the sense of effectuation is involved in the scientihc concept of causality, what necessity is there left ^ Only the hypothetical necessity of Helmholtz's 'presup- position.' The scientific principle of causality, in short, is a necessary postulate : scientific knowledge — in other words, knowledge expressed in general pro- positions concerning matters of fact — is possible only on the assumption that events actually happen with strict and uniform regularity. Now there is one theory of the world, and one only, which would justify this assumption completely, and that one is the mechanical theory. Accordingly the postulate of the uniformity of nature is frequently converted into the theorem that nature is a mechanical system ; and thus a methodo- logical principle becomes an ontological dogma. We can now see, as we suspected at starting, that to say an event is determined still leaves the nature of the determination an open (juestion, and is so far amljiguous. When the wayfarer says, 1 am determined to go on against the wind, and the man of science says. It is determined that \\\(\ dust will always go with it, ' Cf. Naturalism and Aj^nosticism, y{.\ cdn, vol. i. pp. 62 H., vol. 11. pp. 241 f. An excellent exp(jsition of this tiaiisitiini is given by I)r Venn in his Empirical Lo^ic, ch.s. ii. and iv. 2/8 Freedom this ambiguity is at once apparent. In the first case determination impHes efficient causation, self-direction and purpose : it does not imply any uniformity such that in all like circumstances a like determination always has recurred and always will. In the second case, on the other hand, this is precisely what is implied ; whereas here nothing is implied as to efficient causation ; also self-direction and purpose are either denied or treated as meaningless. But at this point the determinist may interpose, insisting that, to say nothing of habitual actions, there is abundant evidence of uniformity in human conduct even when most deliberate. There is unquestionably; but for all that the two forms of determination remain as different as ever : moreover the uniformities in the two cases are also altogether different. In every instance of deliberate conduct, though the agents decide alike, each is still conscious of self-determination, of purpose, and of effort in the pursuit of it, conscious of that ' action ' contrary to the line of least resistance, which in the case of inanimate things is impossible. And though in like situations there is often a corresponding likeness in the agents' conduct, often there is not ; there is here then no warrant for any such generalisation as natural law im- plies. If we ask a man why in a new and strange situation he acts as he does, it will hardly occur to him to explain his conduct by describing to us the im- mediately preceding situation. The answer he is likely to give, and that we naturally expect, will consist rather in describing the end at which he aims and the value that it has for him, as the reasons for his deter- mination. But if we ask the physicist to explain an Tivo forms of Dctcnuiiiafioii 279 unusual phenomenon he can do so only by discovering its antecedents, tracing these to their antecedents, and so on indefinitely : in other words he can explain it only on the assumption that it is determined by its place in a single rigorous mechanical system. Pri))ia facie then the two forms of determina- tion are distinctly different: whether the difference is irltimate, and if it is not, which form is the more comprehensive — these are further questions. At all events the difference runs very deep. The one form, that of self-determination — implying such teleological categories as personality, utility and worth — dominates all our interpretations of the world as a realm of ends. The other form, that of determination according to fi.xed law, implying in the last resort only the categories of mechanism, underlies our scientific description of the so-called realm of nature or world of things. The one has been called the ethical postulate of freedom, the other the epistemological postulate of necessity\ But in truth self-determination extends beyond the self-conscious and rational autonomy that we find only in the ethical sphere, and is besides not simply an ideal or moral postulate. The contrast with which we have to deal then is the wider one between spontaneity or individual activity as priiiia facie a fact on the one side and the scientific concept o{ inert mattcM" as a constant (juantity on the other'-. Individuality is ' So far the old distinction of Libcrtarianism and Necessitarianism is really clearer and therefore, pact: J. .S. Mill, also 'fairer' than tiiat now in vogue of Indeterniinism and Determinism. • As already remarked (I.«ct. i. p. 9) the negative concept of inertia or inactivity presupposes the positive fact of activity. 28o Freedom inseparable from mind and altogether foreign to matter, which loses nothing by disintegration and gains nothing by integration ; whereas to divide one mind into many or to aggregate many minds into one is meaningless and impossible. But for all that, the more individual minds cooperate the higher they rise and the more they achieve severally and collectively. Hence the steady advance in the efficiency of the world of ends, which Wundt has called the dominant law of spiritual life and entitled ' the increase of spiritual energy ' in contrast to the energy of the physical world that is held neither to increase nor to decreased Wherein then does the difference between them lie? Perhaps if we say that it lies in the different meaning given to direction in the two cases, the contrast we are considering will be made clearer on another side. When we regard the world as a realm of ends, direction implies guidance and control, and therewith activity ; but when we regard it as a physical whole, direction has simply its literal, spatial meaning. We describe the inertia of a moving body by saying that it cannot of itself change its direction or its velocity. And whenever by the so-called ' action ' of another body either of these components of its motion is altered there will also, according to the mechanical theory, be a compensatory alteration in the components of the motion of that other body. Then generalising, and agreeably to the notion of inertia, we have the principle known as the Conservation of Momentum, a principle which perhaps expresses as clearly as any that the ' Wundt, 'Wachsthum der geistigen Energie,' System der Philo- sophies 1889, p. 315. Two senses of Dinrfion 28 1 so-called uniformity ot nature completely excludes all ideas of spontaneity and guidance. Yet that such guidance prima facie exists is no longer seriously disputed : every movement of every living thing is an instance of it. Nevertheless the fact of guidance is, by the very terms of the mechanical theory itself, a fact outside the range of that theory. Moreover, primarily for the sake of such guiding con- trol, and largely by means of it, the theory itself has been elaborated. And those who know it best only claim that it tells us what will happen so far as things are left to themselves, but not that it can show how guidance is possible nor when it will occur \ As often as it does occur then, we have an event which does not lie within the sweep of the so-called uniformity of nature regarded as a system determined throughout by mechanical necessity, determined in such wise that all its uncontrolled working admits of rigorous calcu- lation. Everv such event, so far as the system is concerned, is a new beginning to which, as inert, the system simply submits, and yet for which it, as inert, cannot possibly account. It is just the continual accumulation of such unique events and conservation of their values that distinguishes the historical evolution of experience from the steady downward trend ol the physical world conceived as independent ot experience. The course of the one. its final (Miuilibraiion, is theo- retically calculable from the beginning ; the course ot the other, the tinal harmony of the realm of ends, is not. ' (,"f. an excellent article by Professor J. 11. roynling on 'Pliysiral Law and Life,' Hibbert Journal, 1903. pj). 7280". 282 Freedom Much as Plato found the characteristics of justice more conspicuous in the state than in the individual, so perhaps we find that in the broad contrast between nature and history the difference we have been seeking to analyse and elucidate is more apparent than it is when we confine our attention to the individual alone. But for all that, the solution of our problem — and that of Plato's too — ultimately turns on the reality of individual existence. Efficiency and spontaneity, pur- pose and worth, these ontological and teleological categories are more and more ruthlessly extruded from the description of nature as a phenomenal whole the more that description succeeds in attaining to scien- tific precision. Yet these are the categories that in the main define what we mean by an individual or a person. The course of history we refer to self- determinations, the course of nature science regards as due to mechanical necessitations. But are these alternatives, determination by per- sonal agency and determination according to universal law, really mutually exclusive ? We picture the course of history as continually foreclosing genuine alter- natives, and the course of nature as throughout completely determined : the future in the one case cannot, we think, in the other certainly can — theoretically at least — be deduced from the present. But there are many who think otherwise and who include the doings of men as well as the motions of matter under the phrase ' uniformity of nature.' These we may term thorough-going determinists ; for there is no ambiguity in the meaning they assign to deter- mination. It is simply the (hypothetical) necessity of Analysis of I'oluntary Action 283 science. Still whether such a position is compatible with the existence of a plurality of really conative agents remains to be seen. We must first examine the position itself. Hitherto we have not attempted to analyse the process of voluntary action itself, but as the contention of the thorough-going determinists turns upon this analysis we must now follow them. Their procedure in the main is to regard motives as forces, between which — in deliberation — there may be a varying con- flict till at length one proves itself the strongest, whereupon the action, that it is said to determine, ensues. The man meanwhile seems to play the part of a simply passive spectator. How little Jie deter- mines the result accordinq- to this view is shown, for example, by the reiterated statements of that classic determinist, Hobbes : "In deliberation there be many wills, whereof not any is the cause of a voluntary action but the last," "Will therefore is the last appetite in deliberating." Now there is no doubt that motives in relation to each other have a certain analogy to forces or to weicrhts in a scale, whence indeed the word de- liberation is derived. But the relation of motives to the subject deliberating is not at all that of independent forces applied to an inert object, allxit Hobbes treats of them under the head of Physics'. Appetite and aversion, that is to say conation, implies something that seeks and shuns, a subject that actively strives according as it feels and as long as it lives. Psy- chologists do not ordinarily talk of motives save in connexion with deliberation, which in strictness is an ' Engiish Works, Molcsworth'.s edn, vol. i. p 408. 284 Freedom intellectual rather than a conative process ; but for the purpose of our present discussion it will be convenient, and need not mislead, if we regard motives not as pleas or reasons for acting but as impulses or tendencies to action. So regarded their characteristic is not, that like external forces they move or tend to move the subject, but that they are themselves the subject moving or tending to move, or more accurately, acting or tending to act. We say indeed that hunger makes a man eat, but we do not interpret this statement as we should the statement that heat makes a glass crack. In both cases we have a certain situation, but in the one case the active subject changes the situation ; in the other the situation changes the passive object. Again in what we may call physical situations, where several forces concur, the change is always their resultant and each, strong and weak alike, produces its full effect. In psychical situations, on the other hand, where several motives are said to conflict, the eventual action is determined in accordance with one only, the so-called strongest motive : the rejected motives, if they tell at all, do so simply as testing steadfastness of purpose. It is perhaps hardly needful to say that strength does not here, as in the case of a force, imply any reference to an external standard. In a certain situation, which they share in common, so far as two persons can ever be situated alike, one will say : This motive weighs most with me, and the other, This the most with me. The analogy then between the relation of forces applied to an inert object and the relation of conations to an active subject seems to fail in all essential points. Motives and Forces 285 So long as the subject does not act but merely ' de- liberates or ponders ' how he shall act, there is some resemblance in his procedure to that of using a balance to determine weights, and the suggested metaphor is as old as Plato ; but it is only a metaphor after all. When, however, we consider the facts in their active rather than their cognitive aspect the disparity between the psychical and the physical seems complete. Forces, though distinct, combine their effects only because they converge on one body : motives, though distinct, con- flict only because they diverge, so to say, from one subject. The forces, that is, are applied to the body, the motives spring from the subject. The body moves in the one path which the forces collectively determine, the subject moves in the one path which it selectively determines. The magnitude of a force is referred to an objective standard, the strength of a motive depends on its subjective worth : the sufficient reason is in the one case mechanical, in the other it is teleological. Nevertheless, the thorough-going determinist will doubtless rejoin, these differences are comparatively superficial, and when we think the matter out what we come down to at last is in both cases alike the same necessitation ; the same complete determination of the consequent by its antecedents. We speak of a man's path through life as well as of a body's path through space, and this, however intricate it nia\- have been, we know was throughout perfectly d('rmit(,' and at every pcjint inevitably determined. Now what is true of the motions of a body is true of iIk- doings of a man. Well, it is certainly true always that whatever is once determined is inevitably determined and thai 286 Freedom in this sense the complete antecedents uniquely deter- mine the consequent. But is this a reason for ignoring the difference between the circumstances that determine the rolling of a stone and the volitions that determine the movements of a hero ? Or can anyone seriously maintain that we get to the bottom of things by thus ignoring it? If the said difference is merely an ac- cidental accessory, what is the essential characteristic that pertains alike to the physical event and to the voluntary act? It is, the determinist will repeat, that the antecedents in both cases, in the rolling of the stone and in the willing of the man, are beyond control: as Hobbes has said, "The will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not\" If we ask for further explication, as we well may, we get two answers, more or less connected, which it will be best to consider in turn. First, it is said, a man's volitions depend on his nature, and that is not a matter of his choice. If it be urged that often they depend rather on the character which he has acquired, a character which may control his nature ; it is replied that acquired character is due to modification of nature induced by circumstances, so that after all we come back to nature or original character in the end. But what real distinction, we may ask, can anyone find between a subject and its nature or character" ? As to what an individual subject ^ ' Liberty and Necessity,' E?tglish Works, Molesworth's edn, vol. IV. p. 274. ^ It is not of course with such specific attributes as it shares with others of its kind but with its own pecuUar traits that we are here concerned. A Maifs Volitiojis mid ///s Xiifinr 287 is, there may be room for much metaphysical dispute. But at least we are certain that it is not an indthniie 'this,' or an abstract entity, having only an extrinsic connexion with its so-called nature. Thinking is re- lating, and we are sometimes led in consequence to talk as if reality were altogether resolvable into relations. It is this same habit of thought that leads the indeterminist to talk of the freedom of the will apart from motives, and that leads the determinist, as Priestley does, to talk of " motives as the proper causes of human actions, though it is the man that is called the agent'." The efficiency and initiative that ' "No writer," says Schopenhauer, "has set forth the necessity of voluntary acts so thoroughly and convincingly as Priestley in his... Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity y I trust I shall be excused then, if I venture to give a specimen of his reasoning. It occurs in one of the most important sections of his work, in which he is arguing against his Libertarian friend, Price. "Suppose," he says, "a philosopher to be entirely ignorant of the constitution of the human mind, but to see, as Dr Price acknowledges, that men do, in fact, act according to their affections and desires, i.e. in one word, according to motives, would he not as in a case of the doctrine of chances, immediately infer that there must be d. fixed cause for this coincidence of motives and actions ? Would he not say that, though he could not see into the man, the connexion was fiatural, and necessary, because constant} And since the motives, in all cases, precede the actions, would he not naturally, i.e. according to the custom of philosophers in similar cases, say that the motive was the cause of the action? And would he not be led by the obvious analogy to compare the mind to a balance, which was inclined this way or that, according to the motives presented to it ?... Therefore," he presently concludes, "in proper philosophical language, the motive ought to be called the proper cause of the action. It is as much so as anything in nature is the cause of anything else "— senten< es which Schopen- hauer thought it worth while to quote. (J. Priestley, Disquisitions 288 Freedom the indeterminist seems to find in the man apart from his character the determinist professes to find in the character apart from the man. But whereas it is certain that there cannot be less in the concrete self than we know, there may very well be a great deal more ; and therefore, while it may be possible to clear indeterminism of its seeming paradox, it is not possible to reconcile thorough-going determinism with our actual experience. We certainly have no experience of events without causes, but we experience determination in both the forms which make up the two sides of causation : the efiect as determined, the cause as determining ; and we experience both, not objectively as presentations of what is not self, but subjectively as immediate states of self. We have moreover no ground for regarding the one as a whit more real than the other : if pleasure and pain are verily subjective feeling or affection, conation is verily subjective activity or effectuation. What we are here calling a motive implies both ; and essentially distinct though they are, both arise together in certain situations. But not even the feeling, still less the conation, can be described as caused by the situation, if that is regarded simply as any science except psy- chology would regard it. Psychologically the situation must be interesting ; but this is not a quality pertaining to the situation as such, it is a character that the sub- ject as such gives to it. And gives why ? Because the subject is not, like an inanimate thing, indifferent relating to Matter and Spirit, 1782, vol. 11. pp. 64 ff.) I fancy, if I had myself put this forward as a presentation of the determinist's case, it would have been condemned at once as an unfair travesty. Deteriuiuism and Scjisatioualisiii 289 to circumstances, but has ends and aims to realise, and therefore assumes a different attitude towards its en- vironment according as this helps or hinders it in the pursuit of its purposes — purposes which conform to no general law save that of self-conservation and better- ment. Its oivii character determines the character that it gives to objects, and its behaviour towards them is so far essentially self-determination. To deny all this is tacitly to deny the reality of the self or subject of experience altogether. This brings us to the second answer, a psycho- logical analysis of experience in much favour with thorough-going determinists, wherein this denial is openly made. Hume, it will be remembered, de- scribed the mind as "nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which... are in a perpetual movement or flux." In this bundle his successors signalised appetites and aversions, which are also in perpetual flux. They agree then with him in main- taining that " it cannot therefore be from any of these impressions," as he says, " or from any other, that the idea of self is derived, and consequently there is no such idea'" — so that, speaking plainly, there is no such reality. If there were, said Bain, "a fourth or residual department [of psychology] would need to be consti- tuted, the department of 'self or IMe-ation. and we should set about the investigation of the laws (or the anarchy) prevailing there, as in the three remaining branches [Emotion, Volition, Intellection]." "I can- not," he continues, "light upon anything of the sort; ' Hume, Treatise on Human yatiin, (Irccii ;md (Jrosc's edition, vol. I. pp. 533 f. w. 19 290 Freedom and in the setting-up of a determining power under the name of ' self,' as a contrast to the whole region of motives...! see only an erroneous conception of the facts \" The hopeless shortcomings of this doctrine — variously known as Sensationalism, Associationism, Presentationism — have been often exposed, and it is doubtful if in the present day there is a single psy- chologist who would defend it. We might then fairly content ourselves by saying that thorough-going de- terminism finds at once in this sensationalism its logical outcome and its refutation. But the reasons of its failure can be put very briefly. In the first place, determinism and sensationalism alike, in common with all naturalistic thinking, set out from the objective standpoint, as if it were absolute. The subjective factor in all experience, which the natural sciences can safely ignore, can, they assume, be ignored by the moral and historical sciences too. The category of ' attribute or property ' which implies possession is metaphorically used of things, though these, albeit qualified, in x^2}i\X.y possess nothing. "Without pro- perty no person," Hegel has said: but we may convert this and say, Without a person no property. Ex- perience is in this sense property : it is always owned. Percepts and appetites that nobody has are not percepts and appetites at all. To talk of motives conflicting of themselves is as absurd as to talk of commodities competing in the absence of traders. ^ The Emotions and the Will^ 3rd edn, 1875, p. 492. To 'contrast' self and motives in this fashion is indeed just that ' erroneous conception of the facts' referred to above, p. 2%6 Jin. The Result 291 Again, if there is only a bundle of percepts and motives, but no self to determine or control, it is obxious that there can be no self to be determined or controlled. But since presentationism cannot con- sistently regard presentations themselves as purposive, there can be no purpose in the Many at all. Finally, since the onlv causalitv naturalism rcco'''niscs is the hypothetical regularity of sequence, there is no place left for efficiency either : the world is resolved into mechanism, and so experience is explained away. Such a rcductio ad absiti^diuii is surel)' an indirect proof of the reality of that self-determination which we directly experience. 19 — 2 LECTURE XIV. FREEDOM AND FOREKNOWLEDGE. We may perhaps claim to have found that the thorough-going determinism, which denies self-deter- mination and self-direction in toto, refutes itself by overshooting the mark and proving too much : by resolving the subject of experience into an abstraction it denies the reality of experience altogether. But there are those who profess to admit freedom in the sense of self-determination, in common with the Liber- tarian, and who yet maintain necessity in the sense of natural law, in common with the Necessitarian. I am thinking, of course, of Kant and his solution of this antinomy between the demands of pure science and pure ethics as he conceived them — a solution which Schopenhauer praises as among the most admirable and profound achievements of human genius. The self is here noumenal and its freedom transcendental, but its active manifestations are phenomenal and necessarily determined. Though many besides Schopenhauer have been impressed with the amazing ingenuity of this Kantian doctrine, he, almost alone, seems to have had the courage or the hardihood to accept it completely^ At this time of day then it would be unprofitable to begin by discussing it at length, though it may repay ^ Fichte and Schelling ought perhaps to be included. TJie Doctrine of Kant and ScJiopcuJiaucy 293 us presently to consider whether after all beneath this splendid failure there does not lie a great truth. But it is Schopenhauer's exposition that more inimediately concerns us. Adopting the scholastic principle, Opcrari sequitur esse, he says: — "It has been a fundamental error, a vaTepou irporepov of all times, to assign the necessity to the esse and the freedom to the operari. On the contrary freedom pertains to the esse alone; but from this and the motives the operari follows of necessity; and from what we do we know what we are\" And "necessary" he defines as "that which follows from a given sufficient ground"." So far and at first sight there seems nothing here incompatible with self-determination as the Libertarian understands it : a being that in a given situation is itself the sufficient ground of what it does is all that we mean by a spontaneous or free being. The only such beings that we know or can conceive are conscious, that is to say conative and cognitive, subjects. Hut we find no such restriction of freedom in Schopenhauer's doctrine. The freedom that he allows is not confined to conscious beings; antl on looking closer we shall see that consciousness has essentially nothing to do with it. It is the inner essence of each thing, he maintains, whether it be physical force or vital force or will, that determines its characteristic reaction. The law operari sequitur esse applies alike to all : as its reactions disclose the nature of a chemical substance, so his motives disclose the character of a man. " Objectively ' Sdinmtlu/u Wcrkc^ ' I'rcihcil dcs Willcns,' Frauenstadt's cdn, vol. IV. p. 97. * Op. cit. p. 7. 294 Freedom and Foreknowledge considered, a man's behaviour," he tells us, " like the action of every natural essence, is recognised as falling necessarily under the causal law in its utmost rigour : subjectively on the other hand everyone feels that he always does only what he wills. This however only amounts to saying that his action is the pure outcome of his own peculiar nature : even the meanest thing therefore would feel the same, if it could feel at all\" What all this comes to then is substantially and briefly as follows : — The esse of everything is noumenal and is will or energy of a definite kind, the kind differing for all the so-called physical forces, for all organic species and for all individual men. The opei^ari of everything is phenomenal, and involves two factors ; (i) the original esse, i.e. force or will, and (2), in addition to this, the determining condition or occasion, answering to what in physics we term causes in the narrower sense, to what in biology we call stimuli, in psychology motives. All that these so-called causes account for is the when and where of the manifestations {Aeusserungen) of the primitive things per se, which — themselves beyond explanation and causation — are the principles of all explanation and the source of all causation. As such a thing per se or noumenon, man according to Kant and Schopenhauer alike is free — free as a cause that is not in turn an effect. And now what is the result of all this freedom of the noumenal world ? A phenomenal world of cast-iron necessity ; and since this is the only world we know about, the determinist, so far as objective experience extends, is completely in the right. But how from such ' Op. cit. pp. 57, 98. The PJiowiueual and tJic Noimiciinl 295 complete libertydoes this rigorous necessity come about ? Because the essential nature or character of everything is unalterable : what is conscious and what is not are in this respect, according to Schopenhauer at any rate, completely on a par. In like manner Kant affirms that "all the acts of a man, so far as they are phenomena, are determined accordincr..,to the order of nature, and it we could investigate [them]... to the very bottom, there would not be a single human action which we could not predict with certainty and recognise from its preceding conditions as necessary, just as we do an eclipse of the sun or the moon\" It is not this assignment to freedom of a purely extra-phenomenal character that is at variance with the pluralistic interpretation of evolution, although it is against this that most of the objections to the Kantian doctrine have been directed. On the contrary, as I shall attempt presently to show, in this respect it contains, as I have already hinted, a great truth. But if the characters of men, say, are fixed and immutable, just as the qualities of the chemical elements arc: assumed to be ; and the course of history therefore is as amenable to calculation as the movements of the planets, then — so far as experience goes — we may as well accept at once 'the firmly rooted conviction of the ancients concerning F"ate,' as Schopenhauer was prepared to do*. We must in(iuire, therefore, in the first place whether the statement so often made l)\- dclc^rminists is really defensible, vi/. thai persons and things are so ' Critique of J 'u re Reason, ist cdn, p. 550, M. M. s trans, p. .