K^A^ey u c/?^^ Cj. ^.. //rr.M- y/y^/. ,,, ^A^ 19) theology, of (^' 20) the antinomies, of (i^ 21) psychology. ,^ 19. Kant's claim that of three possible proofs of the existence of God, two are false and the third is inadequate. But if the third can prove a limited God, is not this all that is needed ? § 20. The antinomies, the infinity of Space and Time. The thesis inadequately stated, being supported by science as well as by metaphysics ; the proof of the antithesis holds good only of our Ideas of Space and Time, and identifies Space with what fills it. A third alternative in the case of Time, ignored by Kant. § 21. Kant's attack on the reality of the soul ; its assumptions and contradictions. § 22. The origin of agnosticism, a phenomenon of the growth of knowledge. ,^ 23. The transition into Scepticism owing (i) to the impossibility of refuting metaphysics without upsetting science, and § 24 (2) to the self-criticism of Agnosticism. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. XV PAGE Chapter III. ScepticiSxM 57 § I. The meaning of Scepticism, and § 2 its invalid forms. § 3. It must be immanejit and base itself on the irreconcilable conflict of the data of consciousness, e.g., between thought and reality. §§ 4-14. The origin a7idflaivs of the conceptio7is fo7'm' ingthe first principles of science. § 4. They are mutilated anthropomorphisms, and (§ 5) cannot grasp the Becoming of things. § 6. This shown in the case of Time. The fiction of its discreteness. Time measured by motions and motions by Time, a vicious circle. Its infinity and self-contradiction. § 7. Space. Its infinity. Atomism v. , its infinite divisibility. Matter and Space and the Void. Real and conceptual Space and the truth of geometry. § 8. Motion measured by Rest, but Rest illusory. If all motive is relative, what of the conservation of energy ? How can there be potential energy or position in in- finite Space? § 9. Matter, an abstraction. The solidity of atoms does not account for the hardness of bodies. The wonders of the Ether. Action at a distance and inertia. Matter a hypothesis which is not even self- consistent. § 10. Force, only depersonalized will. The interaction of bodies a theory. § 11. Causation, its animistic origin. It will not work unless arbitrary isola- tions and connections are made in the complex of phe- nomena. Even so it involves the difficulties of an infinite regress or of a First Cause, and finally, it con- flicts with free will § 12. Substance, the permanent in change; no proof of this. § 13. Becoming not a cate- gory, but a contradiction to thought, which science can deal with only as Being and Not Being. But Being a fiction, for all things become. So (§ 14) none of our principles can deal with Becoming, because of the radi- cal difference of thought and feeling (reality). The meaning of the a priority of thought. § 15. The characteristics of the Real; individual, substantival, presented, becomes in Time and Space, has infinite content. And of Thought, does not become in Time or Space, but is valid eternally ; abstract, univer- sal, discursive, discrete, adjectival, necessary. Hence, § 16, a harmony of truth and fact, viz., knowledge, is impossible. §§ 17-18. This conclusion is confirmed by logic, both as to judgment, which states ideas as facts, and (§ 18) as to inference, which does not even pretend XVI ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. to correspond with facts. The course of explanation leads away from reality. § 19. Hence the case for knowledge is hopeless. § 20. But yet our assumptions work. This plea only shifts the ground of the argu- ment, and by denying (§21) that knowledge ultimately works in practice, Scepticism passes into Pessimism. Chapter IV. Pessimism 95 §§ 1-2. Pessimism essentially the theory of the inherent perversity of things, rendering all the aims of life illusory. i^ 3. Not based on hedonism ; the belief that life is misery the consequence, not the cause of Pessimism. §§4-19. The Ideal of Happiness. §4. As happiness is complete adaptation to environment, it is impossible in a world of change. § 5. So there is no adaptation to the physical environment — all must die. Nor {% 6) to the social— births, marriages and deaths. Nor (^ 7) is harmony attainable in the soul — inherited discords and incompatible claims. Life for the individual a fruitless struggle, with a certain prospect of defeat. §^ 8-10. The prospects of the race no better, either physically, § 8 ; socially, § 9 ; or psychologically, § 10. Owing to the rapidity of the changes in the conditions of life, our feelings are survivals from obsolete modes of life, and conflict with our reason. Our bodies still less har- monized with our duties. ,^ 11-17. The evidence for Pejorism, the growth of misery. ^ 12. Evidence that the physical organism does not adapt itself quickly enough to changed conditions. Increased sensitiveness to pain, and diminished power of recuperation. Death itself evolved. § 13. Material progress renders spiritual misery possible, and (§ 14) provokes social discontent. § 15. The social environment has grown too fast, and so (§ 16) has the discord in the soul, most obviously (§ 17) in the case of the sexual feelings, which have re- tained an excessive strength from animal times, although the smaller waste of life renders it needless. They are fostered by society, but their wholesome gratification becomes more and more difficult. Consequent growth of immorality and misery. ^18. The evolutionist arga- . ment for Meliorism : adaptation must prevail, for the imadapted die, — § 19, unless the nature of things is ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. XVll PAGE SO perverse that the environment changes more rapidly tlian adaptation takes place. § 20. The Ideal of Goodness. The moral value of life would only aggravate its misery. But goodness is as impossible as happiness : depends on the proportion between the moral ideal and actual conduct. If then the moral ideal is capable of infinite growth, it is un- attainable, and we fall farther and further short of it. § 21. The Ideal of Beauty. The sense of beauty the least developed ; its conflict with the other ideals ; makes us sensitive to the ugliness of ordinary life. § 22. The Ideal of Knowledge. It, like the rest, re- quires a fixed environment, and so baffled by the Be- coming of the world. § 23. But the success of Pessimism may be due to the rejection of metaphysics. BOOK IL Chapter V. Reconstruction . . . . .133 § I. Result so far to prove that metaphysics alone can answer Pessimism, though, § 2, even that will only be an alternative. No direct answer to Scepticism or Pessimism possible. But if philosophy can solve all the • problems of life, it may be esteemed successful. The three great characteristics of life to be accounted for. § 3. The one indisputable fact and basis of philosophy, viz., the reality of the Self. Attacked in vain by Hume, and by Kant (§ 4). § 5. The Self as the concrete union ' of thought and feeling rises superior to the sceptical attack on knowledge, and suggests that the ideals of thought are nearer to truth than sensible reality, and that the change of the real may be due to its striving after the ideal. § 6. The necessary anthropomorphism of all thought ; choice only between good and bad. § 7. The bad either false or confused. § 8. The confused anthropomorphism of science, and, § 9, the ideal of true anthropomorphism : to show how all things are of like nature with the mind. Chapter VI. The Method of Philosophy . . .148 § I. Epistemological and psychological methods must be rejected, as they do not take the mind in its historical context. Hence, § 2, the method must be either meta- XVIU ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. physical or pseudo-metaphysical. ^ 3. The latter mis- applies the methods of science to ultimate questions. But (i) the principles of the sciences involve contradic- tions which philosophy has to solve. And (2) this method explains the higher by the lower, which is im- possible, and then denies the higher. (3) Its strength lies in its appreciation of the continuity of things and its accumulation of data. § 4. The metaphysical method rightly protests against the explanation of the higher by the lower, but merely asserts their difference^ while their cotmection is wanted. § 5. By denying the con- tinuity of higher and lower it either regards them as antagonistic, and ends in dualism and pessimism, e.g., Platonism, or, § 6, it ignores the lower altogether, like the Eleatics and Hegel. § 7. The fact is that the method is abstract, and that tirst principles which are abstractions are all false, all the more (§ 8) when they are picked up at random. § 9. The true method is metaphysical, but concrete. It explains the lower by the higher, but admits their connection. Metaphysics to be derived from the sciences. § 10. Its difficulties; (i) scarcity of precedents, § 11 (2) Our imperfect know- ledge of the lower, and § 12 (3) Our imperfect attain- ment of the higher, which remains unimaginable to the lower. § 13. These defects limit its achievements, yet, g 14, much light may be derived from the new data of science. Chapter VII. The Metaphysics of Evolution i^ I. The theory of evolution, like all others, must be based on ultimate principles, i.e.., metaphysics. § 2. It is a special case of the historical method, which assumes the reality of history, and so of time. Also (§ 3) that the past has caused the present, and that things have had an origin. But how if causal connexion is an illu- sion, and the infinity of time renders a beginning incredible ? Hence the historical method assumes a real beginning of things, or at least of their history. 5:; 4. Evolutionism shares these assumptions, and adds the assertion that history proceeds from the simple to the complex. § 5. By erecting this fact into a itniversal principle evolutionism becomes metaphysical and philoso- phic, as in Spencer. § 6. Evolution as a history of all ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. XIX I'ACE things, and so involving a sort of teleology. § 7- But in what sense is a history an explanation ? The three results of historical explanations, an inexplicable datum, a passing into something else, or an origination out of nothing, and, § 8, ultimately they all resolve into the last. § 9. The logical necessity of this process illus- trated by evolutionist theories, and §§ 10-12 most com- pletely by Mr. Crookes' theory of prothyle, and of the genesis of the elements. § 13. Does it refer to a historical event or assert an eternal process? If the latter, the mechanical cosmogony of evolutionism would be complete. § 14. But prothyle is indistinguishable from nothing. The genesis and dissolution of atoms a couple of miracles. § 15. Hence historical evolutionism must be supplemented by metaphysics, and it must be admitted, § 16, that it is really successful only when it derives the actual from its germ or potentiality, as explained by Aristotle. § 17. Though in Time the potential comes first, metaphysically the actual is prior. i§ 18. So prothyle, as the pure potentiality of the whole phenomenal world, implies a prior actuality, i.e., a non- phenomenal cause of its evolution, and so a transcendent Deity becomes necessary, of whose purpose the world- process is the working out. And as its earlier stages are more remote from that purpose, the true significance of things lies in their end, and all explanation is ultimately teleological. § 19. The necessity of teleology is also derivable from the analysis of the conception of a pro- cess, for, § 20, a process is necessarily /w//^, and so the world, if it is in process, must have a beginning and an end in Time, with reference to which fixed points all events must be arranged teleologically. § 21. But this teleology does not lend itself to abuse by human con- ceit, nor is it incompatible with scientific mechanism, which it supplements but does not supersede, being itself based on scientific data. § 22. Yet it can only gradually work down to the lower facts. ?^ 23. The process -can not be everlasting, nor, § 24, alternate in cycles. This idea due (i) to the difficulty of grasping the reality of progress, and to the confusion of our world with the totality of existence, and (2) to ignorance of the nature of eternity. §25. Summary. XX ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. PAGE Chapter VIII. Formulas of the Law of Evolution. 212 § I. Evolutionism asserts that the course of the world conforms to the conception of a process. But a process of what ? § 2. Mr. Spencer's formula — true as far as it goes, but inadequate, ij 3. Von Hartmann's formula : not applicable to the inorganic. § 4. The perfection of the societies of the ants and bees. But, § 5, it is attained by the sacrifice of the individual and of the possibility of progress. § 6. This suggests that real progress concurrently develops the individual and the social medium. ,§ 7. Shown in actual society, in the division of labour, ^ 8, in the growth of knowledge and science, § 9, in military strength, i^ 10, in social inter- course, and .§ II, may be traced also in the earlier stages of human evolution. ^12. Apparent exceptions. Caste States have higher social structure, but repress individuality. Greece sacrificed the family to the State, but could not control the individual. Rome secured the self-subordination of the individuals, but made them too mediocre to find any one who could adapt the Roman training to a universal empire. § 13. Among animals both individuality and sociality are at a lower stage. § 14. In plants and the lowest animals individu- ality becomes j too'faint to be any longer distinguished from the social medium. Perhaps dependence on it has here become a physical bond, as, ^ 15, is certainly the case in inorganic nature, where physical combination is the analogue of society and individuality is evanes- cent. § 16. In the evolution of chemical substances, the most complex came last, though before life. But even in the elements there are signs of individual differ- ences. §17. The /r^ri 27. God immanent as well as transcendent. Can be in all because not = all. §28. Our conception of the Divine Power really heightened by this view : its practi- cal value. § 29. Why pluralism must be theistic — a Deity required to guide the world-process. § 30. Pluralism not Polytheism. , Chapter XI. Immortality 375 § I. The unreasonable attitude of men towards the subject. Do they really desire to believe in a future life? >^ 2. Is such belief really desirable? Its dangers and advantages. ^^ 3. Can the question be settled by an appeal to facts in the shape of ghost stories, etc. ? Facts which are not reasonable carry no conviction. §§ 4-13. But the reasons on both sides are inadequate, (a) In favour of immortality. § 4. (i) The religious argument. § 5. (2) The argument from moral necessity ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. XXV FACE and the postulates of feeling. § 6. (3) From dualism and the different natures of body and soul. This ends in materialism, or in the. immortality of a universal Soul, which is not personal. §§ 7~^3- {^^) ^^^^ argiDiients against immortality. % 7. (i) Materialism. § 8. (2) The self-evidence of death. But we know what death is only from the point of view of the survivors, and, taking an idealist view of the material world, this is insufficient. § 9. (3) The gradual evolution of consciousness : either all beings are immortal or none. § 10. This objection to be answered only by a doctrine of gradations in immortality, corre- sponding to those of consciousness. § 11. Practically a future life dependent on self-identity and memory. § 12. But memory is a matter of degree. Immortality proportioned to spiritual development. § 13. Objec- tions. §§ 14-76. The metaphysical basis for the belief in immortality. § 14. Its only secure basis in the plurality of ultimate existences, whose spiritual evolution inspires the material evolution. §15. Their relation to our phenomenal selves. The latter phases in the develop- ment of the former, which persist as factors in that development. The immortality of the good and transi- (_ toriness of evil. ^16. This theory meets the chief difficulties. • §§ 17-25. Elucidation of difficulties. % 17. Pre- existence, confirmed by Darwinist account of the "descent of man." §§ 18-22. Pre-existence and Here- dity. § 18. Not incompatible, owing (§ 19) to the possibility of double causation. § 20. Examples of this. § 21. Hence the scientific and the metaphysical views both true. § 22. The significance of heredity. .§ 23. Do several phenomenal beings correspond to a single ultimate spirit ? Evidence in favour of this view. § 24. Especially in the existence of Sex. A metaphysic of Love. § 25. Yet this does not afiect the ultimate ideal. Chapter XII. Conclusion 431 § I. The relation of the world's evolution to ultimate reality. § 2. The ultimate aim of the process — the perfectioning of a society of harmonious individuals. XXvI ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. ^ 3. If SO, its starting-point must have been a minimum of harmony. This implies a precosmic state, when no interaction, and hence no world, existed. It preceded Time and Change, and does not admit of further in- quiries. § 4. The end of the world-process — in the attainment of perfect harmony or adaptation — the per- fection and aim of all the activities of life. Distin- guished by its metaphysical character from the Becoming of the time-process, a changeless and eternal state of perfect Being. This includes a solution of all difficul- ties, evil, Time, divergence of thought and feeling, etc. §§ 5-1 1. The 7iatiire of Perfection. % 5. It is con- scious, but not self-conscious. § 6. It is perfect Activity rather than Rest, Being rather than Not-Being, Heaven rather than Nirvana. The conception of the Ideal as the perfection of activity, held by Aristotle. § 7. The analogy of perfect motion. § 8. The content of the perfect activity of Being cannot be ithagijied, but only conceived, as it is an ideal of thought which lacks all analogy in sensuous experience. But if reality reahzes the ideals of thought, i.e., if the world is rational and knowledge possible, the ideal of Being must be realized. For it is implied in the assumption of all thought that what becomes is. But it must be experienced and can- not be anticipated. § 9. Hence it can be described only as the perfection of the activities of life, and yet transcends them. It is perfect goodness, knowledge, beauty, and happiness, and yet something more. § 10. It is all-embra . - else its harmony might be destroyed. Hence the existii imperfection of the world reflected in the divine cc.isciousness. The expression of this principle in philosophy and religion — the sympathetic suffering of Christ The world-process a redemption of all beings. § 11. It is attainable, as a real process does not admit of infinite approximations. ^12. The ultimate answer to the problem — the world- process leads from timeless Not-Being through temporal Becoming to eternal Being. § 13. Yet this answer is hypothetical, and only gives an alternative to Pessimism, for the final rejection of which (§ 14) Faith in the ration- ality of things is required ; demonstration must issue in belief. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. XXvIl PAGE. Appendix. Freedom and Necessity .... 459 ^ I. The difficulty as usually stated insoluble, as (§ 2) both terms have several senses. § 3. The difficulty really one about the nature, not of the will, but of caus- ation. § 4. This shown by fact that both determinists and libertarians ultimately arrive at indeterminism. >^ 5. But the question has been wrongly put, for to explain the will by causation is to explain the prototype by the derivative. The assumptions made. § 6. Causation and necessity strictly applicable only to the will. Neces- sity should mean the feeling of compulsion, § 7, when, like Freedom, it would be a psychological fact. Free- dom and Necessity as correlative, and both abnormal. § 8. For the maximum consciousness of either involves an unhealthy mental condition, while thorough degrad- ation is unconscious of either necessity or freedom. § 9. This is the condition of inanimate nature, the Be- coming of which is neither necessary nor free. But we read causal necessity into what simply happens. § 10. But as there is a state beneath morality and freedom, so there is one which transcends the consciousness of a freedom and necessity, viz., perfect wisdom and perfect virtue. So both necessity and freedom are defects of a nature only partly rational, and would vanish together in perfection, i.e., at the end of the world-process. BOOK I. R. otS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. \ I. The attempt nowadays to solve afresh the world-old problems of philosophy will doubtless be thought to require some apology : for though there has never been an age in which the desire for such solution has been more ardent, or the need greater, there is none also in which the faith in its possibility has been fainter. It is an age which professes to have despaired of the ultimate problems of life with its lips, whatever the secret hopes it may cherish in its heart ; it is an age in which a theory of what we can not know has usurped the name of philosophy, in which science is defined as the knowledge of the manifestations of the Unknowable, in which, even in religion, God has become an unknowable Infinite, and Faith has been degraded into an unthinking assent to unmeaning verbiage about confessedly insoluble difficulties, instead of being the. prescience that forecasts the future beyond what is rigorously justified by the data as yet given, the pillar of flame that points out the path of the soul beyond the limits of unaided sight. And so we are brought face to face with the curious and unnatural phen- omenon that an age which has witnessed greater triumphs of the human mind than any that preceded it, should have despaired more completely of an answer to its highest questions. 4 INTRODUCTORY. In view of this anarchy of the intellectual com- monwealth, the aim of this essay will be threefold. Its first design will be to record a protest against the current despair of a theoretic understanding of the meaning of life, a protest for which it should, even if unsuccessful, deserve at least the thanks which the unyielding constancy of the Roman Senate bestowed upon the general who had brought about the catastrophe of Cannae, for not having despaired of the republic. Secondly, it aims at tracing the far-reaching consequences of this super- ficial and apparently unimportant despair of philo- sophy, and tracking it to its ultimate foundation in utter pessimism and complete negation. Thirdly, its main object will be to put forward a sketch of a possible solution of the great problems of philo- sophy, which may, it is hoped, claim to proceed from a new combination of the old materials, to reconcile the present antagonism of several import- ant ways of thinking, and to afford to its conclusions a more or less considerable degree of probability. And this probability will assuredly be materially enhanced if it can be shown that these conclusions, possible in themselves, are consistent with one another, and capable of combining in a systematic and organic view of the whole world, of giving a complete answer to the problem.s of life, an answer which, it is hoped, may be found to satisfy not only the desiderata of knowledge, but also, substantially, the aspirations of the human soul. To absolute certainty its conclusions do not pretend ; for cer- tainty does not exist outside of the abstractions of mathematics and of the barren sphere of formal logic. In science and in practical life probability is all-important, and hence any answer to the ques- THE DESPAIR OF PHILOSOPHY. 5 tion of life cannot be more than probable. And in action especially we are often forced to act upon slight possibilities. Hence, if it can be shown that our solution is a possible answer, and the only pos- sible alternative to pessimism, to a complete despair of life, it would deserve acceptance, even though it were but a bare possibility. But, though human minds vary greatly in their estimates of indefinite probabilities, it may perhaps appear to some to be far more than a possibility, and to be based on prin- ciples which will be confirmed by subsequent ac- cumulations of material, even when, as must be expected, its minor details are proved erroneous by the growth of knowledge. The contention, then, of this essay is, that the prevalent despair of philosophy can not be justified. But though it cannot be justified, it may be ex- plained, and its explanation is the first step towards its refutation. § 2. Religion, philosophy, and science have all contributed to discredit the possibility of a theory of life. With regard to the first, it must be admitted that its present position is a not undeserved Nemesis on its past policy. The alienation from religion of so much of the best thought of our times, and the consequent discord in the ranks of the all too scanty army of the fighters for righteousness, is deplorable but not astonishing ; for the short-sighted leaders of the religious masses have too often abused their position ih' favour of obscurantism, have too often burked inconvenient questions by sophistical evas- ions. Professing themselves the depositaries of divine knowledge, they have too often cast a doubt upon its value by confessing to ignorance concern- ing the vital issues of human life. They have 6 INTRODUCTORY. seemed to possess too little real faith in the eternal truth of the principles of religion, to admit that their creeds were but human formularies, which, JMst because they contained divine truth, could only be transitory and impermanent receptacles of the changeless, i.e., could be true only in idea and not in formula. And so, instead of perceiving that in- spiration is as necessary to the successive interpre- tations of divine truth as to its original statement, and that hence it required to be constantly re- modelled and re-stated, in order to take in the new aspects of truth which the progress of the world re- vealed, they have clung to the lifeless letter of their worn-out creeds, until they have driven to despair all who believed that truth was one and indivisible, and that if there was, as alleQ^ed, an irreconcilable conflict between faith and reason, this must be due to the errors of a reason which so unreasonably in- terpreted the demands of faith. Philosophers, again, have been too prone to de- clare insoluble problems which they had not yet the data to solve, too much enslaved to a false method to utilize the fresh data offered them by the dis- coveries of science, too ready to profess that they possessed answers where they had none, and could only conceal an arid vacuity of hopeless negation in endless swathings of ambitious and ambiguous phrases. The disgust at such deceptions could not but generate estrangement from philosophy in men's minds, and deliver them over to unauthorized guides, who boldly proclaimed that physical science alone could answer the questions philosophy had aban- doned. But if philosophy was futile, reflection too soon showed that science was helpless and hopeless. It depended too obviously upon unproved assumpt- / POSITIVISM. 7 ions, which ought to have been established by philosophy, but which were left at the mercy of every chance objection. Hence science, starting without criticism from the metaphysical assumptions of ordinary life, has never been able to give an answer to ultimate questions that could appear ad- equate to those that had the least perception of the real point of the difficulty; and many of the scientists themselves have been wise enough to admit this limitation of their subject. And so, being conscious of their limits, they deprecated any inquiry which transcended them. § 3. As the net result of these influences, there has arisen a *' positive " frame of mind, which con- fines itself within the limited horizon and grey tones of the known, and renounces all ulterior and ultimate inquiries. And so long as this positivism aims at nothing beyond the production of a state of feeling, we cannot but applaud its tendency to a wise limitat- ion of our aims, and admire the enviable happiness of lives that present no problems which the known data cannot solve, no desires which the known facts cannot satisfy, no restlessness of discontent which drives them beyond the phenomenal. But when it attempts to raise a most serviceable but rare temper of mind into a dogmatic injunction, and to assert as a universal fact that philosophy is irrelevant to practice, that things as they are can and ought to content us all, that the practical life can be lived without reference to ulterior theories, it is necessary to join issue. § 4. Can the practical life really be lived without answering the theoretical questions of philosophy ? Are the riddles of the Sphinx the idle pastime of deluded fancy ? Does the wise man turn his back 8 INTRODUCTORY. Upon them and go his way, his ears sealed against them as against the allurements of the Siren ? This is, alas, impossible. The Sphinx is seated in the soul of each man, and though we endeavour to be deaf, their penetrating sounds, more subtle than the Siren's song, will search us out and ask — What then art thou ? And to her riddles we may not gainsay an answer : it was no false myth that symbolized the mystery of life in the figure of the " Strangler," whose cold embrace constricts the warm elow of life, and stifles by degrees the voice of hope. Thus life depends upon the answer, and death, spiritual and physical, is the penalty for him that answers wrongly. We are the subjects of the Sphinx, and often too her victims ; and it is neither right nor possible for us to evade her questions. For it may boldly be affirmed that the speculative impulse, both in its origin and in its inmost essence, is practical. It sprang from practical necessities, and it is still concerned with them. The ultimate questions of philosophy are what we come to when we follow out/their conclusions, the practical problems of life : they concern the theory upon which all practice is based. And the neglect of the theoretic foundation of life ultimately ruins its whole fabric, and leads from agnosticism to the despair of scepticism and pessimism. The question — ^What is life .-^ — is not propounded by the idleness of a leisure hour, but by the most pressing realities of life, and must be de- cided in one way or another in every action. And in order to know what life is, we must inquire into its whence and whither ; we are exercised about the past and the future, in order to know what use to make of the present. And the threefold riddle of the Sphinx is merely the articulation of the question, THE PROBLEM OF LIFE. 9 What Is man or what is Hfe ? — and concerned merely with the relation of man to his Cause, to his Environ- ment, and to his Future. The questions of man's relation to God, to the world, and to immortality, are the three great problems of philosophy, to which all other speculative inquiries are subsidiary ; and in a sense the three are one. § 5. And this ultimate unity of life, which it is the business of philosophy consciously to restore, was unconsciously foreshadowed by the origin of its problems. The material Sphinx is the oldest of the extant monuments of human labour, and was a mystery even to the old-time builders of the pyra- mids. But the spiritual Sphinx, its archetype, is older still ; it is as old as reflection, as old as know- ledge, and, we may be assured,' will last as long. And knowledge is one and indivisible, and an inte- gral portion of life. For in order to live we must know, and knowledge sets us the problems of which philosophy essays the solution. Our solutions, it is true, must be imperfect until the end is reached ; but is it not sufficient that our errors should progress- ively approximate to truth ? If we can bring our- selves to believe that an impulse so deeply rooted in our nature, so intimately bound up with all our knowledge, as that of speculation, can be an illusion, intended to misguide us, and destined never to be satisfied, what must we think of a world so ordered to delude us ? What but that it may contain such ineradicable illusions elsewhere also ? For philo- sophy does not arise self- sought from idle wonder and vain speculation. The wonder, to which Greek thinkers were fond of attributing the origin of philo- sophy, is an essential characteristic of the mind, or rather, it is the inevitable reflexion of the action of lO INTRODUCTORY. external nature. And if, In an age in which science loves to pry into the origins of all things, it were once to turn its attention to its own origin, it would quickly appear that the origin of science, philosophy and reh'eion was to be found in one and the same fact, the fact that the world is so constituted that we can not In thoughtless content acquiesce in what is given. The perplexity, with which thought starts on Its road to knowledge, Is forced upon it from without. So far from its being true, as Aristotle said, that man naturally desires knowledge, It is rather the case that man is originally as lazy and unlnquiring as the beasts, and that the necessity of knowledge Is hardly borne In upon him by the stern struggle for existence. Primitive man could not acquiesce in the chaos of phenomena, because its improvident and thoughtless acceptance meant death. Then, as always, knowledge was power, and to survive, man had to understand the world he lived in. And so the first steps in knowledge were directly necessitated by external pressure, and the primitive theory of life was the first reaction of thought upon its environment. And as such It contained, in an undifferentiated whole, the germs of activities that have since drifted far apart. Aiiirnism Is the first theory of the world, and out of it have differentiated science, philosophy, and reli- gion. The single basis of all three was the "anthro- pomorphic " assumption that all things were to be interpreted on the analogy of what man conceived to be his own nature, and hence supposed that volit- ion was the cause of motion, and that all events were to be ascribed to the action of personal spirits, with wills as capricious as man's own. § 6. This theory was the basis of religion. In PRIMITIVE ANIMISM. I I that men feared and attempted to propitiate the spirits that conducted the operations of nature, al- though Animism can hardly yet be called a religion. It is not until some subordination is introduced into the spiritual chaos, which corresponded to the mater- ial chaos in the thought of early man, that real religion is evolved. But as the underlying simil- arity in the operations of nature came to be per- ceived, the numberless spirits aggregated into gods, and a god of fire presiding over the whole depart- ment, took the place of individual fire-spirits acting every time a fire burned. Thus Animism passes into Polytheism, and, as the consciousness of the uniformity of nature grows, into Monotheism, unless the derivative law of causation so obscures the personal volition fromwhich it sprang as to make personal agency seem impossible, when there takes place a direct transition into Pantheism. § 7. Animism is also the origin of philosophy, •for the volitional theory of causation is also a theory of the ultimate truth about the world. § 8. It is also the origin of science, for the spirits are also the efficient causes of phenomena, and the physical changes of the world are explained by their volitions. Thus while religion was rapidly differ- entiated from philosophy and science by the growth of an emotional factor, passing through fear and propitiation into worship, philosophy and science remained united much longer. The theories of the physical and of the metaphysical, the working theories of the actual appearances of the environ- ment, and of its ultimate nature, remained identical or closely connected. It is only in comparatively recent times that the independent growth of the physical sciences, the accumulation of facts, the 1 2 INTRODUCTORY. validity of which could not be affected by any meta- physical interpretation that might be applied to them, together with the mutual contradictions of philosophic theories, has produced the semblance of their complete separation, and suggested the idea that science and metaphysics are two inde- pendent and mutually irrelevant branches of know- ledge. But should we not rather cherish the hope of a final reconciliation of these three speculative activities, of such a harmony of all the elements of thought as is worthy of their common parentage, and as will enable all in the end to subserve in unison to the attainment of the perfect life ? May not the appearances of the world be connected with its ultimate nature, i.e., science with meta- physics, and may not the true religion be but the emotional aspect of the true philosophy ? To such a consummation these discussions may perhaps in some measure pave the way ; they may contribute some material to bridore the Sea of Doubt, to mark a track across the Slouorh of De- spond, and thus to smooth the rough paths of virtue ; nor need we be dissatisfied if our successors trample under foot the stepping-stones we have collected, and thus at length attain the promised goal. § 9. We have seen hitherto that no serious de- fence of the positivist attitude could be made on the ground of its desirability. It could not seriously be maintained that it was better in itself for us not to know anything beyond our present environment. It turns out to be impossible to separate the "posit- ive knowledge" of science from its metaphysical presuppositions ; it was an undertaking justified neither by their common origin nor by the essential POSITIVISM IMPRACTICABLE. 1 3 solidarity of knowledge. For in the subsequent course of its development knowledge did not belie its origin. There has been no age when the Sphinx could be evaded, when the answers to her riddles were not of transcendent importance to life. To escape these questions proves neither possible, nor perhaps, right. For if there is any meaning at all in life, the philosophic impulse also cannot be devoid of its significance, nay, of a significance proportionate to its antiquity, its persistence, and its vital import- ance. To the question, therefore, of Positivism — Why should you seek to know? — we may give the 'answer — Because we must and ought. It is futile to bid us confine ourselves to this present world of phen- omena, and to assure us that the question as to the nature of God and of our future need not be raised. The world of phenomena, the sphere of positive science, is not self-supporting, self-sufficing, and self- explaining, it points beyond itself to a reality which underlies it, back to a past from which it is de- scended, and forward to a future it foreshadows. Man can not understand his own nature and that of his existing environment, the twofold aspect of a single fact, except by a reference to their previous and prospective conditions. Life cannot be lived now except in connexion with its past and future. And this, we shall see, is literally true, since the consistent attempt to take the world as it is, to con- fine ourselves to the given, to exclude all ulterior inquiries, inevitably leads to pessimism, i.e., to the utter neo^ation of life. Positivism, therefore, i.e., the assertion that philo- sophy is unnecessary and useless, cannot maintain its position: it must either vanish or transform itself. 1 4 INTRODUCTORY. It is merely the first stage in negation, and negation finds no rest until it has sunk to the lowest depth. And Positivism, especially, finds it very easy to pass into Agnosticism, with which it is indeed frequently combined. § ID. Granted, it may be said, that a knowledge of God and of a future life would be of all thines the most desirable, of all knowledge the most pre- cious, and that the search for it is irresistibly sug- gested by the constitution of things, it does not follow that it is also possible. It was, perhaps, a well-meant deception to maintain that philosophy was not needed, intended to console men for the fact that it is impossible. The rejection of meta- physics was put on the wrong ground : the assertion that they did not exist should have been supple- mented by the proof that they could not exist. The consoling sophism that philosophy is a matter of indifference having been falsified by the concern men display about it, and the simple assertion that we do not know having proved insufficient to repress the pertinacious questionings of the philosopher, it is now time to assert that we can not know, and to exhibit the illusoriness of metaphysics and the im- possibility of answering the ultimate questions of philosophy. This is the task which Agnosticism sets itself to prove, and we shall consider its achieve- ments in the next chapter. It will then appear that it succeeds only by suggesting a doubt of the com- petence of human knowledge, which cannot be con- fined to the sphere in which it started. It calls up Scepticism from the abyss of negation, and is ab- sorbed by a greater and more powerful spirit of evil. Scepticism, in its turn, can establish its case only by allying itself with Pessimism, and in Pessimism the POSITIVISM PASSES INTO AGNOSTICISM. 1 5 last disguise is thrown off, and Chaos once more swallows up the Cosmos. The second Book will be concerned with the rebirth and regeneration of the world by means of metaphysics, and the elaboration of the method of philosophy ; the third will apply the principles laid down to the solution of the problems of philosophy. CHAPTER II. AGNOSTICISM. \i. \j nder the head of Agnosticism may be included all doctrines concerning the inherent insolubleness of certain questions, or inherent limitations or de- fects of the human mind, which, precluding from the knowledge of certain departments of existence, leave something unknowable beyond the barriers of possible knowledge. And where agnostic assertions are not made in the light-hearted contempt of ignorance, where an iorrioi^amtis is not the real basis of the cry of ignor- abimiis, we may distinguish two species of rational \Agnosticism. And looking at the character of the philosophies which have upheld them, we may call these two forms of Agnosticism the scientific and the epistemological. For though their general tend- ency is the same, there is a slight difference in the method of their argumentation. Scieyitific Agnost- icism infers a region of the unknowable from the indefinite and seemingly infinite expansion of know- ledge : epistemological Agnosticism is based rather on a consideration of the relativity of knowledge to the knowing faculty, and suggests that the limits of objects do not correspond to the limits of our knowledge of them. As types of these two agnost- icisms we may take Mr. Herbert Spencer and Kant ; INIr. Spencer as the representative of scient- ITS TWO KINDS. I 7 Ific and Kant of epistemological Agnosticism. And since somewhat different objections apply to each, it will be well to consider first the arguments against Agnosticism generally, before dealing with the special pleas of its chief exponents. And thus the exposure of the flaws involved in all forms of Agnosticism will finally drive it to seek refuge with Scepticism. § 2. The first objection which may be made to every form of Agnosticism is, that it is impossible on practical grounds. It supposes that we can take up a position of suspense of judgment, based on a theoretical recognition of their unknowableness, with regard to the great principles which underlie the practical life, and need neither afifirm nor deny them in action. This is really a re-assertion of the positivist plea that they were immaterial to practice, without the excuse positivism had in its ignorance of their importance. But such suspense of judg- ment is quite impossible. If we were purely think- ing beings, it would obviously be the right attitude towards matters not known. But as we have also \ to act, and as action requires practical certainty, we must make up our minds in one way or the other, and our acts must belie the professions of our theory. No agnostic can live for five minutes without indulging in acts involving a belief or dis- belief in some of the unknowables he had solemnly forsworn. Questions such as the existence of God and the future of the soul cannot be treated as practically ihdifferent ; and the life, if not the theory, of the agnostic must practically answer them in some way or other. Just as men arrange their lives differendy according as they believe them- selves to have one year more to live or fifty, ac- R ofS. Q 1 8 AGNOSTICISM. cording as they possess a powerful patron or are thrown on their own resources, so Hfe must be ordered either on the assumption or on the neglect of its indefinite prolongation and divine care. And the acrnostic writers themselves afford this practical contradiction to their theories, though their idiosyncrasies lead them to adopt different sides of the alternative. Thus Mr. Spencer's Agnosticism practically denies the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, in spite of all his theoretical protests that he has merely referred them to the Unknowable. Kant, on the other hand, in a manner which would be comical, if it were not concerned with such serious issues, and which has brought upon him much ridicule, deliberately refutes his theor- etical agnosticism. He avowedly rehabilitates, by means of the Practical Reason, the doo^mas he had invalidated by the Theoretic Reason. Hence he avows his personal belief in a God whose existence he had shown to be indemonstrable, in a future life for which he had asserted there could be no evidence, and in a freedom which he had admitted to contradict all causation in Time. The one thought which seems never to have suggested itself to him is, that the Power which was capable of playing such pranks upon its creatures, capable of devising a Theoretic Reason, destined by the es- sential constitution of its nature to irreconcilable conflict with the practical necessities of life, was hardly a fit object of our reverence or trust. The fact is, that this demand for an impossible suspense of judgment is based upon a confusion of scientific and philosophic certainty. In science, certainty = great probability, and impossibility = an off chance ; and hence in pure (as opposed to ab- CERTAINTY REQUIRED FOR ACTION. 1 9 stract^ or applied) science certainty is neither fre- quent nor necessary. But in philosophy, which is the science of life, we require from our theory practical certainty in addition to its theoretic probab- ility, a^nd as we must act, we must act often on - very slight probabilities. . While science, therefore, must remain conscious of all sorts of improbable and barely possible theories, seeing that they may Ny suggest fruitful experiments and so enlarge the bounds of knowledge, philosophy, when it has once decided on the right solution, must sternly and rigorously put aside all its rivals, even though its choice was originally arrived at by a very slender preponderance. It must act and act without waver- ing and without hesitation, as soon as its initial inquiry has been concluded, nor allow itself to be easily dismayed by difficulties or deterred from following its principles to their consistent conclus- . ions. " Philosophy, at all events, cannot serve both God and Mammon. Any inconsistency and any hesitation is bound to be false, whatever theory of life is true. Such a thing, therefore, as a provisional 'theory of life would be absurd. How different is the course of merely theoretic science : upon all disputable points, it may, nay must, keep any number of provisional hypotheses before its eyes, and must be slow to decide in favour of one or the other ; it must be for ever doubting and testing, and, if con- venient, may even adopt conflicting explanations in different branches of its inquiries, and trust to fresh 1 Such as e.^. geometry. As its subject-matter is ideal Space and not the Real at all, all its assertions must be certain and necessary. But the necessity of mathematics is simply an ex- ample of the necessity possessed by all thought as thought [cf. ch. iii. § 15]. \ 20 AGNOSTICISM. discovery to resolve the contradictions of its work- ing hypotheses. The patient temper which does not reject the remotest possibiHty that may throw light upon a subject, which, as in Darwin's case, is not ashamed to try absurd experiments which it is ashamed to record, is that which has led to great discovery. The mental at-titude in short required in scientific research, is the very opposite to that required in a theory of life ; and in philosophy there is no room for the scientific suspense of judgment. From this point of view, then. Agnosticism is simply a misconception of the limits of science and philosophy, and its practical impossibility is fatal to its claims to be a theory of Life. \ 3. But it is also open to grave theoretic ob- jection. It involves in every case an argument from the known to the unknowable. • For unless the assumption of the unknowable is purely gratuitous, and so refutes itself, there must be somethincy in the constitution of the known to lead us to infer an unknowable. But such an inference from the known to the unknowable is a contradict- ion. For that very inference creates a bond be- tween the known and the unknowable, and to this extent renders the unknowable knowable. If we can know nothing else about the unknowable, we can at least know that it is the cause of the known. At the very least, the known is its manifestation, the " phenomenon " is the appearance of the '* Noumenon." ^Thus the connection between the known and the unknowable is in the same breath both asserted and denied. The primary statement of Agnosticism explicitly asserts, but implicitly denies, the imposs- ITS SELF-CONTRADICTION. 2'! ibillty of a transition from the known to the unknow- able. It is the vagary of aa insane logic- which from its very nature refutes- itself. It is as imposs- ible to credit its initial assertion as it was to believe the Hibernian wlio asserted that he- was dead. If, therefore, the assertion alone of the unknowable implies that it is not wholly unknowable, what busi- ness have we to call it the unknowable ? But this is not all. All reasoning that does not confine itself to- aa analysis of the logical necessities of our thought, must be based upon some real evid- ence, must have some ground from which it draws its conclusions. But if so) that evidence must have a determinate character, which must affect its con- clusions, and which may, if we choose, appear in them. The inference as to the existence of a thine may often be so much the most important as to be the only one we care to derive from our evidence, but in itself it says least. An existential judgment cannot be made unless we have grounds for assert- ing very much more than bare existence. Either we have no grounds for asserting the existence of a thincr at all, or we have orrounds for assertine a certain kind of existence, an existence of a deter- minate character. It "follows from these general principles of reasoning, that, in this case also, the evidence on the strength of which we inferred the existence of an unknowable beyond the known, can never justify an inference merely to the bare exist- ence of the unknowable. That inference must to some extent reveal the nature of the unknowable ; it must present us with some hints of its attributes or qualities ; the character of the unknowable must to some extent appear in its action. And so the paradoxical result ensues, that we really find our^ 2 2 AGNOSTICISM. selves in possession of a good deal of knowledge about the unknowable. Indeed it has been plaus- ibly remarked, that, in the course of Mr. Spencer's philosophy, we are afforded far more information about the Unknowable than the combined efforts of revelation and theology have yet given us concern- ing God.^ § 4. And there is no way by which Agnosticism * can escape its fundamental contradiction. Either the nature of the known does not justify the infer- ence to an unknowable beyond, or, if it does, the unknowable ipso facto becomes knowable. All that any reasoning can ever prove is the unknown ; but no valid process of thought will carry us from the unknown to the unknowable. Aornosticism has here mistaken the unknown for the unknowable, and imao-ined that because the known could sucrcrest o 00 the unknown, it could also suggest an unknowable • beyond itself But this is a paralogism. The known can sug- gest the unknown, and there is nothing extraord- inary in the existence of the latter, because know- ledge is fragmentary, and reality points to realities beyond it : we have problems that are not solved, and facts that are not independent. But unsolved problems are not on that account insoluble, nor are unknown facts unknowable. . Science may become conscious of something beyond the known, because ^ The Unknowable lias a liigh character in Mr. Spencer's philosophy. It is orderly and considerate in its habits, and always *' conserves " the same amount of its various " manifesta- tions" in the world. This is all the more estimable, as if it did not do this, if e.g. it suddenly took to manifesting itself as mind, instead of as matter, or vice versa, it might very easily make knowledge impossible. NO EVIDENCE FOR THE UNKNOWABLE. 23 the facts suggest it, but they can never suggest that it should be unknowable. For the fact that the unknown persists in spite of the advance of knowledge is insufficient to prove it unknowable ; it is a phenomenon which must persist until knowledge is completed and the un- known is exhausted. Nor can we lay serious stress upon Mr. Spencers argument that the circle of " surrounding nescience " grows with every advance of science. Not only is the truth of this statement doubtful, but its importance is slight. For a finite unknown can never grow into an infinite unknow- able, and even its growth is due only to the mis- taken practice of explaining the more known by means of the less known. If we work down the pyramid of knowledge, and regard the lower know- ledge as the deeper, we shall necessarily find that the lower layers are more extensive. § 5. But there is no real warrant for the assert- ion that either our thought or its objects display an inherent necessity to plunge into an infinite process, the only plea which could to some extent excuse Agnosticism. There is no infinite process implied in the exist- ence of things, for existence is the highest category of the Real, and a thing cannot be more than a fact. Prima faciCy therefore, there is no need to go beyond the fact ; a harmonious fact is as final to knowledge as it is to action. Its existence needs no explanation. If, therefore, a fact is asserted to be inharmonious or incongruous, the burden of proof lies with those who are not satisfied with hings as they find them, and the unknown and un- satisfactory element has to be demonstrated in each case. And in an imperfectly-evolved world such 24 AGNOSTICISM. thought-provoking facts must be common, but they will not justify the assumption of an essentially un- knowable element — not unless the ideal of complete adaptation, of a completely congruous system of facts be renounced as an illusion. Neither is an unknowable infinity latent in thought. Our search for explanation does not go on to infinity — on the contrary, an infinite regress of reasons is no reason at all — but only until we reach some really or apparently self-evident principle. If therefore our principles were always self-evident, and our facts always harmonious, there would be nothing to suggest a mystery beyond the actual, either of knowledge or of life, no hint of an un- known, and still less of an unknowable, working behind the veil. If a self-evident certainty of knowledge and a self-sufficing harmony of life be the ideal of our theoretic and practical activities, it is clear that they have no sympathy with a restless and endless striving after the infinite. The infinite region of the unknowable, which is supposed to border knowledge, is nothing, and can gain no support from the fact that our knowledge is, like all things, limited. For as we shall see [§ 7], a limit does not imply anything beyond It, and the infinite is only a negation, the ideal limit of the finite [cf. ch. ix. ^ 3]. Hence we may console our- selves with the reflection that even if a real limit to knowledge existed, our thought could never dis- cover its reality. It would always regard it as an ideal limit* not as something beyond the known, but as the illusion of the self-transcendence of knowledge. . § 6. It has been shown then that the assertion of any unknowable Is self-contradictory, and that COLLAPSE OF THE UNKNOWABLE. 25 knowledge, no matter what Its difficulties may be, can never afford any positive ground for the as- sumption of an unknowable. But if agnostics per- sist in their assertions as a matter of faith, without having any positive basis of evidence, we may request them at least to make their. theory consist- ent. If they gratuitously assume an unknowable, they must at least purify their assumption from an illusory reference to reality. If any connection with the known degrades the unknowable into the known, that link must be broken. The agnostics must pass over for good into the region of the unknowable and unthinkable,, and burn their boats. They must make the separation between the unknowable and our real world complete, and carry k out consist- ently. They must no longer be allowed to base anything upon the unknowable, to make it the ground of anything actual, the cause of anything real, the reason of anything rational. They must no longer be alk)wed to. decorate their first principle with an initial capital, for to spell it with [/, is to liken it to reality in the known world, to attribute existence to it, to make an adjectival negation of knowledge into a substantive fact ; In a word, to hypostasize it. They must be prevented from say- ino- even that the unknowable exists, for existence also is a predicate of the known world. Rigorously, the only statement they can be permitted to make is, that it is unknowable, and has no connection with the known. • But this proposition would suggest nothing to our minds, just as nothing can validly suggest It to them ; if we could hold the self-contradictory hypothesis that the unknowable existed, we should yet have to . admit that its existence could never be discovered. 26 AGNOSTICISM. And if such consequences of his doctrine do not convince the agnostic that an unknowable, which is truly unknowable, truly out of relation to the known, is nothing, nothing ever will. § 7. The inherent contradictions of the agnostic position generally having been exposed, it becomes necessary to point out the flaws in the special argu- ments of Mr. Spencer and of Kant, and to detect the weak points in the "antinomies" in which they have sought to enmesh the human reason. Spencer's positive arguments in favour of the assumption of an unknowable, if indeed they should be called arguments rather than metaphors drawn from a mistaken comparison of knowledge and Space, have been already, to a considerable extent, dealt with. It is not true that science is " a gradually increasing sphere in which every addition to its surface brings us into wider contact with surround- ing nescience." Neither is it true that *' at the uttermost reach of discovery there arises, and must continue to arise, the question — What lies beyond ? " or that " we cannot conceive any explanation pro- found enough to exclude the question — What is the explanation of that explanation ? " It is indeed true that "positive knowledge does not, and cannot, fill the whole region of possible knowledge," if under "possible knowledge" we in- clude, as Mr. Spencer apparently wishes us to include, every casual question of fools and madmen. But no sane thought will argue on possibilities that everything might have been different from what it is, or trouble itself to consider the consequences of such absurd assumptions, nor will it seek an explan- ation of the self-evident, nor, when it has reached THE FINITUDE OF KNOWLEDGE. 2 J the ultimate fact, will It stray beyond it into the shadowy region of fiction. But if the argument concerning the infinite pro- cess of thought cannot be regarded as more than a mistaken metaphor from Space, the argument which follows rises to a positive fallacy from the same source. Mr. Spencer says : ^ ** To think of the First Cause 2S finite ( = limited in power) is to think of it as limited. To think of it as limited^ necessarily implies a conception of something beyond its limits ; it is absolutely impossible to conceive a thing as bounded ( = limited in space), without conceiving a region surrounding its boundaries." We have ventured to emphasize by the use of italics the curious transition from finite to bounded by means of the ambiguous middle term, limited, for it is on this that the argument depends. Boundaries are, of course, frankly spatial, and Space is, of course, in some sense infinite (ch. Ix., § 2 ff.). But the limited is used not merely in a spatial sense, but also, more widely, In a sense to which spatial analogies no longer apply. Every boundary Is a limit, but not every limit Is a boundary. Limits exist in thoughts and feelings as well as In Space. When the stupidity of a sensational novel reaches the limits of his endurance, Mr. Spencer does not perceive a black line on the paper. Or again, a process of Inference is limited by its premisses and its conclusion, but these are neither straight lines nor crooked. Again, it Is not one of the difficulties of a limited liability company that it is necessarily sur- rounded by an infinite ocean of liabilities. It Is not true, then, that in thought a limit, necessarily and 1 "First Principles," p. 37. 28 AGNOSTICISM. as such, implies anything beyond it : the not-known remains a merely logical possibility, an empty figure of speech, devoid of real content : it can lend no help to infer the real contrary of knowledge, the unknown, and still less does it involve the un- knowable. ^ § 8. But Mr. Spencer, after the fashion of agnost- ics, lays far more stress on the indirect than on the ^ Mr. Spencer, when hard pressed for reasons in favour of a positive unknowable, does indeed make use of another argument (" First Princ," p. 88), which respect for his other achievements must make his critics reluctant to dwell on. He suggests that ** besides the definite consciousness of which logic formulates the laws, there is also an indefinite consciousness which cannot be formulated . . . and which is yet real as being a normal affection of the intellect." Is not this a clear confession of the extra-logical character of the agnostic's faith in the Unknowable ? And there has been nothing like this ''indefinite consciousness," invented to know the Unknowable, since the days when Plato declared that Not-Being was vd^o) Xoytcr/xw aTrrdr, to be grasped only by spurious reasoning I And the spuriousness of its nature seems to affect also the arguments in its favour, for a little further down we find Mr. Spencer contending that "an argument . . . which assigns to a term a certain meaning, but ends in showing that this term has no such meaning, is simply elaborate suicide. Clearly then the very demonstration that a definite consciousness of the Absolute is impossible unavoidably presupposes an indefinite consciousness of it." Has Mr. Spencer never heard of the method of reductio ad ahsurduin^ and does he regard the fourth propos- ition of the first book of Euclid as -a suicidal argument?- And does he seriously think that " the very proof that a definite consciousness of Unicorns or Chimeras is impossible, must necessarily involve an indefinite consciousness of them" ? And would the proof of the fictitious character of unicorns really destroy in his min^d the reality of their " correlative," all two- horned animals ? It would have been better if in matters of logic, one of the few subjects to. which he could, not claim to have made any important addition, he had followed, as in the rest of his arguments for Agnosticism,, the guidance of Mansel and of Hamilton. IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH EVOLUTION. 29 direct argument for the unknowable. And it is, of course, always possible to produce considerable effect by parading the real difficulties of metaphysics. But here again there are plenty of unknowns but no unknowable, plenty of unsolved problems and some which are doubtless insoluble if perversely stated, but none which can be declared insoluble in themselves. And least of all can Mr. Spencer assert that these problems are insoluble without being false to his own principles. An evolutionist must surely be the last to believe that any problems need remain insoluble because they have not hitherto been solved, the last to restrict by a dogmatic prohibition, even in thought, the boundless possibilities of future development. Indeed the raison d'etre of this essay is to show how evolution may lead to the solution of many of these apparently insoluble questions. A great part of Mr. Spencer's content- ion may indeed be accepted without qualification. The contradictions m the. conceptions of Matter, Motion, Rest, and Force are insoluble, and fraught with dire consequences to all knowledge when manipulated by the sceptic (ch. iii.'§ 5-8). They can be justified only as relative conceptions which must be transcended by metaphysical inquiry in the search for ultimate truth: Space and Time, again, present real difficulties and will cause us much trouble. The impossibility, on .the other hand, of treating the Self as an object of knowledge and of finding the ends of the thread of consciousness ^ will turn out a fortunate and serviceable fact. § 9. Mr. Spencer's account of the problems of ^ " First Principles," p. 66. 30 AGNOSTICISM. self-existence and causation, on the other hand, deserves closer attention. He rightly says that we must assume self-existence somewhere, and infers that we may as well assume it of the world as of a transcendent deity and cause of the world. Nothing- is gained by accounting for the world by a self-existing God ; we have merely needlessly multiplied entities. And either theory is equally unable to satisfy our demand for a luJiy : we can as little tell w/iy God should exist as why the world should : we must seek a cause of the existence of God just as of the world. It will be seen from this that Mr. Spencer admits that we are prhia facie entitled to ask the why of the world and the cause of its existence, but considers our demand futile, because the same de- mand may be renewed upon any answer we may get. It will be necessary, therefore, for any one asserting the self-existence of God, while denying that of the world, to make a distinction between their cases, which will justify their different treat- ment. And it is not perhaps so difficult to make such a distinction as it might at first appear. It was shown above (§ 5) that our thought does not possess a futile craving after infinite explanations, but that its inquiries must in every case be suggested and provoked by something outside it. The impetus to thought is given by the discordant aspects of facts. We do not ask the why of a fact, unless the fact is so constituted as to provoke us to this question. If, therefore, we raise the question of the why of the world, this is not due to some gratuitous vagary of our thought, but to the fact that the world is so constituted as irresistibly to raise this question. THE PROBLEM OF SELF-EXISTENCE. 3 1 Hence it does so, not in virtue of being a world as such, but in consequence of being a world of a certain kind, with a certain character which prompts us to ask certain questions. It is because the world does not appear to be self-caused, that we ask for its cause. And conceivably the answer we gave to this question might be the vision of a fact that would not, when reached, arouse in us the same desire to ask the reason why. If, therefore, our conception of the Deity as the cause of the world, substituted a harmonious fact for a discordant one, a truly concordant cosmos for the conflict of unin- telligible chaos, we should have succeeded, not merely in postponing, but in actually solving the problem. But is the theory of the causation ot our world by a self-existent Deity such a solution ? This is at least possible ; for while the self-existence of the world is inferred from its character to be im- possible, and its existence is felt to require an explanation, that of God may eventually be seen not to require explanation. At all events the ex- planation is not an immediate necessity, and in the course of evolution many things no less wonderful may happen. Thus the question of self-existence and the conception of causation may be relative to an imperfect world still in the process of its develop- ment ; and together with the imperfection which xirove us to seek a cause of the existent, the category by which we sought to explain it may itself disappear. The conception of causation may become simply inapplicable and unmeaning in a state of perfect adaptation (ch. xii.). For it is bound up with physical Becoming or change ; and as in the case of perfect adaptation, the organism and the environment would be in such complete correspond- 32 ' AGNOSTICISM. ence that each would instantaneously respond to every change in either ; and as there would hence be no interval of imperfect adaptation, no change could be perceived and no consciousness of change could arise. And without consciousness of change there would be no occasion for the use of the conception of causation. It is impossible, therefore, for an evolutionist, consistently with his principles, to maintain that any conception must remain what it now| island Mr. Spencer, while half admitting this, is really trying to combine two irreconcilable views when he says : ^ " The ideas of cause and origin, which have been slowly changing, will change still further. But no changes in them, even when pushed to the extreme, will expel them from consciousness. . . . No more in this than in other thino^s will Evolution alter its general direction." But how, we may reasonably ask, can Mr. Spencer tell from the general direction of evolution in the past, that the relation of our conception of causation to self-existence will not undergo important and radical changes ? And may not a continuous change in degree finally amount to a change in kind ? Not only will these conceptions change, but they may be wholly trans- formed or become wholly otiose, because nothing would any longer correspond to them. Thus, in a state of complete adaptation or " Being," there would be no Becoming, i-e., no chancre for which it was needful to discover a cause. (Ch. iv. § 4, xii. § 4.) And this is the real reason why our present changing world is felt to be explained, when it is referred to a self-existent Deity as its cause. For 1 In the volume on Sociology in the International Scientific Series, p. 309. IS A FIRST CAUSE CONCEIVABLE ? 33 God is conceived as in a state of *' Being," and even when not regarded as perfectly unchanging, He has attributed to Him at least that amount of permanence or Being which is implied in self-identity. We find, therefore, that when we inquire, not into existence in general, but only into that special portion of it which constitutes our world, a self-existent God may explain it in a way in which it could never explain itself. § 10. And a similar solution may be given to the parallel difficulty concerning the cause of the First Cause. Mr. Spencer urges that the assumpt- ion of a first cause is futile, because we must con- tinue to ask for further causes of the first cause ad infinitum, and somewhat unjustly regards the diffic- ulty as one in the * metaphysical ' conception of a first cause instead of in the * scientific ' conception of causation generally. And yet the conception of a first cause represents only an attempt to escape from the difficulty of the infinite regress which is inherent in every form of causation. Whatever, therefore, it proves, is proved against the use of the conception of causation generally, Le,, the drift of the argument is sceptical and not agnostic. And, as a matter of fact, a First Cause, if the meaning of the term is properly limited, is open to rather less objection than an ordinary cause. If it is taken as an absolute First Cause of all things, it is indeed unthinkable, whereas a relative first cause of our phenomenal world may turn out a conception both valid and useful. An absolute First Cause of the" universe as such (aTrXw?), is absurd, because it is a supposition which would explain nothing, and would only contradict itself. It could not explain the Becoming or cause R. of S. D 34 AGNOSTICISM. el^the changes In our world. For there could be nothing either within or without it to cause it to be the cause of the world at one time rather than at another. For if there were anything that could thus compel it to become a cause, that something would itself be the first cause. Whatever, there- fore, the condition of the First Cause happened to be, it would remain for ever, without change, alike whether no world existed at all or whether myriad worlds were mirrored in its dream. Since, then, the world exists, it must always have existed. But if it has always existed, it has not come into being, and hence it has had no cause. And not only does this result contradict our premiss, that a first cause of the world existed, but it does not even appear how an. absolute first cause could be a cause at all. For, as the cause of the All would be all, the sum of its existence could neither be increased nor diminished : it would be equally all- embracing, whether the world existed or not. It could gain nothing then by the creation, and lose nothing by the destruction of the world : it would contain nothinof that could determine it at one time to create, at another to remain in motionless absorpt- ion in itself. The changes, therefore, of our world are not in the least explained by such a cause. (Cf. ch. X, § II.) If, therefore, we put the First Cause of our world = a First Cause of all things, the result is confusion, and the collapse of our conception. But no such consequence need follow if we regard the First Cause as the cause merely of our universe, not of the totality of existence. The question as to the cause of the First Cause may then be met by the suggestion that to a non-phenomenal First Cause KANTS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 35 the category of causation, to which the difficulty Is due, is not applicable in the same way as to the phenomenal causes of physical science. § II. The Kantian Agnosticism, to which we must next direct our attention, has proved as stimul- ating to philosophers as the Spencerlan has been comforting to scientists, when afflicted with* doubts as to whether a rational interpretation of their first principles was possible. And just as the discovery of the Unknowable appeared to the one the crown- ing achievement of human knowledge, so it has seemed to the others a discovery most important to knowledge that we could not know certain subjects. Indeed, the whole of post- Kantian philosophy seems to be occupied In persistent but futile attempts to wriggle out of Kant's conclusions while accepting their basis, or in expounding the meaning of an argument so subtle that only a born metaphys- ician could make his way unaided through its ob- scurities. And as complete success, either in establishing the Kantian case, or in making It wholly intelligible to the world, would destroy the whole occupation of philosophers, it Is perhaps fortunate that they have not committed the happy despatch by doing the only thing they supposed themselves entitled to attempt. The difference between Spencerlan and Kantian Agnosticism may be roughly formulated as being, that while the former declares knowledge impossible because of Its knowledge of the Unknowable, the latter does so because of Its knowledge of the Im- potencies of our knowledge. By Kant, the possib- ility of metaphysics Is denied, not because of the infinite complexity of things, begetting an infinite process of knowledge, but because of the faulty '36 AGNOSTICISM. constitution of our minds, and the limitations of our faculties. It is not that things actively elude our minds, but that our knowledge cannot reach them. Its activity cannot penetrate to the real nature of things, or disturb the serene calm of their essences, the "otium cum dignitate of the thing-in-itself." We can know only appearances, not the ultimate (which is also the real) nature of things. In Kantian language, our knowledge is only of pheno- mena not of Noumena. § 12. Now, as we have already pointed out il 3~6)» t^^ absurdity of making unknowable realities, the causes of phenomena, it is here merely necess- ary to point out how this assumption, in Kant's special form, is refuted by himself, and contradicts his own clearly enunciated principles. Kant himself lays great stress on the fact that all the categories or fundamental conceptions of our knowledge have a value and a meaning only relat- ively to the world of our experience, in his own phrase, are '' of Immanent application." Now chief among these categories are the conceptions of Sub- stance and Cause. Hence, on Kant's own showing, the unknowable Noumena can be neither substances nor causes. And yet, unless they are both, we can neither say that they are, nor that they are the causes of phenomena. They are not substances, i.e., they do not exist, they are not causes, i.e., if they did, they would explain nothing. It remains that they are nothing, and that Kant's doctrine of the unknowable Noumena Is a mistake. That this is so, has been generally admitted by all competent critics of Kant ; but it is astonishing that this result should have led so few of them to question the soundness of the basis from which Kant was able to reach such absurd conclusions. FORM' AND matter; 37 § 13. Kant's great discovery, in his own estimat- ion was, that the inquiry into the nature of our knowing faculty must precede actual investigation. We must discover how we can know, before we examine what we do know. This is the gist of the famous Criticism, and the basis of a theory of know-- ledge which substituted " epistemology " for meta- physics. But though this undertaking is apparently simple, it involves several assumptions which are no longer admissible in the present state of our know- ledge. § 14. It involves, in the first place, the assumpt- ion that-the Form and Matter of knowledge can be separated : that the growth of the Matter does not affect its Form, and that hence it is possible to examine the knowing , faculty independently, and that any conclusion arrived at concerning it will hold good of all our knowledge for all time. For, unless all possibilities of valid inference can be determined v/ith absolute certainty, in consequence of an exhaustive analysis of their forms, it is evident that the future course of knowledge cannot be pre- dicted. And yet, even as a matter of pure logic, it seems that no such separation of Form and Matter is possible. The " pure forms " collapse as empty abstractions when it is attempted to treat them as independent realities. The '' laws of thought" by themselves do not work nor lea.d to real knowledge. Even in logic, thought turns out to be an organism in which form and matter imply each other, so that each grows with the growth of the other. And when we go on to the principles of actual investigation, it appears still more clearly that we can never know until we try. The process, which is fruitful of results, cannot be predicted beforehand, but only analysed after the event. And every such o 8 AGNOSTICISM. result In some way modifies the principles from which we started, and the method by which we reached it. Thus, the application of the Historical Method to biological science has not only been most fruitful of results, but it has reacted profoundly upon the method itself, and changed the whole course of sociological inquiry. We cannot know, then, Jiow w^e know, except in dependence upon what w^e know. The theory of knowledge appears only from its practice, and it is a prejudice to think that it can be prejudged. § 15. And the Kantian separation of the form and matter of knowledge is not only vicious on general grounds, but the w^hole epistemological standpoint is utterly irreconcilable with the modern conception of the world as an evolution. The Kantian theory of knowledge is able to assert that the mind can never do certain things, because it claims to have g^iven an exhaustive account and a complete classification of the powers and impot- encies of the human mind. But how if the mind which it analyses have not the dead fixity of an artificial machine, but be a living organism with boundless capacities for de- velopment ? How then, can any classification of its faculties be complete or conclusive ? How can one analyse the latent germs which have not yet reached the surface ? how foretell the future growth, ^ even,^ of what yet lacks its full development ? Why, even the impotencles of our minds may be potentialities prescient of future powers ! And these suggestions are so far from being unverified analogies from other spheres of knowledge, that we can already actually trace some startling changes in the development of our categories. (Ch. iii, § 10.) EVOLUTION V. EPISTEMOLOGY. 