\i.\ ; Practical Reaion, Hartcnstcin's cdn, vol. v. p. 104. ' Op. cit. p. 60. 296 Freedom and Foreknozvledge far on a par that from a complete knowledge of a man's present 'empirical character' all his future actions could be foretold. It is obvious however that more than this would be needed ; that in fact a complete specifi- cation of all the circumstances in which the man is hereafter to be placed would be equally indispensable. It is obvious again that nothing short of a complete knowledge of the characters of all his contemporaries as well would suffice to render such complete specification possible. But, once more, the thoughts and deeds of contemporaries on the one hand and physical events on the other obviously could not be regarded as two inde- pendent series ; for conduct is unquestionably affected by natural changes, while at the same time certain natural changes are the result of human interference. What we should have to deal with then would be one vast predetermined series. The idea of such a rigorously concatenated system is just what the thorough-going determinist understands by the Uni- formity of Nature. All the same, when the man of science proceeds to picture out this uniformity, he does so only on the supposition that the whole is a mechanism, whose ultimate constituents are qualitatively alike and differ only quantitatively, in respect of mass, configura- tion, acceleration, and so forth. Given a complete knowledge of the whole of such a system at two instants and its state at any assigned date in the future or in the past is ideally calculable. Men also interact and affect each other, in so far as they are members of a social system; but then their characters and interests are not alike, and therefore for each the world, though objectively the same, is different too. The words of Mcc/ianisni and Morals 297 Terence, Ouof homines tot sejitoitiac, are here to the point. As Oliver Wendell Holmes has somewhere humorously put it. whenever two persons J/ and A^ converse together there are six individuals concerned, M as he is, M as he thinks himself to be, M as N thinks him to be ; and a like trinity as respects A'^. While it is true that we hnd no two individuals of our acquaintance entirely alike, it is true also on the other hand that we know no one completely: indeed adequate knowledge about the individual is allowed to be logically impossible. So far Professor Royce is right in his emphatic contention that an individual — however intimately known — is, as known, but an instance of a type : that J/ or iV is the only instance we know does not make him essentially unique^ If on the strength of this partial knowledge we venture to predict his future conduct, we are generalising, following, that is to say, the hypothetical procedure of science, as truly as when we affirm that he will die. But in certain circumstances the one prediction would be as justifiable as the other, since both alike would be instances of the ' uniformity of nature,' viz. when the man's action, like a forced move in chess, is externally constrained ; or when again, like .some trick of manner, it is secondarily automatic, a case ol mechanical routine, the outcome of the dead sell, the woodenness of the man as distinct from the growing life. The cases to which Schopenhauer so triumph- antly apjjeals are in j)art of this sort. And e\<.ii in the rest we find our confident expectations often belied: the most humdrum mortals rising to great occasions, and ' T/if World anit tli( Individual, vol. l. pi). 292-4. 298 Freedom and Foreknowledge others, in whom the hue of resolution seemed native and ingrained, growing pallid in the supreme crisis and finally renouncing their cause. But the literature of conversions and counter-conversions, of which Pro- fessor James in his Gifford Lectures has given such an admirable selection, is amply sufficient to turn the flank of Schopenhauer's position. Moreover not only Kant but even Schopenhauer, the more rigorous determinist of the two, is inconsistent enough to recognise these radical changes of character. To be sure they regard them as ' mysteries,' cases of regeneration or new birth, manifestations not of ' nature ' but of ' grace ' ; but it is enough for us now that they admit their possibility. If the appeal then is to be to facts, can anyone soberly maintain that it is even ideally possible to forecast what he, still less what another, will think and do a week hence ? Besides, even if the forecast could be made it would take the week to make it ; for none of the intervening thoughts and deeds could be safely omitted ; nor could their rate be accelerated unless a like acceleration held throughout the world — and then we should be relatively just where we were before. The so-called forecast in a word would be after the event\ Surely if there is an empirical common-place beyond dispute it is this, that no man knows before- hand even his own possibilities completely, to say nothing of those of another. So far as experience goes what we find is not simply uniformity and routine, nahtra natiirata, but also innovation and variation, natui^a naturans. Hence while it is possible to publish Bradshaw s Giiide as ' Cf. Bergson, Les Donnees hninediates^ 2""^ edn, pp. 140 ff. Freedom as Defenuiiiisni 299 well as the Nautical Almanack, Zadkiels Ahuanack is a fraud, and other forms of clairvoyance an absurdity, in spite of Schopenhauer's confident appeal to them. But after all his thorough-going determinism — or 'noumenal freedom' — was not based on experience. Further his definition of necessary as '* that which follows from a given sufficient ground" does not justify him in assuming that the ground is once for all fixed and unalterable ^ That is an assumption which he simply took over straight from Plato's theory of ideas and grievously misapplied. If on this assumption there could be events, their rigorous concatenation would, of course, be inevitable. But though the fixed and unalterable character of the 'free,' noumenal, grounds of nature would necessitate a phenomenal world fast bound in fate, we cannot till we have found this ijifer that. To assert such a character of the noumenal, and thence to deduce what the phenomenal, world must be, is mere dogmatism. Nevertheless it was to this solid mechanism or * nature-necessity ' as he called it that Kant appealed in support of his 'empirical 'determinism. And most incon- sistently, for he has himself allowed that this miscalled 'necessity of nature' neither logically nor really deserves the name. The 'uniformity of nature' is indeed so far a priori, as being part and parcel of the postulate that the very possibility of any empirical forecast at all implies. But nowpostulation isa practical notatheoretical matter: ' What, wc wonder, would Schopenhauer have said of the Kea, the New Zealand parrot that has developed the extraordinary habit of picking holes in the back of the living sheep ; or of other instances of changed habits which Darwin gives? {Ori^t^n of Species^ 6ih cdn, pp. 1 4 1-3)- 300 Freedom and Foreknowledge what then in the last resort does it really mean? Experi- ence itself being practical, and theory the result not the presupposition of experience, we can put the matter most simply by saying of experience what Helmholtz has said: — Hiergilt nur der eine Rath: Vertraue und handle! Das Unzuldngliche Dann ivird^s Ereigniss^. This then is our postulate reduced to its lowest terms, and with this the progress of experience entirely agrees. The Many have all alike had to trust and try, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, but on the whole always learning and so gradually achieving the order that determinism assumes to exist a priori. This established order or nattira naturata then implies free causes, as Kant and Schopenhauer maintained, for it is their work ; but why suppose that by their very first stroke they forge for themselves adamantine chains ? Yet this is what Schopenhauer certainly assumed- and what Kant seems to assume. Such a supposition, so far from making experience possible, would rather make it impossible ; for if the nature or essence of all agents were irrevocably fixed, how could — nay why should — there be any evolution at all ? A Spinozistic world, existing sub specie aeterniiatis but really devoid of change, is all we could expect. Nevertheless, as I shall now try to show, the Kantian distinction between intelligible and empirical character is of real importance ; although, of course, we must take it to mean not that a subject has two characters, one noumenal the other phenomenal, but ^ Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, 2'^ Aus. p. 594. - Cf. Sdmmtliche Werke^ Frauenstadt's edn, vol. 11. p. 598, vol. iv. p. 97. Homo noumenon and Homo phenomenon 301 simply that in the latter we have sundry manifestations of what the subject's character really is : opcrari scqiiitur esse, as Schopenhauer said. But Kant, I think, never meant to regard the free subject as Schopenhauer did, that is, as related to its acts as a logical essence is to its predicates. When therefore he speaks of it as out of time he does not mean to exclude process and change in the sense in which logic excludes these : that he postulates immortality in order to the attainment of perfection is enough to show this. What then does he mean ? What he really means is, I think, far more clearly expressed in his distinction of JiojHO noumenon and homo pJienomenon. As phenomenal, 'when we are merely obsci'ving^' a man, he is an object simply, not a subject. Like all .observed objects, he is so far conceived as merely part and parcel of that continuous whole we call nature ; and the successive states through which he is observed to pass are con- ceived as regularly linked in with those of other phenomena in this one unbroken continuum. It is to this regular succession of phenomenal events that the category of causality as used in science applies. But besides this causal relation to other phenomena everything phenomenal is related, on the one hand to the subject to whom it appears, and on the other to the 'transcendental object,' of which it is the appear- ance. Whether consistently or not with the main position of his critical philosophy, it is at all events a fact that Kant never dreamt of (juestioning the exist- ence of things per se as the ground of the phenomena that we observe externally, h is ecjually certain ih.u • Kant's phrase. Cf. the context of first passage quoted above, p. 295. 302 Freedom and Foreknowledge he regarded the 'transcendental subject' or the ground of the facts that we experience internally as also such a thing per se ; and that not simply from the standpoint of practice but also from that of theory. In a word the experience of phenomena, whether external or internal, implies the existence of corresponding things per se as their grounds or causes ; as Leibniz, Herbart and Lotze maintained. Wie viel Schein so viel Hinde-iLtung mifs Sein was as true for Kant as it was for them. But the causality in this case is not the phenomenal and relative causality of science, but the noumenal and absolute causality that pertains solely to the ultimate efficiency of the thing per se. To man conceived as noumenal this absolute or free causality belongs. The reasonable in thought and conduct affords the most adequate instances of such causality ; for " reason," as Kant says, " does not yield to the impulse that is given empirically and does not follow the order of things as they present themselves as phenomena, but frames for itself, with perfect spon- taneity, a new order according to ideas to which it adapts the empirical conditions\" But he also gives the following simpler example : — " If at this moment I rise from my chair with perfect freedom, without the necessarily determining influence of natural causes, a new series has its absolute beginning in this event, with all its natural consequences ad indefinitum^y The phenomenal world then we may compare, as Lotze has done, to a continuous texture or fabric con- sisting entirely of the joint effects produced, the overt ^ Critique^ ist edn, p. 548, M.M.'s trans, p. 473. ' Op. cit. p. 450, M.M. p. 392. The PJieuojucual as filled Time 303 deeds done, by innumerable things per se or agents. The pattern of this texture is what we call filled time, and the process of filling-in is, as we know, ever going forward. So far as we are merely cognitive, we are confined to observations, past and present, of this pro- cess and to such more or less probable inferences concerning the future as these suggest. As a matter of fact our inductions frequent!}- turn out right, and they prove to be more reliable the more niethodically we proceed. It is so ; but as already said there is no necessity, either logical or real, about it. " For we could quite well imagine," Kant himself allows, " that phenomena might possibly be such that the under- standins: would not find them conformable... : all mii/ht be in such confusion that nothing would be found in the succession of phenomena which could supply a rule of synthesis corresponding to the category of cause and effect, so that this category would therefore be altogether null and void and meaningless'." Thus it is simply to the ideal of a ' rule' of succession, which the weaving of the phenomenal texture de facto suggests, that we apply the concept called by Kant 'causality of nature.' Entirely distinct from this phenomenal or empirical causality is that which Kant calls 'causality of freedom ' — intelligiljle or noumenal causality. So difterent are the two that positive science fights shy of the terms, ' cause and effect,' because of their association with this efficient or noumenal causality, the existence of which positive science ignores and naturalism dogmatically denies alt(jgether '. l)iii lo the grounds ' Critii/ue of the Pure Rcnson. .Analytic (5 13, M.M. p. So. ' Cf. Aaturaiism and Af;noiticism, vol. n. pp. 241, J47. 304 Freedom and Foreknoiuledge for assuming its existence we need not now return. At all events, as the very causality that produces the pattern in 'the context of nature' — Kant's phrase by the way — this noumenal causality obviously cannot be identified with the phenomenal causality — so-called — that the pattern itself displays. The essential charac- teristic of the latter is objective time-order according to universal law : the essential characteristic of the former is subjective initiation. Since it freely inserts those ' links in the chain of nature ' it cannot, I say, be a part of the time-order that it makes. As compared with the phenomenal solidarity or continuity that they jointly produce, these independent, real, causes may then be said to be out of time. Their acts are not 'events' that seem to come out of {evenire), or to follow from, what has preceded in the time-process: they are rather ' interventions ' that appear in this process and con- stitute its further evolution. Accordingly in reference to them and them only ' ought ' has a meaning ; for, as Kant truly says : "If we look merely at the course of nature, 'ought' has no meaning whatever It expresses a possible action, the ground of which cannot be anything but a mere concept," cannot be a phe- nomenon \ This concept, as we should say now, is the teleological concept of worth or of the good, whereby the realm of ends in which it obtains is still further differentiated from the realm of nature in which it is meaningless. In the one, events appear as deter- mined by preceding events ; in the other, actions are initiated to secure future ends. But can we then say that the realm of ends is out ^ Op. cit. p. 547, M.M. p. 472. Abstract Time 305 of time ? Certainly not, as I have already maintained, in the sense that it is. like Plato's world of ideas, an eternal world of immutable essences, a logical world but not a real world at all. In tending to equate 'intelligible character' to mere essential cxistc7itia, as Schopenhauer expressly did, Kant's procedure is in- defensible as well as inconsistent. Hut what is the time, beyond which, so to say, free agents arc said to exist ^. It is that time which Kant conceived as yielding an exact science of chronometry, the pendant of geometry the exact science of space. It is time as a continuous quantity of one dimension, and so far comparable to a line, save that its points or parts are not simultaneous but successive. Succession in this time is conceived as constant ; in other words this time is regarded as homogeneous and so as measurable, divisible into intervals of equal length. In a word it is the abstract time of science in which we imagine the successive states of the whole phenomenal world to be plotted out, suggesting, as Bergson has admirably put it. the substitution for the complete world of experience of a set of kinematographic pictures. What then is left out of this abstract or empty time ? Paradoxical though it ajjpear, what is left out, we shall find, are the mutually im()licated facts of duration and change. An interval of time is not the same as the experience of duration, and the two different states situated at its extremes are no equi- valent for the experience of change. iUit these problems of time which we have here broached are far loo complex for discussion now. The only larther eluci- dation I can offer is to raise one more (juestion anil \v. 20 3o6 Freedom and Foreknowledge content myself with a very summary answer. How do we come by this schema of time ? We come by it solely because our experience involves both duration and change ; and thus, as has been well said, "time is in us though we are not in time," But for experience duration is not something objective, is not a homo- geneous linear quantity that is abstracted from a multiplicity of presentations. What the term duration ultimately represents is our immediate subjective ex- perience as actively striving and wearing on: it implies the actual living, which only is actual in so far as it is not homogeneous and empty but full of changes endured or wrought. And change again as experienced is not merely a temporal succession, a, b, c..., where a is not when b is, and c is not till b is no more. Such a schema would never yield experience : it answers exactly to that zero limit of experience that, as I have already remarked, Leibniz ascribed to bodies, when he said omne corpus mens momentanea est. But experience yields that schema ; and empirical psychology affords us a fairly complete analysis of its constituents and a fairly probable account of their genetic synthesis. Experience however yields that schema only because experience, as living, is the natura naturans that leaves behind it, as it were, the natzira naturata to which the schema entirely belongs. Between the intemporal world of ideas and the temporal world of phenomena free agents then have their place\ ^ Cf. Bergson, L! Evolution creatrice, p. 391. "The feature in Professor Bergson's contribution to the philosophy of experience which distinguishes it fundamentally from the views of previous thinkers, is his new conception of time as concrete time, or what Necessitariauis)}! so far not proved 307 The necessitarian position is not then, we seem entitled to conclude, empirically warranted. As an argument from experience it rests on the assumption that phenomena are the whole ; that there is, in other words, nothing but filled time : whence and how time is hlled, it does not inquire. Once this foundation is found faulty, all the empirical arguments that rest upon it may be overturned. Nor, with one exception, are the supposed a pi'iori arguments more satisfactory. That every event must have a cause we may allow to be axiomatic, but not that the same cause — the same efficient cause, that is — must always produce the same effect. Again to identify such a cause with an essence, to equate it, as it were, to a reason was the mistake of rationalism, which Kant completely exposed in his important pre-critical paper on Negative Quantities. he calls Duration" (D. Balsillie, Mind, 191 1, p. 357). I think however that I may fairly claim to have anticipated him to some extent. In 1886, three years before the publication of Professor Bergson's Donnees, I had written a long paragraph on this topic, containing inter alia the following: — "Thus. ..there is an element in our concrete time-perception which has no place in our al)stract conception of time. In time, conceived as physical, there is no trace of intensity ; in time, as psychically experienced, duration is primarily an intensive magnitude" {Ency. Brit. 'Psychology,' i ith edn, p. 577). I should probably have taken an earlier opportunity of mentioning this point, if I had known before, that one of Professor Bergson's compatriots had already called attention to it — of this however I only became aware ([uite recently. Cf. M. (1. Ragcot in the Rrt'iic philosophique, t. i.x. 1905, j). 84. In a reply to him Professor Bergson {ibid. p. 229), while establishing his own independence, strangely misses the point of resemblance, which is not, as he supposes, between my ' presentatitm-continuum ' and his duree rl-elle, but between this and my analysis of lime as concrete. On the main (juestion see further in Sup|)lementary Note iv. 20 — 2 3o8 Freedom and Forekjtowledge But if we start from theism the case is quite other- wise : then indeed the necessitarian position appears to be axiomatic\ It is, I think, generally allowed that in the long theological controversies, which for cen- turies have raged round our problem, logic has been on the side of those who, like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin and Edwards, have maintained the doctrine of divine predestination, the doctrine "that God orders all events, and the volitions of moral agents amongst others, by such a decisive disposal, that the events are infallibly connected with his disposal'"; or otherwise put, that second causes in nature are incompatible with the admis- sion that there is only one cause, the First Cause. What however does this start from theism imply ? It implies a supposed knowledge of God that is independent of experience — partly as innate, partly as revealed. It im- plies further that knowing what God is apart from the world we infer what any world that he creates must be. The absolute omniscience and omnipotence of God are regarded as beyond question ; and from these follow as a corollary the absolute and eternal decrees. As Jonathan Edwards concisely put it : " All things are perfectly and equally in his view from eternity ; hence it will follow that his designs or purposes are not things formed anew, founded on any new views or appear- ances, but are all eternal purposes." But there is another corollary equally evident from which those intent on theism at any cost seek in vain to escape. There is — as already said — no room left for other ■^ So we come round again to the divergence between pluralism and theism from which we first set out. Cf. Lect. xni. init. ^ Jonathan Edwards, Enquiry, 4th edn, 1775, p. 406. NecessifariaJiism and T/icisni 309 causes, other purposes, no room for a real world with such a God at all. As a Scottish professor of divinity has said : — "If God is thus the real cause of all that is, the universe would seem to be merely God evolving himself, and there has been no true creation, no bringing into being of wills separate from his own'."' In a word — as I attempted to show in the second lecture — starting from the One there is no arriving at the Many. If we attempt to conceive of God apart from the world there is nothing to lead us on to the idea of creation. On the other hand, if we start from the Many, it has. I trust, become more and more clear as we have ad- vanced, that we find there no justification for the notion of a ' block universe' — as Professor James called it — a universe, that is, in which every detail is decreed, in which real initiative, evolution as we understand it, is impossible. But, in fact, we /lave to start from the Many, and accordingly always do — this too I trust has been made clear. Moreover, if thorough-going deter- minism were true, we should, it has seemed equally clear, never attain to the idea of a Creator at all. b^or if ourselves devoid of all originality what meaning could that idea have for us ? The doctrine of predestination has been for theo- logians a hopeless and insoluble })roblem as well as a source of bitter strife largely because of this opposition between a priori speculation and actual experience. "That in the actual passage of events something should actually come to pass, something new which previ- ously was not; that history should be something more than a translation iiiio lime of the eternally comjilete ' Rev. .Marcus Uods, limy. lirit. ylh cdii, s.v. I'rcUcstinatioii. 3IO Freedom and Foreknowledge content of an ordered world — this," said Lotze, " is a deep and irresistible demand of our spirit, under the influence of which we all act in life. Without its satisfaction the world would be, not indeed unthinkable and self-contradictory, but unmeaning and incredible^" But though I have used that ominous word ' pre- destination ' I am not going to attempt to adjudicate the theological differences of Augustine and Pelagius, Arminius and Calvin, It is the wider issue — that of reconciling pluralism and theism — that alone concerns us. Nevertheless there are two or three points con- nected with the purely theological controversy that are worthy of notice. First, in its most rigid and, as it seems to me, its most logical form — in what is called Supralapsarianism — the dogma of predestination has always appeared so shocking, so ' excruciating ' as Augustine said, to ordinary humanity, that it has not only been charged on moral grounds with tending to atheism, but it has been used either openly or covertly to promote atheism. Readers of church history will remember the fates of Gottschalk and Vanini. But, secondly and as more important, we may notice the attempts that have been made to tone down the ex- treme rigour of the Calvinistic dogma — as represented, for example, in Jonathan Edwards's classical treatise — by distinguishing between the divine prescience and the divine purposes. The text of all such attempts is to be found in a famous saying of Origen : — " God's prescience is not the cause of things future, but their being future is the cause of God's prescience that they will be." To the relations of finite beings this dis- ' Metaphysic, §65, E. t. p. 117. The Prcdcstiiiariaii Controversy 311 tinction is certainly applicable. I may confidently expect what another will do, without any responsibility for his deed ; but in proportion as he has become what he is through my deliberate influence and effort the distinction lapses : so far, what I expect is just what I intended. If then the divine decrees and the divine prescience are coeval, if God is the sole cause of all that is and foresees infallibly all that can ever happen, a fortiori it seems futile to attempt to discriminate between what he decrees and what he merely permits. The philosopher Reid, who in opposition to Priestley attempted to reconcile divine foreknowledge and human freedom, made the extraordinary blunder of comparing foreknowledge of the future with memory of the past. He practically assumed that because memory of the past is memory of what was once both future and contingent, the fact remembered remains contingent though it is future no more. Nothing is easier than to turn this analogy against him with fatal effect, as his own disciple Hamilton has actually done. " Factum infccttun rcddcre, nc Dcus quidem potest, has been said and sung in a thousand forms," says Hamilton. The past that is to say is necessary : if then ("lod's prescience resembles our memory, it is only because the past and the future are both alike to him : as the past is not contingent so neither is the future'. I^»ut notwithstanding his exposure, iiamilton still sides with Reid, not with Priestley. And this l)rings to our notice another atlemj)l to save the Divine .Sovereignty, as it is called, without surrendering the ' The Works uf T/ios. Reid, Hamilton's edition, |t. 631 n. 312 Freedom and Foreknowledge freedom of man ; and that is the simple declaration that the problem is transcendent. The conciliation of divine foreknowledge and human freedom is, said Hamilton, "one of the things to be believed, not understood " : all " attempts to harmonize these anti- logies by human reasoning to human understanding" are to be rejected as " futile...' vain wisdom all and false philosophy.' " But what if antilogy is only a euphemism for contradiction, and what of the logical cogency of the predestinarian view, about which, however repulsive, there is nothing obscure or in- conceivable ? I do not think Jonathan Edwards overstated his case, when he said : — " There is no geometrical theorem whatsoever, more capable of strict demonstration than that God's certain Prescience of the volitions of moral agents is inconsistent with such a contingency of these events, as is without all Necessity^" The pluralist then, it would seem, has no alternative but either to deny the complete prescience of the One or to abandon the self-determination of the Many, and thus wholly surrender his own position. There is however still an old attempt at conciliation, recently set forth anew by a former Gifford Lecturer, which we perhaps ought not to pass altogether without notice. " Foreknowledge in time," says Professor Royce, " is possible only of the general and of the causally pre- determined, and not of the unique and the free. Hence neith-er God nor man can perfectly foreknow, at any temporal moment, what a free-will agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolute possesses a perfect 1 Op. cii. p. 182. Atfeiiipts at a Coiiciliafion 313 k7iowledge at one gla7ice of tJic wJiolc of the temporal order, present, past and future. This knowledge is ill-called foreknowledore. It is eternal knowledo-e'." But I fear that even eternity will not afford a secure refuge from the difficulty. It is noteworthy that, while it is of God that Professor Royce denies perfect fore- knowledge,, it is of the Absolute that he asserts eternal knowledge. There is here more than an accidental difference of expression. Professor Royce in fact, like only too many theists, is guilty of that vacillation between God and the Absolute which Mr Bradley we found quaintly comparing to the futile attempts of a dog to follow two masters-. The Absolute must be in every respect all-inclusive, but God, if his creatures are free, is so far not all-inclusive. As I have already said the Creator together with his creatures may be called the Absolute ; but unless the creatures — said to be made out of nothing — verily remain themselves but nothing, God is, no longer at any rate, the Absolute. To God we ma}' attribute personality and therefore experience and knowledge ; since for him tin- world is a Not-self, although his own creation. But we cannot attribute personality to the Absolute, for there the duality of Self and Not-self is necessarily tran- scended. \\\i cannot then speak of the Absolute as knowing ; but since it is all-inclusive we may perhaps say that ii ' possesses knowledge ' — a vague i)hrase that will mean too little to help us much'. ' The World arid the Individual, vol. n. p. 374. Italics the author's. "^ Cf. Lect. n. p. 24. ' It would be equally true to say, as Mr Hosanquct has observed, that it possesses colour. 314 Freedom and Foreknowledge But if now we turn for a moment to consider what Professor Royce understands by an eternal knowledge that takes in ' at a glance ' — the expression is odd — the whole temporal order — again an odd but significant expression — we shall find that in fact we are not helped at all. He distinguishes two senses of present, an exclusive — as when we hear or apprehend a musical air note by note, where each note excludes the rest from coexistence with itself — and an inclusive — as when we take in or comprehend the melody as a whole and appreciate it. In this latter case the whole melody is present, included at once in what I have called a time perspective. The range of such inclusive present, or time-span, is for us extremely limited, but within such limits we experience a sort of temporal ubiquity. As I have already had occasion to observe, when this limit is reduced to zero, there is strictly no experience. Now, on the other hand, imagine all limits withdrawn and you have the sort of experience Professor Royce calls eternal knowledge. Comparing the whole temporal order to an infinite symphony, he holds that the Absolute knows it at once as we might know one brief rhythm. But now, we ask, when is it that we grasp this rhythm as an ordered whole ? When it is complete — a parte post. And here surely the fatal defect of Professor Royce's solution for our purpose is evident. No wonder he talks of ' the temporal order' as if it were fixed ! If the Absolute takes in at a glance the whole temporal order of the world, it can only be, according to Professor Royce's analogy, because, as Hegel supposed, the world's evolution is for it merely a rehearsal after the symphony is composed. TJie P/it rail's fs \'ia Media 315 But such an absolute One, as we have seen many times over, has no need and leaves no room for a real Many at all. Further, it seems contradictory to attribute to it the limitations of the temporal stand- point along with the perfection of the eternal': the composer can never be a mere auditor too. This remark brings us back to the pluralist's solution, and raises an obvious difficulty. Is God then not the composer it will reasonably be asked: are we not assuming that the world is his creation ? Or has he only devised an /Eolian harp and left the winds of chance to call the tune, being himself then only an auditor ^ Such questions suggest two extremes, neither of which is compatible with pluralism ; between which however there lies a via media that may be. Aii is not decreed : the world is not created like a symphony. Again, all possibilities are not left open : the Many have not severally unlimited freedom, that ' freedom of indifference ' which is indistinguishable from chance. God's creatures are creators, the pluralist maintains : their ' nature ' is partly his doing, partly their own : he assigns the talents, they use or misuse them. Not everything that is possible is possible to any, yet some initiative is open to every one: none are left with no talent at all. The totai possibilities then, however far back we go, are fixed ; but within these, contingencies, however far forward we go, are open. "An infinite Miii4l. with prevision thus extended beyond all that is to all that can be," said M.iriliicau, "is lifted above sur[)rise or disaiJpoiniment...y/iisc/ie Monati/if/tf,\\\. 79 f Italics mine. This article is republished in Hartmann's rhilosophische /fit/rai^en. * Sully, Pessimism, ist edn, p. i 1.}. 328 The Problem of Evil and Pessimism perturb his balance. At any rate he provides himself with an interesting dilemma. We may now inquire whether Hartmann is more convincing when he attempts to deduce pessimism from psychological principles. Here he is substantially at one with Schopenhauer and we may deal with both together. Both alike on the one hand confound all psychical activity with will and on the other identify will exclusively with desire. In the first sense both presentation and feeling would presuppose will, since they both imply psychical activity or life. But the converse would be true when will is restricted to the narrower sense of desire. Desire does not merely give rise to feeling ; it also presupposes it ; we do not want and then feel pain, but rather feel pain and then and there want its removal. Further and more important — so far as feeling is antecedent to pursuit — there may be pleasurable feelings which cannot be what Schopen- hauer called negative, the mere filling up of a want, for they may come without our striving and be wholly unforeseen. We do not need to cite only such rare cases of good fortune as unexpected legacies or sudden unearned increments : there are few lives without any agreeable disappointments, any halcyon days, golden opportunities, or runs of luck. It is not only the lilies of the field that are clothed, though they toil not neither do they spin. Finally — and as the fundamental fact in the whole matter — spontaneity and an unimpeded energy, that is for a time at least self-sustaining, are sources of pleasure and well being to most creatures during a large part of their lives, quite apart from desire or antecedent pain. In a word absolute privation, like Pain, Desire and J J 'ill 329 absolute negation. Is unthinkable : the world cannot begin in utter bankruptcy without any assets. Hart- mann's initial state of the Absolute as empty will is the most glaring contradiction of a writer who has perpetrated more absurdities than any other writer of repute that I know. How, it has been often asked, can the Absolute lack anything ? And how too. we may add. can the hnite Many, if parts of the Absolute, lack everything ? Only to him that hath can be given : we cannot therefore equate life with privation, resolve all activity into desire nor all pleasure into the mere cessation of the pain to which unsatisfied desire gives rise. But it is not even true that wherever there is desire there is pain. The huntsman, for example, only desires to catch the fox because of the pleasure of the pursuit ; and. in general, we account that man happy who can follow his favourite pursuit ; for " it is not the goal, but the course which makes us happy," as Jean Paul Richter said. Still without 'progressive attainment' there would be no pleasure in pursuit' ; and if will were nothing but desire, we should be as much at the mercy of vain desires, as Schopenhauer and von Hartmann suppose. But grown men are not the slaves of endless whimsies, they are not (;vcr crying for the moon like a spoiled child. Again, strictly speaking, to will is not to desire but rather to control desires : its sphere is possible action and its essential characteristic, even according to Schopenhauer, is not w.uii but energy. " W'e exist only as we energise ; pleasiwe is the reflex of unimpeded ' To have insisted on this point, ovcrlcjokcd by Sitlj^wick, is a merit of Professor Mackenzie's Manual of I'ltliics; ff. cli. vi. Note i. 330 The Problem of Evil and Pessimism energy ; energy is the ineans by which our faculties are developed ; and a higher energy the ^/^^f which develop- ment proposes. I n action is thus contained the existence, happiness, improvement and perfection of our being\" These words of Hamilton are but an echo of the teach- ing of Aristotle, with which the teaching of Kant and Fichte had much in common. But now it was from Kant and Fichte that Schopenhauer and von Hartmann derived their doctrine of the primacy of will, a doctrine incompatible, as we have seen, with the identification of will and desire. Unless this identification is true, the pessimism is groundless, which they rest upon it. The question of its truth or falsity is one for psychology, and I can only say that I do not know of a single psychologist who would uphold it. In spite of pluming themselves on the inductive and scientific character of their method, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann have perhaps surpassed the most ' romantic ' of their countrymen in the wildness of their metaphysical speculations : here, if anywhere, we have mysticism and mythology in excelsis. And it is in these metaphysical speculations that their identification of will with blind desire, and the consequent complete separation between will and idea, work out their own refutation. Let error but develop a outrance and it explodes itself. This truth, which, as we shall see, is for Hartmann the golden thread of his pessimism, applies — as perhaps it ought to do — to his own meta- physics. "If will as such is blind how shall it in willing come by sight ? If as will it is endless, irrational impulse, how shall it in willing be other than just as ' Sir ^V. Hamilton, Disacssions on Philosophy, etc., p. 40. Hartmami s quest iois to ScJiopoiJiaucr 331 endless and irrational ? How shall what is aimless set to work to give itself an aim' ? " These are the ques- tions which Hartmann addresses to Schopenhauer, and which he rightly enough maintains Schopenhauer did not and could not answer. Let us see how he answers them himself. Schopen- hauer, he says, failed to reach the rational ; Hegel, to reach the real. By combining the Paiithelismus of the one with the Panlozisvms of the other, Hartmann claims to have corrected the one-sidedness of both ; and thus, in place of an Absolute that is only W'ill or only Idea, to reach an Absolute Spirit of which both will and idea are the attributes. The only objection he finds to calling this Absolute Spirit God, as Spinoza did, "lies in the exclusively religious origin" of tliat term. Such an all-powerful, all-wise Being could, if he would, we should suppose, create a world that is not only the best possible but absolutely good, not a world, that, though the best possible, is irretrievably bad. How came Hartmann. who seems to begin by agreeing so far with the optimist's views concerning God and the world, nevertheless to end by siding with the pessimist ? Unlike Leibniz and theists generally, Hartmann, as is fitting in a romantic philosopher, starts his philosophy not with a theology but with a theogony. Here we shall find the answer to our (jues- tions. r)efore time was — filled time that is to say — Thought or the Idea in the Absolute was only 'latent' and could not of itself pass over into actual existence, and Will was only potential, had oiil)- the capacity ' "Ueber die nothwcndigc Umbildiin^; dcr Schoptnliaiarschcn Philosophic," Philosophisclic Mottatslujk, 1867, 11. p. 4^>5- 332 The Problem of Evil and Pessimism of willing or not willing 'according to circumstances.' How there can be circumstances where there is no actual being we will not stop to inquire. Actual willing requires a content and this only the Idea can give — the si^ie qua non of actual willing thus lies outside of the Will as such. But in that case how with only pure latency on the one side and only pure potentiality on the other did actual willing ever arise ? A single bare possibility cannot advance to reality, how is the case mended if there are two ? Here is the Achilles' heel of all Absolutist specula- tion as it appears in the speculation of Hartmann, The jump into existence that he denies to Hegel's Idea is, he thinks, less of a jump in the case of Will, to which, after all, ' initiative ' essentially belongs. Between the state of rest — and blessedness — of the mere potentiality to will or not and actual, determinate, willing with a con- tent, there comes 'empty willing,' the mere initiative of willing to will — a state of " absolute unblessedness, torment without pleasure and without pause." And now, since W^ill and Idea are both but attributes of the same Absolute Spirit, the Idea cannot for a moment withhold itself or escape when the empty Will lays violent hands upon it. But if the empty Will can thus secure its object the instant the impulse arises, why lay stress on its ceaseless and infinite pain, what ground is there for extending pessimism even to the Absolute.'^ It is in answer to this question that Schopenhauer speaks through Hartmann. Will is everywhere infinite, so it is necessarily insatiable ; since a completed infinite is logically impossible, is a content therefore that the Idea cannot supply. Let Hartiuauifs T/icogony and Cosmogony 333 the world be never so good, and it is the best possible, yet beyond the world, for God himself, there is only absolute pain and unblessedness. This can only cease when the willing to will itself ceases. It is God then who more even than the world needs deliverance from evil. Even granting, as Hartmann maintains, that this willing to will on the part of the Absolute was a piece of absolute stupidity — and if stupid at all, we must perhaps assume that the Absolute is absolutely stupid — still, since it is just as truly absolutely wise\ will it then not at once retrieve the blunder ? At least it wi/l retrieve it, Hartmann assures us. But how often do we find that a momentary folly on the part of one person takes another years to undo ! The Absolute is in a like predicament : the whole world must run its course before the divine fall can be redeemed and the blind aimless will cease from troubling and be again at rest. This purely negative outcome is the supreme goal of the world as a realm of ends. Puit " how shall what is aimless set to work to give itself an end?" was, as we have seen, the question Hartmann proposed to Schopenhauer. And now at length we reach his own answer: W'ere the Absolute only Will the thing would be impc^ssible ; but it is also Idea and as such provides the end. Like Hegel he believes in the "absolute cunning of reason.' The Idea is powerless to resist the sort of rapt-, which he supjJO.ses the will t(j perpetrate, but it lakes care ' The remark that used to be made of Charles II., "he never said a fooUsh thin^; and never did a wise one," seems true also of the Absokite, according to Hartmann. .Xs Will it is absolutely stupid, as Idea absolutely wise. 334 T^^^^ Problem of Evil and Pessiiuisni that at least the offspring shall be such as to put a term to the paternal folly. For though "the world gets its ' that ' from the father, its ' what ' and ' how ' come from its mother" says Hartmann, adopting an old conceit of Goethe's, which Schopenhauer professed to explain^ It does not concern us now to examine in detail this process of deliverance from evil, ' evolutional optimism' as Hartmann had the effrontery to call it: enouofh to note that its one essential feature is the evolution of self-conscious beings whose wills are not blind and aimless. These, as they advance in intel- ligence, must realise more and more distinctly the irrationality of the positive will to be, and — as negative will not to be — must finally suppress it. Hartmann is frank enough to confess that no apocalyptic vision of the final scene has been vouchsafed him ; so he can only vaguely conjecture under what conditions it would even be possible". One preliminary, however, is certain: the world must first be reduced to a state of rational despair. From beginning to end suffering has prepon- derated to an ever increasing extent, God himself or the Absolute Spirit being the greatest sufferer of all. Only through this climax of despair is release possible ; ' Philosophie des Utibeivussten, 6te Aus. 1876, p. 796. ^ Needless to say, the supposed conditions are improbable in the extreme. Hartmann has dilated at length on 'the three stages of illusion ' through which the intelligent world must pass before it realises that positive happiness is unattainable. His one remaining consolation, that at least the world can then will itself out of existence, has been aptly called by a rival pessimist, Bahnsen, 'the fourth stage of illusion.' But for Hartmann, who begins by setting aside the first half of the old ontological maxim. Ex tiihiio nihil fit, there can be no difficulty in setting aside the second, Li tiihilo nil posse revcrti. Hayfniainis ' Evolufioial Opfi))iis)ir 335 and the world with this as its goal was devised by the divine Wisdom as the one means of effectincr its own deliverance. And when the end comes, what then ? The will of the Absolute is reduced again to the state of pure potentiality to be sure, but ii has learnt nothing ; for it is altoijether devoid of intclliefence. It mav then instantly repeat its '[onw(i\: faux pas : also it ma)- not. In place of the existing certainty of evil, there will be an even chance of its non-recurrence ; and this, says Hartmann, is " a gain not to be despised," When a cheerful medieval sinner was being borne away by the devil at the end of his earthly career, he is said to have exclaimed : Even so, of course, it might have been yet worse : For, though now, as you see, he's carrying me, An it pleased old Harry, I'd had him to carry. An optimist of this sort was the pessimist, Kduard \-on Hartmann. It is but a step froni the sublime to th(; ridiculous ; and this pessimism would certainly strike the stoutest heart with terror if it did not at once strike every sane mind as nonsensical. The very superlluity of its naughtiness embarrasses the critic. P)Ut one point at least stands out clear: the supposed y^///.v / of the Absolute is simply Hartmann's oww faux pas \ and, as I hinted at th(' (jutset, the one like- the other is its own undoing. llartmann has not synthesized liegel's Alxsolute with .Schopenhauer's : he has sim|)l\' set them over against each other in irreconcilable conflict, so soon and so long as they are at all. ( )iil\ while they are b.ire possibilities and actually nothing can 33^ The Problem of Evil and Pessimism they be said to agree. Anyone, to whom it does not seem meaningless, may regard them in this non-existent state as ' subsisting ' in a single substance, but the moment they exist their incompatibility makes any real unity impossible, to say nothing of unity in one and the same spirit. The subtlest modal distinction or secundum qiiid will not avail to bring contradictories into simple unity, least of all the unity of an absolute Spirit who may be called God. Hartmann's God qua willing and absolutely irrational and his God qua thinking and absolutely rational may be two Gods perhaps, or God and something else ; but one God simply it cannot be. Instead of le Dieu m^chant of Manichaeism, what Hartmann gives us, as Secretan happily put it\ is the still greater absurdity of un Dieu bete. The dualism into which he is driven in spite of himself comes out clearly in the fine ethical appeal that he makes to us to sympathize and co- operate with God in effecting his redemption and our own. But surely we cannot sympathize with a God who is the source of all evil ; certainly we cannot cooperate with such a God. Moreover Hartmann makes a point of maintaining that for the existence of the world a " God as such " is not responsible : in this, he says, lies the superiority of his philosophy over that of the ordinary theist. That a mind daring — or shall we say, rash — enough to start from nothing or the other side of being and show how God came to be could not manage to reach a better theogony is sur- prising. Nevertheless Hartmann maintains that his speculation has a scientific basis. The truth is that ^ Revue philosophique^ 1883, xv. 395. HarfjiKvuis Scheme of Rcdoiiptioii 337 it rests on the bad psychology of will which he inherited from his master, Schopenhauer ; and. as I have said, in de- veloping that errors? ^/^/n?;/fd: he has furnished the most telling refutation of their common pessimism : he has imitated his Absolutes suicide, as Bradley would say. The odd thing is that almost at the close of his chief work Hartmann explicitly recognises the truth that he began by implicitly denying. " There is no doubt," he says, "that a particular volition in man can be suppressed by the influence of conscious reason," not indeed directly but by the suggestion of counter motives'. And without this truth, as he expressly allows, his whole scheme of redemption would become quite impossible. But all volition is particular volition : volition of nothing in particular or empty volition is surely a veritable chimaera. If the imperfect reason of man can sometimes control the will, whv should this never be possible for the all-perfect reason of God } Because God is the Unconscious, perhaps one might expect Hartmann to repK'. lUit no, God is omniscient, possessed of an intellectual intuition equivalent to an absolute clairvoyance not only of this world and all that is therein but of all possible worlds besides. Only to differentiate this ' Over-consciousness ' from all such consciousness as we can conceive is the term ' the Unconscious' 'temporally' applied lo it. It is the absolute Initiative of the primordial Will that prevents the divine Reason from influencing it. Ilu,' fateful deed is done before that Reason emerges from its pristine latency. By what good fortiuH- then, we may ask, does this Will, ' unenlightened l)y a single ■ Op. at., \^. 768. w. 22 33^ The Problem of Evil and Pessimism ray of rational intelligence ' out of all the possible worlds lying latent in the Idea, realise precisely that one that is the best ? This is substantially the question already mentioned, which Hartmann addressed in vain to Schopenhauer, and it now becomes clear that he can give no satisfactory answer to it himself. The fact that there is a world at all he attributes, as we have seen, to absolute chance. The fact that it is the best possible can have for him no better ground, so long as he refuses to extend to reason that influence over will in the creation of the world, which he allows is essential to its evolution when created. In a word intellectual intuition and a blind will cannot be con- joined. Again as severally but possibilities they can effect nothing. It is an error long since exploded that bare possibilities can precede all actuality. So then there is no empty will ; and no will with a content can be called blind. Thus we are entitled to conclude that, while their empirical pessimism is not proven, the so- called ' metaphysical pessimism ' of Schopenhauer and Hartmann has no basis in experience and is but a bad dream. LECTURE XVI. THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND OPTIMISM. The two leading systems of pessimism, which on account of their wide vogue, seemed to challenge our attention, deserve — most of you, I think, will allow — the title of irrational philosophies, which Windelband, a very fair and able historian of philosophy, has re- cently assigned to the chief of them. We may, then, now turn from these to consider whether other and less sweeping indictments against the constitution of the universe can be better sustained. First of all it is especially important, not only as bearing on our present problem, but also for the sake of our whole discussion, to examine the dogma, already re- ferred to as the basis of optimism and pessimism alike — the dogma, I mean, that an ideally perfect world would be one in which from first to last, permanently antl universally, there was unmixed happiness ; in which physical and moral evil were alike unknown. iUit only if complete happiness were the sole v.n(.\ of ihe world would its continuous and universal presence prove that the world was perfect ; antl perfect simj)Iy because of that. Ilere then there is a manifest as- sumption, for if hap])iness /tv sc were the one supreme good, any conduct that conduced lo il would Ix* so lar 22 — 2 340 The Problem of Evil and OptUnism justified and would be otherwise without any justifica- tion. The only standard of right would be the hedon- istic one. That happiness is involved as a positive constituent of the supreme end, only the thorough- going pessimist would have the hardihood to deny. But that happiness per se is not the end as such, hedonists themselves unwittingly allow in accepting what Sidgwick called the * fundamental paradox of hedonism.' " The impulse towards pleasure, if too predominant, defeats its own aim," he says\ Pleasure may come unsought but to get it we must forget it. But now by ' aim ' or end in this connexion — practical end, that is to say — we mean something that we aim at, that we actively strive to accomplish, the consum- mation of some definite purpose towards which we direct our efforts. Hence the literal meaning of sin as a/xa/DTta or missing the mark, on which theologians love to dwell. Grant that pleasure is not the mark, but only the satisfaction felt on attaining it, and there is no paradox ; but insist that pleasure is verily what we aim at, then to maintain that we are not to aim at what we are all the while really aiming at is surely something more than a paradox. Clearly too in that case, as Sidgwick somewhat naively observes, " if we started with no impulse except the desire of pleasure, it might seem difficult to execute the practical paradox of attaining pleasure by aiming at something else"." It might indeed; but I think we may go further and say that with such a complete inversion of the order of nature the difficulty ^ Methods of Ethics, 6th edn, p. 48. ' Op. cit. p. 137. The 'Hedonistic Paradox' 341 would, in fact, prove insuperable. The anticipation of a state of feelinq^ that would be the same, no matter how it was attained, could never give rise to definite acts at all. Thus a subject animated solely by the ' mere desire of pleasure ' would never get under weigh : but such a being is quite inconceivable. Por experience, as already said, could never begin from a state of absolute privation, nor with the representa- tion of something in the future while as yet there was nothing definite in the present. Vet Sidgwick was of opinion that " even supposing a man to begin with absolute indifference to everything but his own plea- sure, it does not follow that if he were convinced that the possession of other desires and impulses were necessary to the attainment of the greatest possible pleasure, he could not succeed in producing these." Unfortunately Sidgwick makes no attempt even to suggest hypothetically how such a being, who obviously could not be a man, would set about this task'. .Sidgwick contents himself with saying : " Rut this supposition is never actually realised. F.very man, when he commences the task of systematising his conduct... is conscious of a number of different im- pulses and tendencies within him, (^thcr than the mere desire of pleasure... : so that he has only to place himself under certain external intluences, and these desires and impulses will begin to ()j)erale without any effort of will'." To the biologist or the psychologist ' .Such a being would closely resemble the blind will of Schopen- hauer or von Hartmann and doubtless would end by being a pessimist. Indeed we may say that it was the underlying hedonism of .Schopen- hauer and von Hartmann that led to their iKssimism. ' Op. cit. p. 137. 