39 It would be more to the purpose If, instead of attacking others, epistemology looked to Itself, — If, instead of interfering with metaphysics and psy- chology, it raised Its own stock question about it- self and considered 'how,* If at all, 'epistemology was possible.' § 16. The epistemological standpoint, then, is false, because it makes no allowance for the growth of- the faculties of the mind which it attempts to analyse, and so it can not establish unknowable limits to thought, nor prove anything against the possibility of metaphysics. But it is also so im- potent in itself, and so Inherently futile that it can- not, legitimately and in accordance with Its own principles, even attempt any attack upon meta- physics. It is not only false, but barren. To establish a proposition which may appear somewhat startling, let us recollect why the Kantian doctrine of Nolimena broke down. It broke down in attempting to pass from phenomena to thlngs-In- themselves. And It broke down because it attempted to transcend itself and to Ignore the limits of its method. It may be asserted further that epistem- ology must break down whenever it tries to trans- cend Its limits, and that it Is yet under constant temptation to attempt this, because if it does not and keeps within its proper limits ^ it is utterly useless. § 17. For it professes to be nothing but an " Immanent criticism of experience," an account of what is " implied In knowledge." What is implied In this attitude, however, Is, that It can neither generate nor criticize actual knowledge. Given actual knowledge, " Criticism " can analyse it, can tell us what is implied In it. It can show us what categories we have used, and how the "forms of 40 AGNOSTICISM. thought " are combined with the matter. It can re- arrange the factors in knowledge and show us the logical connexions of its elements. But it can do no more. It can bring to the surface what is concealed in the depth, it can render explicit what was implicit, but it can create nothing new. It can neither account for the origin nor judge of the ultimate validity of any actual bit of knowledge. For to do so, it would have to cease to be " im- manent," to cease to deal with the logical elements ''implied in knowledge," and to reach real facts. But if it dealt with real facts, actual instances of knowledge, it would become a science like all others, psychology or something of the sort, and would cease to be the theory and criticism of all knowledge. If, on the other hand, our theory of knowledge claimed to deal with ultimate existences, it would, like the Platonic theory of Ideas, become a meta- physic.^ But of course it would be absurd to assert that the series of logical elements, the ''a priori forms of intuition and thought," such as Space and Time, Cause, Substance, Interaction, etc., were actual existences, and not abstractions '' implied in reality." ^ T. H.Green in his " Prolegomena to Ethics " makes what looks like an attempt to do this, and comes very near asserting it. He talks about a " metaphysic of knowledge," but does not venture, like Hegel, to put it forward definitely as absolute metaphysic. His "spiritual principle implied in nature" is rather our means for infernng the Absolute than the Absolute itself ; it does not attain to the dignity of a hypostasized abstraction, although it strongly suggests one, and remains an epistemological ambiguity. Still it is often difficult to remember that all Green's statements must be taken in an epistemological sense, especially when he " theologizes," and declares that individuals are only parts of the " eternal self-consciousness," a statement that ought not to mean anything more than that they exemplify the use of the category of self-consciousness. THE AMBIGUITY OF A PRIORI. 4 1 And SO epistemology remains in the air, a great mist, as it were, suspended between science and metaphysics, and makes ineffectual attempts to come into contact with both. But this is intrinsically impossible, and all it does is to obscure the issues between science and metaphysics, and by the fog it raises, to prevent the combatants from meeting, and either fighting out, or, as is more probable, com- posing their differences. Its contributions to the question of the relation of science and metaphysics are always irrelevant and often misleading. For whether it be its misfortune or its fault, epistemology is in the habit of using terms in a, peculiar sense of its own. When we are told, e.g., that '* the conception ot cause is a priori and cannot be derived from ex- perience, because it is the presupposition of all experience," or informed that. " an eternal self is the presupposition of all knowledge," we are, accord- ing to the bent of our sympathies, either consoled or confounded. But the exultation of the one party and the depression of the other is alike premature. Upon further inquiry it appears that the priority of the epistemologists is not in time at all and does not refer to historical events. They are not making statements about the actual origin or ultimate nature of knowledge, but only about the relation of certain factors in existing knowledge. They do not mean that the conception of cause is a priori in the sense that many ages ago it existed without experience, and that, when experience came, it was subsumed under this pre-existing category, nor are they speak- ing of any experience any one ever had. Cause is a priori, because, if we eliminate this factor out of actual experience, we are left with a fictitious 42 AGNOSTICISM. abstraction of *' mere experience " and the whole conception collapses. But it would be equally erroneous to suppose that the a piHori forms of thought could exist without the matter given by experience. Perception without conception, as Kant himself says, is blind; conception without perception is empty : the reality lies in their combination alone. Similarly the assertion that the eternal self is pre- supposed in all knowledge, conceals merely the commonplace fact that all knowledge must be so7iie- bodys knowledge, must be referred to some '* I." The self is eternal or timeless, because it is a logical abstraction (cf p. %.\) and because abstractions do not exist either in Space or in Time. It is eternal in precisely the same w^ay and for precisely the same reasons as the isosceles triangle. There Is In fact no reason why epistemology should designate one of the mutually-Implied elem.ents in knowledge as a priori, and the other as a posterioiH rather than vice versa, and the use of such a word as " prior " merely has the misleading effect of producing an irresistible reference to Time. It would be a great boon if epistemologlsts gave up the use of both words, even though their whole science would prob- ably disappear with it. Nor would this be a result one could affect to deplore ; a science which is so sterile of truth in Itself, and yet so fruitful in engendering error in others, had better be destroyed. It can utter only trivial truisms within the limits of its *' immanent criticism " ; beyond them it gets tiltra vires, and can only suggest dangerous con- fusions. It can prove nothing, still less prove fatal to metaphysics. It is a Criticism which can validly criticize nothing but itself, and to itself its criticism is deadly. KANT V. METAPHYSICS. 43 § 1 8. It remains, as before, not only to exhibit the unsoundness of the basis of epistemological Agnosticism, but also to point out the flaws in Kant's reductio ad absiirdum of metaphysics. For it is in the negative polemic against meta- physic that the chief strength of Agnosticism lies, and it is by the skilfulness of its attack that it can most easily cover the weakness of its own positive position. Kant's description of the antinomies ot metaphysics, of the contradictory necessities and perplexing inadequacies which distract the human mind in deaHng with certain ultimate questions, is deservedly famous. Their fam-e must be our apology for stating them so briefly and for merely indicating here the side in the conflict which we intend subsequently to espouse. The difficulties of metaphysics, according to Kant, fall under the three pseudo-sciences of Ontology, Cosmology, and Rational Psychology, and are concerned with the conceptions or *' Ideas of the Pure Reason," i.e., of God, the world, and the Self. § 19. With respect to the first, Kant asserts that no theoretical proof of the existence of God can be given, though three may be attempted. These he calls the ontological, the cosmological and the physico- theological. The ontological proof infers the existence of God from the necessity of the conception of a being possessing all reaUty. We have this conception ; and since real existence is included in th^ conception of "all reality," the being we conceive must be con- ceived also to have real existence. The cosmological proof is a form of the argument from causation, and runs as follows : If anything 44 AGNOSTICISM. exists, an absolutely necessary being exists. Now I exist : therefore an absolutely necessary (uncon- ditioned) being {i.e., God as the First Cause) exists. The physico-theological proof is the argument from design, and argues from the wisdom and in- telligence in the creation to the existence of a wise and intelligent Creator. Now, says Kant, both the cosmologlcal and the physico-theological proofs depend ultimately on the ontological, and the ontologlcal simply begs the question. It professes to establish the existence of God, z>., to show that a reality corresponds to our conception. But in order to do so, it assumes the conception of a totality of all reality, in which it has covertly Included actual existence. Mere thought, therefore, cannot prove that a reality corresponds to its ideas ; It would be as reasonable to suppose that we might increase our property by thinking of vast sums. Reality can be derived only from experience of reality, not from any manipulation of abstract ideas. To' this argument, which has never been met, nothing need be added ; it is a conclusive refuta- tion of a conception of God which has almost monopolized the attention of philosophers. With regard to the cosmologlcal, it must be pointed out that, until it has been connected with the ontologlcal proof, it does not specify what the " absolutely necessary being " is, or exclude the possibility of Its being the world as a whole, or a Spencerian " Unknowable" instead of a God. So it Is connected with the ontologlcal proof, on the ground that the conception of a being possessing all reality is the only one which can completely determine that THE PROOFS OF GOD S EXISTENCE. 45 of a necessary being.^ Thus the cosmologlcal proof stands and falls with the ontologlcal. The physlco-theological proof in its turn depends on the cosmologlcal, and must argue from the con- tingent existence of the world to an absolute First Cause, if it is to be adequate. For in itself it is concerned wholly with the finite and cannot properly infer anything but an adequate yf/e//^ cause of pheno- mena. The argument from design cannot validly pass from the conception of a great Architect of the world, designing and disposing his materials like a human craftsman, to an absolute and infinite Creator. Thus the only argument in favour of the existence of God which has any cogency, the only one which could give us any insight into His nature, is in- adequate. It cannot prove an infinite God. This admission of Kant's we shall do well to store up for subsequent use, when it will be necess- ary to inquire whether infinity is a possible or desirable attribute of the Deity. For should it appear {v. ch. x.) that an infinite God would be an embarrassment rather than an advantage, the inability of the argument from design to justify a false conception of the Deity will have been a fortunate deficiency. § 20. The four antinomies involved in the at- tempt to think the ultimate nature of the world are concerned with its infinity, the infinite divisibility of substances, the conflict of causation and freewill, and ^ All other conceptions would be inadequate predicates, which could not determine their subject singly, and hence could not establish its existence. For all real existences are subjects con- taining an infinity of predicates, and the only predicate which contains an infinity of attributes and -can thus put its subject on a par with a real existence and thereby confer reality upon it, is the conception of an ens realissimum. 46 AGNOSTICISM. its first cause; On each of these subjects contra- dictory propositions may be maintained, either that the world is infinite in Space and Time, or that it is not, etc. The last of these antinomies has been already discussed in connection with Mr. Spencer's views (§ lo), and it is here only necessary to remark, in- completion of what was previously asserted, that Kant proves conclusively that the First Cause cannot be one in- the series of catised pheno77iena. Hence, if in seeking a cause of- our world, we are inquiring into the cause of existence in general, we are doomed to disappointment. If all things are caused, then a First Cause is impossible. If God, therefore is the cause of all things, the All is God, and God (in the traditional sense) is nothing. The antinomy of causation and freedom can be profitably discussed only when we have realized the origin and nature of our conception of causation (v. ch. iii', § II, and App. I.). The second antinomy is concerned with the relat- ions of part to whole : the thesis maintains that unless absolutely simple substances exist, composite substances are impossible, and hence nothing exists; the antithesis infers the infinite divisibility of sub- stances from the infinite divisibility of the Space in which they exist, and asserts that simple substances could never be objects of perception or of any ex- perience. Kant's proof in the antithesis is based on several assumptions. In the first place he assumes that the infinite divisibility of our conception of Space must be applied to the spatially-extended objects, that the ideal Space which we conceive, and the real Space which we perceive, are one and the THE INFINITY OF THE WORLD. 4/ same ; in short, that our conception of Space Is not an abstraction from an attribute of the Real, a uni- versal mode of the interaction of the Existent, but simply an ideal a priori form of intuition, under which things must appear to us^. Even though, therefore, metaphysically speaking, ultimate entities may be '* monads," yet, phenomenally, their appear- ances must be subject to the laws of spatial intuition and composite. Secondly, Kant argues that the Self or Soul is not an instance of a simple sub- stance, because its apparent simplicity is merely due to the fact that in declaring its own substant- iality, it is contemplating itself; that if it could be externally perceived, it would probably display its compositeness. Now every one cA these ^ assertions may be tra- versed. We need not suppose, and indeed scientific atomism has always refused to suppose, that the mathematical infinite divisibility of Space holds good of real objects ; nor that ideal Space, which is con- ceived, but never seen, is like real Space ; nor again that Space is ^n a priori formwhich exists independ- ently of the interactions of the bodies that occupy it Further, it may be remarked that Kant here illustrates both of the two great fallacies of his doctrine : (i) he forgets the impotence of epistemo- logy and allows himself to treat his ^/r/^re Space as a condition and not as a mode of existence, and so regards it as something which can prescribe to reality its mode of behaviour (2) He makes the impossible distinction between phenomena and noumena. Lastly, we may point out that Kant's argument against the existence of absolute sub- stances is bound up with his doctrine of the Self, presently to be considered, and need only wonder 48 AGNOSTICISM. in passing how Kant could^ arrive at his extra- ordinary confidence that if he could only get outside himself and see his Self, it would appear to be a composite patchwork of various substances ! Does he imao:ine that if he could see his soul it would be his soul? And even if he could see it, and see that it was composite, it would yet, on his own principles, be a fallacy to infer the multiplicity of the (noumenal) subject from that of its (pheno- menal) appearance. It may be that our idea of the unity of the soul requires modification ult- imately, but it can hardly be denied that our con- sciousness of the oneness of our Self is th.^ prima facie basis of our assertion of the unity of substance. Lastly, his first antinomy deals with the limits of the world in Space and Time. The thesis main- tains that the world must have limits in Space and in Time ; it must have had a beginning in Time and must come to an end in Space, because of the conflict between the conceptions of infinity and of a whole. An infinite whole is an impossibility, because its infinity consists just in the fact that it cannot be completed. Time, therefore, without beginning, is a contradiction in terms, for past Time is infinite, and yet limited by the present. An infinite world in Space, on the other hand, is no world at all, i.e., it can never be completed and treated as a whole. The antithesis argues that limits to the world in Space and Time are unthinkable. For did they exist, they would imply in the world a relation to empty Space and empty Time, i.e., relations to nonentities, and hence contradictions. We can never conceive limits to Space, but our thought must ever stray beyond any imagined limit, and THE INFINITY OF TIME. 49 inquire into its beyond. So with Time ; even if we imagined an absolute beginning of the world, the empty Time which preceded the existence of the world, could neither itself have caused the world nor have contained anything that could cause it. Now, as we intend to return to the subject of the infinity of Space and Time (ch. vi. § 2 ff.), it will here suffice to remark that Kant understates the force of the argument in favour of the limitation of the world in Space and Time, by stating it in metaphysical terms merely. The infinity of the world is indeed in metaphysical conflict with our conception of a whole, and, we may add, of a process and of causation, but it is also incompatible with all scientific doctrines which involve these conceptions. And, as we shall see, these form no inconsiderable portion of all the sciences, but one so great that their abandonment would ruin many important sciences like physics, mechanics, chemistry, and biology, and bring universal scepticism in its train. The difficulties of the thesis, therefore, are not merely difficulties of metaphysics, as the agnostic would make out, but also real difficulties of all science. Those of the antithesis, on the other hand, 2X^ purely metaphysical. They do not conflict with the facts, but with our ideas. The infinity of Space and Time is not, and never can be, a fact. An infinite reality can never be perceived, infinity must always be merely a matter of idea, merely a necess- ity of thought. It is not the actual perception of Space and Time that leads us to the conviction that they are infinite, but the conceptions we form about them. If therefore the identity and parallel- ism of our ideal conceptions of Space and Time which involve infinity, and our real perceptions of R. of S. E 50 AGNOSTICISM. objects in Space and Time, which cannot involve infinity, be denied, the whole antithesis vanishes. For infinity in thought is quite compatible with actual finitude. With regard to the origin of the world in Time, Kant's difficulty, like Spencer's about the First Cause (§ lo), applies only to an. absolute beginning of all things. If nothing originally existed, nothing can have come into beino^. But if somethino^ existed eternally, that something may at some point have caused the existence of our world. There is in fact a third alternative to the infinite existence of the world and its beginning in empty Time. For though the world cannot have come into existence in Time, it may perfectly well have done so with Time. Time and our phenomenal world may be correlated conditions of our present dispensation. This is a possibility which Kant should have noticed and considered, all the more that it is as old as Plato, w^ho in the Timseus (38 B) calls Time the moving image of Eternity, and that it has been adopted by the majority of thinkers who have con- sidered the question of creation seriously, e.g., by St. Augustine, who says, Non est facttis mtmdtis in tempore, sed cu7n te^jipore.^ § 21. Lastly, we must consider Kant's attack upon the old rational psychology, which professed to derive from the substantiality of the Self or Soul its immateriality, incorruptibility, personality, im- mortality, etc. And with regard to the a priori proofs of rational psychology, Kant may be admitted to have made out his case.- The simplicity of the 1 "The world was not made in Time, but together with Time." 2 Thus he shows that the immortality cannot be inferred from the simplicity of the soul : for though the simple cannot be dis- solved into its component parts, it may yet be annihilated by evanescence. THE REALITY OF THE SELF. 5 1 soul cannot be made a proof of its immortality ; such juggling with ideas cannot afford any. real certainty of a future life. But Kant's own doctrine is of a more dubious character. The question is, whether our conscious- ness of our own existence can be made the basis of theoretical inferences.^ Kant puts it as^the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes, and denies • that it is the basis of any knowledge. For, he says, self- consciousness is a mere form, indifferent to its matter, the actual contents which, fill it (cf. § 14), and utterly empty In itself. The Self is a mere ''synthetic unity of apperception," which > unites and binds together ''the manifold. of perception" into a whole, and thus makes experience and knowledge possible. But it does no more ; it is a paralogism to regard our own existence as the one certain fact and the basis of all knowledge. This argument depends on. the substitution of the Cogito ergo sum, i.e. the explicit assertion of exist- ence, for the implicit conviction which we feel. It assumes that thought can be put = consciousness, and that that which cannot be stated in terms of thought, e.g. feeling, is nothing. But as a matter of fact, the Cogito ergo sum can- not be regarded as the ratio essendi, but only as the ratio coornoscendi of our existence. It is not that we are because we think, but we are able to think because we are. And we not only think, but will 1 On theoretical grounds his verdict about the existence of the soul is non liquet. But this, of course, does not hinder him, here as elsewhere, from reversing the agnosticism of the Theoretic Reason by means of the Practical Reason. So he asserts that the moral consciousness does establish the reality of the Self. " I am, because I ought," as it were. Only, he says, this does not suffice for any theoretic inference. 52 AGNOSTiaSM. and feel And AVill and Feellnor are other than Thought, and Thought does not fully represent them. It is true that if we desire to assert our existence, we must assert it in terms of thought, i.e., as Cogito ergo S2un^ but then we assert it only against a doubt, and a doubt so futile does not require to be refuted. As long, therefore, as we content ourselves with our inner consciousness, i.e., the feeling of our existence, we have committed nothing which thought can lay hold of. And when it does lay hold of our expressed conviction of our existence, and attempts to show it is invalid, it only does so to cover itself with confusion. Kant's attack on the reality of the Self may be refuted out of his own mouth. He admits^ (i) that our thought can think the Self only in the position of a subject, i.e., that the " I " can never be the predicate of any statement ; (2) that our thought is discursive, i.e., all its state- ments are predicates. Hence (3) the Self, cannot be a (mere) conception. Thereupon he argues, that because the conception of the Self is empty, the Self is no reality. This argument not merely involves the direct contradiction of denying and asserting, almost in the same breath, that the Self was a con- ception, but actually argues from the defect of a defective conception to a defect in its subject. First he shows conclusively that if the Self is real, our thought can never do justice to it, then he argues, that because our thought cannot do justice to it, the Self is not real. If it could be validly asserted that the Self was a conception at all, it must surely be admitted that, so far from being empty, it is the fullest of all conceptions, with a 1 Prolegomena, p. 116 (Reclara), Mahaffy's trans, p. 47. THE ORIGIN OF AGNOSTICISM'. ■ JJ content co-extensive with the whole world. For every thought that was ever thought, every feeling that was ever felt, every act that was ever willed, was contained in the consciousness of some self, was thought, felt, or willed within the soul of somebody. The proper inference then surely was, that the emptiness of our conception, of our thought-symbol of the Self, proved nothirig against its reality, but much against thought, the abstractions of which here prove utterly inadequate to grasp the reality. Thus the breakdown of Kant's argument leads us on to the important distinction of Thought and Reality, which in the next chapter will be emphas- ized by scepticism to the utmost ; it illustrates unexpectedly our contention that Agnosticism paves the way for Scepticism. § 2 2. Our elaborate examination of Agnosticism has been rendered necessary, not only by the repute of the authors criticized,- but still more by the fact that the agnostic attitude towards ultimate philo- sophic problems is the most prevalent one among philosophers and cultivated men generally. But the length of the argument will have been more than justified, if it can- induce us to realize the arrogance of the pretensions to omniscience lurking beneath the mock modesty of the agnostic's assert- ion of the unknowable, and if it enables us to see how inconclusive are the attacks on metaphysics by which he seeks to veil the weakness of his own position. And yet the doubt may recur — How can we know things as they really are ? and will not be set at rest until we have exposed its origin as well as its futility. We might indeed answer it by shifting, the onus probandi, and asking, Why should not 54 AGNOSTICISM. things appear as they are ? Why should not appearances be true, or a sure basis whence to infer the truth ? Why should not "^things as they are" be either nothing at all, or at least irrelevant machinery intended to produce in us the spectacle of the world ? The suggestion that appearances are divided by an impassable gulf from the reality of things is a mere prejudice, which may be left to flounder in its own impotence. But, it is urged, is it not a fact that appearances are deceptive ? It is this that makes Agnosticism plausible. But for this, but for the fact that appearances are but the raw material of knowledge, there would be nothing to suggest anything beyond what is given. Only the fact will not bear the inference the agnostic seeks to put upon it. It does not justify the assumption of a world of things " as they really are," opposed to a world of appearances. All it in- volves is that the real and ultimate nature of thino^s o must be inferred, that things do not yet appear as they are. The known suggests an unknown, but not an unknowable. And what is this but the phenomenon of the growth of knowledge, what but the fact that in a world not yet fully known, the imperfection of our knowledge must suggest its own defect, and cause things to appear at first other than what they subsequently turn out to be ? The feeling, therefore, from which Agnosticism draws its force, is an illusion incident to the growth of knowledge. In a perfectly known world things would appear as they ive^^e, and would be what they appeared ; there would be no occasion to correct the judgments of sense or to go beyond the given. Thus the same orrowth of knowledo^e which made TRANSITION TO SCEPTICISM. 55 it impossible to admit that agnosticism could be true, explains also how it comes to seem true. § 23. The course of the argument has so far been directed to establish that Agnosticism is an illusion and cannot be true. It must now establish that if it is true, it must cease to be itself, and pass into something profounder and more consistent Its only hope lies in its turning into Scepticism, and internal and external necessities combine to turn it into this. Scepticism is the only refuge for Agnosticism from the external pressure of reason : it alone can suspend and reverse the condemnation pronounced on its absurdities. The sceptic may admit that Agnosticism has failed, that its arguments are fall- acious and absurd. But, he asks, what does this prove .'^ What but the absurdity of all arguments ? Arguments may be made to prove anything, but in the end they prove nothing. Not only is there an Unknowable beyond knowledge, but all around it and before its eyes. The mistake of Agnosticism was not in thinking that some things were unknow- able, but in implying that there is anything not unknowable, not in clinging to demonstrable ab- surdities, but in supposing that anything but absurdities were demonstrable. Agnosticism erred in attempting to draw a distinction between meta- physics and the rest of knowledge, and so was sur- prised by their solidarity and overwhelmed by their union. This was a mistake in principle ; for meta- physic is not only every whit as good as any other knowledge, but indeed superior. For metaphysic is the science of the ultimate chaos in which all knowledge ends ; so far from being false, it is pre- eminently true, for it alone of all the sciences is 56 AGNOSTICISM. aware of Its condition. All knowledge terminates in nonsense, but metaphysic alone confesses this fact. § 24. Thus Scepticism rises superior to the question in dispute, not only by rescuing Agnostic- ism from metaphysical objections, but also by its kindly rehabilitation of metaphysics. But it is not merely the outcome of the dispute between Agnostic- ism and metaphysics, but also of the logical self- development of Agnosticism. Agnosticism had asserted that there exists in the world something unknowable and that certain questions cannot be solved. But admitting this, how can we limit the havoc this admission works in the whole structure of knowledge? If any one thing is unknowable, may there not be many others like it ? If some questions are insoluble, how do we know that insoluble questions are confined to a single department of thought ? Nay, if the Unknowable is at the basis of all knowledge, if all things are "manifestations of the Unknowable," how- can it manifest anything but its unknowableness ? If all our explanations terminate in the inconceiv- able, are they not all illusions ? If an unknowable force underlies all things, if the ultimate constitution of things cannot be grasped by our minds, what can our knowledge do but laboriously lead us to the conclusion that all our science is a fraud, hopelessly vitiated by the unknowable character of its basis ? Does not this fundamental flaw falsify all the futile efforts of beings constitutionally incapable of under- standing the real nature of things ? Agnosticism, at all events^ has no strength to resist such suggestions, and falls into the deeper but seemingly securer abyss of Scepticism. \ \ CHAPTER III. SCEPTICISM. § I. Scepticism is, as was shown In the last chapter, the development of Agnosticism, which passes into it as necessarily as Positivism passed into Agnosticism. It is related to Agnosticism as the whole to the part ; it both refutes and completes it ; for it is Agnosticism perfected and purified from prejudice. By Scepticism we mean the denial of the possibility of knowledge, based on rational grounds. For the psychological scepticism, so frequent now- a-days, which is distracted by doubt, not because nothing is worthy of belief, but because the mind has lost the faculty of belief, is indeed one of the most serious and distressing symptoms of our times, but belongs rather to the pathology of the human mind. True Scepticism does not arise from a morbid flabblnesss of the intellectual fibre, but Is vigorously aggressive and dogmatic. For though it sometimes affects to doubt rather than to deny the possibility of knowledge, the real intention of the doubt Is yet to deny and to destroy the practical certainty of knowledge. If Scepticism did not succeed in producing any practical effect, if its doubt of the possibility of knowledge were theoretically ad- mitted but practically ignored, it would feel that it had failed. § 2. In pursuance of its object of proving the 57 58 SCEPTICISM. impossibility of knowledge, Scepticism may adopt several modes of procedure, of which only those can be at once disposed of which involve a denial of the laws of thought. The most common form, perhaps, is the ancient scepticism based on the " relativity of knowledge," i.e., on the distinction of phenomena and the real nature of things, Avhich denies that we can know auo^ht, because we cannot know thino^s ''as they really are." This scepticism is merely a re- appearance of Agnosticism, extended and enlarged, if not improved, and directed not merely against metaphysics, but against the whole of knowledge. And as such it has been already refuted in the last chapter (§ 22). Here it need merely be character- ized as a gratuitous prejudice, since it has no positive o^round for assuminof these unknowable thinors-in- themselves. If no argument can directly refute it, neither can any argument establish it. But the 07ms p ro da ndz SUV tly lies on those who attack, and'^not on those who assert the existence -of knowledge. And, as has been shown, if such a w^orld of things- in- themselves existed, we could never know of its existence (chap. ii. § 6). It is a gross abuse, there- fore, to invent a transcendent world of unknowable things-in-themselves, merely in order to cast a slur on knowledge, to convict it of incapacity, merely because it cannot transcend 'itself § 3. Scepticism is on firmer ground when it becomes immanent instead of ti^anscendent, and asserts not that there may be something behind appearances, but that appearances are inherently conflicting, and that knowledge is impossible, be- cause thi^ conflict witltin consciousness and between its data can never be resolved. If the constituent elements of consciousness are essentially disparate THE CONFLICT OF TH^-E FACTORS OF KNOWLEDGE. 59 and incongruous, Scepticism has merely to compare the characteristics of the given factors, and to pro- nounce their disagreement to be irreconcilable, in order to prove that knowledge, i.e., systematic harmony of the given, is impossible, and need not perform the impossible feat of getting help from the unknowable outside consciousness. Its aim must therefore be throuorhout to elicit the conflict and incompatibility of the constituents of knowledge. It will begin by showing that appearances are deceptive, and in so doing it will be proving a truism. For the whole of science is concerned with enabling us to see through the deceptive appearances of things, and to perceive their real nature. But Scepticism will contend that science fails ; that this deceptiveness is ultimate and never can be seen through ; that in fancying that our science can correct it, we are once more deceived. For all science is an interpretation of phenomena by means of thought, in which we substitute thought-symbols for the real things of which we are treating, and suppose .that the manipulations of our symbols will hold good of the realities we perceived, and will thus enable us:to manage and calculate their course. But it turns out (i) that not one of the categories of our knowledge, not one of the fundamental conceptions which underlie all science, is adequate to describe the nature of the Real, and that science is everywhere based upon fictitious assumptions known to be : false : (2.) the reason of this is dis- covered to lie in the radically different natures of thought and feeling, which give us two utterly discordant aspects of existence, and render it im- possible that the real thing .perceived by feeling should ever be symbolized by thought; and .(3), as 60 SCEPTICISM. it appears that every utterance involves a reference to reality, it is both false and impossible, false, because the thought-symbols expressed by speech cannot be true of reality, and because the course of inference does not correspond to the course of nature, and impossible because we cannot see how the transition from fact to symbol should ever have been made. Thus Scepticism succeeds not only in exhibiting the justice of its denial of knowledge, but literally reduces its opponents to silence. It is the course of this process which we must now follow. § 4. It has been said with some point, that the best cure for the admiration of old institutions lies in the study of their history ; and certainly our traditional faith in reason must be very strong or very blind, if it can resist the doubts of the com- petency of our categories suggested by the least study of their origin and history. We are all, thanks to the perhaps not wholly disinterested efforts of modern science, familiar with the discredit which their anthropomorphic character has brought on the central conceptions of religion, and have seen the grossness of savage superstitions traced throughout their survivals in modern theo- logy. But though the Sceptic will be at one with the scientist in reprobating the anthropomorphism of the savage, he will hardly have the politeness to confine the inferences from his historical studies to the single sphere of religion, or to show any greater respect for the sacro-sanctity of science. For he finds that all our knowledge is vitiated by this fundamental flaw of its anthropomorphic origin, that the conceptions of our science are all direct descend- FIRST PRINCIPLES ALL ANTHROPOMORPHIC. 6 1 ants of the grossest anthropomorphisms of primi- tive savages, who naively and uncritically ascribed whatsoever they felt, and whatsoever seemed natural to them to the world outside them. And grotesque as was the savage's method of explanation, grossly erroneous as was the ascription to nature of these primitive fancies, it was at all events better than their subsequent treatment at the hands of science. They were not rejected outright, but reduced into unmeaning skeletons of explanations by the cutting away of such portions as seemed too obviously false to be any longer retained ; they were not buried in merciful oblivion, but permitted to linger on in a maimed and impotent condition, starved, and stripped of the sensuous analogies that suggested their self-evidence. And by this brutal process of mutilation, all the advantages of the primitive view have been lost, without countervailing gain, and without extirpating the original taint of our know- ledge : it is as though we should attempt to change an Ethiopian's skin by flaying him, and then dis- cover that even his bones were not as the bones of a white man. Our categories have too often be- come mere symbols, words to which no definite fact can be found to correspond. Thus the animistic conception of a cause as a personal will (chap. i. § 5, 6), was intelligible though false ; but what possible meaning can be attached to the conception of Cause as Identity ? So long, again, as a frankly material view was taken of Substance, and nothing was accounted substance that could not be touched, seen, tasted, and smelt, we were at least secured against the hypostasizing of '* second substances," safe from the confusions of ideas with real existences with which V (i2 SCEPTICISM. the history of philosophy teems, exempt from the metaphysical fictions of modern science, from intan- gible solids like the ether, from ' vortex rings ' in ' frictionless fluids.' So too the geometrical ignor- ance of the savage left him blissfully untroubled by the possibilities of pseudo-spherical, or four-dimens- ional Space ; his simple theory of causation had not yet evolved an insoluble contradiction between free will and necessity. Happy too were the ages of scientific faith In anthropomorphic metaphor, when a mystic marriage of male and female elements could be witnessed in every chemical combination, and when terms like arsenic ^ and chemical affinity^ as yet conveyed a meaning that explained their nature. But we are burdened by the heritage of ancient thought and ancient fancy, while we have to our loss exchanged their vividness for modern excre- scences, quite as false and far more obscure. And our categories are not able to fit the facts, even when they have been whittled away into nonsense ; not even then do they succeed in being true. ^ 5. For not one of the principal conceptions of our science Is true, not one is able to grasp the *' Becoming " of things as It really is. All are what we call ** approximations," which leave an unex- plained surd in everything they are supposed to explain ; and not only are they false, but we know that they are false, however we may choose to ignore It. We believe in o.ur first principles, though we know that they involve fictions ; we believe in them because these fictions are so transparent as no longer to excite surprise. Is it then too much to say that the Credo quia abs2crdum is the basis of 1 Arsenica the male element. 2 Affinity = relationship by marriage. V CONTRADICTIONS OF TIME. 63 science as well as of theology, and that knowledge as well as faith is reared upon the milk of mythology ? § 6. If ^.^. we consider the conception of Time, we find that Time is for scientific purposes taken as discrete, and divided into years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds ; and. indeed its accuracy in measuring Time is one of the chief boasts of modern science. And yet is not this very measurement of Time based on all sorts of fictitious assumptions ? When we ask how Time is measured, we perceive that our measurements in the last resort are all based on the supposed regularity of certain, motions. And the measurement of these motions again depends on the supposed accuracy of our time-pieces. And further, as far as our observation can check their vagaries, we have every reason to believe that not one of these motions, is really regular. And so our measurements of time move in a vicious circle : Time depends on motioa and motion on Time. Some interesting corollaries would follow from this, such as that if the motions on which our measure- ment of Time depends were uniformly accelerated, the flow of Time also would be accelerated in like proportion, and the events of a lifetime might be V crowded into what would previously have been re- garded as a few minutes. And if this acceleration were conceived to go on indefinitely, any finite series of events could be compressed into an in- finitely short time. Or conversely, supposing that the flow of Time could somehow be indefinitely accelerated without corresponding acceleration in the flow of events, a finite series of events would last for an infinite Time. In either case the infinite divisibility of Time would be equivalent to infinite duration, and the essential subjectivity of Time N 64 SCEPTICISM. would peep through our apparently objective measurements. And is not a further fiction involved in the measurement of Time at all ? For our measure- k; ment is, and must be, in terms of the discrete, whereas that which we attempt to measure is continuous, one, and indivisible by our arbitrary partitions. Again, Time is infinite, and yet science treats it as though it were finite : we fancy that the past explains the present ; Time has no beginning, and yet we search the past for the origins of things : the world of which science is the knowledge cannot [ have existed from all time, and yet a beginning of the world in Time is impossible. Our real consciousness of Time conflicts at every point with the treatment of Time required in science, and this conflict culminates as a contradiction in terms in the insoluble antinomy of the completed infinity of past Time. For the original and only valid meaning of infinity is that which can never be completed by the addition of units, and yet we undoubtedly regard the past infinity as completed by the present. § 7. Nor do we fare any better when we com- pare our conception of Space with the reality : its infinite extent and divisibility cannot be forced into y the scheme of science. An infinite and infinitely divisible world is not an object of knowledge ; so science postulates the atom at the one, and the "confines of the universe" at the other extreme, as the limits of Space, in order to obtain definite quantities which can be calculated. And yet we can conceive neither how the atom should be in- capable of further division, nor how the extent of OF SPACE. 65 the world can be limited. For it is equally difficult to treat of *' Space " apart from that which fills it, i.e. Matter, and to neglect this distinction. If Space = the spatially-extended, then the infinite extent and divisibility of Space must apply to Matter, i.e. atoms and limits of the material universe are impossible. If, on the other hand. Space is distinguished from that which fills it, we not only seem to be making a false abstraction, inasmuch as Space is never pre- sented to us except as filled by Matter, but to com- mit ourselves to the existence of the Void or empty space, existing certainly between the interstices of the atoms, and probably beyond the limits of the universe. But empty Space, possessing no qualities by which it could possibly be cognizable, is a thing in no way distinguishable from nothing, i.e. a non- entity. And further, if Space be not identified with the spatially extended, how do we know that the properties of Space hold good of the spatially- / extended, i.e. that bodies obey the laws prescribed for them by mathematics '^. And even when Space has been distinguished from that which fills it, it seems necessary to dis- tinguish afresh between real Space which we per- ceive and ideal or conceptual Space, about which we reason in mathematics. For they differ on the , important point of infinity : real Space is not in- finite, for nothing infinite can be perceived. In- finity, on the other hand, is the most prominent attribute of ideal Space. And so their other pro- perties also might be different, ^.^. all the lines drawn in real Space might really be closed curves, owing to an inherent curvature of Space, etc. If, then, ideal Space and real Space are different, a serious difficulty arises for mathematics, for they deal with R. ofS. -c 66 SCEPTICISM. Ideally straight lines, perfect circles, etc., such as do not exist In real Space, and which, for all we know, may be Incapable of so existing, because real Space is ** pseudo - spherical " or *' four-dlmenslonal." If, therefore, mathematical demonstrations are supposed to apply to figures In real Space, they are not true, and If not, to what do they apply ? It seems easy to reply, to the Ideal space in our minds ; but what If there be no relation between real and Ideal Space ? And If mathematical truths exist only In our heads, what and where are they before they are discovered ? Surely the truth that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles did not come Into being when It was first discovered ? Such considerations may justify the Sceptic in his doubt whether the Ideal certainty of mathematics Is after all relevant to reality, and In his denial of the self-evidence of the assumptions which underlie the scientific treatment of Space. § 8. Motion also Is feigned for scientific purposes to be something different from what It Is : It can be calculated only on the assumption that It Is discrete and proceeds from point to point, and yet the ancient Zeno's famous fallacy of the Arrow warns us that the Real moves continuously} Our conception, too, of Rest is Illusory ; for all things seem to be In more or less rapid motion. And yet motion is calculated only by the assumption of fixed points, i.e. of Rest. But these fixed points ^ If the arrow really moved from point to point, it would be at rest at each point, i.e, would never move at all. But of course it never is at the points at all, but moves through them. Only unfortunately our thought and our speech refuses to express a fact which our eyes behold, and we must continue to say one thing, while meaning another. OF MOTION AND REST;. 67 are fictitious, and so our calculations are wholly arbitrary, for in limitless S>pace all motion must be relative : the bodies whiich from, certain points of view seem to be at rest, horn others seem to. be in motion, and so on alternately at rest and In motion ad infinitum. Nor is. there any theoretic reason to be assigned for giving one point of view the pre- ference over another. If, then, Motion is relative to ^ any and every point, it is relative to nothing, and does not admit of being objectively determined. And even if we were content that motion should be relative, yet energy must be real, and indeed its conservation is one of the chief doctrines of modern physics. But energy is ever generated out of and passing into motion, and the amount of actual and potential energy possessed by any system of bodies would be relative to the points which for the purpose of our calculations were feigned to be at rest. Thus from one point of view a system might possess three times the motive energy it has from another, and the question arises which of these seeming energies is the subject of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. And in whatever way we answer, that doctrine is false. For the points relatively to which energy is conserved do not preserve their relative positions for two moments together, and hence the case to which the doctrine refers never arises. The doctrine of the conservation of energy is a purely metaphysical assertion concerning a state of things that cannot possibly arise in our experience. And the same conviction of the entirely metempirical and hypothetical character of the doctrine of the con- servation of energy is forced upon us when we ex- amine the statements which our physicists make concerning it. For they admit that it does not 68 ■ -SCEPTICISM. hold good of any actual system ; m any system of bodies we may choose to take, the sum of energy does no^ remain the same from moment to moment. What else Is it then but to trifle with the ignorance of their hearers to talk about demonstrating the doctrine by actual experiment ? They might as well prove that two parallel straight lines never met by an assiduous use of the measuring tape. And the case Is no better, but rather worse, when it is explained that strictly speaking the conservation of energy holds only of an infinite system. For an infinite system is in the very nature of things im- possible. It would be a whole which was not a whole, a system which was not a system (Cf. ch. 9 § 8 and ch. 2 § 20). However It is put, the doctrine can be asserted only of a fictitious case, well known to be impossible. And of the assumptions subsidiary to that of the conservation of energy, the conception of potential energy deserves special criticism. For it Illustrates the haphazard way In which our science accepts incompatible first principles. Potential energy is defined as energy of position. But how can there be position In Infinite Space ? Position Is deter- mined with reference to at least three points, and each of these with reference to three others, and so on until we either get to fixed points with an ab- solute position, or go on to Infinity and are never able to determine position at all. Thus the reality of Motion, Rest, Energy, and Position in every case involves metaphysical postul- ates which experience does not satisfy, and we have agreed that for the present a reduction to meta- physics shall be esteemed a reduction to absurdity. § 9. The conception of Matter, which may next 0¥ MATTER. 6g be consld'ered, though it at present seeirrs indis- pensable to science, is really a fruitful source of perplexities. For it appears that all we know of Matter is the forces it exercises. Matter, therefore, is said to be unknowable in itself, and this unkn^ow- ableness of matter-in-itself is quoted in support of the belief in the unknowable generally. And yet it is perhaps hardly astonishing that a baseless abstraction should be unknowable in itself. And Matter certainly is such an abstraction. For all that appears to us is bodies, which we call material. They possess certain more or less obvious points of resemblance, and the abstraction, *' Matter," is promptly invented to account for them. But this is not only a gross instance of abstract metaphysics, but also a fiction which in the end profits us little. Certain superficial aspects of bodies are taken and exaggerated into primary qualities of Matter. The hardness of bodies is explained by the hardness of the ultimate particles of which they are composed, their divisibility and compressibility by the empty interstices between these ultimate atoms. So as the final result bodies are to be explained by their com- position out of atoms, possessing the attributes of gravity, impenetrability, and inertia. These attributes, however, suffer severally from the defects of being false, insufficient, and unin- telligible. No visible material body, e.g., is im- penetrable or absolutely solid : all are more or less compressible. So the atoms of absolute solidity have been falsely invented, in order to explain a property of bodies, which, after all, they were un- able to explain ; viz., their relative solidity. For the supposed solidity of the atoms is, according to modern scientific views, utterly irrelevant to- the /O SCEPTICISM. actual solidity of bodies. The latter is due to re- pellent forces acting at molecular distances, and not due to contact with tlie atoms. Nor is it even true that the complex of interacting atoms composing a body is solid in the way the body seems to be solid, seeing that the atoms are separated by distances vast when compared with their own size.^ And as nothinor else can come within strikinsf distance of them and put their internal economy to the test, it is difficult to see what it matters whether the atoms are solid or liquid, empty or full inside. It follows from the atomic theory in Its present shape that the solidity which we feel is not real, that the solidity which exists is not relevant, and that bodies are not really solid. And the atomic theory is not only false, but feeble. It cannot, after all, explain the behaviour of bodies, but must call to aid the hypothesis of a luminiferous ether, inter- penetrating all bodies, the vibrations of which are supposed to explain the phenomena of light. The qualities of this ether are so extraordinary that not even the boldest scientists venture to determine them all, such as whether it Is continuous or atomic. Nor is this reluctance without good reason. For if the ether is continuous, it cannot vibrate ; while if it is atomic, there must exist voids between Its inter- stices, and all physical action must in the last resort be action at a distance. The first alternative, of a vibratinof ether which cannot vibrate, is too obvlouslv absurd to be explicitly stated, while the second would outrage one of the most cherished of the anthropo- morphic prejudices of science. Still, the avowed * As the size of the interstices in the most solid bodies is to that of the atoms as five to one, it is clear that the solidity we feel has not much to do with the hardness of the atoms. ETHER AND GRAVITY. 71 properties of the ether are sufficiently extraordinary. It is an adamantine solid several hundred times more rigid than the most solid bodies, and vibrates at the rate of from 470 to 760 billion times per second. And this Intangible solid has no gravity, and thereby lacks the great characteristic of matter.^ For gravity has been since Newton's time re- garded as the primary attribute of matter, although its nature and operation is, by Newton's own ad- mission, unthinkable. For it differs radically from all the other forces in the physical universe In that it does not require time for its transmission. Sound travels at the rate of 1,100 feet per second, and light at the rate of 186,000 miles; but the changes in gravitative attraction seem to be instantaneous. So either Time or Space ^ do not seem to exist for it, and it also may be said to involve Action at a dis- tance. Such action our scientists persist in regarding as impossible, although their own physics evidently require it, and although there Is no real reason why it should be more unthinkable than anything else. The objection to k seems nothing but the survival of the primitive pr^'udlce that all action must be like a band of savages in a tug-of-war. If meta- physics had been consulted, it would have been obvious that no special medium was required to 1 If the ether gravitated, it would be attracted towards the larger aggregates of matter, and hence be denser in the neigh- \ bourhood of the stars than in interstellar space ; but if its density varied, it would not propagate light in straight lines. 2 If it can traverse any distance instantaneously ; for the fact that it varies inversely as the square of the distance does not prove that gravity recognises the prior existence of space. The distances between bodies may be only the phenomenal expres- sion of their metaphysical attractions and repulsions. 72 SCEPTICISM. make interaction possible between bodies that co- exist, seeing that their co-existence is an ample guarantee of their connection and of the possibihty of their interaction. Lastly, the Inertia of matter is a prejudice in- herited from a time when the test of life was self- motion ; and its retention now makes the origination of motion by matter impossible, and thus forms an insuperable obstacle to any successful materialistic (or rather hylozoist) explanation of the world. The sum total therefore of the explanation of bodies by scientific doctrines of Matter is : — (i) That all things are Matter. (2) That gravitation is the characteristic quality of Matter. (3) That gravitation is entirely unthinkable. (4) That ether is Matter, but does not gravitate. (5) That Matter is solid, but that solidity is not due to the solidity of Matter. (6) That Matter does not explain all things be- cause it is inert. It will be seen from this, that until the theory of Matter acquires something like self-consistency it is needless for the sceptic to inquire whether it ex- plains the action of bodies. § 10. Force is the conception which does most work in science ; but it is only a clumsy depersonal- ization of our human volition, from the sense of which it sprang, and the sense of effort still seems indissolubly associated with it This fact is, of course, irresistibly suggestive of false ideas as to the " cause of motion," it is subsequently defined to be. The correlative conceptions again of Activity and Passivity, which so long dominated human thought, FORCE AND INTERACTION. '] 2, are now discarded by science. We now say that a force is one half a stress, and substitute interact- ion for the distinction of active and passive ; and indeed the fact that action and reaction are equal and opposite has become as obvious a necessity of thought as it ever was to the Greeks, that one thing must be acted upon and the other act upon it. And yet what business have we to speak even of interaction ? All we see is how two bodies seem to change each other's motions, without being able to grasp kow they do so in their action at a distance. Even so we have assumed too much ; for what right have we to assume that one influences the other, what justification for defining force as the cause of motion, for applying our conception of causation to the thino^s around us ? § II. Since the time of Hume the vital import- ance to science of the conception of causation has been fully recognised, and it would now be generally admitted that a successful assault upon it is in itself sufficient to establish the case of Scepticism. And fully proportionate to its importance are the diffic- ulties of justifying this principle. Its historical antecedents are in themselves almost sufficient to condemn it ; and the existing divergences as to its nature make a consistent defence almost impossible. Originally, as has been remarked, the conception of cause was a transference of the internal sense of volition and effort to things outside the organism. The changes In the world were supposed to be due to the action of immanent spirits. In course of time these divine spirits were no longer regarded as directly causing events, but as being the first causes which set secondary causes in motion. It was then supposed that cause and effect were con- 74 SCEPTICISM. nected by chains of necessity, which ultimately de- pended from the First Cause of the All. Then Hume remarked that necessity was subjective and falsely anthropopathic, and that the necessary con- nexion between cause and effect could never be traced. So it was suggested that if cause and effect were merely antecedent and consequent, science would suffer no hurt, and that it worked equally well with an (ambiguously) " invariable " antecedent. But the arbitrary distinction between the anteced- ent conditions which were causes of the effect, and those which were not, proved untenable ; the cry was raised that ail the conditions must be included. This was done, and it then appeared, as the triumphant result of a scientific purification of the category of causation, that the cause was identical with the effect ! And this r^dnctio ad absurdu7n of the whole conception was actually hailed as the highest achievement of philosophic criticism, about which it was alone remarkable that the element of temporal succession from cause to effect should somehow have dropped out of sight ! It was simply curious that the category which was to have explained the Becoming of nature should finally involve no transition whatever, and thus be unable to discern the various elements, to distinguish the different phases, in the fiow of things. The true use of the conception was to teach us that every- thing was the cause or the effect of everything else, to suggest that our failure to see this arose from an illusion of Time, unworthy of the timelessness of our true Self Of course, however, it is not intended to suggest that an extreme of epistemologlcal fatuity like this view of causation could ever work in practice ; it is CAUSATION. 75 merely the legitimate outcome of the attempt to apply the category consistently to the explanation of things. And not only is Cause useless when purged of its incongruities, but it is false, if taken at an earlier stage in the process. The necessary connexion of cause and effect is not, as Hume rightly remarked, anything visible in rerum natura, but a fiction of the mind. All we see In nature is how a thing Is or becomes, how one thing or phase follows upon another. Either, therefore, the necess- ary connexion is pure assumption, or all Becoming must be called necessary ; in the latter case we simply produce useless ambiguity in a useful term without curing the defects of causation. If, again, mere sequence Is causation, night, as has been long ago pointed out, would be the cause of day. The fact is, that in applying the conception of causation to the world we have made a gigantic assumption ; and that all these difficulties arise from the fact that our assumption breaks down everywhere as soon as It is tested. Secondary causes involve just as great difficulties as first causes, the perplexities of which we have already considered (ch. li., § lo). It is assumed (i) that events depend on one another, and not on some remote agency behind the veil of illusion. But what If the successive aspects of the world be comparable to the continuous shuf- fling of a gigantic kaleidoscope, in the tube of which we were imprisoned as impotent spectators of a world that had no meaning or intelligible connec- tion ? Would not the attempt to know phenomena, to derive one set from another by our category of causation, be inherently futile? And (2) it is assumed that we are both entitled and able to dis- 76 SCEPTICISM. member the continuous flow of events, to dissever it into discrete stages, to distinguish certain elements in the infinitely complex whole of phenomena, and to connect them with others as their causes or effects. But what if the Becoming of things be an integral whole, which could be understood only from the point of view of the whole ? Would not the idea of causation be inherently invalid, just because it isolates certain factors ? And in any case it is inherently false. For whether our dissection of the continuous flux of phenomena be justifiable or not, the separation by which we isolate certain fragments must be false. We hear a noise and see a bird fall ; we jump to the conclusion that it has been shot. But what right have we thus to connect the firing of the gun and the death of the bird as cause and effect, and to separate them from the infinite mult- itude of concomitant circumstances ? Why do we ne OF thought: 8 J either a fact or nothinor at all, a truth for tliouorht may vary through all the gradations of logical necessity, from possibility up to " necessary truth." Whenever, therefore, we set out to /rclalm to seal the mouth of the defenders of knowledge, until they can show how thought can harmonize with fe«ellng, or our conceptions correspond with facts. And this he knows can never be, for since the equivalence of thought and feeling has been denied, no reasoning which assumes it can avail against Scepticism ; the proof of their correspondence would have to be derived from thought alone or feelinof alone. And yet feeling alone is inarticulate, while thought alone is vain, and has no contact with reality; they cannot DOES KNOWLEDGE WORK ? 91 coalesce, and each must separately succumb to the attack of Scepticism. § 20. But all these demonstrations leave us cold. It seems idle to urge that judgment is impossible, that inference is invalid, that the categories of our thought cannot interpret the cipher of reality, in face of the fact that, rightly or wrongly, the assump- tions of our "knowledge zuork. The theoretic falsity of science shrinks back into the obscurest shade of self-tormenting sophistry before the brilliant evidence daily afforded us of its practical certainty. Our mathematics may be grounded on falsity, and pro- ceed by iiction, but yet they somehow manage to predict the time of an eclipse within the tenth part of a second. Such refl-ections have often rendered theoretic scepticism practically harmless, and even some- times enabled it to strike up a curious alliance with theological orthodoxy. But they show, not that Scepticism is harmless, but that in merely theoretical scepticism It has not attained its fullest development. It is baffled, not because it has been convicted of error, but because the venue has been changed. The knowl-edge which it attacks, shifts its ground and takes refuge in the strong citadel of practice, and mere scepticism has not the siege artillery to assault it. And this new position knowledge can maintain only until Scepticism decides to press its attack home. Knowledge is safe o.nly while it is not pursued, safe until the sceptic disputes his adversary's appeal to the higher court of practice. When he .does, it soon appears thai the '* practical working" of our knowledge is far from .conclusive of the question at issue. If knowledge appeals to practice, the sceptic may say, to practice it shall go. 92 SCEPTICISM. What is meant by saying that knowledge works in practice ? Is it enough that we should be able to work out from our theoretic assumptions isolated results which hold good in practice ? Are the fundamental principles of life and knowledge justi- fied by their application to isolated cases ? Shall we stay to praise the correctness of the minor details of a picture, if its whole plan is preposterous, and its whole conception is perverse ? Surely that is not enough : if knowledge is to be justified by its practical success, it must be because its success is complete, because it succeeds in producing a complete harmony in the practical sphere. For else it may be merely an elaborate fraud, designed to lead us by an arduous and round-about way to the inevitable conclusion, that the nature of things is ultimately inexplicable. 'Our knowledge works' — what won- der if it works? For where would be the mischief if it did not work ? If it did not work, we should not worry. If, arguing falsely from false premisses to vicious conclusions, these did not, by some malicious mockery of a primordial perversity of things, partly correspond to the processes of nature, how should we be deceived? What if the lieht of science be but a baleful will-of-the-wisp which involves us ever deeper in the marshes of nescience ? How should we be lured into the fruidess toil of science, if it did not hold out to us a delusive hope of reducing into a cosmos of knowledge the chaos of our present- ations, if we saw at the outset what with much labour we perceive at the end, that our knowledge always leaves us with an irrational remainder of final in- explicability ? In order to rebut the suggestion that the apparent practical success of knowledge is one more illusion, TRANSITION TO PESSIMISM. 93 a false clue that involves us only the more inextric- ably in the maze of perplexity, its vindicators must be prepared to show that knowledge solves, or can reasonably be considered capable of solving, the problems of practical life, capable of constituting it into a concordant whole. In this way, and in this way alone, knowledge would acquire a problematic certainty, conditional upon its capacity to give, on the basis of its assumptions, a complete solution of the problem of life. But is it likely that knowledge, after failing to justify itself, will be able to solve the whole problem when complicated by the addition of the practical aspect ? This the sceptic will surely deny, and in so doing he becomes a pessimist. § 21. Scepticism passes into Pessimism in two ways. In the first place it is the practical answer of Scepticism to the defence of knowledge on pract- ical grounds. The pessimist admits that know- ledge appears to work ; but it appears to work only in order to lead us the more surely astray, to com- plicate the miseries of life by one more illusory aim ; it works only to work us woe. For how can our science claim indulgence on the ground of its practical success, when all it does is to relieve the lesser miseries of life, in order that we may have the leisure and the sensitiveness the more hope- lessly to feel its primary antinomies ? How can the certainty of mathematics console us for the uncertainty of life ? Or how does the piling up of pyramids and Forth Bridges alleviate the agony of death ? As it was in the beginning, the pessimist will maintain, it is now, and ever will be, that Death and Sin are the fruit of the fruit of the tree of knowledcre. It is true, too true, that increase of 94 SCEPTICISM. science Is Increase of sorrow, and that he that multiplies knowledge, multiplies misery. In the end It also Is vanity and vexation of spirit. Thus, just as Agnosticism could explain and justify itself only by passing into Scepticism, so Scepticism is compelled to deny that knowledge works on pessimistic grounds. And secondly, as Agnosticism passed into Scep- ticism, so Scepticism develops into Pessimism by internal forces. Pessimism is the proper emotional reflex of intelfectual scepticism. We may Indeed think the world evil without thinking it unknowable, but we can hardly think It good, K it be unknow- able. Not only can we not approve of a nature of things which renders the satisfaction of our knowing faculty impossible, but we must feel that a scheme of things which contains such elaborate provision for deceiving us, is likely to display similar per- versity throughout. And the sense of an all-pervad- ing perversity of things is the root of Pessimism. Thus, in passing into Pessimism the negation of philosophy reaches its ultimate resting-place In the unfathomed chaos where the powers of darkness and disorder eno^ulf the Cosmos. CHAPTER IV. PESSIMISM. Havra yeXws Kat Travra kovis kou TrdvTa to [xrjSivy HdvTa yctp.e^ dA.oyaji/ ccrrt ra ytyvo/xcva.^ § I. Pessimism has both' an emotional and an intellectual aspect, and these may be to a large extent separated in practice; Emotional pessimism consists in the feeling that life is not worth living, or that the world is evil. As this conclusion may be derived from a variety of premisses, the intellect- ual grounds of pessimism are exceedingly various. Almost every philosophic doctrine has been made the intellectual basis of pessimism, but with most of them pessimism has no direct connection. There exists, nevertheless, an intellectual ground from which emotional pessimism most easily and natur- ally results, and as many or all of the other grounds may be reduced to it, it may fairly be called the essence of Pessimism. This essential basis of Pessimism is what we have reached in the course of the argument, and shall henceforth consider. It may be most briefly described as the supposition of the fundamental perversity or irrationality of all things. It asserts that the problem of life is inherently insoluble, that the attempt to obtain a harmonious and significant 1 All is a mockery, and all is dust, and all is naught, For the irrational engenders all that becomes. {Glycon. Anthol. Pal. x. 124.) 95 96 l^KSSIMISM. solution Is comparable to circle-squaring, and that hence, from whatever side we attack the difficulty, we are baffled b}^ Invincible discords. This position is the negation of all the activities that make up life : for they all in different ways assume that life has a meaning, that Its ends and its means are not incommensurable, that it is not a hopeless and senseless striving that ends in nothing. It Is the negation of happiness and goodness, be- cause it asserts that these ideals are meaningless phantoms impossible of attainment ; of science, because knowledge is a snare and a delusion, and In the end a fruitless waste of labour ; of philosophy, because it assumes that the world has a meaning which may be discovered, whereas in truth the secret of the universe cannot be unravelled, because the world contains nothing which admits of rational interpretation. Thus Pessimism not only includes all the views we have been considering, Agnosticism which denied the possibility of all philosophy, and Scepticism which denied that of all knowledge, but adds on Its own account a denial of the possibility of all rational conduct. And so, since it cuts at the roots of them all, the possibility of this Pessimism must be the primary consideration, not only of philosophy, but of science, of ethics, and of eudaemonism. § 2. And not only is It possible that the con- stitution of things is intrinsically perverse, but it is possible for Pessimism plausibly to urge that this is extremely probable. The one thing certain. It may be said, about the world, is the fundamental discord which runs through all creation, is the Ingen- ious perversity which baffles all effort, is the futil- ity to which all the activities of life are condemned. THE INTRINSIC PERVERSITY OF THINGS. 97 This Pessimism which denies that anything can in any way be made of life, because Hfe is hope- lessly irrational, because its conflicting aspects are insuperable, is the primary question for philosophy. If it can be answered, difficulties may remain in plenty, but there is no impossibility, and indeed we are pledged to the faith that an answer may ult- imately be found to every valid difficulty the human mind can validly feel. If it cannot be answered, the whole edifice of life collapses at a blow, and for its practice we are left to the chance guidance of our inclinations, and deprived even of the hope that they will not lead us into destruction. And yet such pessimism is particularly formidable because of its very simplicity. It does not require the aid of any abstruse metaphysics ; it has not to rely on subtle inferences that take it beyond the obvious and visible ; it merely takes the facts of the world, such as they are, and requests us to put two and two together. It takes the main activities of life, the main aims of life which are capable of being desired for their own sake, and shows how in each case, (i) their attainment is impossible; (2) their imperfection is inherent and ineradicable ; and (3) the aggravation of these defects is to be looked for in the course of time rather than their amelioration. In this way it does not, it is true, justify the ill- coined title of '' pessimism," nor claim to prove a superlative which is ambiguous in the case of optimism and absurd in that of pessimism,^ nor does 1 Optimism may mean, and originally meant, the doctrine that ours is the desf of all possible worlds. But it is often taken as equivalent to the assertion that good predominates. So pessimism should mean that ours was the worst of all possible worlds, but how are we to know this ? R. ofS. H 98 PESSIMISM it at once declare life evil. For though the pessimist asserts this ultimately, just as the optimist asserts that life is good, he cannot do it directly. What- ever -testimony he may bring to the actual evils of life, the optimist may refuse to conclude that the evil predominates. Hence it is only by the tend- encies of things that the question can be scientlhc- ally argued, and that probable but unprovable assertions on either side can be established or refuted. The question as to the value of life is mainly a question of Meliorism or Pejorism : for to whatever side we suppose the balance to incline at the outset, it is bound to be more than counter- balanced in the end by a constant tendency in the opposite direction. § 3. Hence we must consider the nature and prospects of the four main pursuits or aims of life, happiness, goodness, beauty, and knowledge, and see what fate awaits the sensuous, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual enthusiasms. We shall consider first what is the value of life from the point of view of happiness, not only because happiness Is in a way the supreme end including all the rest, because if it could be truly attained the means would be of comparatively slight importance, or because the full and unmarred attain- ment of any of the others would bring happiness in Its train, but also because it has been popularly supposed to be the sole Interest of Pessimism. It has been supposed that the whole question of pessimism and optimism was as to whether there was a surplus of pleasure or pain in the world, and implied agreement to a common hedonistic basis.^ But this is really an accident of the historic 1 E.g. by H. Spencer: ''Data of Ethics," p. 27. NOT PRIMARILY HEDONISTIC. 99 development of the controversy, which does not affect its essential nature, nor justify the derivation of Pessimism from the consciousness of a baffled love of pleasure. The Pessimist need not assert that life normally brings with it a surplus of pain^ though he will doubtless be prone to think so, i.e., he need not base his pessimism on hedonism : his denial of the pleasure- value of life may be the con" sequence and not the cause of his pessimism. No doubt most pessimists have also been hedonists, and' several excellent reasons may be given for the fact; but this is no reason why Pessimism should be based on hedonism. It would be possible to base Pessimism on several non-hedonistic principles ; on. a despair of the possibility of goodness, of know ledge, of beauty, or on an aristocratic corttempt for human happiness. For it would be possible to argue that the happiness of creatures so petty and con- temptible as men was insufficient to redeem the character of the universe : whether or not man enjoyed a short-lived surplus of ephemeral and intrinsically worthless pleasure, there was in this nothing great, nothing noble, nothing worthy of being the aim of effort, nothing capable of satisfying the aspirations of the soul. The deepest pessimism Is not hedonistic ; for hedonism implies a presumption, a confidence in the claims of man, which it cannot countenance ; it asserts, not that life is valueless because it is un- happy, but that it is unhappy because it is valueless. And that so many pessimists have been hedonists Is easily explained by the facts that so few of them had probed the real depths of the abyss of Pessim- ism, that they, like the majority of men, were naturally hedonists, and above all, that the accept- ICO TESSIMISM. ance of the hedonistic basis was the surest way of carrying the war into the enemy's country. For hedonism is the chief stronghold of optimism : the most obvious defence of hfe is on the ground of its happiness. Indeed, if we neglect for the moment metaphysical possibilities, life can hardly be pronounced a success from any other point of view. Can it seriously be asserted that the present race of men deserve to live because of their good- ness, or of their wisdom, or of their beauty ? Would not any impartial man with a decently high stand- ard in these respects, if he Were armed with omnipotence for an hour, destroy the whole race w^ith a destruction more utter than that which over- took the Cities of the Plain, lest he should leave dauo^hters of Lot amono^ the favoured few ? Or shall it be said that any present or probable satis- faction of the moral, intellectual and aesthetic activities of average man makes his life worth living ? Surely if our life is not on the average good because it is happy and pleasant, it cannot be seen to be very good because it is virtuous, beauti- ful or w^ise. Optimists then are well-advised to defend the value of life on the ground of its pleasure-value, for if the defence breaks down here, the resistance will be a mere pretence elsewhere. The optimist and not the pessimist is the real hedonist, for the latter's condemnation of life rests on the conscious- ness of too many evils for him to base it on a single class : he is too deeply absorbed in the endless spectacle of Evil to have the leisure specially to bewail the hedonistic imperfections of life, the l)revity and illusoriness of pleasure. § 4. We must consider then the claims of life to \ THE IDEAL OF HAPPlN£,SS, : ^CCli be happy, and ask what happiness Is and on what it depends. Happiness may be defined from within as the fruition of fulfilled desire, from without as complete adaptation to environment. A complete corre- spondence between the soul and its environment is required for perfect happiness ; it can be attained only if our desires are at once realized In our con- ditions of life, or if they are at once accommodated to them. We need either a wondrous control of our environment or a wondrous plasticity of our nature. But both of these are rendered imposs- ible by what seems to be the Intrinsic constitution of our environment. If that environment were something fixed and unchanging, It is conceivable that we might, in the course of time, come to under- stand it and our nature so perfectly as to bring complete correspondence within our reach. But our environment Is 7io^ fixed : It is constantly shift- ing and changing, and, humanly speaking, it seems impossible that it should be fixed. For it appears to be an essential feature of our world to be a world of Becoming, and to such an ever-changing environ- ment there can be no adaptation. Whenever we fancy that we have adapted ourselves to our con- ditions, the circumstances change : a turn of the kaleidoscope and the labour of a life-time is ren- dered unavailing. Hence it is that not one of the activities or functions of life Is ever quite com- mensurate with its end, that our efforts are for ever disproportionate to our objects, and for ever fail of attaining an end which is too lofty for our means. The Ideal seems sometimes to be within our sight, but it is never within our reach, and we can never cross the great gulf that parts it from the Actual. 