342 TJie Problem of Evil and Optimism even this statement must sound like a parody of the real facts of life. A mere aggregate of organs does not make an organism, nor does a number of merely different functions or impulses make life. Again a living being does not first exist aloof from its environ- ment and then ' have to place itself under external influences ' in order that its life may begin. When a man ' commences the task of systematising his con- duct on principle ' he is already a definite individual, already organically related to a definite environment : in a word his life is already a ' system,' so that in advancing from the natural plane of behaviour to the rational he only develops further what is already there. There is meaning and system in his behaviour at both levels : can we then suppose that there is no sort of connexion or continuity between the two '^. And if there is any connexion or continuity between them how can the psychological character of their ends be fundamentally distinct ? This is a point that it will repay us to consider a little more closely. Since the publication of Butler's famous sermons on Hzmtan Nature, if not before, our moralists have admitted what rightly understood is indisputable, viz., that on the lower plane of animal life, the various springs of action are severally ' extra-regarding or disinterested ' and in a sense, ' blind ' ; but that in proportion as a ' self-regarding and interested ' spring of action develops, controlling these — such as self-love so-called — a higher level of life is attained, one charac- terised by rational insight and unity of purpose. The implication is that whereas those various 'propensions ' are, so to say, automatic and spontaneous, self-love is 'Extra-regarding' and 'Sc/f-regardiiig' 34 -^ o autonomous and deliberate : t/ity sugij^est a sentient organism, t/iis presupposes a controlling and self- conscious mind. But the terminology employed is apt to mislead. On the one side we have a system of extra-regarding, blind, and indifferent impulses ; on the other a single self-regarding, foreseeing, and in- terested person : on the one side, objective ends without a self; on the other, a self without any objective end. Now surely in all this there is too much antithesis, the contrasts are too extreme ; so that not only the advance from the one level to the other, which nowadays at any rate is conceded, becomes altogether inexplicable, but both as t/icy stand are beset with contradictions. We may see this best by starting from the higher. The end of self-love is said to be happiness, a con- tinuous subjective state of pleasant feeling. But the self that we love is presumably the self that we know, and that certainly does not live by feeling alone. Nor is it absolutely identical with the self that loves, in such wise that — disregarding grammar — we might say I love I, or — concealing the breach of grammatical concord — John loves John. Here, as elsewhere, out of barren identities nothing can come. The self that I love, that is the self that I know, is my self holding intercourse, having reciprocal relations, with a com- munity of c///^;' selves and with an environment to an indehnite extent resolvable into selves. So essential are these relations of other selves to my self, of the objective to the subjective, that wiihouL ihcin not only w(HjId the all-imj)oriani jjossessive ' my ' disajjinar for lack of its correlatives, but the possessing I too wouKl 344 ^^^^ Problem of Evil and Optimism become as meaningless as the centre of a circle that had no circumference. With no ' content ' to be conscious of, it could know nothing, feel nothing, and do nothing : such a bare I would thus be worth nothing. Consciousness or experience then is not purely sub- jective, is not simply a state. It implies also an objective factor, that is certain ; and it implies further the reciprocal interaction of subject and object, self and not-self. But till one's knowledge of others has advanced some way self-consciousness, the knowledge of one's self, cannot begin. Definite objective knowledge in turn arises only along with definite subjective interests, so that apart from such interests there would be no knowledge of self and so no interest in self, such as self-love or the desire of one's own happiness assumes. Briefly then, self-consciousness or knowledge of self presupposes consciousness or knowledge of objects, and this again presupposes interests in objects. We may call such interests extra-regarding not self- regarding, so far as they are distinct from the interest in self But here two points are important. First, interest in self is secondary and presupposes these primary interests ; alone it would be empty and mean- ingless. Secondly, as interests of the self, without which there could be no interest i7i self, these primary interests cannot be called disinterested in the literal sense of unselfish : interests without a self would again be a manifest contradiction. They are then the interests of a self, though a self as yet without know- ledge of itself, and so without any reflex interest in itself, in other words, without any self-conscious interest Pleasure never itself the Eml 34- 3 in its interests. These primar\- interests or ends are objective, but not in the sense in wliich the end of a watch — to use Butler's illustration — is objec- tive ; they are not merely the ends of another, they are the ends of a conscious self. So then the end of the .^•^'//"-conscious self in controlling- and extending these objective ends must obviously be itself objective too. In fact a subjective end without an object and an objective end without a subject are both alike con- tradictory. The psychological character of all possible ends of conduct is then fundamentally the same, and so the advance from the lower or natural plane to the higher or the rational is conceivable. But, and this for us now is the main point, in neither is pleasure ever itself the end, but always simply the satisfaction conse- quent on the accomplishment of ends'. Nevertheless, the hedonist will reply, it is obvious that we must distinguish between means and ends ; and since the attainment of all objective ends would be worthless without happiness it is obvious too that this alone is intrinsically desirable, that this subjective ' At first blush it seems conceivable that at any rate a self- conscious being could adopt pleasure as his end, and the ideal voluptuary is supposed to be such a being. In him, as Mr Hradley has said, "the feeling of self-realisation is the end, which calls for reality, without respect for anything in which the self is to be realised, except as a means. It is not necessary to say," he continues, " that the abstract feeling of satisfaction, as an end, contradicts the very notion of an end and must fail to satisfy ; nor is it necessary to add that the voluptuary as the man who consistently pursues that end, is an impossible character" {Ethical Studies, p. 245). Such an abnormality certainly could not be called a rational Ixring nor could a society of such hold itself together. History afTords proof enough of that. 346 The Problem of Evil and Optiinisni end is the only ultimate end, in relation to which the so-called objective ends are in reality only means. Let us examine the following important passage from Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics, in which this position is clearly stated. "It may be said that... we may take ' conscious life ' in a wide sense, so as to include the objective relations of the conscious being... and that from this point of view we may regard ['Virtue, Truth, Beauty, Freedom '] as in some measure preferable alternatives to Pleasure or Happiness...." But Sidg- wick continues: "to me at least it seems clear after reflection that these objective relations of the conscious subject, when distinguished from the consciousness accompanying and resulting from them, are not ulti- mately and intrinsically desirable... that, when (to use Butler's phrase) we 'sit down in a cool hour' we can only justify to ourselves the importance that we attach to any of these objects by considering its conducive- ness, in one way or another, to the happiness of sentient beings^" Now, first of all, is there not here a radical confusion — one to which we are all too prone — the confusion, I mean, between analytical distinction and actual separation ? To say that " we may take conscious life in a wide sense as including objective relations" implies that we may also take it in a narrow sense as excluding these. But the psychologist as- suredly has no such choice : he must take what he always finds. No reflexion will enable him to take the consciousness accompanying or resulting from objective relations apart from these relations them- selves ; for there is no consciousness, or as we had ' Methods of Ethics, 6th edn, pp. 400 f. 'Objective ends' not siiuply means 347 better say, no experience, unless these form an integral part of it. It is clear, from the context, I allow, that what Sidgwick here meant by consciousness was pleasure (or pain). But it is equally clear that feeling alone, a purely subjective state, though always an element in consciousness or experience, is never the whole of it. We cannot then talk of pleasure or happiness or, to speak generally, of pure feeling as in anv measure an altei-nativc to the cotrnitions or actions from which it is inseparable. And yet Sidg- wick not only admits this inseparability, but even urges that " if we finally decide that ultimate good includes many things distinct from Happiness\" hedonism becomes ' entanorled in a vicious circle.' But if the inseparability be admitted, how is that decision to be avoided ? Why then does he still argue as if pleasure by itself could be a subjective end and the only ultimate end ? Regardless of the fact already insisted upon, that a purely subjective end is a psychological contra- diction, Sidgwick's main contention, we shall bt; told, is not that pleasure is a 'thing' we can experience apart from 'things' which are plea.sant, but that these other 'things' are only means to it. Hui this we remark in the second jjlace is like saying, to use a trivial illustration of Mill's, that one of the: blades of a pair of scissors is a means to enabUr thi- other blade to cut: it is to ignore that subject and object are both e.ssential to all con.scious life, desirable or undesirable. If one is a means then th(! other must be a means too, and as cutting is the end of a pair df scissors so ' Op. cit. I. St cdn, p. 376. 348 The Problem of Evil and Optimism happiness becomes the end for the sake of which sub- ject and object aHke are only means : the pure feehng of pleasure, though a state of one of them, is the ultimate raiso7i d'etre of both\ All that matters is the capacity for pleasure in the one and the fitness to produce it in the other. Maximum pleasure being the end of the world, it would seemingly be indifferent whether the number of conscious individuals were increased and their capacity pro tanto diminished, or vice versa : in any case the attainment of the end would be the solution of the quantitative problem : — The greatest possible sum of pleasure wanted : how is it to be got"? When all the objective interests of life are emptied out of it as only means and not meaning, this is the one question that remains. ^ But Sidgwick used a different illustration, which he doubtless thought more apposite. Green's contention that " pleasure as feeling in distinction from its conditions, which are not feelings, cannot be conceived" (Hume, vol. 11. p. 7) he said "is neither more nor less true than the statement that an angle cannot be conceived apart from its sides " (Mmd, O.S., 11. p. 36). He then proceeds to urge that this does not hinder us from comparing one angle with another without comparing their sides. But surely as regards the main contention this is irrelevant. The pursuit of an end may be aptly enough represented by the direction of a line, but without ends we have no lines and therefore no angles. Again, whereas directed lines enclose an angle of definite magnitude, this as purely quanti- tative can never determine definitely directed lines, two pairs of lines, though oppositely directed, having e.g. the same angle. How then can maximum angle, if it have any meaning, be the end ? " Cf. Sidgwick, oJ>. cit., 6th edn, p. 415: "The point up to which, on utilitarian principles, population ought to be encouraged to increase, is that at which the product formed by multiplying the number of persons living into the amount of average happiness reaches its maximum." 77/6' Hedonist and the Parasite 349 But now we may regard life as a series of processes, and in these, as in all processes, the mere nieans either disappear and are left behind as the process advances ; or they become so far worthless when the process is complete and its end attained. Moreover there is no ultimate advantage in means as such, and in fact we always seek to shorten and simplify such intermediaries as much as we can. Bui ihat the objective interests of life are not means in this sense is conclusively shown in parasitism, where many of them are dispensed with, but where too degeneration invariably follows. The literal meaning of happy in our own language and of its equivalents in others — as, for example, evhaiixajv, felix, gliicklich, hetireiix — more or less distinctly implies the favour of fortune but contains not a hint of success- ful striving. That the favourites of fortune often show the degeneracy of parasites is proverbial, har fuller is the life of self-reliant eflort for the worthiest ends, and far fuller too the blessedness and content that crown its achievements. The thoughtless may envy the easy life of the favourites of fortune, but this is not the life that wise men praise. A world in which unalloyed pleasure was meted out to every sentient being would then be ver\- like a world of parasites and so far from being the best of worlds woukl, because of its inevitable vapidity, ennni and unprogressiveness, be almost the worst — a contradiction, of course, and yet, so far as we can see, a necessary conseciuence. Hut this only s<-rves to show ihal such .1 workl is not possible at all. We can lunv move on a stage. If ihls conclusion is sound, it follows that nuu h at any rale that wi: call 350 The Problem of Evil and Optimism evil is only relatively such. The term evil in such cases is, in fact, ambiguous ; since what is in one sense an evil is in another sense a good. " The world (it has been said) is, what for an active being it must be, full of hindrances^" Invincible obstacles that barred all progress would indeed be absolute evils, but not so the hindrances that can be overcome, for only in sur- mounting such is solid advance possible. As to these, it has been said again, a man may " bless God for the law of growth with all the fighting it imposes upon him," evil in this sense, " i.e. what it is man's duty to fight, being one of the major perfections of the Universe"." Again, in another way this relativity of many so-called evils is apparent : in relation to the past, as marking progress, they are really good ; only in view of future progress which they may delay do they become evil. So far it is true to convert the French proverb and say Le bien est lennemi du 77iieux'. not only true but truer, so surely as progress is better than stagnation. " If a man has not wants, he will make no efforts," says Professor Sorley, "and if he make no efforts his condition can never be bettered. Thus social reformers have often found that the classes they have tried to elevate did not feel the evil of their lot as their benefactors saw it ; and they have had to create the consciousness of wants before attempting to satisfy them^" The new position we reach then is, that a world whose fundamental characteristic — now at any rate — is ^ Vauvenargues, quoted by Eucken, Geistige Stromungeti der Gegenwart, 4te Aus. p. 288. ^ C. S. Peirce, Hibbert Journal, vii. p. 107. ^ Ethics of Naturalism, 2nd edn, p. 250. Evolution and fJic Relativity of Evil 351 evolution cannot at any given stage of its development have that perfection towards which it is still only moving, which it can onl)- have by acquiring. It is childish and futile to ask if the world might not have been created perfect at once ; to question whether an evolving world is the best. We cannot form the dimmest idea of what experience in a ' ready-made ' world would mean, if experience, as I have ventured elsewhere to define it, is the process of becoming- expert by experiment. So far as we can judge, a world perfect — in the sense of finished and complete at once — is a contradiction. But at any rate the question may be raised whether the sort of evolution that we observe in this world is ideally the best. Granted that in an evol\-ing world there will be the imperfection or incompleteness that all becoming implies, need there be besides such positive defects as physical suffering, error and sin ? As we have first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear and can conceive each to be faultless, can it be impossible to conceive the development of a world in like manner ? And if that is not impossible, how can this world with its manifold i)hysical, intel- lectual and moral defects be the best .'' This objection we must now in the next place endeavour to meet. The term evolution we have found used in two .senses ; in the strict sense, for the gradual unfokling (jf what is implicitly present honi llu? first, and again in a l(MJser sense for what is IjeLter called epigenesis or the continuous creation ol what is es.sentially new. The initial possibilities woukl in the one case virtu. ill) include the .iclual course of the j)rocess ihrouglioni the 352 The Problem of Evil and Optimism future, in the other they would only exclude indefinite abstract possibilities as not compossible, to use Leibniz's phrase, that is to say, as actually impossible. In both cases certain possibilities would give place to actualities as the evolution advanced ; but in the latter new pos- sibilities would continually arise, in the former they would not. In the one there would be from the first a unity and harmony which in the other were only eventually achieved. The one would be what William James called a block universe, the other what he called a multiverse, or better perhaps a uni-multiverse. In a word, the concept of the world in the former case is that of a dialectical development of one Supreme Idea, such as Hegel essayed to delineate. In the earlier part of these lectures I endeavoured to establish two points, first that the transition from such a purely ideal process to the historical world is inconceivable, as Hegel in spite of himself made clear ; and secondly, that from the point of view of the Idea or Absolute, such transition would be superfluous^ I must content myself by assuming that these points are established ; as also a third, reached in the present part, viz. that setting out from where we are, from the standpoint of the Many, we have no ground for assuming a Creator who does everything but only a Creator whose creatures create in turn. The real world must be the joint result of God and man (including under this term other finite intelligences both higher and lower in the scale), unless we are to deny the reality of that in us which leads us to the idea of God at all. The evolution of such a world then ^ Cf. Lectt. n. vii. Evoliitioi and Coutiugciicy 353 plainly cannot be a case of evolution in the first sense. But if not, then where the Many have some initiative, — where development is epigenetic — contingency and conflict, fallibility and peccability seem inevitable; and these are at any rate relative evils, for they assuredly entail sufferinsf. Even so, it will be asked again, can anyone pretend that he sees no unnecessary suffering in a world like this, where storms devastate and plagues strike ; where ignorance consigns the noblest to exile, to torture and to death ; where vice lapped in luxury grinds down the poor and from its very crimes argues that there is no God ? In attempting to deal with the serious difficulty here raised it will be best to consider physical and moral evil apart'. Now if — to begin with the former — we were challenged to show directly that certain definite physical ills — fever germs or 'malignant' tumours, say — have somehow their requisite place in the world's eco- nomy, we certainly should be most presumptuous and unwise to take up the gage. But we may at least contend that on the other hand we are equally incom- petent to show conclusively that any assigned physical cause of suffering is really superfluous. But then at once we find ourselves confronted with an old objection. The notion of any evil as unavoid- able, we shall be told, involves the contradiction of a non-omnipotent, or finite, God, and is, therefore, not theistic but atheistic. Omnipotence, I fear, is oiu; (A those question-begging epithets that everybody uses ' Intellectual evil, or error, may he practically re^^ardcd as belong* ing partly to the one partly to the other. w. 23 354 ^^^^ Pi'obleiii of Evil and Optimism and nobody defines\ Thus it is not uncommonly taken to imply not merely the power to do whatever it is possible to do, but also the power arbitrarily to determine what shall be possible ; nay even that the impossible shall be possible ; in short that omnipotence absolutely excludes impossibility. Thus we find Schopenhauer saying: — "Even if Leibniz's demonstration, that among the possible worlds this one is the best, were correct : yet still it would not amount to a theodicy. For in truth the Creator is the author not merely of the world but of possibility too : he ought accordingly to have devised this in such a way as to admit of a better worldl" Metaphysic of this sort is not to be met by argument. It is sufficient to remark that at any rate so long as there is no difference between possible and impossible so long omnipotence can have no meaning : two and two may be four or it may be five. Within this mystical region, where ' naught is everything and everything is naught,' determinate being or thought or action there can be none. If there were an omnipotent God he must emerge thence to act at all and then could only do what is possible ; though what is possible would be determined, of course, by what he is and only so. To proclaim creation restricted by determinate possibilities to be an idea derogatory to the sovereign majesty of God is but blind adulation ; ^ In a similar connexion it is interesting to find Mr Bradley saying : — " I shall be told that the Governor of the Universe is omtiipotetit. Perhaps ; but as I never could find out what that means, I can hardly be expected to admit it as true." Mind, O. S. VIII. 259. - Parerga Jind Paralipomena, 11. § 157. So-ciil/cd 'Metaphysical EviT 355 for it really amounts to denying that God is himself a definite being at all, is either intellectually or morally consistent. All determination is negation, Spinoza has truly said : to hnd in this an evil, a so-called meta- physical or logical evil, only shows what ambiguity the term may involve. From such miscalled evils no world can be free. To take a simple illustration. Our decimal system of numeration has the inconvenience that its radix 10 has only two factors, while 12, the radix of the duodecimal system, has twice as many ; and if we had had six fingers on each hand, we should doubtless have taken twelve as our radix and been so far, it is supposed, better off ^ That in other respects we should not have been worse off is niore than we know. Moreover the longer system still has defects — in fact, as many positive defects as the shorter" — whilst against its superiority in respect of divisibility may be set its greater complexity. But the point of our illustration is that no system of numeration is possible that shall be in all respects ideally perfect. Without being Pythagoreans and hailing number as 'omnipotent, the principle and guide of divine and human life,' we still cannot doubt, in these days when science calls itself measurement, that many of our .so-called ' physical evils ' depend ultimately on such miscalhxl ' metaj)hysical evil'.' So far as they go at any rate there is w^^ problem. ' Herbert Spencer regarded this 'evil' as so serious that he left, I understand, the bulk of his property to be expended in combating the decimal system and advocating the duodecimal. ' Cf. Herbert .Spencer's Autol>io\^raph)\ vol. l. p. 5.y. ' Cf. A. Ott, Ix ProbUttK du Mai, 18H8, pp. 153 f. 2^ — 2 356 The Problem of Evil and Optiinism We come back then to the alleged superfluous physical evils. It is futile to attempt to imagine a world different in type from ours. This statement, we assume, cannot be gainsaid and from this we set out. Now the world, as we directly know it, consists as we have seen in a plurality of individuals, whom we may call plastic in so far as they are capable of experience. All of them, again, are intent on self-conservation or betterment. This, however, is not guaranteed to them altogether apart from their own efforts ; but it is to be achieved in large measure through these. Even if there be a God he certainly has not made the world what it is to be, but rather endowed it with talents to enable it to work out its own perfection in conjunction with himself This working out is what we call ex- perience, and experience can never pre-suppose the knowledge or the skill that is only gained by means of it. Where several possibilities are open a creature acting on its own initiative can only find out the right one by way of trial and often of error. Such error we may say is an evil ; but we cannot straightway call it a superfluous, still less an absolute, evil, if it is an inevitable incident of experience as such, and if in general the experience is worth what it costs. Can we, however, say that in general experience Is worth what it costs ? it will be urged. But can we say that it is not? we reply: ive are not arraigning the con- stitution of the world and therefore it is for those who are to make their indictment good. Which way does the presumption lie ? This for us is the final question. At this point there is one consideration that may help us. The more all things eventually work together for Alleged supeyfliious evils 357 good the greater our assurance that Goodness is at the root of all. The attainment of such complete and enduring harmony, however, may well entail an ex- haustive experience of possibilities as its indispensable condition. First thoughts are rarely the best, and the more haste we make often the worse we speed. The fittest to survive, we are told, appear only as the final outcome of innumerable continuous variations : Natura non facit saltus. Herein lies the significance for us of Leibniz's contention that whereas "a machine made by the skill of man is not a machine in each of its parts.... the machines of nature, our living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts." Such thoroughness must imply slowness and much seemingly useless trouble if the process is to be that of experience and epigenesis. Like impatient children, we can hardly restrain the wish "to see the Supreme Ciood active in some other way than this which it has itself chosen,... or by some shorter path than the roundabout one " of creation through creatures, which it has itself entered upon'. Hut still there are those other physical t-vils, such as storms, droughts, earthcjuakes and the like, that can hardly be regarded as the direct consequence of in- cipient and imj^erfect experience. Can ii Ix- said thai these are not absolute nor itven superfluous evils .■* In attempting to deal with ilu-m we must n-call another characteristic of the world's evolution. At any stage in this process the world, we have si;(.-n, may be described as being in part comparatively \\\vx\, iti part still fluent, in part comparatively stable, in i>iri siill ' Cf. IxjtZf, Micro(Oimus, Kng. trans, it. j). 727. 358 The Problem of Evil and Optiinism developing : at once natura nattirata and nahwa nahirans. That the Hfe and progress of society, all its spontaneity, initiative and individuality, would be in- effective without its conservative elements of stability — habit, custom, law and the like — is obvious. Yet these are not an unmixed good. Habit is ability indeed, but its blindness and fatal facility are proverbial. Custom, which according to Hume is the great guide of human life, Bagehot has called ' the most terrible tyranny ever known among men,' and yet, as again another has said. We draw Our right from custom : custom is a law As high as heaven, as wide as sea or land. Stcmmum Jus, summa injuria is the maxim of equity ; and yet injury means injustice. The dubious character thus attaching to the con- servative factors of the social world holds also of the more fundamental routine of what we often speak of apart as the physical world. Here, too, in what are called the conservations of mass and energy we have principles that are at once the indispensable conditions of stable construction, and yet tending always to destruction in so far as they count nothing stable that they can further level down — just as friction, again, renders locomotion possible and yet steadily retards it. All this perhaps may help to account for the world-wide association of matter with evil. How far down within this seemingly fixed mechanism the fluent processes of life extend we do not know ; if there are such processes their tempo, so to say, is so TJie If'or/ifs Conservative Factors 359 different from ours that their significance escapes us. But in any case in their comparative fixity, not in their possible secular transformation, lie all their present advantages and disadvantages for us. That the advantages so far exceed the disadvantages is evident from the advances that the world has made, is making, and bids fair loner to continue to make. Can we have the one without the other.-* If not, then the disad- vantages are neither absolute evils nor in general superfluous evils : metaphysical or logical evils they may be called. But we may ask again if that means anything more beyond what all individuation seems necessarily to imply ? What we might perhaps call the temporary solidarity of physical good and evil is brought home to us in two ways : first, by the rash attempts that have been frequently made to show how things might have been better ; and, secondly, by the ignorant prayers for favourable wind and weather or the like, that religion is supposed to countenance. The foolish- ness of the latter is obvious, inasmuch as the wind that was 'good' for the ship homeward bound would be bad for that bound outwards, and the weather that hastened the ripening of one farmer's corn might dry up the pasture of another. .Such reall\- impious peti- tions are as senseless as the belief in magic or the demand for perpetual miracles. If they were granted they would put an end to all order ami render rational conduct impossible. .\s to the former — there are diseases indeed that seem to be unmixed evils, to be neither the collateral consecjuenccs ol what once was good nor the indispensable conditions of any good 360 The Problem of Evil and Optimism to come\ Leaving such cases aside it would be hard to find a single instance in which suggestions for the better remoulding of the physical world have not been shown by men wiser than their authors to be only specifications for a fool's paradise. But there is yet another difficulty connected with physical evil that is unquestionably serious, since it weighs heavily on many earnest minds. The course of evolution so far has conquered some evils and ame- liorated others, they allow ; but will this progress continue unabated or will it not one day cease and evil in its turn gain the ascendency ? " The theory of evolution," Huxley, for example, has said, "encour- ages no millennial anticipations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, some time the summit will be reached and the downward route will be commenced. The most daring imagina- tion will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great yearl" This is the language of naturalism pure and simple, but if naturalism be accepted as the ultimate truth of things, it is useless to talk of a realm of ends at all : if the life of man and all that it implies are but episodes in what Spencer called the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion, then indeed there is no more to be said. But if, as we have seen reason for doing, we take a wider and deeper view of evolution and regard this so-called realm of nature as having itself all its reality and meaning ^ But often they are the fruits of evil doing and often their removal is within our power and is more than a negative gain. ^ Evolution and Ethics, Collected Essays, ix. p. 85. Progress ivitliout Dcclijic ^6i O' within the one world of living agents, why should we suppose the supreme end of this to l)e simply its own undoing, or take the meaning of the part to be the stultification of the whole ? Only if nature is independent of spirit, and atheism, too, an established certainty, can we, as Huxley does, apply to evolution as a whole the words of Tennyson's Ulysses : — It may be that the gulfs will wash us down, It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles. If Spirit is supreme, its end must be sure of realisation and the procession of its great year know no decline. Nor, happily, does the doctrine of the dissipation of energy, rightly understood, in any way justify the gloomy forebodings to which its misunderstanding has given rise. But, while we have allowed that theism is essential before we can be confident that the world will not fail of the end that seems the only clue to its meaning, we have also had to allow that we have no theoretical proof of theism. On the other hand our discussion of th(i problem of evil has so far, we claim, brought to liu-ht nothin<: that disproves theism and removetl much that at the outset appeared to make against it. We have still, however, to consider what is unciiiestionabiy the chief count in the whole intlictment with which a theodicy has to deal — the fact of moral evil. LECTURE XVII. MORAL EVIL AND MORAL ORDER. " That must needs have been glorious the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepit surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise." These famous words of a seventeenth century orator and divine fairly represent the standpoint from which even to-day the question of moral evil is frequently discussed. That our world in its present state should be a hopeless ruin, which nothing short of the intervention of infinite wisdom and goodness could restore, is, it is held, con- ceivable ; but that this world should be what it is as the result of a development on the whole steady and continuous is thought to be quite inconceivable. In short, God, it is said, created man in his own image and "he himself tempteth no man": to account for moral evil then we must, it is supposed, assume that man by his own wilful act has fallen from his high estate. But why should all have sinned and come short of the glory of God ? To answer this question the doctrine of original sin is added as a corollary to the doctrine of the fall. The whole human race, past, Moral Evil in tlic light of Evolution 363 present, and future, is regarded as involved in one common perdition that is somehow the moral con- sequence of the action of the first and — as we must believe — the least experienced of its members. Is it not possible to account for the prevalence of moral evil in a way less shocking to ordinary morality than this ? But first we may ask, does this account for it ? With- out still further supplement we find it does not. That a man wiser than the wisest should heed the voice of sense or sophistry is only credible if he is already infected with 'original sin.' Accordingly either a timeless or a prenatal fall has to be assumed ; and, finally, the existence of a personal principle of evil in the shape of the devil with his maxim, Evil, be thou my good. In short, such speculations — all alike, be it noted, in ignoring the concept of evolution — fail al- together to explain the existence of moral evil, to say nothing of their inherent improbability : they leave it, as Kant had the candour to admit, an insoluble mystery. We have now then to incjuire whether, when we do not ignore evolution, the problem of moral evil still remains ecjually insoluble. First of all, if we are to staiul !))■ evolution, we shall have to invert Rcjbert South's rhetoric, ami rank primeval man a long way behind Aristotle, ami his j)rimitive resources a long way behind even the rudiments of Athenian civilisation. Ih.-gel's saying, thai i'aradise without the so-called fall was -what indeed the word means -just citi /'ark /iir Thurc, .1 park for beasts, furnishes a better text for th(t evolu- tionist. I*"or the human race, like the human iiulivitlual, in the course of its d(.-v<-lopment has certainly passcrd 364 Moral Evil and Moral Order through the brute stage; and the transition from the ignorant ' innocence ' of this level of life to ' the know- ledge of good and evil ' is surely as such a rise rather than a fall. Let us then endeavour to trace the course of this development and see if it is not really an advance. Moral evil is doubtless essentially selfishness. Yet selfishness has its roots in that instinct of self-preserva- tion, which is called the first law of nature and which moralists of all schools recognise as a rational principle of action that arises as soon as self-consciousness is attained. When and how does what is thus, so to say, rooted in rigfht nevertheless become wronsf.? To love himself a man must know himself, but he can know himself only through knowing other selves: neither self-love nor selfishness then is possible below the social level, as we have already had to remark more than once. With society moral order begins and in society moral evil may arise. Further, as society is based entirely on the mutual dependence and the mutual services of the persons who compose it, the cardinal principle of moral order is justice ; and all immorality, whatever else it may be, is injustice. The very words themselves bear witness to this, In so far as mores or customs are the origin of law. But already in the gregarious habits of many of the higher animals and in the family life of others we find that the uncon- scious germs of the altruism on which society rests are present along with the instinctive egoism all life Im- plies. Now at the outset It Is obvious that the age of innocence Is characterized by acts which have all the objective qualities of moral evil, though no guilt can be Innocence and Jf^rong-doing 365 imputed to the agents. When the moth thes into the candle-flame we mi<'"ht re^jard it as sacrihcino- its own future welfare for the sake of momentary gratifica- tion — behaviour which we should call imprudence, or injustice to self, if the moth were a reasonable person. The habits of the cuckoo in ejecting its foster-brothers from the nest and maltreating its foster-parents strike us as revolting instances of injustice and ingratitude; and would indeed be such, if only the cuckoo knew better. To repeat: it seems, we say, in the first place indisputable that in the evolution of conduct acts objectively wrong are constantly committed before the individual has any consciousness of wrong-doing. How then, we have to ask in the next place, does this con- sciousness of wrong-doing arise — or, more generally, under what circumstances does conscience appear ? Before we can attempt to answ^er this question we ought, it may be thought, to make clear in what sense we understand such a very complex and ambiguous term as conscience. But happily we are not concerned with all that conscience ever means but only with what it means always. For one thing, it always means approval or disapproval : conscience always involves a judgment that ' accuses or else excuses.' Such judgment again is always passed by the person himself ui)on his own conduct and motives. It thus implies seli-conscious- ness : without self-consciousness there is no conscience'. ' Cf. .Sidgwick, Meihoih of Ethics, 6th cdn, p. 381. ' Hence the close relationship bctwcLii the two terms, conscience and consciousness in its original sense of self-consciousness — as wc find it say in Locke or Reid— a relationship so cIom- th.it in IVench the one word ron'scit-nii- is still used for both. 366 Moral Evil and Moral Order Finally conscience always implies a standard : only so is it complete\ Our question then amounts to this : How does the individual come by his standard? A general answer is at once evident : he acquires the knowledge of his standard as he acquires the knowledge of himself — throuo-h social intercourse". But we must try to be more specific. In the first place then we may note that this advance from the level of mere consciousness to that of self-conscious- ness is very gradual, so that with the child and the savage the merely conscious or objective attitude decidedly preponderates. Accordingly other selves, as belonging to the objective world, are observed con- tinually and directly, but the experiencing self only occasionally and reflectively — more or less retrospec- tively — in the exceptional circumstances that evoke the subjective attitude. Two consequences follow from all this : first, the one that we have just noted — viz. that acts which are objectively selfish will be constantly committed though there is as yet no con- sciousness of their selfishness ; secondly, that this objective selfishness will nevertheless be frequently apparent to others, and will be disapproved. The story of David and Nathan may serve as an illustration, if we compare the swiftness of David's condemnation of another's cupidity with his tardiness to realise his ^ It is worth remarking that Locke in the first three editions of his Essay defined conscience as "nothing else but our own opinion of our own actions." In later editions he changed this to "our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions " — thus expHcitly recognising the possession of a standard as essential. - Cf. above, Lect. vi. pp. 122 ff. TJic rise of Conscience 367 own. To be sure we cannot exonerate David, im- pulsive though he was, as we exonerate a child or a savage. But that after all only lends point to the instance ; for if. where conscience is developed, in the heat of passion such things are still possible, can we do else than suppose that they are indefinitely more possible where conscience has yet to be developed, and also that they are indefinitely more innocent? So then, while still unconscious of our own wrong-doing, we become judges of the wrong-doing of others ; and these two positions we continually interchange till at length we find both combined in our own person. Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments was the first modern writer^ to deal with our question at all satisfactorily, and the answer may be recapitulated in his words : — " Our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the characters and conduct of other people — But we soon learn, that other people are equally frank with reeard to our own. We become anxious to know how far we deserve their censure or applause.... We begin, upon this account, to examine our own passions and conduct, and to consider how these must appear to them by considering how they would appear to us if in their situation.... It is evident that in all such cases, 1 divide myself, as it were, into two persons : and that I. the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the [person whose character is examined into and judged of-'." But we may sum ' He seems to have been anticipated by l'olyl)ius. (.\{. Diigald Stewart's Introduction in his cditi(Jii of Adam Smith's Theory, p. xxxi. - Op. cit. I'urt MI. ch. I. pp. 163 f. 368 Moral Evil and Moral Order up our answer still more succinctly in the language of a later writer, by saying that a man's conscience finds its first moral standard in 'the voice of his tribal self\' Though this first standard is woefully defective, still it carries within it the knowledge of moral good and evil : the knowledge of previously unknown evil that was already there but is now condemned, though it be not straightway abandoned ; the knowledge of previously unknown good that is henceforth approved, though it be not always pursued. The transition to this stage from the stage of innocence we find has been gradual ; and pari passu inevitable evil — as suck non- moral — has become avoidable evil, evil that is freely and consciously chosen — and as such bad. Is this an advance? we ask. If the evil, now known, were never forsaken and the good, now seen to be possible, never pursued : if the words of Ovid, Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor, were universally true of all human deeds, there certainly would be no advance. But that is not what we find. At any rate what we do not find, it will be said, is the knowledge of evil without the commission of it, or the knowledge of good without its omission ; and it is this fact after all that is the gravamen of the whole problem. It is, no doubt, and we must presently turn to it. Meanwhile we have gained something if we have found in the theory of evolution the means of divesting the problem of two of the mysteries that have' hitherto enshrouded it — the doctrine of a fall from a state of moral perfection and the doctrine of original sin. And we may hail it as a ^ W. K. Clifford, Lectures and Essays, 2nd edn, pp. 290 — 293. The dog))ia of ' tJic Fair 369 hopeful siVrn of the times that there are now theologians who have the couraore to admit this\ But this appeal to evolution, it may be rcjjlied, after all only throws the difficulty one step further back. For if the germs of moral evil are present from the first, what is this but to allow of a sort of original sin scarcely less repugnant to our moral ideas than the questionable theological dogma that has been dis- credited? On the contrary the difference is surely profound. Original sin is described in the West- minster Confession as an " original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed... to all good and wholly inclined to all evil." The theory of evolution furnishes no warrant for such innate depravity of disposition. To regard our primary and spontaneous impulses as if they were already the germs of moral evil is to ignore the ' I will quote one passage in evidence and I quote it the more readily because its author is a friend and former pupil of my own : — " There is thus every reason to believe that the awakening of man's moral sense or sentiment, his discovery of a law by which he came to know sin, was an advance accomplished by a long series of stnges. Consequently the origin of sin, like other so-called origins, was also a gradual process rather than an abrupt and inexplicable plunge. The appearance of sin, from this point of view, would not consist in the performance of a deed such as man had never done before, and of whose wickedness, should he commit it, he was previously aware ; it would rather be the continuance in certain i)ractices, or the satisfying of natural impulses, after that they were first discovered to be contrary to a recognised sanction of rank as low as that of tril)al custom. The sinfulness of sin would gradually increase from a zero; and the first sin, if the words have any meaning, instead of being the most lu-inous and the most nvjuientous in the race's history, would raiher Ik- tin- least significant of all." I'". K. Tinnant, T/u- Ori^n and J'ro/'ai^ii/ion of Sin: Hulsean I-cclurcs, 1902, p. 91. W. 24 370 Moral Evil and Moral Order true meaning of * moral ' altogether^ Those impulses constitute the basis alike for moral order and for moral evil, but they are actually the one as little as the other. To identify moral evil and sin defined as enmity to God is a still graver mistake, and one which has greatly aggravated the difficulty of reconciling the existence of moral evil with theism. But neither psychology nor the moral and religious development of humanity, so far as we can trace it, will support such a doctrine. According to that doctrine all particular evil thoughts or deeds are but indicia of the breach of the first and great commandment of love to God. But love, like morality, we have found to be possible only when the stage of social intercourse and self-consciousness is attained. Prior to that, man cannot be said consciously to love even himself; and till he has learned to love his " brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen ? " In recent years, since the importance of the historical method has been recognised, an enormous mass of facts concerning primitive religion and morality has been collected, but we are still sadly lacking in insight into their true meaning and con- nexion. In the earlier phases of its development religion doubtless powerfully reinforced the sanctions of the existing morality, but on the other hand probably morality at first did more to elevate religion than religion did to elevate morality. Under the influence of the higher religions however morality has unquestion- ably gained in what we may call inwardness as well as ' Cf. Tennant, op. cit. on "The ambiguous usage of the term 'Sin' and its derivatives," pp. i6o IT. The dogma of ' Origiiia/ Siji ' 37 1 in authority'. Hence the deep sense of sin tliat is characteristic of the aiuakencd Christian conscience. Sin. in fact, as Mr Hobhouse has well said, "borrows somethinqr of the infinitude of the Beine ajrainst whom it offends and [so] puts a measureless gulf between Him and the sinner." Consciousness of sin cannot then be the first stage of moral evil. On the contrary just as morality Is an advance u[)on the animal l(-\el. which as such cannot be called immoral, so this sense of sin is an advance upon the level of mere immorality, which as such cannot be described as one of enniiiy or estrangement between man and God. On the merely moral level self-righteousness is possible, on the higher religious level it is not : hence "there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine righteous persons that need no repentance." Vox such repentance is a new birth into a iiigher life ; but it is not deliverance from innate depravity : it is truly an advance on all that existed before, not a restoration of pristine innocence. Here however let us return to the main question just now mentioned. Granted, it is urged, that the attainment of a knowledge of good and v\\\ is an advance, why need all further advance be interrupted by lapses.** The lapses in (juestion consist in what we ordinarily call yielding to temptation, as in the fall our first jjarents are said to have yielded. The average child or man does not yielil to every imiptation, but only to some, while others art; resisteil. We can. it is thought, imaginfr .v^- ov rather ol a subject in a world of such, as the intercourse of sucli a 392 Theories of a Future Life subject with other subjects. Instead of regarding all souls as substances we have proceeded rather on the spiritualistic interpretation of all substances as souls. And it is worth remarking that a monadology of this sort still haunted Kant's speculation from his earlier days and was constantly cropping out in his later critical writings\ This is notably the case, for example, in his solution of the third antinomy ; for the logical possibility of freedom, whereby the solution is effected, presupposes the actual existence of a plurality of things per se or substances, whose actions determine the so- called course of nature". Between the abstract category of substance and what we may call the real category of things or substances, from which it is abstracted, there is a world of difference. The history of philosophy, I incline to think, shows this abstract concept of sub- stance to be, as Schopenhauer maintained, either useless or mischievous. If the individuality of the concrete thing is dropped then substance becomes synonymous with matter or stuff — for which ' form ' is but an accident — this is indeed its popular meaning and the meaning too unquestionably the predominant one with Kant. The mischief, as respects our present problem, begins when mind too is regarded as substance, as it was by Descartes and Locke. But apart from the categories of individuality and activity that of sub- stantiality is inadequate to define either the idea of God or that of a soul. It is also too indeterminate and empty ^ Cf. B. Erdmann's Kanfs Kriticismus u. s. w., 1878, pp. 73 — 75 : also a dissertation by a pupil of Erdmann's, O. Riedel, Die mo7ia- dologischen Bestim7mmgeti in Kanfs Lehre vom Ding an sick, 1884. ^ Cf. above, Lecture xiv, pp. 302 ff. The question a question as to Value 393 to admit of either individuality or causality being deduced or dialectically developed from it. thouoh itself readilv to be abstracted from the concrete ' things ' with qualities which manifest their being by their activity \ But if we were to discard the category of substanti- ality and content ourselves with that of mere actuality, what reasons would remain for expecting our lilc to continue indefinitely ? Well, at any rate the category of substance will not furnish a reason : it would at best only state the fact, or rather only subtly beg the question. So far perhaps we may agree with what Lotze intended in saying: — "The question of the im- mortality of the soul does not belong to Metaphysic. We have no other principle for deciding it," he con- tinues, ''beyond this general idealistic conviction: — every created thing will continue, if and so long as its continuance belongs to the meaning of the world ; every one will pass away, whose actuality had only in some transitory phase of the world's course a place [Stellc) that justified it'." But it would still remain an open cjuestion whether the evolution of the world's meaning would not be at least as well met, (and a more intimate unity and continuity secured,) by the mutual adaptations and adjustments of the same individuals, as by the annihilation of some and the creation of others. An) huw it is meanwhile safe to say — strange as it may sound — that we have no positives evidence, either a postei'io7-i or a priori, that the latter is the ' Cf. Sigwart, Lo^ik, 2ncl edn, 5^ 77 (i); Lotze, Mclaphysik, I 245 ; Naturalism and Ai^nosticism, 3rd edn, v(j1. ii. \)\). 192 i^. ''■ Afflaphysi/i, loc cit. 394 Theories of a Future Life method which in fact obtains. We say All men are mortal, but not one of us has experienced death ; not one of us knows anything therefore of what for the subject immediately concerned it really is. If we knew that the individual's existence began with that of the body, we might argue that it would also probably end with it : but here again the empirical basis for such an argument fails us. Finally, if the materialist's con- tention were established, if soul and body were shown to be identical, that certainly would leave no further room for doubt. But we may say with some confidence that science itself has once for all renounced materialism of this sort\ Altogether — so far as the mere persist- ence of the individual subject now actually existing goes — we may fairly maintain that the burden of proof after all rests with those who would dogmatically deny it. But, as already said, the mere persistence of the individual subject will not content us : it is in the continuity of our personal life that we are supremely interested, and facts force us to admit that we cannot straightway infer the one from the other. It seems useless to say The eternal form will still divide The eternal soul from all beside, unless we have some basis for conjecturing how much ^ " If the belief in immortality is essential to morality, physical science has no more to say against the probability of that doctrine than the most ordinary experience has, and it effectually closes the mouths of those who pretend to refute it by objections deduced from merely physical data." Huxley, 'Science and Morals,' Collected Essays^ vol. IX. p. 143. Co)iti)iuity of Memory 395 or how little can be 'eternal form.' Whatever has been gradually acquired, may for all we know be lost again ; and indeed much of it, so far as present experience goes, appears, at first sight, to be entirely lost. Some continuity of memory is indispensable to personal continuity, and is commonl)- held to require some continuity of organism. Continuity of environ- ment again appears not only to be a necessary condition of organic continuity, but to be also essential to any further personal development. But how is such con- tinuity conceivable beyond the grave? As regards memory the difficulties so commonly felt are largely due to bad psychology. Memory, thoucrh common thouo-ht and lan^uaee associate it so intimately with objective records, obviously cannot be really identified with these ; for they presuppose it\ Of the subjective function, apart from which records are not records, no explanation, no definition or description even, that does not already imply it, has — so far as I know — ever been, or — as I believe — ever will be given. We are tempted perhaps sometimes to describe memory as the perception of what is distant in the past and to develop the many analogies there are between it aiul the perception of what is distant in space. Hut one difference at any rate there is and that difference is fundamental. Distance in space implies only objective order : two men walking together may both see the same landmark, sa)' a mile in Iront ol tlicin ; hut though they may look back a year in lime, the experi- ences they remember will strictly speaking never be in a like sense the same. Memory furm'shes us with ikj ' Cf. Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. n. pj). 156 — 159. 39^ Theories of a Fiittire Life such common range in time as vision yields us in space : there is at least this much justification for Kant's treatment of time as the form of internal perception. The subjective marks peculiar to memory proper cannot be identified with any merely objective order ; and so, we may question if all connexion between the subject and its past experience is permanently dis- solved simply by the apparent obliteration of certain objective records. Hence the truth — so far — of Fries's contention that the problem to explain is not memory but obliviscence : about that there is, however, no- special difficulty \ Moreover, strictly speaking, the universe contains at this moment the potential record of every event that has ever happened ; and every subject, that has advanced beyond the ideal limit of the ' naked monad, ^ is able to some extent to read this record, and to read it to a greater extent and more distinctly the further its own experience has developed. And again, at the level of self-consciousness, over and above the merely passive memory or reminiscence, that has to wait till the record is clear, we have the active memory or recollection that can search its own archives; and we have also the intelligence that can seek out and interpret other records beyond any imaginable limit. The gradual achievement of such increased independence and ' Herein the analogy with space holds good. Distant objects in a landscape can in general only be clearly seen if they are of sufficient magnitude, and distant events in a lifetime can in general only be clearly remembered if they are of sufficient moment. Again as there may be positive obstructions in the way of our vision so there may be in the way of our memory, and the body — as in disease — is known tc^ be a frequent source of such obstructions. Memory aiui Objective Records 397 initiative is just that advance from sentient individual to rational person, from soul to spirit, which philosophy from Plato onwards has steadily recognised as a fact, though it has seldom ventureci to account for it as a continuous development. If now— in addition to the subjective factor implied in all memory — we take into account this increased independence which the spiritual level secures, and along with this the fact that in what we may call the world order the new is continuous with the old. we surely have some ground for thinking it possible that the departed spirit may re-collect itself, even without the body. Nay, it will not be absurd to suppose with Kant that at this level " the separation from the body would be the end of the sensuous employment and the beginning of the intelligible em- ployment of our faculty of knowledge. The body would then have to be considered, not as the cause of our thinkinof but onlv as a restrictive condition of it and therefore... as an impediment of our pure and spiritual life\" The spirit is often willing when the flesh is weak ; but here we have a literal rising through its death to higher things. At any rate we must hold firmly to the position that it is function that determines structure, n(jt structure that determines function ; that the soul is the entelechy of the body, not vice versa, to use the phrase of Aristotle's which Leibniz adopted. It then surely becomes reasonable to suppose that the spirit that has so far transcended the body is not wholly undone with its undoing, emphatically reasonabh; if we find, when we come presently t(j incjuire, that there are ' Criiiiiue of the Pure Reason, isl cdn, p. 77S. Max Miillcr's trans., \). 667. 