102 PESSIMISM. And so the Ideal of perfect adaptation, harmony or happiness is not one which has any apphcation to the world in which we live ; the dream of its realiz- ation is forbidden by the constitution of things. It was not then a false instinct that prompted men to postpone the attainment of happiness to a heaven beyond their ken in another world ; for assuredly it is an illusion in this world of ours. And what may be inferred from this ? What but this, that the attempt to judge life by the standard of happiness is to judge it by a conception which is inapplicable and unmeaning, by a standard which is false and futile ? What but this, that in aiming at happiness we are deliberately striving after the impossible, and that it would be strange indeed if the vanity of our aim did not reveal Itself in the failure of our efforts ? § 5. But it will not perhaps suffice to assert generally the Impossibility of adaptation to environ- ment under the given conditions of sensible existence, and the fact will at all events become more obvious, if we consider the question more in detail. We shall find that adaptation to environment is intrin- sically Impossible from whatever side we approach the question, no matter whether we consider the physical, social, or psychological environment, the case of the individual or of the race. The Individual cannot adapt himself to his physical environment, because in the end the strength of life must be exhausted in the effort to keep up with the changes the revolving seasons bring, because in the end waste must exceed repair, and the vain struggle of life be solved In death, that the unstable com- pounds of his bodily frame may be dissociated into stabler forms of lifeless matter. If the performance IMPOSSIBILITY OF ADAPTATION. IO3 of the functions of life is the aim of life, life is a fail- ure, for all its forms must die and pass away. § 6. Nor is there adaptation to the social en- vironment : births, marriages, and deaths ring the changes of our social happiness. How can there be stability in relations where all the acting forces come and go, are attracted and divorced by influences they can neither calculate nor govern ? To set one's heart upon the fortunes of another does but multiply the sources of its deadly hurt, and the more expose our vitals to the shafts of fortune. For in the end all love is loss, and all affection breeds affliction. What does it then avail to vow in vain a faith that fate frustrates? why should our will weave ties that death and chance must shatter ? Does not true wisdom, then, lie in a self-centred absorption in one's own interests ? Is not a cool and calm selfishness, which does not place its happi- ness in aught beyond its self, which engages in social relations but does not engage itself m them, the primary condition of prosperity ? Does not the sage's soul retire into its own sphere and contemplate its own intrinsic radiance, unbroken, untouched and unobscured by sympathetic shadows from the lives of others } Is not feeling with others in very truth sympathy, suffering with them } § 7. The dream of such a self-sufficing severance from all physical and social ties may be an ideal for fakirs, but it is impossible for men. And even were it possible, happiness would be as little found in the individual soul as in the social life. For here too, harmony is unattainable : the dis- cords of the essential elements of our nature can never be composed by beings subjected to the material world of Time and Space. It is impossible I04 PESSIMISM. to compromise the claims of the future with the desires of the present, impossible also to cast off the fetters of the past. The life which is warped and narrowed down to limited possibilities by the past, must sacrifice either its present or its future, and most often sacrifices both, in vain. For how can we, starting from the perverse and incongruous materials we did not make, so mould our lives that we can be happy both in youth and in old age, enjoy our lives and yet be glad at death ? How shall we not regret in age the pleasures and the freshness of youth, or in youth struggle vainly to attain the wisdom and the calm of age ? And this incongruence of the inner constitution of man's soul is invincible and universal : his nature is a disordered jumble of misinherited tendencies. The image of a multitude of warring and destructive beasts which Plato regarded as the inner state of a tyrant's soul, fails to describe the full horror of the facts: for each man's soul contains the representatives of ancestral savages and beasts, and has out of such discordant elements to form a government to guide his course. Thus, in addition to the external difficulties of life, there is constant danger of rebellion and anarchy within. The reason has to provide not only against attacks from with- out, but to curb the conflict of the elements within ; for if it reach a certain point, the mind is shattered and a raging maniac leaps forth into the light. And so the lusts of the flesh, the incubus of an- cestral sins, are ever at war with the aspirations of the spirit ; our feelings, the deep-rooted reaction of our emotional nature upon ancient and obsolete conditions of life, persist into a present where they are out of harmony with the more flexible conclu- \ NO HOPE FOR HUMANITY. I05 sions of our reason, and cannot be conformed to them within the brief space of a life-time. Thus, from whatever side we regard the Hfe of the. individual, adaptation is impossible : whether we consider its physical, social, or psychological con- ditions, there is war and constant struggle, over- shadowed by the certainty of ultimate defeat. It is ill dicing with the gods, who load the dice with death : the pursuit of happiness is an unequal fight with fate, for us, '' the helpless pieces of a cruel game," whose life seems little but a series of forced moves resulting in an inevitable checkmate. § 8. And if we consider the prospects of the race, they appear equally hopeless. Physically complete adaptation is impossible. We know that our solar system cannot go on for ever, and that the ultimate fate of humanity, imprisoned in a decaying planet, must be to shiver and to starve to death in ever-deepening gloom. § 9. Again, the possibility of social harmony depends on the possibility of so reconciling the claims of the individual with the requirements of society, that men would be perfectly free to do what they pleased, and be pleased to do what they oueht. But how shall we cherish such an illusion in o face of the evidence of the infinity of the individual, of the boundless growth of selfish demands, of the insatiable cravings of ambition, avarice, and vanity ? Until it has been shown how human society could rid itself of poverty, discontent and crime, could regu- late the number and the reproduction of the race, could eradicate love and hunger, and the competit- ion between individuals for the prizes of those passions, and so the envy, hatred and malice which that competition must engender, such hopes of social I05 PESSIMISM. harmony can bear no relation to the actuaHtles of life. § lo. Or lastly, if we consider the psychological conditions of internal harmony, we shall have again to admit its impossibility under the present constit- ution of things. The primary reflex in the rational soul of the action of the environment, is the growth of certain convictions as to the practical necessities of life. These convictions, when they have sunk into the soul, generate corresponding emotions, and ultim- ately become incarnate, as it w^ere, in the physical structure of the body (whether by direct adaptation, or by natural selection). But this process requires much time. And what is the result in a world of constant change ? The conditions of life change ; the conduct required by the new conditions is first (though often all too late) perceived by the reason, and after a time the suitable emotions are grown, prompting to the performance of that conduct ; and last of all, perhaps only by the action of heredity through numberless generations, the body is moulded into fitness to perform its new functions. But how if these changes follow more rapidly than the capa- city of the organism to adapt themselves to them ? It would tend to fall behind the times ; and thus if A, B, C, be successive stages in the conditions of life, requiring the adaptation of the organism to them, it might be that our reason had adapted itself to stage C, our feelings to B, while our body w^as still only fitted to perform the duties of stage A, and there would arise a conflict in the soul, i.e. the elements of our being would be always more or less unadapted to their work. And there can be no doubt that such is everywhere and normally the THE CONFLICT IN THE SOUL. IO7 case. We can as yet hardly boast to have dis- covered the solutions to the complex problems of modern life with our reason ; our feelings are con- tinually harking back irrationally to the conditions / of a remote antiquity, while our bodies are still more unsuited to the sedentary and intellectual life of ^ civilization. And so we are impelled in contrary directions by the conflicting constituents of our nature, and life becomes a burden to men whose faculties are not competent to perform the functions it requires. It would be but a slight exaggeration of our inability to keep pace with the changes of things to say that our bodies are those of animals, ^ our feelings those of savages, our reason that of men, / while our destiny and duties seem those of angels. Thus this internal discord, this conflict between the convictions of the head and the promptings of the heart, between the aspirations of the will and the shackles imposed on them by " the body of this death " is not, as we would fain believe, a transitory symptom of the present age, due to the ascetic superstitions of an effete religion, or, as Mr. Spencer would persuade us, to the survival of military habits . in an industrial age, but a necessary and permanent feature, which marks and stains the whole of Evol- ution. Internal non-adaptation is the inevitable concomitant of life in a changing world, and must exist until Time pass into Eternity. § II. But not only does the intrinsic constitut- ion of things render the pursuit of happiness that of an unattainable ideal, but even the approximations to it, as we fondly call them, are put beyond our reach by the course of events. Happiness can never be attained, and, for all our efforts, the delusive phantom recedes further and further from our eyes. I08 PESSIMISM. The evidence of Pejoi^ism, i.e., of the fact that the world has been growing more unhappy, must of necessity be historical, and as our knowledge of history is imperfect, it cannot in itself be conclusive. But in connection with the facts which have been mentioned, it becomes highly significant testimony to Pessimism. This testimony may be considered with a view to its bearing upon the physical, material, social and psychological effects of *' progress " upon the happi- ness of mankind. § 1 2. In estimating the effect of physical changes in the organism upon happiness, it is essential to bear in mind the fact that the physical functions of life are largely, and probably increasingly, performed icncoiiscio7isiy, and only enter into consciousness as pain, when out of order. Hence all the improve- ments in the conditions of life which merely secure the carrying on of the physical functions are useless for the production oi positive happiness. Our ordin- ary life is none the happier because it is securer against violent interruption of its functions, because we are less liable to be butchered or burnt. The proper functioning of our organism is doubtless a primary condition of positive happiness, but does not in itself constitute any considerable factor in it. Hence by far the larger part of the increased security and protection of life is of no avail for the production of pleasurable feeling, and its effect would, on the whole, probably be more than counterbalanced by the diminution of happiness arising out of the non - elimination of diseased and unfit organisms which in former times could not have survived to suffer much. Secondly, the pleasures arising from the bodily EVOLUTION FOR THE WORSE. IO9 organism are, owing to the lack of adaptation be- tween man and his environment, particularly liable to be Interfered with by the development of the hieher feelings of the mind, and hence to be Im- paired by the progress of civilization (§ 9). For it is necessary to remember that different pleasures are either mutually exclusive, or can only be enjoyed together to a very limited extent, while different pains admit of indefinite intensification by combination— up to the point at which death or un- consciousness ensues. Thus the greater sensitive- ness of a more refined nervous system is rendered unavailing as a source of pleasure, while it is terribly efficacious as a source of pain. And our non-adaptation to our environment is also a fruitful source of new pains. There can be \ little doubt that our organism is not adapted to the conditions of modern life ; our brains are not equal ' to the intellectual strain imposed on them; our nerves are disordered by the hurry and worry of "• stimuli to which they cannot respond with sufficient rapidity and delicacy ; our eyes cannot be persist- ently used for reading without painful malformations, and even our stomachs are becoming increasingly incompetent to digest the complexities of modern cookery. In short, the physical machine was not \ meant to work at such pressure, nor can it sustain the strains where we require It. And in addition to sources of misery which seem to be, in part at least, due to human action, there are others more purely physical, which form the penalties nature has affixed to Evolution. Among them may be instanced a fruitful source of acute pain in the progressive decay of the teeth of civil- ized man. It has been asserted that no philosophy I I O PESSIMISM. was proof against toothache, but Pessimism at any rate can convert toothache into a proof of its philoso- phy. And, more generally, civilized man becomes far more subject to minor ailments, which, together with his nervous sensitiveness, probably make " a bad cold " as painful as a deadly disease was to a savage. In fact, the higher races of man seem, like the higher breeds of domestic animals, to develop an astonishing aptitude for illness, a delicateness and want of stamina which makes them suffer acutely when they have to bear privations, even when their superior morale enables them to bear up against them, and their superior knowledge enables them to delay death. Again, there is a progressive loss in the power of recuperation under injury as we advance to the higher forms of life. Just as a crab, on losing a limb, will grow another, or as a snail can repair the loss even of its head, so savage races will recover from hurts which would prove fatal to Europeans. And if this process goes on, we may justly dread the time when the merest scratch will prove an incurable wound. Or again, we find several facts about the repro- duction of the race, which may well occasion des- pondency. Births are easier and safer among savages than among civilized men, and most difficult among the most civilized of these. And other facts connected with this subject seem to set a limit to the intellectual development of man. There seems to be a decided tendency for highly educated women to be sterile, probably because their organism does not possess the superfluous energy which renders reproduction possible. And, to a large extent, the explanation both of this and the previous phenome- \ PHYSICAL LIMITS TO PROGRESS. I I I non lies in the fact that there is a physical Hmit to the size of the head of an infant which can be born. It would follow from this that since there is an un- doubted relation between Intellect and the size of the brain, the bulk of our geniuses even now perish in their birth. Lastly, if we go back to prehuman stages in the history of Evolution, we find that some of the most fundamental features of animal life are not original. Sexual reproduction, e.g., has been evolved, and there was originally no difference between nutrition and reproduction. One cannot help thinking, how- ever, that much evil and much suffering might have been prevented if this connection had been main- tained, if life had never been complicated by the distinction of the sexes. If reproduction had never occurred, except as an Incident of superabundant nutrition, and if children had never made their appearance, except where there was an abundance of food ! And recently It has been suggested also that death itself is derivative, and was evolved by the amoeba from a mistaken desire to promote the survival of the fittest.^ Into the somewhat Inadequate evidence for this speculation there Is no need to enter, nor to deny that the biological and physiological reasons for this unparalleled feat of Evolution are doubtless of a highly satisfactory character. But from a purely human point of view It seems the final condemnation of the process. From an evolution which could Invent and cause death, man has evidently no happi- ness to hope ; rather he must In fear and trembling expect it to bring forth some new and unconjectured horror. 1 By Professor Weismann. I I 2 PESSIMISM. § 13. Taking next the material conditions of life, it is undeniable that many ameHoratlons of the lot of man have taken place within our knowledge. But material progress is not in itself a cure of the miseries of the soul ; on the contrary, it alone renders possible that growth of sensitiveness and reflection which makes men conscious pessimists. So it is not surprising that the chief prophets of Pes- simism should have arisen amonQ^st those who from a coarsely material point of view had less to com- plain of than their fellows. Nor is it surprising that an age pre-eminent for its material progress should be also an age pre-eminent for its spiritual misery. For how can railways, telegraphs and telephones make men happy ? To be deprived of their con- veniences would doubtless be pain acutely felt and indignantly resented ; but when the first joy of novel discovery is past, their possession is no source of positive pleasure. § 14. But even if it be admitted that material progress, unlike the evolution of the bodily organ- ism, has in itself brought a surplus of pleasure, it cannot be considered in abstraction, apart from its indirect effect upon social conditions. And if these are taken Into consideration, it appears that every new luxury generates a thousand new wants in those who possess it, a thousand ignoble ambitions in those who may hope to do so, a thousand hateful jealousies in those who behold it beyond their reach. The happiness of the unsophisticated savage was not wholly created by the vivid imaginations of eighteenth century theorists : it is a theory, to some extent at least, borne out by the customary pro- cedure of introducing civilization among savages. Savages have comparatively few wants they cannot ^ MATERIAL PROGRESS. I I 3 satisfy, and so will not slave to produce thing^s in order to satisfy the wants of civilized man. The trader therefore must excite passions powerful enough to overcome the natural indolence of the savage ; and so with rum and rifles he gratifies his desire of drink and of revenge. Thus the savage enters on the path of money- getting, propter vitam vivendi perdere causas, an endless path whence there is no return, and where to falter is to fall. He is demoralized and often too destroyed, but civilization triumphs and the world "progresses," and though each generation be more unhappy than its prede- cessor, each hopes that its successor will be more fortunate. And in another way at any rate, material progress has been the source of much misery, and a chief factor in the increase of social discord, by widening the material gulf between the rich and the poor, and the intellectual gulf between the educated and uneducated, and by stimulating the envy of the poor, nay, by making possible the education which made them conscious of their misery. It is the fierce lust for the material good things of life which has brought upon modern society the great and growing danger of revolutionary Socialism, and which baffles the well-meant efforts of those who would content it with less than the utter destruction of civilization. And not the least pathetic feature of a desperate situation is that, while the unreason- ing insistance of those who claim the good things of life is becoming fiercer, the happiness they covet is imaginary, and those who are supposed to possess the means to happiness are either too blas^ to enjoy them, or have made them the means to new pains. And though these progressively increasing pains R. ofS. I 114 PESSIMISM. and claims of an ever-deepening sensitiveness will doubtless appear morbid and ridiculous from the fact that they differ in almost every case, they are none the less real, none the less the bane of many lives comparatively free from other sources of misery, none the less a cause of social non-adaptation. And while there is so much dirty work to be done in the world, tendencies which engender in men a distaste for dirty work are not conducive to hap- piness. While, e.g,, battles have to be fought, it is a distinct source of misery that so few of the men who fio^ht them should now delio^ht in carnaee for its own sake. § 15. But perhaps the most serious and disheart- ening source of non-adaptation to the social environ- ment, and one indeed which largely underlies the symptoms to which allusion has been made, is the over-rapid growth of the social environment itself. It is impossible for society to harmonize the con- flicting claims of its members because of the con- stant addition of new claimants : adaptation to the social environment is nullified by the ever-increasing complexity of the social environment itself. It was comparatively feasible for political philo- sophers in ancient times to theorize about ideal republics in which social harmony was attained : the citizens for whom they legislated formed but a small proportion even of the human inhabitants of the State ; their material wants were to be sup- plied by the forced labour of slaves and inferior classes, whose happiness was excluded from con- sideration. So, too, the difficulties of the population question were evaded by summary methods of infanticide, i.e., the rights of children were not recognised, and even in the case of women that GROWTH OF THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT. II5 recognition was little more than nominal. With so restricted a body of fully-qualified citizens, i.e., with so circumscribed an area of the social environment, it Is not astonishing that the structural perfection of ancient states should have been far greater than ours and the Ideal far nearer : the ancient State: could represent a higher type of social organismi because it made no attempt to solve the problems^ which perplex us. But we have successively admitted, the claims of children, slaves, and women, and wlthi the growing complexity of our social problems we- have sunk out of sight even of an approximate- solution in) a quagmiire of perplexities, in which we- are more hopelessly Involved with every step in our ''progress." Nor need the process stop with man : in the kws for the prevention of cruelty to animals there is marked a more than incipient recognition, of the rights of animals, and already there are thousandls who resent the sufferlnofs of vivisected dogs as keenly as the most ardent abolitionist did those of negro slaves, and there are more convinced of the Iniquity of vivisection now than there were convinced of the Iniquity of slavery one hundred years ago. \ 16. But not only is the prodigious growth of the social environment removing a harmony of the social forces further and further from our sight, but a parallel process is rendering harmony more and more unattainable for the individual soul. In the earliest beginnings of life, adaptation, in so far as it exists, is physical or nothing at all. The organism adapts itself directly to its environment or It perishes. At a subsequent stage it Is primarily emotional and secondarily physical ; i.e. the pressure of circumstances generates feelings which subse- Il6 PESSIMISM. quently direct the actions of the body. In the amoeba there is scarcely any search for or effort after food : it assimilates the digestible substances it comes across. And hence there is no need of feeling. But higher animals are capable of pursuing their prey, and hence are stimulated by the pangs of hunger. In man, again, the conditions of life have become so complex tliat the simple feelings no longer suffice. Man cannot, as a rule, when hungry, simply put forth his hand and eat. The means to gratify his feelings and his physical needs require a long and far-sighted process of calculation, and thus reason becomes the main factor in vital adapt- ation. As Mr. Spencer phrases it, the more complex and re-representative feeHngs gain greater authority and become more important than the simple and presentative feelings, and the latter must be re- pressed as leading to fatal imprudences. To the consequences of this process allusion has already been made (§ lo); it produces an ever-growing dis- cord within the individual soul. More specifically, however, a single case may be mentioned of the growing non-adaptation of the feelings to the con- ditions of modern life, because it is fraught with such fatal consequences to human welfare and be- cause no reformer dares even to attack a well-spring of evil in the soul of man which poisons the whole of modern life. § 17. In animals the reproductive instinct does not do more — such is the waste of life — than main- tain the numbers of the race. But in man that waste is so diminished that population normally in- creases, and increases rapidly. And every advance in civilization, in medicine, in material comfort, in peaceableness and respect for human life, increases THE POPULATION QUESTION. II 7 the length and the security of life and diminishes the death-rate. In other words, it diminishes the number of new births, required to maintain the race and the fertiHty which \s politically necessary. But no corresponding change takes place in the natural fertility of the race. What is the result ? If we suppose that a healthy woman, marrying at the right age, could without detriment to her health produce six children,^ and if we take into consider- ation also the fact that the length of life will soon on an average extend over two generations, i.e. that men may reasonably expect to see their grand- children grown up, it is evident that population will be fully maintained if one-fifth to ane- sixth of the women in a society provide for its coriitinuance ; I.e. the services of four out of every five,., at least, might be dispensed with from this point of view. If, therefore, only the one who was really wanted, wanted to marry, while the other four were content to leave no descendants, all would be well, and human desires would be adapted to the require- ments of the situation. But in that case the repro- ductive instinct would have to be reduced, it would be hard to say to what fraction of its present strength. This is so far from being the case that even if it is not true that its strength has not been reduced at all, it is yet obvious that its reduction has not taken place in anything like a degree pror portionate to the reduction of the need of its exercise. ^ As a fact the average fertility of marriage is four-and-a-half. But for many reasons the actual number of children falls far short of the possible maximum. For under the present conditions healthy and strong women are by no means exclusively selected, for marriage, and other artificial conditions limit the number afi children produced, in most cases far below what it might be.. I I 8 PESSIMISM. And this Is not astonishing for many reasons. For (j) feehngs are slow to be eradicated, and their persistence is the greater the more deep-seated- and important they were. Hence any considerable change in human nature seems in this case to border upon the impossible, although it must be admitted that no instinct which was acquired in the course of Evolution can be exempted from the possibility of being again removed by an adaptation to cir- cumstances similar to that which generated it. (2) Civilization, although it Qrives the over-sensual mani- fold opportunities of killing themselves, does not directly favour the less sensual as against the more sensual, as it favours the gentler as against the more violent, the more industrious as against the lazier; on the contrary, it perhaps makes the sensual the more likely to leave offspring. (3) Human instit- utions and social forces have, in almost all cases, done their utmost to keep the amative instinct at its pristine strength. Christianity alone has even attempted to contend with human nature in this respect, and even it, In Protestant countries at least, may now be said to hav€ retired baffled from the contest. Its defeat indeed will surprise no one who considers the means it adopted in order to repress sensuality, and reflects upon the fatuity, e.g., of con- demning to celibacy those who were presumably the most spiritually-minded and least sensual in each generation. And what are the present arrangements of society ? Are they not all calculated to foster these feelings in the young ? What else but " love " is the tale which is dinned into their all-too-willing ears from every side ? Not to speak of too un- savoury matters, what is to be thought of the effect \ \ \ THE SEXUAL INSTINCT. II9 of poetry and literature ? What is the inex- haustible subject of lyric poetry ? What of the novels that form nine-tenths of the reading of mankind ? Are they not all of them tales of love, and do not nine-tenths of them inculcate as their sole fragment of philosophy that love is the one redeem- inof feature in life ? Would it not then be a miracle if men did not accept this doctrine and cherish their animal instincts to their own destruc- tion and that of others ? For what does society do for the feelings it has thus trained up ? Does it render satisfaction poss- ible ? Far from it ; it makes marriage difficult and sordid, and all other means odious and dangerous both to body and soul. Even one hundred years ago Kant could say that men were physically adult fifteen years before they were economically adult, i.e., capable of support- ing a household, and since then the age of mar- riage has gone on becoming later and later. And women in many cases never get a chance of marrying at all ! On the effect such a condition of things must have upon morality it is unnecess- ary to say anything, except that it renders all preaching a ghastly and unavailing mockery; but from the point of view of human misery the con- sequences of immorality form too great and too growing a contribution to its sum total to be ignored by Pessimism. And let us consider whether there can be happiness in the soul whose strongest feeling can find no vent in the only way which can give it permanent satisfaction, and reflect upon the myriads who are, and will be, in this condition, and then, if we dare, let us assert that the world is growing happier ! Is it not certain, rather, that it must be 1 20 PESSIMISM. growing both more unhappy and more immoral ? For the strength of the instinct being constant, and its field of action being continuously circumscribed, must not the internal pressure of necessity become more painful ? must not the outbursts of passion more and more frequently and violently burst through the limits of the law ? § 18. We have seen so far how impossible is adaptation, how ineradicable is misery, and how inevitable is the growth of unhappiness ; but it is perhaps necessary also to display the fallaciousness of the appeal which optimism makes to the law of adaptation, which may be called the evolutionist arorument a^fainst Pessimism. It may be stated as follows : — Other things being equal, those men v/ill survive whose speculative doctrines tend to make them more successful in life. This will generate in time a strong bias in favour of those doctrines, which may go the length of making their opposites not only practically impossible, but even theoretically unintelligible. Hence, quite apart from questions of their truth or falsehood, we may rest assured that doctrines tending to handicap those that hold them in the struggle for existence, must in the long run vanish away. Now Pessimism is certainly such a doctrine. It diminishes the amount of pleasure of its votaries, and thus deprives them of its vitalizing effects ; it depresses their energies, efforts and en- terprise, by its constant suggestion of the general futility of all things, even when it does not settle the question of survival by the short remedy of suicide. Hence, the optimist will survive better than the pessimist, and pessimism will receive its final answer from the brutal logic of facts. The X THE EVOLUTIONIST ANSWER INCONCLUSIVE. 121 king of gods and men will stop the railing mouth of Thersites by the cold clod of earth, by the un- answerable summons of his dread herald Death. Thus Pessimism is hopeless, and doomed to pass away, and can cherish no hope, even if true, of per- suading men of its truth. § 19. Pessimists will doubtless use this argu- ment to explain the undeniably optimistic bias ot the generality of men, but will deny several of its assumptions. For instance, it assumed that, other things being equal, the optimist would survive. But how if Pessimism be causally connected with other qualifications for survival, e.g, with growth of knowledge ? How, if increase of wisdom be truly increase of sorro-w ? Might not the wiser pessimist survive better than the ignorant optimist ? History, indeed, seems to teach that this has frequently hap- pened, and that gay savages and the lightly-living races of the South have not been more successful than those who have soberly and sadly borne the burden of civilization and of science. Thus, there is nothing absurd In the supposition that with the attainment of a certain degree of ^ mental development, the conviction of the futility of life should be irresistibly borne in upon all men, and that the forces of evolution should for ever urge mankind towards Pessimism, even though it meant death. Pessimism may invert the evolut- ionist argument, and urge not that the susceptib- ility to pessimistic modes of thinking will be des- troyed by the progress of the world, but that the progress of the world will be artificially suppressed, because of the destruction which pessimistic modes of thinking involve as soon as a certain point Is reached. Civilization, then, would be an ocean 122 PESSIMISM. which for ever uro^ed its foremost waves against the adamantine rocks of Pessimism that broke and shattered them, and for ever pushed forward fresh breakers to carry on a futile contest. And, moreover, the evolutionist argument assumes that the environment is constant, and that hence the law of adaptation must produce happiness in the end. But what if the environment is not constant, but itself evolving, and evolving more rapidly than our powers of adaptation ? And since the Pessimist may claim to have shown that this is actually the case (§§ 12-17), must not the world be growing unhappier in spite of all the law of adaptation can do ? Will not the constant introduction of new conditions of life, to which mankind has not yet grown adapted by the elimination of protesters, pro- vide a constant source of Pessimism ? May not the intrinsic perversity of things render adaptation eternally impossible ? And lastly, supposing the argument to be valid, would it not confirm the Pessimist in his pessimism ? Would it not seem to him one more instance of the utter malignity of the constitution of things, that his protest should be overborne by the brutal tyranny of facts, that truth should be unable to prevail, that the triumphant lust of life should lead reason captive ? It must be confessed, therefore, that the evolu- tionist answer is not only theoretically insufficient, but also inadequately supported by the facts. The facts of life admit of the pessimistic interpretation, and the difficulty is rather to see what other in- terpretation they will admit of § 20. When once the possibility of happiness has been disproved, no possible moral value of life THE IDEAL OF GOODNESS. I 23 can save It from condemnation. On the contrary, it would be an arrangement worthy of the most fiendish ingenuity to combine progressive growth in goodness with progressive growth in misery. But there is no necessity to anticipate this, seeing that the ideal of goodness is as unmeaning and impossible as that of happiness. And for the same reasons. Just as happiness depended on the proportion between desires and their fulfilment, so goodness depends on the py^oportion between the moral /" standard and moral conduct. If our standard be -^high, and our conduct fall far short of it, we shall feel more wicked than if our standard and our conduct be alike low, and the latter approximate more closely to the former. Virtue depends on V adaptation to the moral environment, on relation to the moral ideal. And as before, both the environ- ment and the ideal are capable of growing, and of growing more rapidly than the individual's adapt- ation to them. Thus it may be that the more we do, the more is given us to do ; the more duties we fulfil, the more fresh duties are laid upon us ; the further we advance, the further we are from our end. The result, then, of the moral judgment will / depend on the proportion between aim and achieve- ment. If moral theory develops more rapidly than moral practice, if the refinement of our sense of sin ^ outstrips the refinement of our morals, there is nothing improbable or Impossible in the prospect that the heirs of a long course of moral improve- A / ment may be the most wicked of men, utter scoun- drels as judged by their own moral standard. And there is some reason to think that this 1 24 PESSIMISM. process has actually been going on, to judge by the lower type of the moral ideal in modern times as compared with ancient. The Greeks regarded the moral man as one rejoicing in the exercise of virtue, and finding his highest pleasure in virtuous activities which were the natural expression of his nature. The conduct of a man who, in spite of sore tempt- ation, acted rightly and controlled his evil impulses, they regarded as an altogether inferior type, scarcely worthy of the name of virtue. But with us the case is different ; the unswerving performance of duty is the highest ideal to which man is considered capable of aspiring ; to expect him not to feel temptation, to find pleasicre in doing his duty, is to expect superhuman perfection. But duty is in itself a mark of imperfection, for if there were more perfect correspondence between the internal nature and the external environment, be- tween the feelings and the conduct required, the moral act would be accompanied by pleasure, and prompted by the impulse of feeling, instead of by the coercive sense of duty. Our ideal of morality then represents a lower stage of moral progress than that of the Greeks. Are we then so far inferior to them in moral development ? Assuredly not; there can be no doubt that though w^e are further from the attainment of our moral ideal than the Greeks were from theirs, we have advanced immensely beyond the Greeks in this very matter of morality, and that measured on an absolute scale our conduct and our ideal must rank far higher than theirs. Thus, if there is an absolute scale, w^e are objectively better, though subjectively worse. But is there such an absolute scale ? To assert this would be to assert that there is a definite limit IS VIRTUE A PHANTOM? 