398 Theories of a Future Life teleological grounds of supreme moment, why this should not be. And yet, we must allow that we can hardly frame more than the vaguest conjectures how — so far as it is verily disembodied — the soul or spirit proceeds, if needs be, to clothe itself anew ; albeit we have no reason to regard it, let me remark again, as reduced in the interim to the level of a naked monad. But there is at any rate a closely analogous case, where a like renewal actually happens, though our ignorance of the process is almost as complete. But if we knew abso- lutely nothing of embryology, and if it happened — as Leibniz in fact supposed — that the process of dying consisted in a reversal or ' involution ' of the process of growth and differentiation, so that the true corpse,, so to say, should be again nothing but a tiny and apparently homogeneous speck of protoplasm — so small that a few consecrated pill-boxes might almost suffice for the canipi santi of the world — we should, I fancy, be quite as sure as we can now be that the renewal of such a life was an idle dream. And yet in the embryo^ a like speck, we have Although the print be little, the whole matter And copy of the father, — eyes, nose, lip, The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger. May we not then suppose that if the germinal soul can accomplish so much the separated spirit can accomplish more^ } But it will be replied the germ is an organism, ^ I have, since writing the above, chanced upon the following interesting anticipation : — "Abstractly considered, that is considered without relation to the difference which habit and merely habit ' Iiivolittioii ' and Gcyniiiiation 399 not a disembodied soul. That is true unquestionably and it is important ; for any continuity of life with no continuity of either organism or environment seems quite inconceivable. But there is nothing- in our present knowledge to show that there cannot be any other mode of embodiment than that with which we are here familiar, and that we have not manifold other relations with our environment besides those which the organism as we know it is supposed to explain — or rather perhaps that our environment has not such rela- tions with us, of which we at present have no clear consciousness. It is futile to attempt to specify these possibilities by imagining an astral body, an ethereal body or the like ; and to talk of a subliminal self seems only to betray ignorance of the real problem, which relates not to the self but to the continuance after death of its rappoi't with the world. But we may at least lay stress on the tremendous ga{j in our scientific knowledge concerning the inter- action of body and mind — a gap which there seems no prospect of our filling up, whether w^e work, so to say, outwards from psychology or inwards from physiology — if such inaccurate phraseology may be for brevity's produces in our faculties and modes of apprehension, I do not see anything more in the resurrection of a dead man than in the con- ception of a child ; except it he this that the one comes into his world with a system of prior consciousness about him, while the other docs not : and no person will say that he knows enough of either subject to perceive that this circumstance makes such a difference in the two cases, that the one should be easy, and the other not so. To ilie first man, the succession of the species would be as incomprehensible .IS the resurrection of the dead is to us." I'alcy, Evidences of Christi- luiity, Tcgg's edn of his works, p. i 14. 400 Theories of a Future Life sake allowed. Here there must be facts in plenty of which we are wholly ignorant, and here, it may be, that as an original but little known writer has supposed, " in the course of this life the nervous system by its ultimate habitudes should frame a finer organization, and that this in the moment and act of death should be disentangled from the coarser framed" Or more likely, it may be, as Bonnet and the younger Fichte supposed, that within the changeable ' external body ' there is from the first an 'inner body' that shapes it and outlasts it". Or again, with still more probability, it may be, as Thiele supposed, that this invisible body is not built up from without nor present from the first as ' form-principle ' of the external and changing body, but that it will be gradually elaborated as the soul's development requires, just as the bodies which it has outworn were elaborated to subserve its needs during the lower stages of its development^ But all such hypotheses, and there are many, like the gap in our knowledge that leaves room for them, do not reach beyond the dualism of common thought ; fail in fact to get down to the bed-rock of experience that underlies all such problems. More fundamental than any seem- ing dualism of body and soul is the duality of subject and object in experience, and this — for spiritualistic monism — means the interaction of subjects with other ^ W. Cyples, A?i biqiiiry into the Process of Human Experience, London, 1880, p. 431. ^ C. Bonnet, La palingenesie philosophiqiie, 1769. J. H. Fichte, Psychologie, 1864, i. pp. 63 f. A similar view, it is interesting to note, was entertained by the physicists, Balfour Stewart and Tait : cf. The Unseen Universe, 2nd edn, 1875, PP- 159^- ^ G. Thiele, Die Philosophie des Seibstsbezvusstseitts, 1895, pp. 506 f. Con ti unify of Envirounieiit 401 subjects, transcends the opposition of person and thing. It means too. that the organism is the result of such subjective interaction, not that this interaction is the result of it ; more generally still, that subjects are the prime agents in maintaining the so-called physical world, not this the prime agent by which they are passively sustained. Till naturalism succeeds in con- verting this position the way to belief in a future life will always be open. But again as regards the future environment we must admit, as in the case of the future organism, that in the complete absence of any experience we can do no more than conjecture. And obviously, if we are ignorant of the organism that is to be, we must be ignorant also of its specific environment ; and vice versa. But after all, as just now said, there is for spiritualism no sharp line between the two, indeed even for materialism there is none: for the one as for the other, the organism is continuous with, and a part of, the objective world. All that we can reasonably assert is that between the old life and the new there must be some continuity of experience, if the new life is to be regarded as a future life and not as merely another life. There are two views to be considered : that of trans- migration or reincarnation, accepted by the majority of the human race, and that of transfiguration, if we may so call it, prevalent among Christians. The one secures a continuity of environment that satisfies the imagina- tion of survivors, but at the sacrifice more or less com- plete of that personal continuity which we must regard as essential. The other pre.serves this, but transfers it to an unseen world difficult to realise. w. 26 402 Theories of a Future Life The objection to transmigration or metempsychosis^ has been met by assuming that the personal discon- tinuity is only temporary, and that the successive lives of a given subject may be eventually connected through continuous but latent memories that are revived after death or when all the soul's Wanderjakre are over^ But even so, if this series is to have any real continuity or meaning, if it is to be not merely a series but a pro- gression, then at every return to life, either Providence must determine, or the naturient soul must itself select, its appropriate reincarnation. Otherwise, if disem- bodied souls are to be blown about by the winds of circumstance like other seeds, we should only have a repetition of that outrageous fortune which the doctrine of transmigration was supposed to redress : the con- tingency that seems to pertain to the one birth we know of would only be manifolded, not removed. This difficulty in turn has been met by the further and bolder assumption, that disembodied souls do in fact steer their own way back to a suitable re-birth. An atom liberated from its molecular bonds is described as manifesting an unwonted activity, technically known as ' the nascent state ' ; but still it does not recombine indifferently with the first free atom that it encoun- ters, but only with one for which it has an ' affinity.' And " there seems to be nothing more strange or ^ This term though commonly in use is obviously inaccurate. If we must needs have a Greek word, fx(.Tf.vaui^aT(jiCTi% used by Clem. Alex, is preferable. ^ So, for example, Professor Campbell Eraser thinks. Cf. his Theism, vol. ii. p. 249. And still more definitely Renouvier, Le Persotinalisme, 1903, p. 220. A similar view was held by Max Drossbach, J. Reynaud and many others. Difficulties to be Diet 403 paradoxical," it has been said, "in the suggestion that each person enters into connexion with the body that is most fitted to be connected with him"." But the affinities of a given atom are, so far as we know, any- thing but select : not only will it combine with others of many kinds, but it seems to be absolutely indifferent to individuals within a kind. So far this analogy then, if it justified any inference at all, would, it may well be thought, hardly warrant us in expecting each person to find his next incarnation even within the species Homo sapiens. Still less would it lead us to expect that he could secure such parentage and surroundings as to admit of his turning the best of his past powers — as poet or patriot say — to full account, assuming that with the temporary lapse of definite memories these could be still retained. But on the other hand it may be fairly urged that a liberated spirit ought to be credited with vastly more savoir vivre than a liberated atom. Further it must be allowed that this suggestion is quite in keeping with the conservation of values, which men like Lotze and Hoffding regard as axiomatic — at any rate experience often verifies, and never certainly belies if'. Finally it minimises the objection to personal continuity that is often based on the facts of heredity '. And for my part ' McTaggart, Some D(\^nias of Religion^ 1906, p. 126. ' Cf. Lecturex. pp. 2i2f., and Tenny.son,/«^cwly th(.' princij)l(; of continuity upwards as well as downwards. To connect these otherwise isolated 28— a 436 The Realm of Ends worlds he is driven to assume a hierarchy of intelHgences of a higher order, and so is led on to conceive a Highest of all. But still, so long as we hold to the principle of continuity, this Supreme Being will only be pi'irmcs inter pares, only one of the Many ; he will also, like the rest, be confronted and conditioned by others, so long at least as we hold to the historical standpoint. Thus while pluralism suggests a tran- scendent upper limit, it is one to which knowledge cannot actually attain. Again the principle of continuity and the historical method, the standpoint that is to say of evolution, suggest also a lower limit, and this proves to be equally unattainable. In attempting to regress to an absolute origin, we seem only to get nearer to the utterly indeterminate that affords no ground for distinct individuals at all ; where there is no natura naturata, and where in order that the nasci may begin, we seem to require a transcendent Prime Mover standing apart from the nascent Many. May not the two limits, then, which its cardinal principles of continuity and evolution do not enable pluralism to attain, be really related ? This question leads us to the idea of creation, and so to the discussion of Theism. Not content with the admission that pluralism on examination points both theoretically and practically beyond itself, many advocates of singularism have attempted to show it up as radically absurd. These attempts do not appear successful. That an absolute totality of individuals is self-contradictory and that an absolute individual is not, is more than anyone has yet proved. That a plurality of individuals in isolation should ever come into relation is inconceivable indeed, The Idea of Creation 437 but only because a plurality without unity is itself inconceivable. That individuals severally distinct as regards their existence could not interact is however a mere dictum. Pluralism takes the world as we find it, as a plurality of individuals unified in and through their mutual intercourse. ' Radically empirical ' this certainly is, but if it be true, it cannot be radically absurd ; and if it be not true, then we are entitled to ask the sins^ularist how he ever fjot started on the a priori ro3.d. We approach theism then as promising to complete pluralism, not as threatening to abolish it, as providing theoretically more unity in the ground ot the world, and practically a higher and fuller unity in its meaning and end. Starting from the Many as real we can never reach an Absolute into which they are absorbed and vanish : they are our 7'atio cognoscendi of God as their 7'atio essendi. As related to them, God must be limited and determined by them : he cannot be as if they were not. If then he is not to be merely one of them, not merely primus iiiter pares, this limitation must be an internal limitation ; God, we must say, is their Creator ; and in creating them he has determined himself. And by this the pluralist means even more than at first it seems to mean. Theists in our day profess to accept the evolution hypothesis, but hardly as pluralism interprets it, not as epigenesis or creative synthesis but rather as the literal unfolding of a i)lan completely specified in every detail. " Unless creators are created, nothing is really created " the pluralist maintains, ami the idea oi creation would never enter our minds at all. Ai this point \v(' have tlu: remarkable conjunction 438 The Realm of Ends of naturalism and orthodox theology in opposition to pluralism — Hobbes and Jonathan Edwards in league against the 'personal idealist.' Careful analysis, we thought, enabled us to make good distinctions that the determinist either overlooks or denies — the distinction, for example, between self-determination, implying teleo- logical categories, and determination according to fixed law, implying only mechanical categories ; and again the Kantian distinction between the efficient causality of the thing per se and the schematized causation according to ' a rule of succession,' to which the thing />er se may give rise but which never could give rise to it ; the distinction, that is, between the pattern of filled time and the agents who do the filling. But if we could start, not from these agents, the Many, but from the One conceived as absolute, the necessitarian position would be unavoidable and the predestinarian right. But then, as we have all along maintained, the world, as we know it, would be impossible. The only way out of this impasse — not between pluralism and theism, mind, but between theism and atheism— appears to be the via media, that ''all is not decreed, that the total possibilities, however far back we go, are fixed ; but within these however far forward we go, contingencies are open\" This way alone seems to lead towards the solution of another problem, the gravest that theism has to face — the problem of evil. From the standpoint of the Many, evils are hard to bear but easy enough to account for, but from the standpoint of the One, evil seems to be simply a con- tradiction, an impossibility. If theism be true, then ^ Lecture xiv. p. 315. The Problem of Evil 439 evil can only be relative and must gradually disappear: if theism be not true, though evils remain relative, they may never disappear. In any case, evil as absolute, as a principle, is an absurdity — this the speculations of pessimists sufficiently show. " God can do no evil, it is agreed ; it then this world were verily his creation, there could not be any, even relative, evil in it." This conclusion forms the major premise of the prosecution in the great theodicy, as Leibniz called it. Once again we may say the main issue is between theism and atheism ; and since the fact of relative evils is indispu- table, the verdict must be for atheism, if this conclusion is sound. For if the world as it is be as God decreed it, the moral evil in it zvoidd be his work. But if our contention will hold, that though God created us, he created us free and to be co-workers with himself, then this moral evil, which proximately at all events is our doing, will be really and ultimately ours. If how- ever our contention is not sound, then the whole case, prosecution and defence alike, is either an illusion and a farce, or there is no God at all. Still, granting this contention meanwhile, what of those physical evils which do not seem to be either proximately or remotely attributable to us? But first, there is one restriction that the idea of any determinate world, no matter what, imposes upon itself in being determinate — its parts must be compossible: nothing in it can do everything. The idea of a world the parts of which are in no wav to limit each other is as unthink- able as the idea of an abscjlutely omnipotent God who is to create it. To object that God himself can only be finite, and must Ix- limited from without, because he 440 The Reabn of Ends cannot override eternal truths, is the merest sophistry. The demand for absoluteness of this sort is a demand not for God but for the Indeterminate, a supreme unity of opposites which is the same as nothing. Leaving aside such so-called physical evils as are in this sense metaphysical, the negations which all de- termination involves, we can fairly ask concerning the physical ills that are admittedly contingent, whether we have in general any reason to suppose that they are superfluous and not rather the indispensable condition of advance, and so as an incentive really good. The world, ever pressing forward, entered on the stage of conscious life as soon as it was possible, not waiting till the fierce strife and turmoil of what we call the elements had wholly abated, but rather driven by struggling with these to new adaptations that tended to raise it above them. At this stage such incentives were largely of the nature of a vis a tergo : only as the advance has proceeded, have these given place to motives which partake more and more of the nature of a vis a /route. The pressure of physical evils having first led to the solidarity of the social state, this has ushered in the attraction of those ideals that Hegel called the objective spirit. It is characteristic of man that he stands at the parting of the ways ; and under the influence of both physical ills and spiritual ideals, is led eventually to conclude that he has no abiding city here and to seek a city yet to come. Meanwhile the dimensions that circumscribe this spatial and temporal world afford us no sure clue to the wider dimensions of that more spiri- tual world beyond ; nor do they enable us to conjecture The Tivo J^oiccs — FaifJi ami Kuoii'lcdge 441 how the two are connected or how the transition is to be made. But none the less our hold on those higher spiritual ideals leads us to believe in God and forces us to think we were not made to die. But any- how, it is uroed, all that we are sure of are the ills and the vanities of the present ; and if we must inter from the known to the unknown, is it not more likely that death will end them than that it will mend them ^ That present evil should set us hoping for future good is natural, but to argue from evil now to good hereafter is surely not rational. No, it is replied, vanity and vexation of spirit are not all that we find. Thoughtful men have been driven to call life an enigma but few have been willing to curse it as a folly or a fraud ; it has too much meaning, shows too much purpose for that, though its secret and its goal be not yet clear. Mists may envelope us, mountains seem to bar our way ; but often we have heard when we could not see, and found a way by pressing forward, though, while we halted, there seemed no way at all. These are the two voices — faith and knowledge — how come they to put such different interpretations on the very same facts } Because knowledge is of things we see, and seeks to interpret the world as if they were the whole ; while faith is aware that now we see but in part, and con- vinced that only provided the unseen satisfies our spiritual yearnings is the part we see intelligible — that which ought to be being the key to that which is. And now i(j state succinctly the [JOsiti\e rc-sulls we seem to ha\(* attained. 'i"h(.'y may be gatlK-retl up under four heads relating to Method or slandpoinl. lo 442 The Realm of Ends God or the One, to the World or the Many, and to Faith in the Unseen. I. As to method — we have started from what we are, cognitive and conative subjects; and from where we are — so to say in mediis rebus — in a world consisting to an indefinite extent of other like subjects. No specula- tion, no dialectic, no ontological deduction, is needed to reach this position ; and without it all these alike are impossible. But beginning thus, we are led both on theoretical and on practical grounds to conceive a more fundamental standpoint than this of the Many, namely that of the One that \\ould furnish an ontological unity for their cosmological unity and ensure a teleo- logical unity for their varied ends, in being — as it has been said — 'the impersonated Ideal of every mind^' — the One, as ultimate source of their being and ultimate end of their ends. But though we can conceive this standpoint, we cannot here attain to it or see the world from it. It is there, like their centre of gravity for the inhabitants of a planetary ring, but the aspect of the world from thence is more than we can conceive. Attempts to delineate this have been really but pro- jections of our own eccentric and discursive views : creative synthesis as human implies aspects, creative intuition as divine is beyond them. The result of all attempts to begin with the One is only to lower our idea of the world, not to raise our idea of God. His modus operandi, if even this phase is allowable, in creating, conserving, and ruling the world is beyond us. II. As to God from the point of view of man, then, we can only regard him as Spirit, as possessing ^ Howison, Limits of Evolutioti, 2nd edn, p. xiv. God 443 intelligence and will, and so as personal. But while we must admit such attributes carried to their limit to be beyond us, we cannot regard God as absolute in such wise as to deprive ourselves of all personality or initia- tive. How God created the world, how the One is the ground of the Many, we admit we cannot tell ; but since it is from the Many as real that we start we are forced to say that creation implies limitation; otherwise the world could be nothing. Such theism would be acosmism. But while we have to maintain that in determining the world — his world — God also determines himself, it would be absurd to suppose that in thus determining himself he, so to say, diminishes himself. Such determination may be negation, nay must be, to be real at all ; but it is not abneeation. God does not transform, differentiate or fractionate himself into the world, and so cease to be God. Such theism would only be pantheism, which is truly but atheism. But now, finally, if the world, though God's world, the expression and revelation of himself, is yet not God, if though he is immanent in it, he is also as its creator transcendent to it, surely the greater the world — the greater the freedom and capacity of his creatures — the greater still is he who created and sustains and somehow surely overrules it all. Oriental servility and a priori speculation have made God synonymous with an ' Infinite and Absolute' that leaves room for no other and can brook none. To express dissent from this view, the unfortunate term ' finite God,' devised by those who uphold the view, has been accepted from thcMii by its opponents. As used by the ff)rmer, it implies and was UKNinl to imply imperfec- tion and dependence, to place God in line with the Many 444 T^J^^ Realm of Ends and to deny his transcendent supremacy. So under- stood a finite God is a contradiction, of course. But the term 'finite God/ as accepted by the latter, means for them all that God can mean, if God implies the world and is not God without it : it means a living God with a living world, not a potter God with a world of illusory clay, not an inconceivable abstraction that is only infinite and absolute, because it is beyond everything and means nothing, an dTreLp60eo<; as Thomas Davidson, I believe, called it. III. And now as to this living world, of which God is the ground, this realm of ends which he respects because it is his end — it is, we say, a world of self-detennining, free, agents, severally intent on attain- ing more good or at least on retaining the good they have. We note three main characteristics — contingency in part, stability in part and progress in part — all involved in experience as epigenetic. There is con- tingency, for a common modus vivendi is still to seek ; there is stability, for all effectual cooperation is con- served as good ; and there is progress, so long as the ills we have or the goods we know not of prompt to further efforts. But goods we know not of are ideal ; and ideal ends are only possible on the plane of rational life : the brutes at least leave well alone, and species as soon as they are adjusted to their environment remain stationary, so long at least as that remains unchanged. Such a stationary state may be possible where progress is due solely to the vis a tergo of actual physical ills ; it is impossible, even though these should cease, once the Good as an ideal has loomed in sight, and begun as a vis a f route to draw spirits onwards. But it has taken Tlic IFor/ii 445 untold ages to accomplish that finite amount of progress which the pressure of material want promotes ; can we then expect the indefinite progress that spiritual possi- bilities open up will be easily or speedily achieved ? Compared with the interval between the lowest forms of merely animal life and the highest, the interval between civilised man and man in the infancy of the race, is vast ; and yet. so far as we can judge, the time it has occupied is correspondingly brief. The greater definiteness and steadiness of purpose that intelligence brings and the permanent tradition that social coope- ration makes possible have then unquestionably ac- celerated the rate of progress on the whole. But now struggles of a new order arise through this very progress itself Moral evils spring up and grow apace in the rich soil of worldly prosperity ; for the intelligence and social continuity that make nobler ideals possible can also subserve the ends of selfishness, injustice and oppression. Thus the greatest enemy of mankind is man : so it has always been, so it may long continue to be. Yet here too there has been progress ; and the vision of a new era, when righteousness shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, evokes the lip-service of multitudes and the life-devotion of a few. But time, that tries all things, will assuredly bring more and more to take the lesson to heart that Man must pass from old to new, From vain to real, from mistake to fact, I-'rom what once seemed good to what now proves best. But why, we ask, must the lesson be so slowly learni ? Be- cause to be effectually learnt, it must be l(,-arnt b)- heart, every jot and tittle of it l)\- actual Hving exj)erience. 