1 25 » to the growth of the moral environment, to the expansion of the moral ideal. It would be to assert the existence of a permanent and unchanging environment somewhere^ even though it were in the heaven of heavens, the existence of an eternal Ideal, of an unalterable standard of Right. And what is there in the character of our sensible world of change to justify such an assumption ? Thus goodness is as unattainable as happiness, and like it an ideal for which the Real has no room. It is indeed in one way even more unmeaning, for the perfection of goodness would destroy its own moral character. If all our duties became pleasures, ^ they would ipso facto cease to be duties, and the virtue which is no longer tempted to do wrong ceases to be virtue. And so must not the pessimist's judgment be that in aiming at goodness we are but pursuing the fleeting image of a mirage, that with its delus- ive promise of the waters of eternal life, and the green palms of victorious virtue, lures us ever deeper into the wilderness of Sin ; that mankind will do well to abandon the wild-goose chase of such a winged phantom as insane folly ; and that goodness, so far from being an alternative to happiness, is not even an end which can be rationally aimed at } § 21. Byway of contrast to the otherwise un- redeemed gloom of their pictures of life, pessimist writers have been wont to assert that whatever gratification could be got out of life must be derived from the aesthetic emotions and activities ; hence it is incumbent upon us to examine whether their assertions are well founded. Jn the first place, there is clearly a subtle irony in fixing upon the rarest and most capricious of our 126 PESSIMISM. sensibilities as the redeeming feature in life. For as disputes about taste show, our sense of beauty hardly yet gives rise to objectively valid judgments. It Is still In so rudimentary a state of development that we are in most cases quite unable to justify its judgments, and to say how and why anything Is beautiful. We may indeed conjecture that in the end eesthetic emotion would be found to be the crowning approval of a perfect harmony, of a com- plete adaptation of means to ends, of an exact fitness of things. But if so, a developed sense of the beautiful would find little to admire In a world like ours, in which all things are more or less discordant and unadapted. What wonder, then, that of true beauty we should have no perception and no under- standing ? But even the imperfect sense of beauty we have developed Is a bane rather than a blessing. For even by its standard the vast majority of things in the world are ugly, and the longing for the beautiful can be gratified only at the cost of much subserv- ience to the hideous and the loathsome. And then the pursuit of the beautiful brings us into frequent conflict with the good ; for though we may come to perceive In some cases that the good is beautiful. It is yet far from being the case that the beautiful is always good. The antagonism, too, between the useful and the ornamental is too well known to require comment. But the most fatal effect of the development of the cesthetlc sense Is its influence upon our feelings. It renders us sensitive to evils which we had not had the refinement to perceive before, and it causes us to shrink in disgust from evils we had thought it our duty to face, and to grapple with. The \ THE IDEAL OF BEAUTY. 1 27 aesthetic temperament Is naturally Impelled to avoid what is coarse and ugly, low and common-place, and so loses sympathy with nine-tenths of human life. It Is not merely that duties and functions like those of hospital nurses or butchers, however necess- ary and morally admirable they may be, must continue to be aesthetically repulsive, but that the meanness and ugliness of the greater part of life seems too Irremediable to admit of the hope of improvement. It is not from the resignation and retirement of the aesthetically-minded that the great *' reforms " of history have received their impulse, but from the moral enthusiasm or party spirit of men whose every step was marked by brutal utilit- arianism or unbeautiful fanaticism.^ It Is well, then, that the world is still so Philistine ; for if once the hideous and unalterable sordldness of life were fully realized. It might come to pass that few would care to survive to feel It long. Thus the enthusiasm for beauty does but com- plicate our already all too complex lives, does but add one more warring aim which we can never realize. 1 The history of the Renaissance may seem to refute the view that culture and artistic sense have not been the moving forces of the world. But the Renaissance was a revival of learning quite as much as of art, prompted as much by the desire for knowledge as for beauty. And, after all, in the end it effected little. It was soon absorbed or swept away by the Reformation, and it is well known that, after a little hesitation, most of the chiefs of the Renaissance condoned the abuses of the old order of things and remained Catholics. The intellectual Hberty (such as it is) we have since attained, we owe, not to the Renaissance, ' but rather to the conflict of equally intolerant and equally power- ful orthodoxies, and the progress of science has been stimulated far more by the hope of its material advantages than by the desire of pure knowledge. I2S PESSIMISM. ^2 2. Lastly, the claim of the intellectual activit- ies to provide an aim to life has really been already disposed of by Scepticism. If knowledge cannot lull asleep the discordant strife of the elements of our being, if it cannot discover the road to harmony and to bliss, then knowledge fails in practice, and then its theoretical defects stamp it as an illusion (cf ch. iii., § 20, 21). And it is an illusion for the same reason as the other activities of life, because in order to be true it requires an ideal, fixed, per- manent and definite, as the standard whereby to measure the passing and indeterminate flux of things. And such an ideal it can nowhere find in a world of Becoming. The Becoming of the world is the rock upon which the ark of life is shattered : to know, to be good, to be happy, we require a fixed standard of Being, but the ideal which our reason and our heart demand our eyes can nowhere see. Thus, all reason can do is to render us sensible of the hopelessness of our position ; it is the fire, kindled by the collision of discordant elements, which consumes the soul of man, and by the lurid light it throws upon our gloomy lot we can just see that our doom is irrevocable, that we are the helpless victims of a gigantic auto da fd, of which Evolution is the celebration. For since every advance does but widen the chasm between the ideal and the actual, our only hope would be to retrace the course of Evolution, and to simplify life ^/ by a return to the primitive contentment of the amoeba. But though the amoeba is far more per- fectly adapted to its environment than any of its descendants, it may well be doubted whether even the amoeba is happy : in any case, it suffices that THE RUIN OF HOPE. 1 29 such an escape from misery by a return to uncon- sciousness is impossible. Thus we must resio^n ourselves to our fate, and, to adapt a famous image of Plato's, allow the immortal steeds of Progress and of Reason to drag fi the chariot of the Soul with reckless speed adown the race-course of life, while the reluctant mortal charioteer makes vain essays to break the rush, and succeeds only in racking and rending his car asunder. And so the mad course will go on, until '' tcvremun eqidtem gravatusl'^ the Pegasus of Pro- gress kicks over the traces, wrecks the chariot, and leaves the blanched bones of the charioteer to mark the melancholy track for successors neither wiser nor more fortunate. ^ 23. Thus ruin, final and irretrievable, has overtaken the attempt to deal with life, such as it is, or rather, to regard the present appearances of things as self-sufficinor and ultimate : there remains only the poor consolation of knowing that we have brought this ruin upon ourselves. For perhaps the reflection may obtrude that we are ourselves responsible for the disaster, in that we insisted on ignoring the heavenly nature of our ideals. If we must needs drao: the chariot of the soul through the mire of earth, and feed our Pegasus on the sordid fare most alien from the ambrosia that formed his proper nourishment ; if we deny him the use of his wings, and keep him down to the dusty track that dimmed his sight, and if thus we fail, is it so sure that we may rightly blame the divine steeds of Reason and of Evolution .^ To this question the following section of this essay will attempt to give an answer. 1 " Spurning his eartli-born rider." R. ofS. K BOOK 11. CHAPTER V. K E C O N S T R U C TI N. \ I. The avowed object of the preceding chap- ters has been to trace out the consequences of the denial of metaphysics, i.e. of a systematic examin- ation of ultimate questions, and of Its bearing upon the theory and practice of life. But Incidentally far more serious results followed. Not merely did Positivism lead on to Agnosticism, Agnosticism to Scepticism, and Scepticism to Pessimism, but the two latter streno^thened themselves with aro^uments which It seems well-nigh impossible to refute. And so Avhat advance has been made towards a solution of the problem of life ? What has it availed to show the dire consequences of the unphilosophlcal view. If in so doing we have destroyed also the basis of all others ? Have we not enmeshed our- selves also in a deadly snare and been beguiled into a position from which there Is no escape ? Have we not ourselves destroyed all the hopes or illusions that make life valuable ? Yet it may be that this apparent loss will prove real gain ; even now it is possible to see counter- vailino- advanta<^es. In the first place, we have faced the worst that can be said against the scheme of things, and may at least hope to be acquitted of the suspicion that weakness or disingenuousness has prompted us to 1 34 KECONSTRUCTIOX. understate or overlook the difficulties that beset the attempt to discover any meaning in life. And from this thoroughness in stating the negative position we may also draw the assurance that whatever germs of higher hopes have survived such ruthless destruction, must surelv be immortaL and frauo^ht with no humble destiny. Secondly, the wholesale havoc Pessimism has wrought has effectually cleared the ground : Pessim- ism has played the part of a Samson, and in its fall has crushed alike philosopher and Philistine. Not only has it enabled us to see the real drift and final outcome of popular theories which would otherwise be continually delaying our progress, but it has also swept away the mass of philosophic con- structions, of which none have answered, and very few can even be said to have considered, the questions which have been brought forward. So» whenever we encounter doctrines based upon the veiled assumptions of agnosticism, scepticism, and pessimism, or such as have no answer to the poss- ibilities on Avhich they are grounded, we shall be able to reduce them to their lowest terms, as it were, to refer them to their types, and thus to remove their obstructions. We shall give such opponents the choice between yielding or confessing to the latent pessimism of their views, and thus use pessimism as a sort of provisional reditctio ad absurd- nm, justifying us in rejecting them in their im- perfect form. And, thirdly, we have raised, in an acute form, the question of the vtethod of philosophy, by showing that the attempt to exclude all philosophic methods on the ground of metaphysics, and to speculate about the problems of life by means of merely A BARGAIN WITH SCEPTICISM. 1 35 common-sense reflection leads to irremediable dis- aster. And the toil and trouble of probing to its utmost depths the abyss of Pessimism will not have been in vain, if it can bring home to us this con- viction, that either a metaphysical method can rescue philosophy or all is lost, that salvation is to be found in metaphysics or not at all. ^ 2. But in addition to these, other advantages may indirectly result from an attentive criticism of what has been proved by Scepticism and Pessimism, and of how it has been proved. The demonstration of Scepticism depended on the discrepancy between thought and reality, be- tween things as we think them, and as they appear to us, on the difference of thought and feeling, on the impossibility of representing the whole by the part. And as it denied the correspondence of the elements which constitute knowledge, it cannot be directly refuted. For any argument which assumes such correspondence begs the question, Avhile any argument which proceeds by only one of the factors, is ex hypothtsi incapable of proving the existence of truth, i.e. of the harmony of both. Any refutation, therefore, of Scepticism must be indirect ; and of such refutations, that which is based on its practical absurdity has been already considered. It is transcended by Pessimism, which admits that the assumptions of our knowledge work, In a certain sense, but only up to a certain point, and work only in order to plunge us into a more irredeemable chaos. For In the end they fail, and fail us just at the critical point : they Imply Intel- lectual Ideals to which the Becoming of sensible thines w^ill not conform. Nothlncr remains, therefore, but to make a kind of i:6 RKCONSTRUCTION. bargain with Scepticism, and to assume provision- ally the unproved hypothesis of the real validity of the principles of our thought, of the substantial parallelism of our thought and reality, on condition of thereby solving all the problems of life. For it would be absurd to deny that we can know, if our knowledge can solve, or show the way to the solu- tion of all the problems of the world. And this concession must and should satisfy us. It is indeed no more than w^hat we should really have been justified in demanding before we were urged to it by Scepticism, that the authenticity of human knowledge should be guaranteed by its capacity to deal with all human problems. We may claim that, if the scheme of things is rational at all, it should not mock our reason with puzzles that are insoluble. We must assert that either the human reason is competent to solve all the difficulties that human niinds can properly feel, or that in all things it is the plaything of an unknowable, unmanageable and inexorable perversity of things. But whether we might have urged this claim of our own accord or not. Scepticism renders all debate superfluous : w^c must accept its terms or give up the hope of re- storing the validity of knowledge. And the aspect of the world which Pessimism presents to us is a no less stimulus in the search for a truly satisfactory philosophy. It is based on a possibility which may repel us, but which is so deeply rooted in the nature of our world that we can never wholly reject it. It thus forms an eternal contrast to the true philo- sophy, the gloomy realm of shades which receives the recreant outcasts from the lieht. Its conclusion that life is miserable, and not worth living, was the outcome of a speculative suggestion. ^V1IAT IMllLOSOPHY MUST ACHIEVE. I37 That suggestion was that of the ultimate perversity of the constitution of things, as a consequence of which all problems are intrinsically insoluble, all questions inherently meaningless, and all methods incurably impracticable. It is no use asking quest- ions, because no answer can be given ; it is futile to make any sort of effort, for we are ever baffled in the end, and the greater the effort the more bitter the disappointment : the cup of life must be drained to the dregs, and however we struggle, the dregs •are bitter with death. Theoretically life is a puzzle ^ which has no solution ; practically it is a Barmecide feast at which the wretched dupes, the victims of an 'inscrutable fate, make believe to enjoy delights as unreal and fleetino^ as the shadow of a dream. In ■short, it is all a ghastly, senseless striving after the impossible. And not the least terrible point about this view is its probability. It can claim greater simplicity, greater /r/;;/d;/^^/6' probability, than any other. It may not be the only possible explanation of the facts considered in the last two chapters, but it is ■considerably the most obvious explanation. Every alternative to it will have to explain away many / things which it is exceedingly difficult to explain away. It will have to account for evil and imper- fection ; and even when it has shown the possibility of a final reconciliation, it will have to show why ithis could not have been attained without the long time-process of the world's development. So in theoretical matters it will have to show not merely that the Becoming of things is ultimately knowable, but also to explain how it was conducive 'to the end to be attained. In short, in order to have an alternative to Pess- 13^ RFX'ONSTRUCTIOX. imism, we must be prepared to account for Imper- fection, Becoming- and Time — the three chief and most obvious characteristics of our world. In this, stupendous task the only favourable omen at the start is that no sane human being- will resign him- self to Pessimism if he can possibly help it, that the merest possibility of an alternative must be hailed with delight by every one who has become con- scious of the difficulty. The search, then, for an alternative to Pessimism is a desperate undertaking, which can be justified only by success ; for success alone can save us from despair. And it must be admitted that appearances- are against us, and that our only hope is to pene- trate beyond them : the very principles of our reasoning are hypothetical, conceded ad hoc by Scepticism : the end at which we aim, if attained, would revolutionize the character of the world, and nothing short of complete success Avill deliver us from the monstrous spectre of Pessimism. We set out, then, under sentence of death, like Sir Walter Raleigh, to discover Eldorado, and the penalty of failure will be inexorably exacted if we fail. vj 3. Under such circunistances we shall do well to begin by taking stock of our resources, by seeing what salvage may be fished up out of the shipwreck of our hopes. In addition to the laws of our thought, there is one principle which Scepticism did not deny, and indeed could not deny, without manifestly cutting away the basis of its own argument, viz. the reality of the Self or Soul. Our scepticism did not deny it, because it was immanent and did not stray beyond the limits of THE REALITY OF THE SELF. I39 consciousness (cf. iii. § 3) : it was concerned only ta establish the existence of an irreconcilable discord within the soul. Nor does Pessimism care to deny the reality of the soul, for suffering could hardly be the supreme reality, if the soul which suffered were not real. The only thing that Scepticism and Pessimism would protest against would be the attempt to- derive from the admission of the reality of the Self an admission of its existence as a simple and im- mortal substance, after the fashion of the " rational psychology" of old; but this we have no intention of doing. The existence of the Self is at present asserted only as the basis of all knowledge, and in this sense it cannot be validly doubted. Accord- ingly it has been denied by Agnosticism rather than by Scepticism, i.e. by a doctrine Avhich turned out inadequate on its own presuppositions. Among these denials of the existence of the Self or soul, Hume's argument has the first claim on our attention. He contends that the soul does not exist because he never finds it existing without some particular content, never catches himself without some ''Im- pression or idea." This argument may be regarded as an ingenious redtictio ad abstirdum of Berkeley's nominalism, which denied the existence of universal conceptions on the ground that the psychical images in the mind always contained some irrelevant ac- cessories. But it has no efficacy against all who avoid confounding the idea (or conception) as a universal predicate with the (image or) idea as a psychological fact (cp. iii. § 15). And the conditions upon which Hume would admit the existence of the soul would seem to be of a ridiculous severity. So 140 Rl-XONSTRUCTIOX. long as consciousness is consciousness of sonictliing, of something more than mere existence, we cannot, says Hume, infer from it our own existence. Reality could not, apparently, be attributed to any soul that was not capable of being reduced to an absolute blank. But this implies, in the first place, the fallacy that mei^e existence is possible, undis- tinguished by any particular content, that a mere fact can be found, which is not determined by a certain character (cp. ch. ii. § 3). And secondly, one must wonder who could be supposed to be in the least concerned to assert the existence of such a perfectly void soul, and who need be dismayed at the discovery tliat his soul could never be cauQfht in such a condition of fatuous nudit}^ The exist- ence of the soul does not depend on its capacity to dispense with all content, nor is any slur cast upon it by the fact that the contents of consciousness vary. The ideal to which the variations of consciousness point is not a soul which has been annihilated by the loss of all its contents, but one of which the contents have attained to stability and perfection. vi 4. Kant's objection to the reality of the soul is similar to Hume's. But, like many of his doctrines, it is a compromise, not altogether successful, between Hume and the old metaphysics, and so rejects a good deal of Hume's argument. Kant recognises the necessity of admitting at least an cpisfeniological reality of the soul, as the principle on which the possibility of consciousness and the unity of know- ledge depends. As such, it is the soul which forms the fleeting series of impressions, thoughts, etc., into a continuous system, and thus makes a connected consciousness possible. Yet Kant strenuously maintains that the soul is THE SELF AS THE PRIMARY CERTAINTY. I4I only an epistemological and not a metaphysical (or "^ ultimate) principle, and that it must not be treated as existing outside of the context of knowledge, nor supposed to exist as a " thing-in-itself." And he does this on the same grounds as Hume, viz., be- cause the " I think " impartially accompanies all the contents of consciousness and never exists apart from them : so it must be a mere fonii of know- ledge and not a substantive reality. But as we have already rejected Kant's separation of form and matter, appearance and thing-in-itself (ch. ii. § 14, § 1 2), the real existence of the self is admitted when it is confessed necessary to the existence of knowledge, and the reality of consciousness. And besides, its existence as the basis of knowledge presupposes its existence as a reality. For while the laws of our thought persist, they compel us to admit that operari scqititiir esse, and that which is implied in the activity of knowledge must be before it can be active. It is not necessary, therefore, to linger any longer over Kant's objections to the reality of the Self : we may refer for a further exposure of their fallacious- ness to the criticism of Kant's agnosticism (ch. ii. ^ 21), and accept the reality of the Self as the funda- mental basis of all life, knowledge and proof. As the most certain of all things, it is the Alpha, the starting-point, and it would not be surprising if it turned out also the Omega, the goal of philosophy. 5; 5. And it is not only the primary certainty in Itself, but also affords us the first firm basis of a criticism of Scepticism. Scepticism was based on the disparateness and conflict of the elements of knowledge, on the imposs- ibility of finding a connection between the incom- 142 RKCONSTRUCTION. mensurable aspects of things. But all these discordant aspects are activities of the same self; the thought and feeling which conflict are both "'mine"; my *'self" unites "my" thoughts and "my" feeling into a single consciousness. It gives us the unity as an acconiplished fact, and leaves us the task of discovering how the miracle was •effected. Hence we are justified in provisionally accepting the parallelism of thought and feeling as a fact, and assuming that the conclusions we prove concerning the thought symbols representing reality will hold good of the facts. At any rate we cannot go wrong- in stickinor to realities which unite thouorht and feeling, like the conscious self. It may be false to be guided by the felt objects of perception, or by the abstractions of our thought, but the procedure by means of selves which both think and feel must surely be true. Thus the reality of the Self restores to us, even though only provisionally, the use of the categories and first principles of our thought with a view to the interpretation of things. And it justifies further a bold solution of the diffi- culty into which the hopeless conflict of thought and perception had involved us. We had ventured to express a suspicion (ch. iv. § 23), that possibly the excessive deference shown to phenomenal fdcts and the perceptions of our senses was responsible for the dire straits to which Pessimism reduced us. Pessimism was the natural inference to draw from the apparent supremacy of Becoming in the pheno- menal world, and BecominfT was unknowable and irreconcilably at variance with the principles of our thought. But was it not, after all, a prejudice to suppose the appearance of, Becoming higher than the AND UNION OF THOUGHT AND FEELING. 1 43 ideals of our thought ? Why should not our thought represent a higher plane of truth than the intrinsi- cally unknowable Becoming of nature ? why should not the definiteness and permanence of our ideas approximate more closely to the ultimate constitu- tion of thino;s than the interminable chanofes of phenomena ? Why should not the changes of the Real, instead of being a proof of the impossibility of the Ideal, mark rather its efforts to approximate to the Ideal ? And if so, the persistent fiction by which we interpreted Becoming by the categories of our thought, will have been prompted by a sounder in- stinct than we suspected, and will be justified by the issue : it is not that our thought fails to penetrate into the nature of things, but that the nature of things is as yet too imperfect to come up to the ideals of our thought ; it is the Real that is tainted with unreality, because it cannot express the per- fection of the ideal. r And from this point of view a meaning may be suggested even for the discrepancy which Scepti- cism made so much of, between our thought and the appearance of the reality. Might not the very extravao^ance of the contradiction between what is seen and what is conceived, taken in connection with the inseparable conjunction of thought and feeling, be intended to lead us by a certain path to what is inferred, to raise us from phenomenal appearances and the strife of inadequate categories, to a still higher plane of transcendent reality, capable of resolvinof all our doubts and of reconciling fact and knowledge ^. This suggestion is one which may hereafter be verified ; at present it must appear an arbitrary 144 RECONSTRUCTION. cLittlno;- of the Gordlan knot. But it is the fact alone that thought and feeHnnf are aHke activities of the Self, the fact that all things are phenomena for a conscious soul, which renders it even possible to assign a higher authority to the Ideal, and to assert that it will in the end be found to possess greater reality. And this fact also legalizes what would appear an arbitrary act of power, for in appealing to the Self to compose the conflict between thought and feeling, we are appealing to the legitimate sovereign of both, to whom they both belong, and who has a right to arrange the order. of their merit. Thus the assertion of the reality of the Self affords us the inestimable eain of enablino- us to burst through the fetters of Scepticism and to clear the road for further progress. ^ 6. And from the same principle follows a cor- ollary hardly less important. We are now in a position to protest against the ridiculous charge of anthropomorphism w^ilch is so frequently brought against our thought. The sceptic might indeed have dispensed with a device which more properly belongs to the agnostic, but it was too handy not to be utilized when thrown in his way. He used It fairly and impartially against all knowledge, and not like the agnostic, against a selected portion (ch. Hi. vi 4), but he could not raise it to. the dignity of a vital argument. But even though it benefited the sceptic little, its refutation will benefit us much. We shall rightly seize the opportunity of exposing a wide- spread superstition, which should really by this time have ceased to figure in any serious philosophic argument. For what conceivable meaning can be attached to the reproach that a conception is anthro- pomorphic ? Anthropomorphic means partaking of / ANTHROPOMORPHISM INEVITABLE. 1 45 the nature of man, and what human reasoning can fail to render the pecuHarities of the human reason ? Thus the prohibition of anthropomorphic reasoning is the prohibition of all reasoning in the supposed interes'ts of a fiction of un-anthropomorphlc thought (probably of the Unknowable ?) which can never be known to exist, and which, if it existed, would be utterly inconceivable to us. Surely it is too plain for words that all our thought and all our feeling imist be anthropGinorphic. The proposal to avoid anthropomorphism is as absurd as the suggestion that we should take an unbiassed outside view of ourselves by jumping out of our skin. § 7. If, then, everything we think is of necessity anthropomorphic, the only possible distinction which can be made is not between thought which is anthropomorphic and thought which is not, but between good and bad anthropomorphism. Bad anthropomorphism is of several sorts, and we may distinguish between thQ false and the confused. By false anthropomorphism is meant the ascription to beings other than ourselves of qualities or attributes which we know they cannot possess becatcse of their differejice from ourselves. This is exemplified by the attribution of specifically human qualities to the animals below, and to God above us. When, e.g., I assert that my dog worships me as a god, my an- thropomorphism is false, because I have no reason to ascribe religious emotions to dogs. Similarly, when I expect God to eat the flesh of sacrificial victims, my anthropomorphism is false, for I know that God is a spirit and not a fact in the phenomenal world. § 8. By confused anthropomorphism is meant that which arises when, starting from some obvious human R. of s. L 1 46 RECONSTRUCTION. analogy, our principle of explanation is chopped and chipped, in deference to the apparent exigencies of the facts, until its elements may at last become mutually contradictory, and the original points of analogy may entirely disappear. We have already had occasion to criticize such confused anthropo- morphisms from a sceptical point of view (ch. iii. § 4), and shall have further occasion to do so from that of a consistent and conscious anthropomorphism. And yet it is in the interests of these weatherbeaten old anthropomorphisms, whose original shape is often scarce recognizable, that protests are generally raised against anthropomorphism which keeps closer to the primary principles of explanation. This confused anthropomorphism, though not often wholly wrong, is generally ridiculous, and its claims to superiority over the rest are simply monstrous. For even where the mutilations it has suffered in the course of its chequered career have not rendered it unfit for service, even where its modifications have brought it nearer to the facts, it is a lamentable truth that just in proportion as it departs from the analogy of human action its value as an explanation diminishes, and the process it attempts to describe becomes as unintelligible as it was before explan- ation was essayed at all. The absolute Infinite, e.g. may be the full and final explanation of all things, only unfortunately it is a conception which has exalted itself so far beyond our grasp that it appears to the human reason a mere bundle of contradict- ions. Again, when a soporific virtue is assigned as the reason why poppies put us to sleep, and a universal force of gravitation as the reason why bodies attract one another, we feel that the value of the explanation has been reduced to a minimum. TRUE ANTHROPOMORPHISM. 1 47 § 9. The Ideal of true aiithropomorphism, and the ideal also of true science, would be reaKzed, when all our explanations made use of no principres. which were not self-evident to human minds, self- explanatory to human feelings. Such ideals are, it is true, remote from the present state of our know- ledge, but we may lay it down as a canon of inquiry that a principle Is the better, other things being- equal, the more closely it clings to the analogy of \ human agency, the more completely parallel Its, course runs to the course of the human mind. When by the master-key of the Self all problems have been undone, when all things have been shown y to be of like nature with the mind that knows them, then at length will knowledge be perfect and per- fectly anthropomorphic. Our care, then, must be, not to avoid anthropo- " morphism, but to avoid bad anthropomorphism, not to allow the inevitable anthropomorphism of our explanations to become confused or Inconsistent, or to lag behind the conceptions of our highest aspir- ations. We start, then, with the certainty of our own existence, on the basis and analogy of which the. world must -be interpreted.. CHAPTER VI. THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. \ I. We are now in a position to embark upon the important subject of the method of philosophy, on which it may reasonably be suspected that the failure or success of a philosophy will depend. Among the possible claimants to the honours of the true method we may dismiss two, viz., the epistemologlcal and the psychological. The epistemologlcal method must be rejected for the reasons already stated (ch. ii. §§ 13-17). It suc- cumbed both to scepticism and to science : to science because science could not admit that any theory of knowledge had a right to treat the mind as a fixed product that could be exhaustively analysed, instead of being an organically living and developing growth ; to scepticism, because its denial of the ultimate reality of the Self (ch. v. § 4) incapacitated it from transcendinor the antithesis of thoucrht and reality, and because It could never show that Its assertions held good of the real world. The psychological method is subject to the same defects as the epistemologlcal in a higher degree, and possesses also some peculiar to itself. It also is invalidated by the growth of the mind, which it attempts to make the sole standard of knowledge. The human mind, as it now Is, appears to science to be a transitory phase of a development from 148 NOT THE METHOD OF PSYCHOLOGY. 1 49 protoplasm Into beings who may be reasonably sup- posed to be incalculably superior to existing man, and science cannot possibly make any single term of this development the measure of all things. To understand that development it must be of supreme importance to discover the origins of what is in what was, and its destiny and final condition in what will be, but it is of subordinate interest to know what it happens to be at any fleeting moment of its evolution. The actual condition, therefore, of the human mind cannot by itself afford a universal criterion of the world ; for it is necessarily imperfect and points back ta a past out of which it has deve- loped, and forwards to a future which it fore- shadows. The fact that the mind has a history is fatal to the claims of the psychological method, for it destroys the final authority of its actual deliver- ances. And of that history the psychological method cannot take account without ceasino- to be psychological, and submitting to the restrictions of historical and metaphysical methods. And besides this fatal disability, the psychological method involves other inherent defects. It is particularly liable to the vice of false abstracts- ion. Not only is it constantly tempted to draw hard and fast lines between the various " faculties " of the soul and to forget its fundamental unity, but it is bound to repeat the same error in its treatment of the relation of the mind to- '' external " thinors, and to consider it in isolation from the world in which it lives. It cannot treat the mind and the world as different aspects of the same fact, as dif- ferent sides of the same stress, as the mutually im- plicated action and reaction of interacting factors. And yet it may be boldly laid down that no ex- 150 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHV. planatlon of the world can be successful which for- gets that the world is essentially one and indivisible, and that its parts cannot be explained in isolation, but only in conjunction. Man is the microcosm, and cannot be understood except in the context of the macrocosm which environs him and with which he interacts. Hence it is a fruitless waste of labour to give isolated explanations of this faculty or that, to trace the genesis of this sense or that, for they all can be assigned their proper place only by a reference to the whole. § 2. The method of philosophy, therefore, must be either physical or metaphysical. I. Of these, the physical may more properly be called the psettdo-metaphysical, because it attempts •to extend the method of the physical sciences to the solution of ultimate questions, i.e., to metaphysics. II. The second method may be called the ab- stract metaphysical, because it attempts to state the whole truth of all reality in terms of thought ab- stractions. III. Thirdly, the true method may be called the concrete metaphysical, as combining the advantages and avoiding the defects of the other two. Thus, e.g., the first explains the higher by the lower, since the objects of the physical sciences rank lower in the hierarchy of existence than the mind ; while the other two agree in explaining the lower by die higher. But in very different ways. For while the higher of abstract metaphysics is a mere abstraction, selected at random out of the plenitude of existence with which it has no intrinsic connect- ion, the higher of the concrete metaphysical method is organically connected with the lower. Thus it escapes the constant temptation of the first to deny THE PSEUDO-METAPHYSICAL METHOD. 151 the higher, and of the second to ignore the lower. Again, the pseudo-metaphysical and the concrete metaphysical agree in rejecting the doctrine of the abstract metaphysical as to the difference in kind between the higher and the lower, but with very different motives. The one asserts the connection of higher and lower in order to degrade the higher, the other in order to redeem the lower. But it is necessary to consider the strength and the weakness of each method in detail. § 3. I. The pseudo-metaphysical method puts forward the method of science as the method of philosophy. But it is doomed to perpetual failure. It is not merely that, as we saw (ch. ii. § 2), the mental attitude required in science and in philo- sophy is different, but that the scientific material it uses is both inadequate and intractable. It is inadequate because the physical sciences are - all based on all sorts of assumed first principles, often of the confused anthropomorphic order (ch. v. § 8), which are only valid within the limits of each science, and are often mutually conflicting, like the assumption of the theory of gravitation that all y^ matter gravitates, and that of the undulatory theory that luminiferous ether does not (ch. iii. § 9), or as completely devoid of ultimate validity as the mathe- matical use of impossible quantities.