446 The Realm of Ends Advanced to the plane of social intercourse and ra- tional discourse, man has sought out many inventions, preferring" at first what looks easy to what seems arduous, what looks near to what seems remote, what looks tangible to what seems visionary. This we call worldly wisdom. The more all its schemes are found to fail, the more clearly will stand out the one straight and narrow way — at first so hard to find and still so hard to ascend — that verily leads to life. As from geology we learn of species after species that have disappeared in the process of adjusting organism to environment ; so in history we learn from the rise and fall of empire after empire that only righteousness exalteth a nation and that those that pursue evil perish. It is thus in the light of evolution that the mystery of evil becomes clearest. God is the creator of the world, we say : his end can only be the Good — no other is even conceivable. But in a world created for the Good there can be no inherent, no ineradicable evil. The process of evolution must then in itself be good, the one way possible to actual good for creatures that are created to achieve it. And if again we ask why the way is so long and the progress so devious and so slow, we can but suppose it is so because only so can the progress be thorough and the way assuredly the best ; this we may well believe is why " the mills of God grind slowly and grind exceeding small," Only after proving all things can we hold fast to that which is good. But now — and this leads on to our last head — does this not come near to saying, it may be asked, that the best of all possible worlds is a world without God and the IVorld 447 God ? is it not practically atheism, in short ? and if not that, still, if the world is left severely alone to work out its own sahation, what have we but the God-forsaken world in which the so-called deists are said to have believed ? Not atheism, certainly, for faith in God as the ground of the world affords us an assurance, which we could not otherwise have, that complete harmony and unit)-, the good of all in the good of each, is really attainable, nay, will verily be attained. Whereas, if we stop at a plurality of finite selves in interaction, we have no guarantee, cannot even reasonably expect, that such a totality will ever attain to perfect organic unity. Nor does the theism to which pluralism points leave no place for God in the world ; it is then not deism : creation, if we think, we shall see can be conceived only as continuous presence'. If God is the ground of the world at all he is its ground always as an active, living, interested. Spirit, not as a merely everlasting, change- less and indifferent centre, round which it simply whirls. Still God's action in the world must be for us as in- scrutable as his creation of it : indeed there is no reason why we should attempt to discriminate between them. In calling God transcendent we seek only to express that duality of subject and object which we take as fundamental to all spiritual being, not to suggest that his relation to the world must be thought under the category of external causation, like the interaction of object with object. This is obviously inadequate. Nor is the relation of God to the world comparable to ilic interaction of one finite subject with another; for between them there is no such ' (Jf. above, Led. xii. j)]). lUot 448 The Realm of Ends dependence as that which connects them both with God. We trench upon the mystical when we attempt to picture this divine immanence, ' closer to us than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.' It is this which stirs the ' cosmic emotion ' of poets like Words- worth, Goethe, Browning and Tennyson, to this that the inward witness of the spirit refers which is the essence of religious experience everywhere. In both there opens out in varying degrees of clearness and certainty The true world within the world we see, Whereof our world is but the bounding shore. This is the unseen world, the world not realised, in which faith moves. IV. In keeping with the great principle of continuity, everywhere displayed in the working out of the world's evolution, we have found this faith foreshadowed in the upward striving that is the essence of life. Consider for a moment the development of the senses. The first clear response is to mechanical contact, and we have as the first specific sense, the sense of touch. From this is presently differentiated the sense of hearing, when objects not yet present to actual touch give premonitions of their proximity by the vibrations they set up : hearing is thus the faith of touch. As hearing to touch so smell stands to taste : it is a foretaste that further extends the objective range. A freckle or pigment-spot is all that light at first produces ; but when its hints are heeded and the pig- mented retina that first arose is furnished by the organism's own prophetic efforts with directing muscles, it exchanges its passive sight for active vision, and opens out a vastly wider objective world. In keeping Faith 449 with all this is the place of faith on the higher plane where it contrasts with intellectual sight : it is like a new sense that brings us face to face with an unseen world. What does this mean ? Let us go back a step. Here as everywhere — in its highest as in its lowest form — faith is striving and striving is faith. The whole conscious being is concerned : there is not merely the cognition of what is, there is also an appreciation of what it is worth, a sense of the promise and potency of further good that it may enfold ; there is a yearning to realise this ; and there is finally the active endeavour that such feeling prompts. It is through this faith that man is where he is to-day, through it that mountains have been removed and the unattainable verily attained. More life and fuller achieved by much toil and struggle, an ascent to higher levels not movement along the line of least resistance — this is the one increasing purpose that we can so far discern, when we regard the world historically as a realm of ends in place of summarising it scientifically under a system of concepts. And how do we stand now } That the present world and progress on the plane of the present world do not and never will meet our highest needs — about this there is little question. But where in what is, in what we have so far attained, can we discern those eternal values that point upwards aiul beyond ihis present world ? Surely in all that we lind ol the beautiful and sublime in this earth on which we dwell and the starry heavens above it ; in all that led men long ago to regard nature as a cosmos ; in all that is best and noblest in the annals of human life ; in these very needs thf-mselves that the seen and temporal fu'l w. 2y 450 The Realm of Ends to meet ; and above all, in that nascent sense of the divine presence which constitutes the truly religious life, and converts faith into the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But now a third question at once suggests itself Faith on the lower levels was justified by its results : can we here too apply this test of success or failure ? The founder of Christianity at any rate did not hesitate to appeal to it :■ — ■"■ Beware of false prophets. Ye shall know them by their fruits : do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ? " And, in fact, this is the test that is and will be applied ; for, as I have already said, however much in theory men consider premisses, in practice they consider only results. A powerful practical argument in favour of re- ligious faith might be worked out on the following lines : — first we might point to its universality : no race of mankind is wholly without that feeling of dependence on the supernatural and mysterious, which, as Schleiermacher thought, is the common characteristic of religious emotion. Next we might point to its survival: no race has yet outgrown it. There have been periods of religious decline, no doubt ; but they have sooner or later involved moral and intellectual de- cadence as well. And in these days when faith is said to be waning, we find that "things are in the saddle and ride mankind," and whither that tends history has made only too clear. Hitherto — in keeping with the judgment by results — such times have been followed by periods of revival and awakening ; and there are happily signs of such in our own day. Lastly we might point to the advance of religion that has usually A'ietzsclie 45 1 accompanied the increase of morality and intelligence ; nay we might show that religion has largely furthered such advance. And here by way of contrast I may refer briefly to a strange prophet, whose writings are at this moment exciting the keenest attention — I refer to Nietzsche. As the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest have brought man to the highest place as the paragon of animals, so in time they will lead, he teaches, to a yet higher being, the Uebennensch or Over-man. But this higher man, he foretells, will reject the existing morality of liberty, equality and fraternity, founded on the golden rule of benevolence and brotherly love — the morality of slaves as he con- temptuously names it. The new morality will be the morality of heroes, that is egoists : might will be right. As man now subjugates the lower animals to his own ends, so the Over-man will exploit feebler men and — as it has been sarcastically put — rise on stepping stones of theii' dead selves to higher things. In short a race is to appear, so Nietzsche and others would have us believe, that is to try the experiment of life wholly on the lines of what is called ' modern thought ' and wholly without faith in God or a world to come. I do not think the growing Nietzsche cult will last long or in the end do harm. If the terrible experiment must be made we may safely anticipate the result : it will Ije Hobbes's state of nature over again ; till the world retraces its steps. It will be said, {jerhaps : — ' The regenerate Christian is already an Ueberviensch, no longer "natural man," IjLit "spiritual" in the Pauline sense; nor is his ex- jjcrience fairly drscrilx^d as subjective bchcl in God ; 2y — 2 452 The Realm of Ends it is actual love of God and conscious communion with him.' We have no right to question this ; though we must admit that such inward conviction of the reality of religious experience is, for the ptwposes of our discussion, to be classed as faith, not as knowledge, in so far as it is — epistemologically, though not psycho- logically — subjective, incommunicable, and objectively unverifiable. In so far, however, as he lets his light shine and men see his good works, the religious man affords practical evidence of the worth of his faith. With enough of such light, the justification of faith would be sure. One final question, among the many that suggest themselves, 1 must not wholly omit. We have been contemplating the universe as a realm of ends. If we were asked what is the end of this realm of ends we might answer rightly enough that its end can only be itself; for there is nothing beyond it, and no longer any meaning in beyond. It is the absolutely absolute. Still within it we have distinguished the One and the Many, and we have approached it from the standpoint of the latter. In so doing we are liable to a bias, so to say, in favour of the Many : led to the idea of God as ontologically and teleologically essential to their completion, we are apt to speak as if he were a means for them. Those who attempt to start from the standpoint of the One betray a bias towards the opposite extreme. The world, on their view, is for the glory of God : its ultimate 7^aisou d'etre is to be the means to this divine end. Can we not transcend these one-sided extremes and find some sublimer idea which shall unify them both ? We can indeed ; and The Absolute E)id 453 that idea is Love. But here ao-ain we trench on the o mystical, the ineffable, and can only speak in parables. Turning to Christianity as exhibiting this truth in the purest form we know, we find it has one great secret — dying to live, and one great mystery — the incarnation. The love of God in creating the world implies both. Lciblichkeit ist das Ende a Her IVege Goiies, said an old German theologian. The world is God's self- limitation, self-renunciation might we venture to say } And so God is love. And what must that world be that is worthy of such love ? The only worthy object of love is just love : it must then be a world that can love God. But love is free : in a ready-made world then it could have no place. Only as we learn to know God do we learn to love him : hence the long and painful discipline of evolution, with lis dying to live — the converse process to incarnation — the putting off the earthly for the likeness of God. In such a realm of ends we trust " that God is love indeed, and love creation's final law." We cannot live or move without faith, that is clear. Is it not then rational to believe in the best, we ask ; and can there be a better } SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. I. The Meaning of Contingency. (Lect. iv. p. 76.) While preparing these lectures for the press I have been asked by a friendly critic for a definition of contingency. Possibly the request was prompted by the conviction, com- monly enough entertained, that there is really no contingency in the world at all ; and this, it is supposed, any serious attempt to define contingency would sooner or later disclose. Absolute chance is certainly nonsense ; and relative chance, it may be said, is after all not really chance, and implies nothing but ignorance or — it may be — irrelevance to the matter in hand. The truth of this I have already fully admitted in the text ; but I have also distinguished between the contingency of chance and the contingency of freedom ^ It is the latter contingency that is here in question, and, whatever may be said of its validity, its meaning at least seems clear. If the future of the world is partly determined by the conduct of free agents there will continually be new beginnings that were not foreseen ; and new possibilities will become imminent, that no knowledge of the past can surely forecast. All these possibilities will find a place within a certain ' domain ' (to adopt a mathematical term), inasmuch as the world was never a chaos, but definite from the first ^; and so we say there is no absolute contingency, no utter caprice. ' This has been stigmatized as a 'very scholastic distinction,' and one implying 'a system of pluralism,' as if that would suffice to dispose of it ! With this objection I have already attempted to deal elsewhere. Cf Natiiralistn and Agnosticism, 3rd edn, vol. li. pp. 292 — 4. ^ Cf. Lect. IV. pp. 70 f Dr How ISO) I on Creation 455 Though contingent for others, a man's acts are not con- tingent for him : if they were, we should have to admit absohite contingenc}' or chance. But if not contingent for him, then must they not for him be necessary? So it has been argued as if ' conditioned by ' were the same as ' con- ditioned for.' This further problem, however, is dealt with later. Cf Lectures XIII. and XIV. But the contingency in the so-called ' physical world,' referred to at the close of this Lecture, cannot, it may be thought, be the contingency of freedom : here then to deny immutable law is, it would seem, to assert absolute chance. We cannot, of course, affirm that a star or a meteor or a cluster of particles is an individual. But neither can we be confident that they are always and necessarily the merely inanimate aggregates we commonly take them to be. All that pluralism contends for, however, is simply that the real beings these phenomena imply have some spontaneity and some initiative' ; and to these essential characteristics of all real individuals the uniformity, as well as the diversity, of the physical world is due — the former as Natura naturata^ the latter as Natura iiaturaiis. W. Dr Howison on Creation. (Lect. xi. p. 245.) " Not to know how a thing can be is no disproof that the thing must be and is," Mr Bradley has said, as Fries indeed had said before him. To this truth we have appealed while admitting that creation is to us inexplicable. But Dr Howison seeks to cut us off from this appeal by asserting vehemently and repeatedly that the idea of creation is self-contradictory — if the creatures, that is to say, are to be free agents and not merely machines. We must, he contends, either accept the logical consequences of Jonathan Edwards or deny their premise : he prefers to do the latter. " Better the atheism of a lost P'irst Cause... than the atheism of deified Injustice with ' Cf. Lf( t. III. pp. ''>5 ff. 456 Supplenieiitary Notes its election and reprobation by sheer sovereign prerogative'." Very true, but the one vital question to settle first of all is whether or no we are really shut up to these alternatives — forced to relinquish any idea of creation or give up freedom altogether. Despite his impressive earnestness, however, Dr Howison seems not to have troubled himself about this wider question at all. As a pluralist he, of course, disallows the absolutist's version of the world — that the Many are but ' modes or expressions of the sole self-activity of the One.' This granted, he begins by simply assuming that there is nothing left but " the Oriental, Augustinian, monarcho-theistic idea of creation at a certain date by sheer fiat and out of fathomless nothing." From this assumption he next advances to his main position " that creationism must logically exclude the possibility of freedom. For the Creator cannot, of course, create except by exactly and precisely co7iceiving, otherwise his product would not differ from non-entity. The created nature must therefore inevitably register the will and the plan of the Creator^" This is true, but it is at all events not to the point : on the contrary the sentence I have put into italics covertly assumes that this ' plan ' cannot be the existence of a world of free agents. An exact and precise conception of a machine is possible, but an exact and precise conception of such a world is, it is taken for granted, logically impossible. How then do we come to have it ? Dr Howison plays unawares with a double-edged weapon here. For that exact and precise definition of a free agent, which he declares to be a contradiction from the standpoint of the Creator, he regards as essential from the standpoint of the free agents themselves. They subsist only by ' defining or positing ' themselves, at once " in terms of their own inerasible and unrepeatable particularity and of the supplemental indi- vidualities of a whole world of others" — in other words they ^ The Limits of Evolution, 2nd edn, 1905, p. 341 fin. Cf. also above Lect. XX. p. 438. 2 Qp_ ^i( p_ 297. Dy Hcnvisoii ou Creation 457 assign themselves a place in a series " that must run through every real difference from the lowest increment over non- existence to the absolute realisation of the ideal type\" If exact and precise conception leave no room for freedom, what room can be left by unambiguous definition and position in a continuous series ? If Spinoza was right in denying freedom, as we understand it, in the one case, was not Schopenhauer equally right in denying it in the other ? Whether my essentia is really ' posited ' by God or by myself can make no difference to its logical character. If I must cither be a non-entity or 'utterly pre-determined,' like a machine, by exact and eternal specification, it is all one as regards the question of freedom how my essoitia is raised to existcntia. But if I verily am a free being, ' rational and untrammelled, with will to choose unpredestined,' there can be no contradiction in this my essence ; and there is then certainly none in postulating God as the ground of its existence. And such postulation removes a serious difficulty in Dr Howison's own theory, precisely the difficulty in fact that has led us to advance from pluralism to theism. That the world of the Many should verily be a realm of ends if it have in the One its rational ground seems altogether credible. But that the Many should freely posit themselves so as to form a ' spontaneous harmony providing for all individual differences compatible with the mutual reality of all' seems infinitely improbable. In such a vast election how is the precedence settled ? After all Dr Howison, try as he may, does not escape ' the sheer sovereign preroga- tive ' that creation implies. The One and the Many, he admits, " are different and unchangeably different ; they are even different in species'' \ for there is in every finite soul ' a derivative life absolutely foreign to God,' on account of which, for lack of a better name, it has been called a ' creature-.' Dr Howison's initial assumption will strike most people as out of date. The creationism ' of the old theology and of the > Op. cit. pp. 35 1 -4 f. ''■ Op. tit. pp. 429. 363 f- 458 Suppleinentary Notes plodding realist alike ' — as he styles it — so far from being the only one in vogue, has long been superseded. There are but few thoughtful people nowadays who regard the world as somehow made at a certain point of time by the transeunt activity of a so-called First Cause. Such a view I have already attempted to deal with. And now after all, what does Dr Howison himself tell us ? '•'■Real creatioji" he says, " means suck ail eternal dependence of other souls upon God that the non-existence of God ivoiild involve the non-existence of all souls, luhile his existence is the essential supplementing Reality that raises them to reality ; without him they zuould be but void names and bare possibilities'^ !' ' Void names and bare possi- bilities ' in such a context may fairly be taken as a rhetorical periphrasis for ' nothing,' and ' supplementary ' as therefore superfluous : in short God is here unequivocally declared to be the ground of the existence of the Many, Again, in a later passage he says : " The self-existent perfection of deity itself freely demands for its own fulfilment the possession of a world that is in God's own image and such a control of it as is alone consistent with its being so: a divine creation must com- pletely reflect the divine nature, and must therefore be a world of moral freedom^." Surely here it is unmistakably recognised that though — or rather that because — God is the one ground of the world, the Many are free. What then are we to make of the contention that " creationism must logically exclude the possibility of free- dom " ? At first we might naturally suppose that creationism must here be used not with ' the real meaning ' just defined, but in the inappropriate sense of ' the old theology and the plodding realist' that is now discarded by Dr Howison in common with the rest of us. A free agent ' utterly predeter- mined ' as well as a machine not ' exactly and precisely ' specified is, we agree, a contradiction and a non-entity. Plainly then the souls that God ' raises to reality in fulfilment of his 1 The Limits of Evolution^ 2nd edn, 1905, p. xvii. Italics Dr Howison's. 2 Op. cit. p. 75- Dy Ilo-i^isoii on Cyeatiou 459 own perfection and reflecting his own nature ' cannot be either : for all that, the real meaning of creation may remain. But no, it is the real meaning of creation, as we understand it, that Dr Howison declares to be impossible. But how can it be both real and impossible? Obviously one or other of Dr Howison's positions must be surrendered, and, in point of fact, we find him explaining away the first, keeping it to the ear and breaking it to the hope. " Creation has a most real meaning, though indeed not a literal but only a metaphorical oiie'V The only ground of the world, Dr Howison maintains, is ' a principle of connexion between all minds, God included,' and this principle is not ontological but logical and teleo- logical. "As Final Cause, God is at once (i) the Logical Ground apart from which, as Defining Standard, no conscious- ness can define itself as /, nor consequently can exist at all ; and (2) the Ideal Goal toward which each consciousness in its eternal freedom moves-." Now a logical ground cannot be the ground of the existence of anything ; that much surely is certain. Again, to affirm that I am in virtue of my own self- definition or self-position seems only a Hegelian way of saying that I exist of myself and know of no other ground for my being. So far (i) is just the position of the mere pluralist. And so in like manner is (2) : the Ideal there, is only the pluralistic goal, not a reality but an end. We may say indeed that ideals are always final causes ; but to talk of final causes as real is, I fear, but philosophical barbarism. Up to this point, then, it seems clear that Dr Howison has not got beyond ' uncompromising pluralism.' We have seen, however, that it is not only open to the pluralist to postulate the reality of God, but reasonable, theoretically and practically, to do .so. But Dr Howi.son thinks, Kant notwithstanding, that his 'con- crete logic' enables him to supersede postulation by proof, ' Op. cit. p. 392. Italics mine. There is here, I fear, some confusion between symbol and meaninj,', means and end. Meaning is never meta- phorical thou}ih often conveyed by metaphor. - Op. cit. p. 39 r. 460 Supplementary Notes and to resuscitate ' the thrice-slain ontological argument.' This in its amended form he has himself thus concisely summarized : " The idea of every self and the idea of God are inseparably connected, so that if aiiy self exists, then God also must exist ; but any and every self demonstrably exists, for (as apud Cartesiiun) the very doubt of its existence implies its existence ; and therefore God really exists \" But is not the first premise here utterly dogmatic and flagrantly untrue, at least in the form which the present argument requires ? That we cannot have the idea of God without the idea of self is true ; but the converse, that we cannot have the idea of self without the idea of God, Dr Howison, though he is continually asserting it, has nowhere shown to be true. On the con- trary, in one interesting passage, he rightly urges that — as regards knowledge of his existence — God " only takes the common lot of every soul, the fact of whose being must be gathered by all the rest from the testimony of their own interior thought-." Dr Howison then, we may conclude, w^hile rightly dis- allowing the creationism of Augustine and Edwards, along with that of Spinoza, as alike incompatible with the freedom of the created, has not succeeded in providing another in their place. Nor has he shown that the idea of creation advocated in the text involves any contradiction : indeed it would hardly be going too far to say that all that is intelligible on the subject in his own valuable book is really reconcilable with this. ^ The Limits of Evohitioft, 2nd edn, 1905, p. 359. To demonstrate the intuitive certainty of one's own existence, by the way, is a feat of which Descartes was not really guilty. Further, Dr Howison's version is much nearer the old cosmological argument than it is to the ontological ; and it is perhaps needless to add that the cosmological argument, if sound, would be very damaging to him. 2 op. cit. p. 258. 461 III. Relation of Body and Mind. (Lect. XII. pp. 254. 258.) The difference we have noted between the 'functional' relation of subordinate monads to their own dominant and their 'foreign' relation to other dominants, is the prime source of the difficulties that beset dualism, when — assuming two distinct and disparate substances — it attempts to explain the connexion of mind and brain. When, on the other hand, this connexion is regarded from the standpoint of monadism these difficulties seem to vanish, so soon as this difference is clearly recognised. There are two cardinal facts that together give rise to this so-called 'psychophysical problem,' both name and thing. First, there is the psychological fact that neither in perception nor in action is there any immediate experience of brain processes, intervening prior to the one and subsequent to the other. Most human beings live out their lives without knowing that the brain has any connexion with mind at all. Secondly, there is the fact that the physiologist, who traces the centripetal processes, that stimuli set up, till they reach the brain, and then traces the centrifugal processes that next ensue, till they reach the muscles, thereby learns nothing either of the perceptions that follow upon the former, or of the volitions that precede the latter, of these processes. Thus Aristotle — to take but one instance out of many — who knew a good deal about both psychology and physiology, was quite unaware of any connexion between mind and the brain ; which he regarded "simply as a cold, moist and sense- less organ destined to countervail the excessive heat of the heart." Ikit the conferences of psychologists and physiologists have at length placed the intimate correspondence between psychosis and neurosis beyond doubt. The living being, that the psychologist regards ejectively as mind, the physiologist regards objectively as mechanism ; and together the)' find 462 Suppleniepitary Notes that the more complex the mind the more complex the mechanism ; and vice versa. The problem is rightly to interpret this correspondence, so certainly, yet so indirectly, ascertained. At the outset there are two points on which we shall have to insist: one that we may fairly call an established truth, and another that is fundamental for monadism. First, whereas the mechanism that is the one object of the physiologist's study is altogether phenomenal, the mind that the psycho- logist studies is not — as the naturalist vainly strives to maintain — merely phenomenal or epiphenomenal ; since it implies the subject, or dominant monad, to whom such phenomenal experiences belong. Secondly, the real agents, whose appearances alone constitute the physiologists' phe- nomena, are here regarded as monads that minister as subordinates to this subject, or dominant monad. We have then to account for the fact that these monads, which to the physiologist appear as extended matter, Leibniz's materia secimda, are for their dominant monad not in this wise phenomenal at all. In other words, we have — if we can — to explain how, corresponding to the brain that for the physiologist is but a small part of the external world and continuous with it, there is for the psychologist the pre- sentation to an active subject, distinct from it, of the whole of this external world — except, of course, that small part, the brain, presented only to the physiologist. To begin : we note first that the complexity and dis- tinctness of the world, as object for a given subject, vary with its point of view. But the standpoint, or, as we might also say, the rank of a monad depends on its retinue of subordinate or ministering monads. For it, these are not objective, i.e. constituents of its objective world. To become such they must lose their functional relation as ministering subjects and take on that other, the foreign relation, which they have only for an outside observer, like the physiologist ; and at the same time their dominant monad — unless they are Relation of Body ajid Mind 463 replaced — must be impoverished to a corresponding extent. The two relations are in this respect incompatible. And now it is this incompatibility that gives rise to the psychophysical problem, so hopeless for the Cartesian dualism with its disparate substances, and so simple for the personal idealist. We observe next that functionality is the main category of life : it suffices to mark off the organic and individual from the inorganic and its divers aggregations. But, though there is a real analogy between the relation of a subordinate monad and its dominant and the relation of an op-yavov or instrument to the worker who uses it, there is yet an important difference between the two. To the tyro, his instrument is at first a foreign object and nothing more ; but as he masters it, he becomes less conscious of what it is and attends onl\' to what it does. The surgeon, for example, while operating, feels not his sound, but what it is probing ; when he lays it down however, it becomes for him but an object once more. The function of the subordinate monad, then, is more intimate than that of an organ or instrument, literally understood ; for the relation here is not that of subject to object, but rather that of subject to subject. It means all that can be meant by immediate rapport or, as some in these days prefer to sa}' — telepathy. But we get no light on this rapport from our individual experience as such : that it is and what it is, first dawn upon us at the higher level where, over-individual or social ends being present, social 'organization' becomes an object of reflexion'. Here, as already pointed out, we observe cases innumerable of behaviour consequent solely on ' sympathetic rapport ' — between private citizens and public officials, for example'-. These oflncials are persons too, no doubt ; but so far forth ' We have in this one more instance of our knowledjje of the higher enabhng us to interpret the lower. Cf Lect. vii. pp. 145 f. * Cf. Lect. \. pp. 218 f. It is true, as Lotze has remarked, that "there may be many intermediating processes producing the conditions on which this rapport depends"; but if we look closer we find no media- tion so far as the rapport itself is rrincerncd. 