-^ And from a 1 The use of graphic formulae in chemistry may be instanced. To represent simple and indivisible atoms as equipped with all sorts of hooks and bonds for grappling with their neighbours (or themselves) is impossible mythology, especially when we reflect that multiplicity of parts seems excluded by the conception of an atom. Or again, what are we to say of '* negative elements " diminishing the atomic weight of the bodies with which they com- bine ? Such a dematerializing agency is surely a mere symbol, and cannot possibly correspond to any actual fact. A 152 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. scientific point of view no objection can be taken to the use of serviceable fictions, however discordant and contradictory they may be, so long as they are really useful to the particular sciences. On the other hand, it is just the business of philosophy to reinterpret these fundamental assum.ptions of the sciences, and to reconcile their conflicts, by showing that they are not ultimate truths but convenient formulae for special purposes. But for this very reason they cannot form the basis of philosophy. It is philosophy alone which renders them capable of forming parts of a single and consistent system of knowledge. And the data supplied by the physical sciences are intractable, because they are data of a lower order than the facts they are to explain. The objects of the physical sciences form the lower orders in the hierarchy of existence, more extensive but less significant. Thus the atoms of the physicists may indeed be found in the organizat- ion of conscious beings, but they are subordinate : a living organism exhibits actions which cannot be formulated by the laws of physics alone ; man is material, but he is also a great deal more. Again, all bodies gravitate, but the activities of living, to say nothing of rational, bodies cannot be explained by the action of gravitation alone. So chemical affinities are presupposed in biological actions, but yet life is something more than and beyond chemical affinity. And it is the same inherent flaw of the method which is displayed, not only in the palpable absurdity of explaining biological facts by chemical or mechanical facts, but also in that of explaining the rational or moral by mere biology. The pseudo- metaphysical method of physical VIRTUES AND VICES OF THE METHOD OF SCIENCE. I 53 science, which of necessity must try to explain the higher by the lower, constantly fails to include the whole of the higher, and is therefore constantly driven to deny what it cannot explain, and to reduce the higher to the lower. But though at first it seems plausible to explain the higher and fuller by something which seems simpler because less signific- ant, by dint of leaving out its surplus meaning, this process becomes more and more ■ difficult the further it is carried, and if it were carried to its con- sistent conclusion, it would be seen to refute itself. It would end by explaining all things by that which is nothing in itself, and has meaning only in relat- ion to the things it is supposed to explain. The further we carry our researches into the lower, the more it appears that it is not really simple, but only vaguer and more indefinite, and that the lack of differentiation indicates not that we have got down to the fundamental principles of the complex, but that it arises from a confounding of all the distinct- ions which enable us to comprehend the thing. To take only the one example of protoplasm, which is the starting-point of biology (itself one of the higher sciences). For biology protoplasm is ultim- J^ ate : it can no longer be derived from any lower and ** simpler " form of life. It can be defined only in terms of what it becomes or develops into. And yet this '' simple " protoplasm performs all the funct- ions which in its differentiated developments fall to the share of the most various structures and the most various faculties. It sees and hears and smells and tastes and feels, thinks and wills and moves, it absorbs and excretes, it grows and reproduces itself, /^ and all without any discoverable difference of struc- ture. What then have we gained by deriving 154 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. differences we can see and partly understand from hypothetical differences which are invisible and in- comprehensible ? Is the mystery lessened by being relegated to the mythical region of the unknowable and imperceptible, and is it not in very deed an explanation ignoti per ignothis ? But we shall have abundant illustration of this defect of the method hereafter (ch. vii. §§ 4-14). At present it is more pleasant to turn from the intrinsic weakness of the method to its intrinsic strength. Its great merit is the emphasis it lays on the law of continuity. It refuses to draw hard and fast divisions anywhere. It does not sever the con- nections at the articulations of the cosmos. It does not regard the higher as toto coslo different from the lower ; it never loses its grasp of the essential unity of things, even though it may sometimes drag what is lofty in the mire. But even in its errors it is not unprofitable. The connections it establishes between the hisfher and the lower serve to brido^e the moats which dissever the continuity of the universe, and will stand firm, even though their architects were mistaken in their ulterior aims. The scientific truths it discovers are so much o^ain to those who utilize the material more wisely, and, up to a certain point, it gives us pure truth. We need therefore merely pull down certain excrescences and extravagances, and we shall have firm foundations of science and material of inestimable value. We may say then, that the pseudo-metaphysical method is not so much false as insufficient. § 4. II. The abstract metaphysical method, which has been the method hitherto most frequent in philosophy, differs widely from the pseudo-meta- \ THE METHOD OF ABSTRACT METAPHYSIC. 1 55 physical In Its character. It promises much more, but accomplishes much less. Indeed, we are con- stantly tempted to assert that it has accomplished nothing, and to say that science has never been assisted, but often been perverted by metaphysics. But such ebullitions of pardonable Impatience would Ignore the Immense Impulse, the far-reaching sug- gestions which the whole Intellectual and emotional life of men has often received from metaphysical doctrines. But If the metaphysical method Is more suggestive, It is also less sound. It produces artificial constructions which charm us by the harmonious interdependence of their parts, but which are fatally unstable. The demolition of a single part drags the whole edifice to the ground, and in the common ruin all its outworks perish. And so metaphysical systems have seemed like a succession of beauteous bubbles blowm from the reflective pipe of genius, which delighted us for a season and then were dis- sipated Into thin air. Where are the metaphysical systems of the earlier Greeks or later Germans ? Their multitudinous shades are buried In the bulky tomes of our histories of philosophy, and but rarely stalk about the earth in the eccentricities of living representatives. The fatal flaw in almost all the metaphysics of the past was their abstractness, and this is a flaw which far exceeds their merits. For what does It avail that the metaphysical method rightly protests against the explanation of the higher by the lower. If it confines Itself to a mere protest, to a mere assertion of their difference ? To tell us that the spiritual is not natural, that soul is not body, that God is not man, that appear- ance is not reality, is to tell us nothing. All this does is to constitute a difference in kind between 156 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. the higher and the lower, to break in two the unity of the universe, to open an impassable abyss between here and hereafter, so that they that would pass from earth to heaven cannot pass from facts to metaphysics, while those who breathe the unsubstant- ial air of metaphysical meditation can never reach the gross but solid facts. To assert the difference between the higher and the lower is not enough ; we require a method which will also bring out their connection. § 5. After this breach In the law of continuity, and the assertion of the utter difference of higher and lower, the method of abstract metaphysics develops in two ways. If it retains any consciousness of the lower earthly plane at all, the difference between the higher and the lower becomes accentuated into antagonism. The spiritual becomes the supernatural, the pheno- menal becomes the unreal, the body Is opposed to the soul in everlasting conflict, man to God and earth to heaven. There results, first, an Irreconcil- able dualism of the higher and lower, and in the end the lower or physical plane is regarded as the sphere of the principle of evil. It is well known how near many Manichsean heresies, as well as certain forms of orthodoxy, come to making the Devil the ruler of the world, from whose dominion the individual can only escape by special miraculous grace, and the whole ascetic view of life, once so widely prevalent, really results from the same tend- ency. And that these consequences are not due to the bias of individuals, but inherent In the method, is shown also In the history of pre-Christian philo- sophy. In their asceticism and contempt for the material the Neo-Platonlsts yielded not a whit to THE ANTAGONISM OF HIGHER AND LOWER. 1 57 the most enthusiastic monk. And yet they might justly trace their intellectual descent from the most Hellenic of Hellenic philosophers, and yet they are connected by an unbroken chain of logical necessity with the doctrine of Plato. And indeed we can find in Plato both the source and the reason of Neo- Platonic asceticism. For the Platonic system is perhaps the most purely metaphysical the world has ever seen. To Plato metaphysical "Ideas" abstracted from phenomena were the only true reality, while the phenomena of sense were real only as partaking in them. The result is that the connection of the Ideas with the Sensible becomes entirely unintelligible {cf. iii. § 15, note) : the contrast has become so sharp that union becomes inconceiv- able, and Plato himself admits that he cannot explain how sensible things partake of the Ideas. And, as might have been expected, his metaphysical dualism spreads from the theoretic to the practical sphere, and in his latest and maturest work we find him seriously propounding the theory of an evil World- Soul, the action of which is to differentiate the character of the imperfect world of Becoming from the perfection of the world of Ideas.^ But from ^ Laws X. 896D, 898c. It seems hopeless to deny this anti- thesis of the phenomenal and the real on the «/mr/ ground that Plato was too great a philosopher to be a dualist, and for this reason to assume that a reconciliation of the Ideas and the Sensible must be found somewhere in his system. For it is no derogation to Plato's genius to say that he failed to achieve what no philo- sopher has succeeded in achieving, viz., the impossible task of reconciling the higher and the lower by abstract metaphysics. And at all events Plato showed more discernment than his critics in seeing where the real crux lay, and in perceiving that its solution was, on his principles and by his method, impossible. And if a way out of the difficulty was discovered by Plato, is it not astonish- in^ that all his successors should not only have failed to discover 158 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. the admission of an evil and irrational principle in the physical world, at war with the principle of Good and Reason, to that of its supremacy in the visible world, is only a small step, easily forced upon the mind by the evils of life, and hence we find it constantly and consistently taken in the Gnostic and Neo- Platonic speculations. Thus we find the abstract metaphysical method, in one of its develop- ments, passing from the dualism of the Ideal and the Real to their inherent conflict a^d to final Pessimism. The separation of the physical and the metaphysical, the %a)pto-/id9 which the acute criti- cism of Plato's great disciple, Aristotle, detected as the central flaw of the Platonic system, has avenged itself by a fearful penalty. § 6. But the metaphysical method may essay to rid itself of the contrast of higher and lower by a still more heroic remedy. Just as the pseudo- metaphysical method yielded to the temptation of denying the higher, so conversely the metaphysical method may yield to the temptation of ignoring the lower. The metaphysician wings his flight to the invisible, and loses sight of earth altogether. He closes his eyes and hardens his heart to the facts of life. He declares 2tn7'eal whatever does not fit into the narrow limits of his theories, on the ground that whatever is real is rational, and leaving to his dis- ciples a glittering legacy of magniloquent but un- meaning phrases, he vanishes into the air before he can be caught and questioned about the meaning of his enchantments. But even he cannot outsoar the atmosphere which supports him : in the end the irresistible attraction of earth brings him down it in Plato, but have themselves one and all come to grief over this same difficulty ? KEGELS ''metaphysics 1 59 with a fall more dire than that of Icarus : stripped of the false plumes in which he had counterfeited the divine bird of Zeus, and pursued by the imprec- ations of those who discovered too late the cheat which had deceived him, and at length perceive that a haughty scorn of the phenomenal does not satisfy the demands of reality, and that empty abstractions are not the staff of life, he perishes miserably, and leaves lasting discredit on a subject which seems composed of a series of splendid failures. Of this type of metaphysics we may take as examples Eleaticism in ancient, and Hegelianism in modern times. The Eleatic philosophy seems to have simply ignored the phenomenal, and to have consisted in an emphatic assertion of the abstract unity of the universe. Its ingenious polemic against the possibility of Becoming has been preserved in Zeno's famous fallacies about motion, and "Achilles and the Tortoise " and *' The Arrow " will ever retain their charm — even though the world has long ago replied to the system which they illustrated and defended by a solvihtr ambulando. The same praise of ingenuity may be bestowed also upon the Hegelian system, which is doubtless the most ingenious system of false pretences that adorns the history of philosophy. For even its metaphysical character is largely a pretence. It pretends to give us metaphysics where it really has no business to be more than epistemological. We fancy it is speaking of metaphysical realities when it is really dealing with logical categories. It pre- tends to give us a thought- process incarnate in reality, but the thought remains motionless, and its transitions are really Effected by the surreptitious introduction of phenomenal Becoming. It pretends l6o THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. to deal with the reahties of Hfe, but it talks of abstract- ions throughout. It pretends to explain all things, and then ascribes inconvenient facts to the " con- tingency of matter," i.e. it pretends to be a rational explanation of the world, and then admits an element of irrationality. It pretends to solve all practical problems, but finally turns out to be necessarily incapable of solving a single one. It professes to give categorical answers to disputed questions, but its most definite assertions are rendered worthless by the taint of a subtle ambiguity. It seems a hard saying, but it is no more than what is strictly demon- strable, that Hegelianism never anywhere gets within sight of a fact, or within touch of reality. And the reason is simple : you cannot, without paying the penalty, substitute abstractions for real- ities ; the thought-symbol cannot do duty for the thing symbolized ; the development of a logical category is not the same as the evolution of a real individual. The ** dialectical process," if we admit the phrase, is logical and not in Time, and has nothing to do with the world process in Time. Hegelianism is the greatest system of abstract meta- physics, because it starts from the highest abstract- ion and makes the most persistent effort to work down to reality from it, because its abstractions are carried out most ruthlessly, because its confusions are concealed most artfully, and because it hence seems to come closer to reality than systems which stopped short of such perfect illusion. But for these very reasons it is also the falsest of abstract metaphysical systems, if degrees be admitted, where all are fundamentally false. § 7. For the truth is that any theory which puts forward an abstraction as the ultimate explanation ABSTRACT FIRST PRINCIPLES ALL BAD. l6l of all things is false. It is no matter what we call it, whether it is dubbed the Absolute, or the Un- knowable, or the Idea, or the Will, or the Uncon- scious, or Matter, or Reason, the Good or the In- finite. Nor is it a relevant difference whether the fundamental principle be picked up out of the sphere of material or of immaterial things, and whether we pronounce that the All is the One, or Number, or a material " element," like Fire, Water, or Air. For all these first principles are abstractions ; they will give partial interpretations of aspects of things, more or less successful according to the importance of the element denoted by the abstraction, and ac- cording to the care with which it has been selected. But not one of them can ever be wholly successful, for each of them is a part which cannot include the whole. The efforts, therefore, of such theories may present to the astounded spectator the most surpris- ing feats of mental acrobatism, but they must be as fruitless as a man's attempt to put himself into his own pocket. § 8. In addition to the evils of the xtt>/Ofo-yuo? involved in the abstractions of mere metaphysics, further difficulties arise out of the random and haphazard way in which they arrive at their first principles. Philosophies are, for the most part, generated by reflection upon the difficulties of the theories of the past, and so work on from age to age in the same old narrow and vicious groove. Hence the history of philosophy presents a series of unprofitable con- troversies, like that as to the nature of universals, as to the origin of knowledge, as to the existence of an "external " world, etc., which would either never have been raised or rapidly adjusted if philosophy had kept in closer contact with the real problems of R. of S. M 1 62 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. life, and shown itself more sensitive to outside in- fluences. And it is manifest that this sectarian adherence to the traditional formulation of philosophic questions affords but the slenderest guarantee that the first principles of philosophy will be such as to be applicable to any other subject. Such principles have no organic connexion with the positive sciences, and very often must be incapable of utilizing scientific facts. Hence the general attitude N of abstract metaphysics is anti- scientific, and hence the antagonism of physical science and philosophy, which in the present day is so detrimental to the best interests of both. Thus each of the two methods on which the human mind has hitherto placed Its chief reliance in order to achieve the Herculean task of silencing the Sphinx, is vitiated by its peculiar disabilities. The pseudo-metaphysical method may be compared to an earth-born Antaeus, whose strength fails as soon as he is raised above the ground ; the abstract metaphysical to a flighty Icarus, who reaches the ground only in his death. The one is of use only on the earth, and the other only in the air, whereas the winged Sphinx Is equally at home in either element. § 9. We require, then, a method which combines the excellencies of both the pseudo-metaphysical and the abstract metaphysical, if philosophy is to be possible at all. It must be metaphysical, and yet not abstract ; it must agree with the metaphysical in explaining the lower by the higher, and with the pseudo-metaphysical in admitting their intrinsic like- ness and the continuity of all existence. And so it must avoid the weaknesses of the others. Un- TRUE METAPHYSIC BASED ON SCIENCE. 1 63 like the first, it must explain the less known and less intelligible lower, i.e., the more remote from human nature by the more known and more in- telligible, i.e. that which is nearer to human nature* Unlike the second, it must avoid the x^pia^j^oq of phenomenal and real, the abstract opposition of ideal and actual. Unlike the second, too, its principles must be organically connected with the sciences, aided by them, and reciprocating their assistance. How can this be ? Simply by basing; our meta- physics on our science. Our metaphysics must be concrete, and not abstract ; they must be the inquiry into the ultimate nature of concrete realities, and not of thought abstractions. In other words, they must proceed from the phenomenally real to the ultimately real, from science to metaphysics. And so the method of philosophy must utilize the results of science ; metaphysical theories must be suggested by scientific researches, and must approve themselves by in their turn suggesting scientific advances. Their principles of explanation must be systematic- ally based on the sciences, and not picked up at random, and their function must be to systematize the fundamental principles of the various sciences. Metaphysic, in short, must again become what it once was in the time of Aristode — the science of ultimate existence, the science of the first principles of the physical sciences. § 10. But is such a method more than the vision of an imagination which has soared too far above the region of the actual ? Is such a reconciliation of science and metaphysics possible at all ? It is certainly extremely difificult. In the first place, because of the scarcity of 164 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. philosophical predecessors. With the mention of Berkeley's '' spirits " and Leibnitz's " monads " we have almost exhausted the list of philosophical principles which are not liable to the charge of being abstractions, or of explaining the higher by the lower. Aristotle also regarded the concrete indi- vidual as the primary reality {jpwrrj ova-ia), and in his practice gives us an unequalled example of the way in which science and metaphysics should work together. IMuch help may be derived from all these, and in questions of method, especially from Aristotle. § II. But even with the utmost help and in- genuity, our task is still tremendous. Its difficulty arises from two main causes. (i) Our imperfect knowledge of the lower. (2) Our imperfect attainment of the higher. These two causes conspire to make most of the facts in the world unintelliorible. We have to ac- cept them as facts for which we can give no reason. Why does gravity vary inversely as the square of the distance ? A simple fact like this will defy ex- planation for many an age, for it is the lowest and most general of physical facts, and therefore the last to be rendered intelligible from the point of view of the higher. For just as in ascending a mountain the higher peaks are the first to be perceived, the first whose groupings can be understood, just as it is not until we reach the summit that we rise to a free purview of the whole, and that the inter-connection of the lowlands and the direction of the valleys can be made out ; so in philosophy we can only catch partial and misleading views of what is below, while we toil through the dense forest of prejudice, and can only gain mysterious hints of what lies beyond, THE HIGHER LIFE RICHER THOUGH UNIMAGINABLE. 1 65 while what is above is shrouded in the mists of early morning. § 12. And not only are we hampered by our avowed ignorance of the lower, but in view of the slight deference which the scheme of things pays to man and his desires, we must admit also that little progress has been made in the attainment of the higher. We are after all far nearer to the beast than to the angel, far closer to hell than to heaven. We can feel the throb of brutal instincts, we can conceive the anguish of undying torment ; but the calm of superhuman virtue leaves us cold, and visions of eternal bliss seem empty and unmeaning. Yet this is in the nature of things inevitable. The higher can in a way understand the lower, by tracing in it the germs the higher has developed. But the lower cannot in the same way aJiticipate the higher. In the case of existences higher than our- selves, we can ascribe to them the possession of certain qualities senstL eniinentiori, or the perfection of our highest activities. But how, if our activities seem essentially imperfect, bound up with imperfect conditions, relative to imperfect stages of develop- ment ? In such cases perfection means destruction. One human activity after another must be excluded from the ideal life, and we can imagine nothing which can take their place ; and owing to this pro- gressive elimination of the lower activities, it is a great achievement if we can retain any aspect of human life as a permanent ideal, and in any case the ideals of perfection become mere forms, the whole content of which has been eviscerated. And so the higher life seems dull and empty. We are able to describe it only by negatives, by the negation of the lower attributes unworthy of it. This is the 1 66 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. real explanation of the eternal emptiness of happi- ness, of the enmii of bliss which Is so marked In the popular representations of heaven. It Is the ex- planation also of the Irrepressible tendency to de- scribe God by negations, as the Ineffable, infinite, immutable, Incomprehensible and unknowable, which is continually making religion the half-way house to agnosticism. But in reality this Is a mere prejudice, though a very pardonable one. To overcome It, we should consider the parallel of the relation of the Infra- human to the human from the point of view of the former. How unable would the amoeba be to realize the higher activities of man, how Inevitably would the dim forecasts of its knowledge deny to man the activities, whatever they are, that make up the life of the amoeba ! To a less degree, the same Incapacity is displayed also among men. The un- thinking masses also condemn the life of the thinker as dull, empty, and uneventful, simply because they cannot imagine how much fuller his heightened consciousness makes It, how much more intense are the pleasures and pains of the sage than those of coarser minds that cannot react upon the subtler stimuli. From such examples we begin to perceive that the higher is not a negation, because the lower cannot determine its positive attributes. Every step in advance does indeed mean a dropping away of some lower activities, until they have all dis- appeared. But each step in advance also opens up new activities, and fuller realizations of old activities, which progressively Increase the total content of life, and make the higher life richer and fuller than the lower. But these, of course, are not visible from the standpoint of the lower. The lament, therefore. \ THE LIMITATIONS OF THE METHOD. 1 67 over the emptiness of the higher life, is as though one were to lament in the ascent of a mountain that the advance was pure loss, because the scenery at the foot must be more and more obscured, oblivious of the fact that the ascent would bring new features into view of which we could not have dreamt be- low. Or to illustrate by a mathematical parallel : the higher can understand the lower just as we can abstract one and two dimensions from three dimens- ional space ; the lower cannot understand the higher, just as we cannot add a fourth dimension to Space. § 1 3. These defects in the concrete metaphysical method are insurmountable ; and though they do not impair its correctness, they sadly limit its achievements. They render it impossible for philosophy to solve all questions, to be more than fragmentary, to be complete and final. Philosophy must be content if it can make out the general drift of life, if it can determine its main features, if it can approximately decipher its chief enigmas, it not with perfect certainty and in full detail, yet with reasonable probability. Its function is to form a temporary roofing- in of the pyramid of knowledge, which anticipates the completion of the structure, and enables the workers to work secured against the inclemency of the skies, but which from time to time must be renewed and modified and expanded, so as to satisfy the requirements of its growing bulk. A philosophical system will share the characteristics of the sciences on which it is based. It will consist of a series of happy, but not random, guesses, more or less probable, and deriving a certain amount of support from their connexion, able to explain the broad outlines of the constitution of things to a greater or less extent, but leaving much as yet 1 68 THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY. inexplicable ; like scientific theories also it will be ratified by the way it works and stands the test of experience. Finality, completeness, and perfection are as impossible at present in a true system of philosophy as in any of the sciences, and if this lack is censured by the admirers of spick and span sys- tems which have a glib response for every question, Ave must admit that as yet philosophy can do little more than keep alive the sacred fire of hope, than throw a light upon the path of progress. But we may be more than consoled by the reflection that such philosophy, though it is imperfect, is at least alive, and that its potentialities of progress render it immensely superior to the most artful and artificial system, the symmetry of which forbids the slightest change. § 14. But little as philosophy can as yet achieve, it could nevertheless have achieved far more than it has done if it had kept in touch with science. Ought it not to have profited immensely by the unparalleled advance of the sciences in the course of the present century ? Ought it not to have gathered from this advance data of primary interest and principles of surpassing importance ? But the traditional metaphysics have known so little to profit by the teaching of science that, even in purely metaphysical matters, scientific theories are now often far in advance of philosophical ones, and involve metaphysical principles which philosophy has either not yet realized at all, or only grudgingly recognized, and failed to apply generally to the solution of its own problems.-^ And yet it is the 1 Like the metaphysical principles of Evolution (ch. vii.) and the impossibility of infinity (ch. vii. § 20; ch. ix. §§ 2-1 1), and of Interaction (ch. xii. § 10; ch. vii. §1) respectively. METAPHYSICAL GAINS FROM MODERN SCIENCE. 1 69 conviction that metaphysical principles underlie the great scientific progress of our age, and that they afford the key to the solution of the chief problems of philosophy, that can embolden philosophy to refuse to surrender to pessimistic and sceptical despair. But as the actual discussion of the metaphysical principles involved in modern scientific conceptions will demonstrate far more clearly than any general argument can do, not only that the method of con- crete metaphysics is possible, but that it is true, and yields philosophic results of supreme importance, we must delay no longer to consider the Metaphysics of Evolution. We shall see in the next chapter how a scientific doctrine, originating in the single science of biology, from the suggestion of an ob- scure sociological analogy, has pursued its triumph- ant march through all the sciences, impelled by the irresistible impetus of its metaphysical nature, and how the metaphysical conception which had been the latent cause of its success at last becomes explicit, and enriches philosophy with the accumu- lated wealth of the data it has collected. CHAPTER VII. THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. § I. The discussion of the metaphysics of Evolut- ion may come with the shock of seeming paradox on those who pride themselves on their complete exemption from metaphysical views and metaphys- ical knowledge. But in reality their surprise is quite uncalled for; and if they knew what meta- physics were, they would perceive that it was as difficult to avoid talking metaphysics as it is to avoid talking prose. It requires a real poet to avoid prose, and it requires a real metaphysician to avoid metaphysical assumptions. For ordinary men the choice is only between good and bad metaphysics as between good and bad prose. For metaphysics is simply the science of the fundamental principles of all knowing and being, and it is impossible to act or think without assum- ing and implying some such principles. It is as impossible to carry on life without metaphysical principles as it is to carry on thought without logical principles. The only real question is whether our various metaphysical principles are to be consistent with one another and capable of being combined into a connected whole or not ; and it is highly probable that, unless great care is taken, they will not be so consistent. Hence the object of the systematic study of metaphysics Is to render 170 > WHAT METAPHYSICS MEAN. I7I US conscious of the errors of the bad metaphysics of common Hfe and common science, and to avoid such views of fundamental principles as will make nonsense of all things. In this respect metaphysics resemble logic, the science of the principles on which our thought proceeds ; for logical principles also cannot be with impunity ignored. If we are ignorant of them, it is probable that our thought will misapply them ; but to dispense with them is impossible. But though metaphysical and logical X principles cannot be dispensed with, it is not neces- sary to be conscious of them ; on the contrary, just as people reasoned rightly and thought logically long before Aristotle explicitly stated the principles of logic, so it is possible to discover and to use metaphysical principles in ordinary life and in science long before they are consciously appro- priated by systematic philosophy. And so it is not too much to say that every con- siderable advance in science has involved a parallel advance In our view of metaphysical first principles ; and It would not be difficult to illustrate this by the history of metaphysical principles of acknow- ledged Importance, which have owed their dis- covery, or at least their acceptance, to the progress of the other sciences. Thus it was nothing but Newton's discovery of gravitation which enabled the principle of Interaction to supersede the old conceptions of Activity and Passivity {cf. ch. Hi. § 10) ; and the full import of the metaphysical re- volution which was thus worked by a physical discovery has hardly even now been realized In all philosophic controversies (ch. xli. § lo).^ ^ It must not, however, be supposed that metaphysical ad varices are always conditioned by scientific progress, and that the 172 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. This explanation should suffice to render the assertion of metaph3'sical principles in Evolution a truism rather than a paradox, and to convince us that, if their importance is in any way proportionate to their scientific value, they will throw much light upon the ultimate problems of life. And it will be the object of this chapter to show, not only what the metaphysical principles underlying the progress of modern science are, but also that our expectat- ions as to their value are likely to be more than fulfilled. § 2. The great method of science which has proved so fruitful of progress in modern times has been the Historical Method, which investigates things by tracing their history. Wherever it has been possible to apply it, the light thrown on the nature of things by the study of their history sciences owe nothing to metaphysics. On the contrary, the ob- ligation is reciprocal, and metaphysics react upon science and accelerate its progress. And in early times metaphysical know- ledge is often far ahead of physical science. But in such cases the metaphysical conceptions are apt to prove barren, because no physical facts are known which exemplify them. And being thus destitute of illustration by reason of the backwardness of the physical sciences, the true metaphysics are often rejected in favour of less advanced principles, which may be supported by a plausible show of facts. It is pretty clear, for instance, that in the time of Aristotle Greek metaphysics were far ahead, not only of Greek science, but also of all but the most recent develop- ments of modern science. The lack of progressiveness of pure metaphysics since is to be attributed, not merely to the disastrous introduction into speculative philosophy of the popular doctrine of God's ''infinity" (ch. x. § 7), but also to the fact that meta- physics had to wait until the physical sciences had reached a point which afforded the data for further metaphysical progress. Hence, as we shall see (§ 16), the metaphysical principles of Evolution were already contemplated by Aristotle, but rejected by him for lack of the scientific corroboration which they are now receiving. \ THE POSTULATES OF THE HISTORICAL METHOD. I 73 has been such that in most branches of science a rejection of the Historic Method would justly be regarded as a conclusive mark of unscientific per- versity. And in its origin evolutionism is nothing but a special application and development of the Historical Method, the metaphysical assumptions of which it shares. Those assumptions are so few and so simple that ordinary thought would hardly think of calling them metaphysical ; and yet they really involve some very grave metaphysical diffic- ulties. The fundamental assumption on which every form of the Historical Method is based is that the thing investigated has had a hhtory. And to say that a thing has had a history is to assert, not only that it has had a past, but that this past has a bearing upon and a connexion with its present condition. These postulates are so easily granted on ord- inary occasions that we are apt to overlook the metaphysical assumptions to which they commit us. The reality of history implies the reality of the past; i.e., the reality of Time and the causality of the past with respect to the present. For the con- ditions which render the application of the Historical Method valid are absent, if a thing has not existed in the past, or if its past is not causally connected with its present. And these conditions, which make it possible to speak of a history at all, will be found ultimately to involve, not only the reality, but also, as a further metaphysical postulate, the limitation of Time, or, at all events, of the past of the thing to which a history is ascribed. But this very important point deserves further elucidation. 174 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. § 3. The Historical Method supposes that the cause and explanation of the present state of a thing is to be found in its past, that its nature will appear when its origin has been discovered. But what if this supposition be an illusion ? What if there is no real causal connexion between the past and present states of things, and the succession of their phases resembles rather the successive arrange- ments of a kaleidoscope, or of dissolving views in a magic-lantern, in which picture follows upon pic- ture without any intrinsic connexion between them {cf. ch. iii. § 11)?' And again, what if things have had no origin ? Surely the search for origins, the claim that the explanation of things is to be found in their history, is fundamentally false if the infinity of Time renders the whole conception of a beginning or origin a delusive prejudice of our fancy ? If things have fluctuated to and fro from all eternity, in a confused and unintelligible series of indeterminate changes, if everything has passed into everything else by in- sensible and indefinite gradations, not in virtue of any determinate and discoverable law, but in con- sequence of the kaleidoscopic freaks of an irrational, inscrutable, and irresponsible *' Unknowable," will not their nature baffle the utmost efforts of historical research? If men have "developed" into proto- plasm and protoplasm into man, in an infinite number of infinitely various and capricious ways, ^ Of course it is not intended to assert that there is no con- nexion between the successive pictures, but only that there is no direct connexion ; />., that the earlier image is not the cause of its successor. And just as the structure of the kaleidoscope underlies the appearances in the one case, so the ultimate per- versity of things (ch. v. § 2, p. 137) would underlie them on the other hypothesis. THE REALITY OF HISTORY. 