464 Sjipplementary Notes as their social functions are concerned, their position is analogous to that of subordinate monads ; and here all interest in them for ' the man in the street ' comes to an end. They are like Mr Wemmick in Jaggers' office, so different from Mr Wemmick with his aged P. at the Fort. Nor has the average man any interest in the technical details on which the effective working of, say the post office or the police, actually turns : he only knows what they mean and confidently relies on their services. Now our social organi- zation secures to its individual members wider acquaintance with their environment as well as fuller control over it than are possible in a more primitive society, and this again more than is possible to the naked and isolated savage. And the like holds good of organisms. Again, in organisms as in societies the cooperation of their members, so far as it is effective, is due to consentience and mutual adaptation rather than to external constraint. Once more, in organisms ' the technical details,' as we have called them — here the neural processes that come before perception and those that follow upon volition — are beyond the individual's interest or ken, till the reflective study of other organisms brings them to light as objective facts. It is in this way indeed that the ideas of organ and function first arise. But these extra-cortical and subsidiary processes, that have no concomitants in the immediate experience of the dominant monad, have still for all that their psychical side ; just as truly as the internal arrangements of the post-office, though unknown to people at large, have their own social rapport. Indeed the facts of what we may call comparative neurology, normal and abnormal, though they admit perhaps of objective description, can, we may fairly say, be interpreted only subjectively. And this biologists and even physiologists are coming to recognise more and more. As the Ptolemaic astronomy was overwhelmed by the complex machinery of cycles and epicycles which new facts led it to assume, so our modern physiology has been encumbered by the reflex mechanisms that have accumulated as the science has Rcldfioii of Body and Mind 465 advanced — a sign to many that a Copernican era for ph)'siology also is at hand'. We may attempt, by parity of reasoning, either to advance from simple reflexes to more and more complex reflexes, keeping that is to the mechanical standpoint throughout ; or to regress from our own level of self-conscious experience to ever lower levels, without for- saking the subjective standpoint. Both attempts have been made; and the first has proved definitely a failure. Therefore some have supposed that possibly, as the complexity advances, the ph\'sical gradually becomes psychical ; but this is to take refuge in what at Oxford they call /ji€Td/3a(Ti<; et? dWo 'yevo/cs of l.Oi^ic, §§ 6 ff.). ■ 470 Sitpplenientary Notes on a certain functional relation to the temporal process of the world's evolution ^ We have passed, in fact, to the contrast between the noumenal and the phenomenal, the spiritual and the natural. The question then arises : How is change related respectively to these opposites ? In dealing with this question we have, of course, to set out from our own experience, and so doing we come at once on Kant's paradox — change pertains only to the permanent and substantial, not to the transitory and accidental". From our standpoint, that of spiritual monism, a succession of events is a change only for an experient : from the standpoint of scientific description it is but a case of alteration. Strictly speaking, then, change for a spiritualistic philosophy implies in general some voluntary action on the part of one or more subjects and some non- voluntary perception on the part of others ; in other words it implies that intercourse which we call life. These subjects, however, are not phenomenal but noumenal. To their efficient activity we refer the phenomenal or natural world, that we perceive as 'filled time' or the course of events. The attempt to represent our experience as but a part of this course was the mistake of the sensationalist psychology of Hume and his successors : they failed to distinguish between alteration and change, between a succession of presentations and the pre- sentation of succession. The content of filled time is doubtless phenomenal, but the reality which is the source of this content cannot be so : the efficient cannot be its own effect. So far, 1 Cf. A. O. Lovejoy, 'The Obsolescence of the Eternal,' Phil. Rev. 1909, p. 490. ^ " To arise and to pass away are not changes of that which arises and passes away. Change is a way of existing that follows on another way of existing of the very same object. Hence whatever changes is permanent and only its state alters iwecJiselt). As this alteration then concerns only determinations that can cease as well as begin [to be], we may say — using an expression seemingly somewhat paradoxical — that only the enduring (the substance) is changed, the variable undergoes no change but only an alteration^ in so far as certain determinations cease and others begin." {Critique of the Pure Reason, First Analogy, Max Miiller's trans, (amended), pp. 164 f ) The Te)iipoyaI and the Eternal 471 time alone, as the abstract form of alteration or succession, is not adequate to represent change as concretely experienced and involving both efficient and effect. So far too, experients are out of time, though functionally related to it — as said already in the second passage of the text. The Hegelian distinction between eternal reality and temporal process then applies not only to God but also to us. But if so, the natural and temporal cannot be exclusively the expression of God's reality ; and, in fact, only the experi- ence that it is — at least in part — the expression of our own, could ever have led us to the idea of God, as spiritual and eternal, at all. But it is proverbial that extremes meet. So here : it is all one to assert with the sensationalist that our life is but a flux of presentations, and to deny with the abso- lutist that in the world's evolution our purposes are expressed. On either view experience becomes utterly inexplicable. If we avoid these extremes, then just as our life cannot be resolved into a temporal flux of phenomena, so the life of God cannot be resolved into the timeless content of an Absolute Idea. Both the living God and his living creatures, we are led to say, have alike a functional relation to the world's process. There will be important differences between the two, of course, and the main difference is obvious at once. Our life is one of development, God's life is always perfect. So far unchangeableness may be attributed to God, as it can be to none beside. We come thus upon a third, what in technical language would be called the axiological, meaning of eternal ; and this raises many difficulties, both as regards tiie divine life anfl our own. In contrast to God, who is blessed for evermore, " Man never is but always to be, blessed " the satirist has said. If on this ground eternal and perfect are fitting designations only of the one unchanging life, are not temporal and imjjerfect alone appropriate to the life that only is life so long as it is change? Hut f)n the other hand, as this life f)f continuous development is the only life that wc know or can understand, can what is eternally or absolutely the 472 Supplementary Notes same, though we call it perfect, be called a life? Nay, if reality implies activity, or in other words 'functional relation to the world's process,' can purely static being be called real at all in any sense that we can understand ? Thus in equating perfect and eternal we seem after all to be back at the Spino- zistic or Absolutist standpoint, where the Many are absorbed and the whole world vanishes. And yet can we be content to say, not only that we are never to attain perfection, but to suppose that — after all — God, if he be veritably a living God, can never attain it either ? Thus we are confronted by two problems : in the case of man to connect progress and per- fection, in the case of God to connect perfection and life. Beginning with the latter — it is plain that the absolutely perfect could not change, if by changing it became imperfect ; for were this possible it could never have been perfect. More- over, if change in the sense of development is the only possible form of life, then absolute perfection must mean a sort of Nirvana or utter quiescence. But unless all activity is essen- tially an imperfection, there is no contradiction in Aristotle's doctrine of pure or perfect activity {evep'yeia dKivr^a-iaq). But it will have to be more than a ' beatific vision,' if it is to be the ground of the world or to have the faintest interest for us. " An ii'epyeia that ever generates the supreme pleasure of self- contemplation {v6r](Ti<; vo7]a€(or it is an obvious contradiction. Yes, to us it may be, some will still contend, inasmuch as we live in time and experience things successivcl)'. The ' Quoted by IJaron F. von Huj,'cl, The Mystical Eletnenl of Rclii^ion^ 1908, vol. 11. p. 24.S. -' A Trinitate, v. i6. Quoted hy H.imilton, RiiiVs Works, p. 976. 474 Supplementary Notes whole point is that the divine experience is timeless, is eternal. " Time is the moving image of eternity," but the movement is illusory, like that of the landscape to the railway traveller. Yes, but there is real movement at the back of this illusion ; and the question at once arises what is the real at the back of ' the time illusion ' } The restlessness and change begotten of want and imperfection, it will be replied. But this is too much at once : both change and defect are real and not illusory, we admit ; for the moment^ however, it is only the former that concerns us. And the admission of the reality of change is enough to dispose of this spectacular theory of time in relation to eternity, and to justify our contention that expectation is not on a par with memory. The only basis for anticipation is past experience ; but though the past is one factor in determining the future, it is only one. There is beside the initiative of personal agents^ to whom the whole filling of time is due ; and who, therefore, are not in time, as phenomena ; though, as noumena they are functionally related to it. Unless then God has preordained all that is to be done, it is surely a contradiction to say even of him that he has such a knowledge of the future as we have of the past. The mention just now of defect and restlessness brings us back once more to the second of the problems to which the conjunction of eternal and perfect gave rise. Granted that perfection and changeless activity are not incompatible, anyhow, it is urged, creatures can never be perfect, for development implies not only activity but change, progress towards perfection, it may be, but never actual attainment. What is perfect is perfect always ; and what is imperfect, how- ever long it last, must be imperfect still. " To exist in time is the same thing as to exist imperfectly," Plotinus is reported to have said, and conversely to exist imperfectly is the same thing as to exist in time. But though perfection does not, strictly speaking, admit of degree ; it is still, we may reply, not absurd to speak of a perfection that is relative to kind. The hyssop and the fir-tree are not necessarily TJic Tempo ya I and the Eternal 475 imperfect because they are not cedars. Unless it were pos- sible for God's creatures to have a perfection of their own, how could perfection be attributed to God himself? Yet in an evolving world none could have it, if all progress as such implied imperfection. But, yet again, what else could we say, if all progress were but a succession of means to an end that ceaselessly recedes and never is actually realised t This dualism of means and end, 'the most mischievous of all dualisms' as Hoffding calls it, is here however out of place. Evolution is not means to an end, it is itself end. " Single moments in a man's life," as Hoffding truly says, "ought not to be merely means for other moments ; past and present merely means for the future. Nor will they be, if work and development themselves retain immediate value and can thus themselves be ends..., The child is then not simply a man in the making ; childhood becomes an independent age with its special tasks and its own appropriate value. In this wise every period of life, every part of the course of time, is to be understood. Then will it be possible in the midst of time to live in eternit)-....' Eternity ' appears then not as the pro- longation of time... but as an expression for the permanence of value during the alteration (IVec/ise/) of the times^" Finally — it is hardly needful to repeat — the active agents in weaving this variegated texture of time are not themselves part of its stuff, do not themselves exist in time. But if what does exist in time is imperfect those who have wrought it must be and must remain imperfect, it will be rejoined. To say this is to judge the future by the past and the whole by the part. Our development, it must be confessed, is not strictly 'orthogenctic ' ; it does not take the ideally straightest path. But it may do so when it is more advanced; and there may be creatures in whom it has done so always or at any rate does so now. And as with God so here perfection will not imply inaction. There may be progress in perfection as well as progress towards it ; thus St Luke ' Philosophy of Relii^ion^ Eng. trans. 1906, p. 56 f. ('amended). 476 Supplementary Notes tells us that "Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man." Such a life of perfect development, that is, of entire accord with the Divine ideal, Christianity describes as 'eternal': "to know God, this is life eternal," It is a life that endures and yet is not temporal. Is there any sense in which we can understand this contrast of temporal and eternal, and if so what ? " The world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." We have here imperfect unsatisfying life, on the one side, as perishing ; and on the other, perfect life as all- satisfying and finally conserved. The one is empty, the other has eternal value : the one is always wearing away, the other abideth for ever. For the ' time-seeking,' ' self-serving ' man, it is said, dooms himself to endless disappointment, whereas the man who loses himself in steadfast devotion to God can never fail. The lapse of time, though quantitatively it should be alike for both, is qualitatively wholly different. Even now, whenever we are satisfied, there is an absorption in the fulness of the present, such that dein GlilcklicJie}i sdiliigt keine Stunde, as Schiller said. Then there is rest, not in the sense of lifeless inaction, for effective energy may at such times be maximal ; but rather in the sense of that i^peybia which Aristotle associates with the Divine evepryeia aKivqaia^;^. It is perhaps this oneness wath the Divine will and this likeness to the Divine constancy that have led to the mystical interpretation of such eternal life as a sort of re- absorption of the creature in the Creator — when time shall be no more. There is truth in this mysticism perhaps ; but, if so, all our attempts to conceive it end, as here, in contra- dictions. To resume then : we have briefly considered three senses in which time and eternity are contrasted, the formal, the ontological and the axiological — if such technical language may be allowed ; but in none can we find any justification 1 Cf. F. C. S. Schiller, op. cit. p. 211 n. TJie Divine Experience 477 for the Hegelian view, that " God is the eternal reality of which the world is the temporal expression " ; unless indeed this is interpreted in such wise as to leave the world genuinely a realm of ends in the pluralistic sense. That, it cannot be, if the temporal is reduced from the phenomenal to the illusory (^from ErscJiciming to Sc/icin, as a German would say); nor if the eternal is raised from the noumenal to the logical, cut off from living activity by apotheosis in the firmament of ideas. V. The Divine Experience. (Lectt. XI. — XX.) This too is an important topic, which — like the last — has been, I am told, in these lectures unduly neglected. In the first plan of them, there was, I may say, to be one lecture bearing this very title. But at one time, the lack of definite know- ledge gave me pause, and at another, the mass of speculation and controversy there was to handle ; and so the lecture was never written. Still, under provocation, I now append a few remarks — and more or less under protest too — since they only bring together what has been already said more or less incidentally in the text. To have experience is to be a person among persons. But we are persons in a world of others who exist in- dependently of us. God is not in this wise a person : and though it be true that he is confronted by the world and active in it, still other persons are not for him merely objective (known through sense and intellection) or merely ejective (known through instinct (^r interpretation). Again, the world for God is the world in its unity and entirety : his is not a perspective view, such as ' standpoint ' imi)lies ; nor is it a discursive view, such as our limited attention entails. God is ubiquitous and omnicontiiitivc, to coin a term, r'inally, self-consciousness and reason in God are 478 Sfipplemetitary Notes not as with us incomplete and intermittent. There are no * broken Hghts ' in him : he alone can say I am that I am. We may then either describe God as super-personal ; or, following Lotze, say " Perfect Personality is in God only : to all finite minds only a pale copy of it is allotted \" Yet the divine creative intuition and the divine knowledge are to be distinguished ; for the knowledge presupposes the creation, and the relation of creator and created involves just that dependence which the relation of knower and known excludes. For knowledge does not posit or constitute its objects, which for spiritualism are the manifestations or utterances of free agents or subjects. Now, if we regard the divine knowledge as knowledge in this sense, and if we can understand it in no other, it seems to follow, as already said-, that what God merely knows is the world as there and as a whole, all that it has been, all that it is, and — being what it is, all that it tends further to become. His purpose or creative ideal is perfectly definite, unchangeable and assured. But the world's future history, the course by which that purpose is to be attained, depends not on him alone but also on the free agents, whom he sustains but never constrains. This course then is not part of his creation ; nor is it, we seem entitled to conclude also, part of his knowledge. Then God, it will be triumphantly objected, does not know what will happen to-morrow, may not even know, if I hesitate between bacon and fish for breakfast, which I shall choose. Yet this retort should not disconcert us : the issue is too serious to make it likely that it can be thus summarily decided. Fore-knowledge of the future is, we may contend, something of a misnomer. It is either not strictly _/i?r^- knowledge or it is not strictly knowledge. The astronomer we say calculates or predicts a future eclipse : but what he calculates is not fore-knowledge and what he predicts is only a probability. If the world ^ Microcosmtcs, E. t. ii. p. 688, 2 Cf. Lect. XI. p. 236 above. TJie Divine Experience 479 were all routine or mechanical, to forecast the future would be possible ; but pure mechanism is an abstraction and is incompatible with the novelty that the real world contains. But even we are not in a state of blank ignorance concerning the morrow, and God, who knows both tendencies and possibilities completely, is beyond surprise and his purpose beyond frustration. If that purpose is verily to allow his creatures some initiative, to associate them as co-workers with himself, it surely must needs imply some self-limitation and some contingency. And now what of the divine activity in view of such limitation and contingency, what of the divine office in the realisation of God's world and ours? It is that Providence " that shapes our ends rough-hew them how we will." That it consists of special interferences we have every reason to doubt ^; but if we call it 'general,' this must be in the sen.se, as Kant said, "that no single thing is left out." But the modus operandi, so to say, here as in creation, is to us inscrutable. We may well believe, however, that, for example, — over and above the natural advance or decline that they entail — all our good deeds render us more, and all our evil deeds render us less, amenable to divine influence or in- spiration : the former thus tending, as Christianity teaches, towards life and light, the latter towards degeneration and darkness. But how God works with us or against in the government of the world, we must again admit wc do not know. But now if this divine experience is to be really experience, living experience, in any .sense that we can at all understand — and to talk of it in any other would be nonsense — the world's history, in which God is present, must surely be more than a mere show or Darstcllung, as Hegel called it, of what in every detail is eternally decreed. Providence, Jacobi has said, is " what, in opposition to Fate, constitutes the ruling • Cf. Lcct. XM. pp. 249 51, above. What is there said a prof>os of Occasionalism applies, mutatis mutandis, to Providence. 480 Supplementary Notes principle of the universe into a real God." The doctrine of prescience and preordination may imply for us only the Christian idea of fate, as Leibniz called it, not the Moham- medan, since we have to act in ignorance of the divine decrees. But that doctrine robs the divine experience itself of all seriousness and assigns to the Highest a role that thousands of earnest and thoughtful men have regarded as altogether unworthy. Even if we rejected the eternal re- probation that is part of it and supposed all to end happily, the whole would still be devoid of any moral value : the actions would be the acting of puppets not the deeds of free persons. And as to the dramaturge himself, we might credit him with a singular hobby, but we could not possibly regard him as the God of the living, the God who is Love. INDEX Absolute, The, ideals of reached by ab- straction, 39-41 ; the world for these superfluous or illusory, 32-6 ; God- and-the-World as the concrete, 241 f. ; objection to this, 242 ; reply, 243 Absolutism (jtv also Singularism), 52, 267 Action, springs of, the contrast of ' extra- regarding ' and ' self-regarding ' too extreme, 342-5 Activity, jf. ; purposive, as presupposing order, 67 f. ; as producing it, 71 f., 75 U 78 Adamson, R., 48 Agnosticism, its so-called Monism, 10; what it overlooks, 413 Argyll, late Duke of, on the Argus pheasant, 188 Aristotle, on Creation, 31 ; his Absolute, 38 ; his practical syllogism, 68 ; on the discontinuity between man and brute, 9 1 ; on disjecta membra, 1 20 ; on efficient cause, 274; on action, 330 ; soul as entelechy of the body, 397; on the brain, 461 ; on perfect activity, 472, 476 Aspects of the world, i f., 430; the natural and the spiritual as contrasted, 2f. , 431 ; the latter as the more fundamental, 10-3, 431 f. Augustine, on predestination, 310 ; on time, 472 f. Bacon, F., on the generating of new natures, 73 ; on final causes, 275 Eagchot, on custom, 358 liahnsen, on Hartniann, 334 «. liain, denied the reality of self, 289 f. llchaviour, 50, 62, 433 ; continuity be- tween the natural and rational planes of, 34^-5 Bcneke <|uotcfi, 29 Bcrgson, I'ruf. II., his ^/att vita/, 238 «.; referred to, 298 >/., 305; on 'concrete time,' 306 »/. Berkeley, his sense-symbolism, 216 f., as divine revelation, 261 f. ; his oc- casionalism, 248, 249 Bionomics, as illustrating pluralism, 56-8 Birth, the problem of, 204 f. Boehm, Jacob, and Hegel, 166, 182 Bosanquet, Prof. B., quoted, 136 Boscovich, his centres of force, 255 f. Bradley, Mr F. H., quoted, i, 24 ; on pluralism, 23 f. , 201 ; on God and the Absolute, 43 f. ; on the idea of potentiality, 108 «. ; on the ideal voluptuary as impossible, 345 «. BufTon quoted on Nature's ' ill-assorted designs,' 86 Caird, E., on monotheism, 30 ; on Aristotle's theology, 32 f. ; on that of Plotinus, 33 ; on the social character of self-consciousness, i28f. ; on selfish interest in immortality, 388 «. Categories, source of, 1 1 f. ; Kant's table of, 228 Causa sia', the Absolute as, 32, 199 ; the Many as severally, 199 Causality, principle of, 275; as a postu- late, 277 Cause, as category, 1 1 ; efficient and occasional distinguished, 75 ; its meanings, 273-5 > '^^ noumenal as cause of the phenomenal, 303 f , 438 Chance, 68, 75, 76, 267, 454 f. Change, 305, 469 ; and alteration dis- tinguished, 470 ; God as, unchanging and yet living, 472 ; and imperfection, 47.3-.^ Chaos, inconceivable, 70 Character, transmission of acquired, 2 1 o ; a man's character and his nature, 286-8, and his objects, 289 Clifford, \V. K., on conscience, 368; his ethics of belief, 413 Collier, A., as anticipating Berkeley, 249 W. 31 482 Index Comte, A., on Nature and Humanity, ■20 ; J. S. Mill on, 134 Conduct {see Behaviour) Conscience, what it means and how it arises, 365-8 Conscious automata, 6 f. Conservation of Mass and Energy, 103, 109; of the organic, 212; of value, 213 ; of momentum, 280 Contingency, 76, 78, 316, 434 ; in the world, an argument for pluralism, 80; illustrated from the useful arts, 80 f. ; from zoology and botany, 81 f . ; analogies between the two, 83 f. ; and the ' Natural Right ' to live, 87-9 ; and the existence of mankind, 89-92; and of particular individuals, 93 f. ; and the physical world , 94-6, 455 ; implies a definite 'domain,' 454 Continuity, the Principle of, 20 ; and Pluralism, 52, 54, 185, 188, 433 Creation, ancient ideas of, 31 f. ; idea of, from the standpoint of pluralism, 191 ; theistic idea of, 231 ; as respects the world, 231-3 ; as respects God, 233 f . ; as ' intellective intuition,' 234 f. ; does not identify God and the world, 237 ; analogous to the originality of genius, 238-40 ; dif- ficulties, 242-6 ; represents God as not absolute, 242 f. ; and so implies limitation, 243 f. ; this, even if self- limitation, incompatible with omni- potence, 244 ; the idea certainly transcendent, and yet not unphiloso- phical, 245 f. Creative Synthesis, 104 f., 434 ; the idea due to Lotze and Wundt, 104 ; instances of, 104 f . ; not appreciated by sensationalism, 105 ; results from the activity of subjects, 105, 106; source of new values, 109 ; secures an increase of directed energy and of determinate structure, 109 Cuvier, ignored evolution, 15 Darwin, C, on connexion of cats and red clover, 57 ; on the variety in Nature, 82 f. ; on Unity of Type and variety of conditions, 84 f. ; on Man's simian ancestry, 89 ; on Natural Selection and progress, 11 5 f. ; thought Sexual Selection would ac- count for animal ornamentation, 188 Death, the problem of, 212-4; for the mere animal, 385 f. Descartes, his dualism, 7, 260, 463 ; his Cogito ergo sum, 45, 460 n. ; on the difference between man and brute, 91 ; regarded mind as substance, 392 ; on body and mind as a sub- stantial unity, 467 Desire, 328-30 ; presupposes feeling, 328 ; its relation to will, 329 Determination, two forms of, 277-9, their difference, 279-81, 438, where- in it lies, 280, are they mutually exclusive, 282 f.; Self-determination, 279 f., 288 f. ; a determining self denied, 289 f. Determinism, and Indeterminism, am- biguity of these terms, 273; thorough- going, 282 f. Direction, as guidance of lower by higher, in f., 280 f. ; two senses of, 280 f. Drews, A., a criticism of Hegel, 165 it. Dualism, 7, 10 Duality in unity, of experience, 10, 26, 430. Duration, 305 f., 468 Eckhart, 34, 39, 43 Edwards, Jonathan, quoted, 308, 312 Effect, compound and heteropathic dis- tinguished, 102 f. ; the latter alone merely quantitative and abstract, 102 ' Elective Affinities,' 63 Empedocles, ' the Newton of organic nature,' 63 Ends, ' Heterogony of,' 79 f., 93, 149, Energy, dissipation of, 203, 360 ; spiritual, increase of, 280 Environment, differentiation of, 61 ; adaptation to and adaptation of, ro6, in; social and physical approxi- mated through habit, 60, 219 Epigenesis, theory of, propounded by Harvey, 98 ; its meaning, 98 ; as 'creative synthesis,' conflicting with theism, 270 f. Equilibration, as implied in Epigenesis, loi, 115 Eternity, as formal, 468 f. ; as onto- logical, 469-71 ; as axiological, 471-6 Eugenics, 94 Evil, no principle of, 131, 376, 439; no ' solidarity 'of, 133 ; physical, as a difficulty for pluralism, 202 f. ; not simply negative, 318, 376 ; problem of, in what sense soluble, 319, 439 ; what in one way evil in another good, 350, 440 ; such relative evil implied in evolution, 351 ; but is the Index 483 evolurion of our \vorld the best ? 35i~3; where the Many have some initiative, contingency seems in- evitable, 351 f.; in this world, it is replied, there are many superfluous CNils, but can this be proved ? },i,i ; so-called metaphysical evil, 354 f., 440 f. ; alleged superfluous evils, 356-60; error incidental to ex- perience may be worth what it costs, 356 f. ; but there are physia\l evils not to be thus accounted for, 357 ; here we have to recognise the con- servative factors of natura naturata, 357-60, 439 ; inevitable dissolution a mistake of naturalism, 360 f. (.S'e'c^ also Moral Evil) Evolution, meaning of, 97 f., 351, 434 ; the earlier theory alone a strict evolution, 98, incompatible with Darwinism, 98, implies pre-forma- tion and a 'block universe,' 99, originated for biology in a mistake of Malpighi, 99; and upheld by the philosophers. Regis, Malebranche and Leibniz, 99, and, as singularistic, by Hegel, 100 ; the later theory of Evolution (s(c Epigenesis), as plural- istic, is here upheld, loi ; beginning of, as inconceivable, 195, 265 f. ; theistic interpretation of, 267-9 '■> objection to the actual evolution of the world, 351-61 Experience, and difierentialion of presentations, 77 ; a definition of, 4(3; the divine, 477 Faith, as 'primitive credulity ' or trust- fulness, 12, 414-6 ; analogies to, in the biological world, 415 f., 448; always ' room for faith ' and need of it, 416; rational belief, its final phase, 416 f., this amenable to logic, 4r7 ; distinct from prudence, 418 ; meaning of rational in this con- nexion, 4i8f. ; practical grounds for theistic faith, 421-3, its theoretical value, 423 ; why only faith, when the nee '" what sense this true, 264 f. Necessitarianism, not |>rovcd empiri- cally, 307; but by many Theists regardeeing, absurd, 226; laudation of Priestley, 287 ; his doctrine of freedom, 292-5, a misapplication of Plato's theory of ideas, 299 ; on optimism, 321 ; on pleasure and pain, 322 f.; on will as insatiable want, 323 f.; on the category of substance, 392 Science, tends to eliminate qualitative variety, 4, 65 Self-conservation, 21, 52 f.; of the Absolute, 216 f. Selfishness, and extra-social sanctions, 132, 422; and social sanctions, 132 f. Self-love, its objective implications, 343 f. ; the subjective implications of the ' extra-regarding propensions ' it presupposes, 344 f. Sensation, pure, 256; in what sense it has a meaning, 259 n. Sensationalism, ignores creative syn- thesis, 105; denies the reality of self, 289 f.; its shortcomings, 290 f. Sidgwick, H., on Hedonism, 340-8; on the ' theistic hypothesis ' as in- dispensable to perfect ethics, 422 Sin, the doctrine of original, 363, 369^ ; meaning of, 370 f. Singularism, 24, 201, 228, 271, 432; of the Eleatics, 46, 47 ; predominant in the 19th century, 49 Smith, Adam, on the rise of conscience. Society, analogies with organism, 1 1 7 f . ; its continuity of a higher order, 1 17, 387 ; nominalistic and realistic views of, 118-20, the result of 'creative synthesis,' i2of. ; as over-individual, 1 29 f. , 44O ; wider than the state, 130; sfjciety and selfishness essentially op|K* ch ;/;•';•■; f' ! • :*i'' ■ ■• ^■«-. -