175 what meaning can any longer be attached to the history of the Evolution of man out of protoplasm ? If the Becoming of the world has really been in- finite, no amount of history will bring us any nearer to its real origin ; it is vain to sound the bottomless abyss of the past with the puny plummet of science. The Historical Method is futile, all theories of Evolution are false, and the nature of things is really unknowable. And if we refuse to admit these conclusions, we must admit as the metaphysical postulate of the Historical Method in all its forms, that thmgs have had an origin, and their history a beginning. And so it appears that the ancient historians, who began their histories with the beginning of the world, were prompted by a correct and truly scientific instinct ; they felt that unless they began at the beginnmg, they would have to leave much obscure, and, that if a beginning was in the nature of things unattain- able, all would be left obscure, and all explan- ations would ultimately come to nought. Thus the vindication of a determinate beginning and a real origin as the necessary pre-supposition of any hist- orical account, commits us to the doctrine of a be- ginning of the world, or at least of the present order of thin<^s. But it does not directly compel us to as- sert the finiteness of Time. Until the nature of the infinity of Time has been investigated (in ch. ix. § 1 1), we may here reserve judgment, all the more easily that we do not perhaps really require to limit Time for the purposes of the Historical Method. But we can avoid it only by a supposition at least as dif- ficult. The origin which the method requires need not have^'n origin of Time ; it is conceivable that the world existed for an infinity of time, and then 176 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. entered into the historical process of development at some fixed point in the past. Supposing e.g., that life had existed from all time in the form of protoplasm, it might suddenly have taken to de- veloping more complex forms, and this point would form the starting-point of biology, and the ideal H>xed point to which the Historical Method would go back. Or again, an *' eternal " Deity may have existed always, and at some point in the past have created the beginnings of the world. In this second case the ideal starting-point of the Historical Method would be also the real beginning of the world (at least as a world) ; in the first, it would be ideal only, and mark the limit merely for our knowledge. But in either case, the Historical Method would be unable to distinguish the ideal from the real limit ; it could not determine whether its starting-point was merely an instantaneous phase in the history, or whether it had not existed for an infinity before the beginning of change and beyond the reach of all history. It is thus an intrinsic limitation of the Historical Method, that even where it does penetrate to an apparent beginning, it cannot tell us whether it is the beginning of the existence of the thing or only of its histo7y. § 4. Now it follows from the fact that modern Evolutionism is a special application of the Histori- cal Method that it shares all the metaphysical as- sumption^ and limitations of that method. But in the course of its development it has superadded several others. And as its history affords the most instructive examples of how scientific progress un- wittingly develops metaphysical conceptions (ch. vi. §§ 9, 16), it will be no real digression to trace the history of the theory of Evolution. EVOLUTIONISM AND THE HISTORICAL METHOD. I 77 The evolutionism which has revolutionized the thought of our century is the evolutionism of Charles Darwin, and confessedly arose out of an interpretation of the gradations and affinities of animal species in the light of the Malthuslan law of population. That is to say, it arose out of a hint which the single science of zoology received from the science of sociology/ After revolutionizing zoology, it found Its scope so much enlarged by that process, that it could be applied with success to many other sciences, such as botany, biology and anthropology, with especial appropriateness to sociology (from which it had received its original impulse), and even to psychology and ethics.^ And every new application had the effect of bringing out more definitely the principles by which it pro- ceeded. Thus It appeared as the common result of all evolutionist histories, what had not before seemed a necessary characteristic of historical explanations, that they traced the genesis of the higher and more differentiated subsequent forms out of earlier forms which were lower and simpler and more homo- geneous. And hence arose the first specific ad-- ditlon Evolutionism made to the Historical Method proper, which may be described as the assertion that historical research leads us from the more com- plex to the simpler, and ''explains" complexity by ^ deriving it from simplicity. And perhaps it Is the aesthetic obviousness of this process, rather than any magic virtue in mere history, which has ren- dered evolutionist explanations so plausible and so 1 Cf. Darwin's Life, I., p. 83, and compare Mr. Spencer's Study of Sociology, p. 438. 2 For a similar example, cf. Study of Sociology, p. 335>ff- (^Sth ed.). R. of S. N I/O THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION". popular. But it is this addition also which commits the evolutionist theory of descent to a course of metaphysical assertion by which it becomes at the outset a specimen, though a most favourable one, of the pseudo-metaphysical method (ch. vi. § 3). And if in this it errs, its error is yet venial. It had achieved so much in the way of extending the borders of science, and thrown such a surprising light upon so many obscure problems, that we might well be pardoned for a greater blindness to the limita- tions of the theory than we have actually displayed. For we were able to carry the histories of things so much further back than we had ever expected, and were so wholly absorbed in disputing the details of those histories, that our dazzled and distracted reason could hardly muster the composure to in- quire whether the historical explanations of evol- utionism were successful as a whole, and whether their complete success would not bring out an in- herent weakness of the method. The consciousness of this difficulty was generated only by the further advance of the theory of Evolution itself. § 5. That historical explanations should trace the development of the complex out of the simple was at first merely an empirical fact of observation ; it was an interesting scientific fact, but not a philo- sophic principle. But when this turned out to be the invariable result of each new extension of the Historical Method, the idea was imperatively sug- gested that this fact was no mere accident, but the result of an essential law in the history of things. The development of the simple into the complex came to be reg^arded as the higher law which all the applications of the Historical Method to the various sciences illustrated, and the theory of Evolution EVOLUTION OF DARWIN AND OF SPENCER. 1 79 thereby ceased to be merely scientific, and became avowedly metaphysical. The merit of the discovery and formulation of this great generalization belongs to Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose evolutionism is related to the bio- logical evolutionism of Darwin much as the New- tonian law of gravitation is related to Kepler's laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies. And the step taken by Mr. Spencer was not only one of the utmost importance for the development of the philosophic Implications of the theory of Evolution, but also thoroughly justified by purely scientific con- siderations. For it was only by such a generaliza- tion that the applications of evolutionist principles to the various sciences could be brought Into a connection that explained the similarity of their evolutions. A merely biological evolutionism, e:g., could never have accounted for the evolution of the chemical elements (§ 9) ; but from the standpoint of a philosophic evolutionism the evolution in biology and In chemistry are instances of one and the same law. § 6. When Evolution has been recognised as the universal law of the Becoming of things, the position of affairs is, that all things are subject to a law, which explains the higher as the development of the lower, and that this law may be formulated by means of the historical data of this development. We have thus advanced beyond the conception of isolated things having a history, to the conception of a history of all things, a world-history ; not only must things be taken In their historical context, but that context Is one and the same for all. And the world has not only got a history, but that history has a meaning, It is the process which z^ l8o THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. works out the universal law of Evolution. The different sections of the w^orld's history must be consistently interpreted with a reference to the universal law w^hich they illustrate, i.e., interpreted as parts of the world-process. And here we come upon the first distinct trace of the teleology which is inseparable from all evol- utionism/ For when the phenomena of the world's evolution are subordinated to the general law of Evolution, their relation inevitably tends to become that of means to an end. All things happen as illustrations of, or in order to illustrate the general law of Evolution. But it is still possible to disavow the teleology at this point in the development of evolutionism, although it admits of little doubt that the success of evolutionism in combatinor other kinds of teleological explanation is due to its ow^n tele- ology. For the attraction which teleology has for the human mind is indestructible ; an ineradicable in- stinct forbids us to renounce the hope of finding in the rest of nature that action for the sake of rational ends which is so prominent in that section of nature represented by intelligence. And, as we saw (ch. v. § 6), all knowledge is based on the anthropo- morphic assumption that the course of nature cor- responds to the operation of our minds. If, then, it must correspond to some extent for knowledge to be possible at all, the completer the correspondence, the more knowable will the w^orld be, and the teleological explanation of things, which asserts this ^ For even biological evolutionism is not free from teleology of a sort. It explains structure as arising by natural selection in order to survival in the struggle for existence, and thereby puts it in the position of a means to an end. \ WHEN IS A HISTORY AN EXPLANATION ? l8l correspondence to the fullest extent, thus becomes a legitimate ideal of knowledge. But before describing the fully developed tele- ology of an evolutionism which is fully conscious of its metaphysical implications, it is necessary to return to the question of the value and validity of the explanation of the higher by its development out of the lower, which has been asserted to be a prominent feature, not only in philosophic evolution- ism, but also in its merely biological stage. § 7. In what sense and under what conditions is a history of the development of the lower into the higher a complete and satisfactory explanation of anything ? Is the mere fact that such an evolution takes place sufficient to satisfy us ? If so, we might without further Inquiry credit a conjuror, when be- fore our eyes he changes a mango-seed Into a mango- tree, or an Qgg into a handkerchief. It Is 7io^ suffic- ient that a fact should happen for it to be intelli- gible ; on the contrary, many facts, like death, e.o-., remain mysteries although they continually come under our observation. Hence it is not true that a mere history, merely as history, always explains ^ the matter it deals with. In so far, therefore, as historical explanations of things seem satisfactory, it must be because they fulfil other conditions also. What those conditions are will perhaps appear most clearly from an examination of the actual procedure of historical explanations. It appears from such examinations that one of t/iree things may happen to a thing, the evolution of which Is investigated by the Historical Method. (i) It may be traced up to a point beyond which historical knowledge will not carry us ; we may come to an unresolved and irresolvable residuum, 1 82 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. which is the basis and datum of evolution, and which no evolution can explain. (;2) The thing to be explained may merge into something else, and cease to exist, or at least to be distinguishable as such. (3) It may vanish entirely : it may be traced to its first appearance on the scene. It is possible to illustrate each of these results of the historical explanation from various evolutionist theories. The first may perhaps be said to be the most common result in the present condition of our data. If we rigorously refuse to follow the evolution- ist method beyond the data which are indisputably given, instead of prolonging our histories inferen- tially, we almost everywhere come to a point at which our evidence fails us. To take the most striking example, we can trace the history of liff^ down to protoplasm, but we have no evidence that / could explain how life arose out of lifeless matter. Strictly speaking, therefore, protoplasm is the inex- plicable datttm of biological evolution. For, though it so happens that protoplasm, or something very like that hypothetical basis of biology, is an actually visible substance, and so capable of further analysis by chemical and physical methods, there is nothing in its chemical and physical properties to bridge the gulf between them and the phenomena of life, nothing that renders it less of an ultimate fact for biology. As an instance of the second we may quote the supposed origin of the intellectual and the moral consciousness in the evolution of life. As we trace the history of intelligence downwards, we seem to pass from the highest reason of man by insensible gradations to a form of life in which nothing that EVERYTHING DERIVED FROM ITS GERM. 1 83 can fairly be called reason can any longer be dis- tinguished. In the lowest forms of life there is not only no reason, but hardly any feeling, to be detected. It is only by the analogy of the higher forms of life that we ascribe to protoplasm the rudiments of thought and sensation. And what is true of intellectual and sensory consciousness, is still more conspicuous in the case of the moral consciousness. There is no need here to eo down into animal life, for we find abundant examples in what must be called human beings of what seems a total absence of all moral feeling. We can all but fix the date of the origin of the moral consciousness, tall but see how it differentiated itself out of the other factors of savage life. Of the third result Vv^e should obtain an example if by any chance we could witness the creation or coming into being of any- thing, § 8. But let us consider what effect would be produced upon the actual results of evolutionist explanations, if the law of evolution could be really and completely universalized. The first case will evidently not bear universalizing. An evolution which starts with an original datum is not com- pletely successful in explaining a thing. On the contrary, it is probable that we should attribute to the original datum the germs at least of all the qualities of the final product, and thereby render the whole explanation illusory. For if we have already got in the original germ all the differences and difficulties we detect in the final product, the whole explanation becomes a petitio principii, and merely zmfolds what we have taken care to put into the thing beforehand. Neither can the second case be universalized. 184 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. For it is clear that things cannot go on indefinitely being merged into other things, for the last thing would have nothing else for it to be merged into. There remains, then, the third case, viz., that our theory of Evolution traces all things back to the point where they arise out of nothing. But is this an explanation ? Have we gained anything by showing laboriously and with an im- mense mass of illustration how A arises out of B, B out of C, etc., until we come to Z, and say that Z arises out of nothing ? And so we are, finally, confronted with this unthinkable miracle of the creation of all things out of nothing, as the final completion and logical per- fection of the historical explanation ! And yet it is an axiomatic principle of human thought that things cannot arise out of nothing, i.e., causelessly ! ^ § 9. And that origination out of nothing is not merely the logical conclusion to which a consistent use of the historical explanation must lead, appears from the fact that it has already been not obscurely asserted in certain evolutionist theories. If we follow the bolder theories of the evolution- ists, as illustrating the logical development of the method, without for the moment considering whether they are justified by the scientific data, we find that they derive all the phenomena of human life from the properties of original protoplasm. And they do not hesitate to carry us beyond this and to con- struct histories of '' biogenesis," intended to account for the origin of life out of inorganic matter. They may attack the problem in a purely mechanical manner by regarding the phenomena of life as differing only in degree from processes of combina- ^ Ex nihilo nihil; in nihilum nil posse reverti. MR. CROOKES' THEORY OF PROTHYLE. 185 tlon and crystallization, or they may also grapple with the logical difficulty of conceiving a transition from the unconscious to the conscious by theories of '* mind-stuff" and the like. When once this 7nattvais pas has been surmounted, evolutionism finds more congenial material in the region of chemical and physical theories. Indeed, the most recent advances of chemical theory, as represented by Mr. Crookes' doctrine of Protyle (prothyle ?),^ enable it to construct an extremely interesting and complete cosmogony. The importance of Mr. Crookes' views to the theory of evolutionism is so great, and they have as yet penetrated so little into the general culture of the day, that no apology is needed for dwelling on them at greater length than on the well-known theories of Darwin and Spencer.^ § 10. Chemists have for some time been struck by the fact that a certain order and connection may be detected among the " elements." The working Qut of the periodic law, i.e., of the law of the natural grouping of the elements, is now one of the chief problems of theoretic chemistry. But to assert that the elements are not only different, but differ in a determinate manner, is to assert that there is a con- nection underlying their differences. The fact that the elements are capable of being arranged in a series, in groups of which the members resemble one another more closely than they do those of other 1 Prothyle is the proper form of the word, as it is the " prote hyle " of Aristotle, derived through the medieval " yle." We have ventured, therefore, to substitute the correcter form. 2 For Mr. Crookes' views v. his Presidential Address to the Chemical Society in May, 1888 (^Journal of C hem. Soc, p. 487). Also his Address to the Chemical Section of the British Associa- tion in 1886. 1 86 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. groups, suggests that the seventy and odd substances which are accounted elements, because we have not hitherto been able to decompose them, are not final and ultimate facts. The law which explains their grouping must be regarded as anterior to them, and its operation may be described as the genesis of the elements. Hence it becomes possible to speak of the evolution of the elements. But the analogy with biological evolution extends much further. It is impossible not to be struck with the great quantitative inequality in the occur- rence of the elements. Some of them are widely distributed and occur in large masses, whereas others only occur rarely and in small quantities. If, therefore, the elements are to be regarded as the products of a process of evolution, it is evident that the process has been much more favourable ^ to metals like iroa than to one like platinum or uranium. *' A rare element, like a rare plant or animal, is one which has failed to develop in har- mony with its surroundings," i.e., failed in the struggle for existence. And it is even possible to guess at the cause. One of the most striking facts about the rare metals is that they occur in rare minerals composed of several of these metals, and often occur in these minerals alone. Thus rare minerals, like samar- skite or gadolinite, may be found to contain three or four of the rare metals, samarium, yttrium, erbium, etc., and their close and constant associ- ation evidently cannot be a matter of chance. Now if a soluble salt of one of these earths, e.g., yttria, be taken, and subjected to an extremely delicate and laborious process of " fractionation," by which the more soluble portions are separated out from THE EVOLUTION OF THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS. 1 87 the less soluble, it appears that the apparently elemental yttrium may be split up into several closely related substances, which, though in some cases their chemical properties may be indistinguish- able, yet show marked differences in their spectra. And so, instead of a single metal, yttrium, w^ith five bright lines in its spectrum, we get five substances with one line each in their spectrum. Similar results have been obtained with, didymium and other metals, and quite lately (1889), even such common and apparently well-known, metals as cobalt and nickel have been foujid to be constantly alloyed with a third substance, and the multiplica- tion of such results seems simply a question of time. § II. Now, says Mr. Crookes, what are we to make of these facts ? Are we to give up our tests as worthless, or are we to dub all these membra disjecta of an element elements.? To do this we should require some gradziatioti of the conception of elementicity, which would, dispens^e us from putting the constituents, of yttrium and didymium on a par with oxygen and carbon with respect to their elementicity. But Mr. Crookes propounds another interpretation, which may startle old- fashioned chemists, but has the merit of being both sensible and philosophic. It is a mere prejudice, he says, to regard a thing as an element, because it has resisted all our reagents and all our tests : for each test can only cleave it in twQ, can only divide a compound into two portions, which are elements as far as that test is conc>erned. But if a new test is applied, the supposed eleipent splits up with perfect ease. All that can be inferred from our ''elements" is that the tests which would subdivide them further have not yet been discovered. And these experi- 1 88 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. ments suggest also that the supposed homogeneity of the particles of a chemical substance was based upon our ignorance. Atoms are not, as Sir J. Herschel said, and Clerk Maxwell endorsed, *' manufactured articles," exactly equal and similar, but, like all other real things, they possess individual differences and have an individual character. The individual differences appear so small only because of the minuteness of the whole scale, just as from a sufficiently lofty standpoint the individual differences between men also might appear as evanescent as those between the atoms do to us. And in chem.ical interactions these individual differences would be manifested by differences of atomic weight, not only between the different '' elements," but within them. Some atoms of calcium ml^ht have the atomic weight of 39*9, and others of 40*1, and the ''atomic weight " of calcium, viz., 40, would be only the average of the closely related groups. Hence if we discover any method of separating the atoms of the atomic weight, 39*9, from those of the atomic weight, 40*1, we should get two substances differing slightly from the ordinary calcium of the chemists, and differing still more from each other. This, or something similar. Is what may be supposed to have happened in the case of didymlum and yttrium. It Is probable, then, that the splitting up of elements Into '' meta-elements " has been first observed among these rare metals only because they present greater individual divergences between their atoms than the rest, and perhaps it may be suggested that It was this very individualism, this lack of coherence and similarity between their more heterogeneous and loosely knitted constituents, which accounts for their comparative failure in the evolution of the elements. THE DISSOCIATION OF CHEMICAL ATOMS. 1 89 § 12. As to the manner of this evolution, Mr. Crookes' suggestion rests on astronomical facts. He infers from the fact that stars are not of all sizes, but seem to vary within certain limits, that there must be some agency to prevent the accretion of the stars beyond a certain point. He also infers from the fact that compound bodies are dissociated by heat, that the " elements," if compound, must also be dissociated at very high temperatures. Hence he supposes that in the centre of the hottest stars all elements are dissociated. But dissociated into what ? Into that out of which they were all evolved, says Mr. Crookes, i.e., into prothyle, the ^ undifferentiated basis of chemical evolution, the '' formless stuff which was the origin of all substances. And so, while from our point of view matter simply disappears at the centres of the hottest stars, when the temperature exceeds a certain point, it is really reconverted into prothyle, which does not gravitate, because it is anterior to the differentiation of gravi- tating matter and imponderable ether. But though (sensible) matter is thus apparently destroyed at the centres of the universe, this loss is compensated by the genesis of matter at its confines. The existence of limits to space Mr. Crookes supports by an in- genious calculation, that " if an unlimited world of stars sent us radiations, we should receive 200,000 times as much light and heat as we do receive, unless radiations are absorbed or intercepted to such an extent that only ^^^ reaches us. This is so improbable that the conclusion that the universe is limited is with some emphasis declared by astronomy." ^ And there is the less reason to object 1 V. Mr. J. G. Stoney's letter to the Times (4th April, 1888), in support of Mr. Crookes' speculations. IQO THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. to this limitation of Space, as it will subsequently appear a necessary postulate also on other scientific and philosophic grounds (ch. ix. §§ 2-10). By this limitation of Space Mr. Crookes avoids the dissipa- tion of energy by reason of its conversion into light and heat, and its subsequent loss by radiation into the infinite. He supposes that at the confines of the universe the ether vibrations constituting light are re-converted, first Into prothyle, and then into atoms of ponderable matter, which, as soon as they are formed, commence to gravitate inward, and close their careers by reaching the larger stars, and there being again dissolved into prothyle. Thus the atoms of sensible matter also are in a way individual beings. And both their individual and their chemical characteristics (as it were, their personal and racial character) will depend on the general physical conditions at the time and place of their formation, in accordance with the periodic law. And when formed a process of segregation and aggregation takes place among the atoms in con- sequence of which "those which have approximately the same rates of motion " cohere to form sensible ag- gregates of practically homogeneous matter, "heap- ing themselves together by virtue of that ill-under- stood tendency through which like and like come together, that principle by which identical or ap- proximately identical bodies are found collected in masses in the earthy crust, instead of being uniformly distributed." There result certain *' nodal points in space with approximately void Intervals," which ex- plains a difficulty which the theory of the evolution of the elements has to meet in common with that of the evolution of species, viz., the absence or scarc- ity of intermediate forms. And thus the larger THE SELF- REGENERATION OF THE UNIVERSE. I9I aggregates first formed tend to absorb and force into conformity with their motions the surrounding atoms, and thus to grow disproportionately at the expense of the others : the common elements are those which have obtained a start in the process of genesis and improved their initial advantage. Such is the life-history of the chemical atoms, for, like all things, they have a limited term of existence. They " share with all created (? generated) beings the attributes of decay and death " ; they are gener- ated out of prothyle, according to the laws of the generation of matter, and when their due course has been accomplished, they return into that which gave them birth. § 13. But it is a more difficult question to deter- mine what is the exact relation of this genesis of the elements to the life of the universe at large, and to decide whether it took place at a definite point in its past history, or continually renews its youth. For there is much that tells in favour of either view. Mr. Crookes himself Vequently speaks of an original genesis of the elements out of prothyle as an event in the past ; he speaks of primitive matter as formed by ''an act of generative force throwing off at intervals atoms endowed with varying quantities of primary forms of energy," and even suggests, on very adequate chemical grounds, that ''it is ex- tremely probable that the chemism-forming energy is itself dying out, like the fires of the cosmic furnace." Moreover we have already seen that a real evolution implies a beginning (§ 3), and shall see that a valid evolutionism implies also an end (§ 20), so that Mr. Crookes own interpretation of his speculations may claim greater consonance with the ultimate requirements of evolutionist metaphysics. 192 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. On the other hand, it would seem that unless new atoms were continually generated to repair the loss of those which revert into prothyle, and to restore to the universe the energy which is radiated out to its confines, the theory will not only fail to dissipate the fear of " a final decrepitude of the universe through the dissipation of energy," but also invalid- ate the famous metaphysical postulate of science as to the conservation of the same amount of matter in the universe, at least as far as sensible matter is concerned. So it is not surprising to find passages in which Mr. Crookes asserts that "heat radiations propagated outwards through the ether from the ponderable matter of the universe, by some as yet unknown process, are transformed at the confines into the primary essential motions of chemical atoms, which, the instant they are formed, gravitate in- wards, and thus restore to the universe the energy which would otherwise be lost to it." Hence it is perhaps preferable at the present stage of the inquiry to regard the continual generation and re- generation of the universe as the theory more in accordance with the spirit of pseudo-metaphysical evolutionism. Thus, though stars and sidereal systems may have come into being and perished, formed matter must have been as eternal as prothyle, and it must be held that the universe itself at no time w^as not.^ The universe is an ever active, self-sustaining, and self-sufficing organism, living on for ever, though all its parts are born and die, and nourished by the constant and correlative transformations of atomic matter into prothyle and of prothyle into atoms, and 1 In this respect also there is a marked similarity between Mr. Crookes' cosmology and Aristotle's (cf. § 16 s.f.) PROTHYLE THE NE PLUS ULTRA OF SCIENCE. 1 93 having in prothyle a basis which all things have been and will be, but which itself never is. For though prothyle is the ground of all reality and the basis out of which all things are evolved, it is itself never actual : when atoms are dissolved into pro- thyle, they apparently perish, when they are gene- rated, they ainse out of nothing : for prothyle lacks all the qualities which could make it knowable or perceptible (§ 14). Such is the theory of the evolution of all things out of prothyle, a theory deserving of the highest praise, not only for its scientific ingenuity, but also as being the logical completion of the evolutionist method of explanation. For it has derived all com- plexity and all differences from the absolutely simple and homogeneous, viz., prothyle. And as it depicts the universe as a perfectly self-existent whole, we may predict for it a very considerable popularity among the foes of '' supernaturalism," as dispensing with the last apology for the belief in creation. § 14. But the very excess of the theory's suc- cess paves the way for its irretrievable overthrow of the method of which it is the logical result. The prothyle, from which it derives all things, is \y\ in reality nothing, for it is devoid of all the charac- teristics of sensible reality. It is not tangible, be- ^ cause its particles, if it has any, would exist in atomic isolation ; nor audible, because sound de- pends on vibrations in very complex matter ; nor visible, because it is anterior to the differentiation of gravitating matter and ether, upon which the phen- omenon of light depends. For the same reason it can have neither colour, nor weight, nor electric properties. It has no temperature, because heat is but molecular motion, and ex hyp. it precedes dis- R. of s. n \ 194 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. tinctlons of chemical properties. In short, it has no qualities that could render it in any way percep- tible ; in the words of Empedocles, — ouTU)9 OUT eTTLSepKTa tolS' avSpdcrii^, out e—aKOva-Ta, ,/ ^ ^ '1 ouT€ vocp TrepiAtjTTTa, and if it could actually exist, its existence could not be known. And so the transition of matter into, and gener- ation out of, prothyle, would have every appearance of a couple of miracles, of a passing into nothing, and of a generation out of nothing. For let us sup- pose that we were somehow able to be present when this unperceivable prothyle developed some proper- ties. What we should experience would be that at one moment nothing appeared to exist, and that at the next something came into being. And sim.ilarly in the case of the destruction of formed matter with definite qualities ; it would appear simply to vanish away. Even, therefore, if we could be present at the evolution of prothyle, we should be none the wiser, and any explanation would appear more probable than the iniracitloits generation of something out of nothing. Thus it seems to have been a mere delusion that prompted us to trace the origin of things out of w^hat has no meaning, no qualities, and no reality apart from that which it develops into. In tracing the universe back to prothyle the Historical Method has reduced it to a fantastic and irrational nonen- tity, without form and without qualities, which differs from all other nothings only by its mysterious capa- city to develop into everything. 1 Thus it is neither to be seen by men, nor to be heard, nor to be grasped by thought. \ A PURE POTENTIALITY IS NOTHING. 195 § 15. Shall we conclude from this result that the evolutionist method is worthless, after the fashion of many who have perceived fhis intrinsic weakness of a professedly " unmetaphysical " (i.e., pseudo-meta- physical) evolutionism ? It is true that as an ulti- mate explanation of things it has failed. It has reduced the "complex" to the "simple," until it arrived at things so simple as to be indistinguishable from nothing, at simple substances which had a meaning only with reference to the complex ones which they were supposed to explain. Must we then reject the whole method as an error and the whole process by which it traced the connection between the higher and the lower as a delusion ? To do this would be to do violence to our best instincts : we cannot lightly or wholly abandon a method which has added such ereat and varied realms to science. But the difficulty Is such as might convince even the most anti-metaphysical of the necessity of a systematic criticism of ultimate questions, and of an investigation of the metaphys- ical implications of the evolutionist method, as being alone capable of separating the valid and valuable elements In It from those which are delusive and absurd. § 16. Taken as the type of the pseudo-meta- physical method, which explains the higher by the lower, the theory of Evolution derives the actual reality from Its germ, i.e., from that which was, what it became, potentially. Wherever we cannot conceive the lower as contalninor the o-erm of the higher potentially, the method fails. Thus it does not explain the genesis of consciousness out of unconscious matter, because we cannot, or do not, attribute potential consciousness to matter. 196 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. Now the metaphysical implications of the potent- ial and the actual, i.e., of the theory of Evolution in its only tenable form, were fully worked out by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. Aristotle's doc- trine of potentiality and actuality (^lyVa/xt? and eptpyeia) is the most complete form of evolutionism conceiv- able. It admits of no differences in kind anywhere in the universe. From the lowest form of matter to the highest form of mind, the lower Is the potent- iality of which the higher is the actuality or real- ization. And so we ascend by insensible gradations from the first matter (prothyle), which is merely potentiar and never actual {cf. § 13), to the divine being which has completely realized all its potenti- alities, i.e., is all it can possibly be. It is true, however, that Aristotle does 7iot con- ceive this process from the potential to the actual to be one In Time, as the historical theories of Evolution are wont to do, but supposes the different degrees of perfection to coexist in Space rather than to succeed one another in Time. For he regards the Avorld as eternal, and rejects the supposition of a secular progress In things. But It is remarkable that he rejects It merely on the ground of lack of evidence. It would be absurd, he says,^ on account of slight and brief changes, like the growth of the Nile delta, to sup- pose a general cosmic motion (Kivelv to irav). Thus, for lack of the requisite scientific illustration, the true theory of Evolution had to remain still-born for 2,000 years, until the progress of physical science could ratify the results Aristotle had anticipated ! But as soon as the scientific evidence was forthcom- ing, it was found necessary to revive Aristotle's 1 Meteorol. I. 14. EVOLUTION IN THE LIGHT OF ARISTOTLE. I97 Speculations down to their special details, down to the very name bestowed upon the potentiality of Becominof, down to the assertion of the finiteness of the universe, and of the generation of its energy at its confines. And the correspondence between Mr. Crookes and Aristotle is the more valuable because it seems undesigned, and because the name of prothyle is (as its incorrect form shows) borrowed through the mediation of Roger Bacon. § 1 7. But Aristotle had the advantage of being a metaphysician as well as a scientist, and so was well aware of the metaphysical value of the symbol he used in his physics and called prote Jiyle. He recognized that it was nothing in itself, and so laid down the axiom, v/hich is so contrary to our ordin- ary modes of thinking, viz., that though the potent- iality is prior to the actuality in the order of time (eV -yci/eW) and in the order of our knowledge (71/600-6^), ^ yet the actuality is really prior to, and presupposed by the potential (it is (^vaei or (xttXco? irporepov). That is to say, to take the old puzzle which really involves the whole question of philosophic method, though historically the Qgg comes before the chicken, it is yet an egg only in virtue of its potentiality to be- come a chicken; the egg exists in order to the development of the chicken out of it. Or, to put it into modern phraseology, the lower is prior to the higher historically, but the higher is prior meta- physically, because the lower can be understood only by reference to the higher, which gives it a meaning and of which it is the potentiality. It is clear that this derivation of all things from, a pure potentiality, and the subsequent analysis of its meaning, explains, justifies, and reconciles the scientific and the metaphysical way of regarding v-.\ 198 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. things. Neither of them is gratuitous or useless, but each is adapted to certain purposes. In ordinary h'fe and science, where we think back- wards, and are more concerned with the past than with the future of things, the explanation by their causes, germs and potentialities is more in point. But in ultimate analysis none of these explanations are metaphysically adequate : things must be ex- , plained by their significance and purpose instead of by their "causes," by their ideals instead of by their germs, by their actualities instead of by their potentialities. And these two ways of looking upon things are reconciled by the fact that they regard the same connexion of things in reverse order ; the process is one and the same, but we find it con- venient to look at it now from the one end and now from the other. § 18. Applying these results of the Aristotelian analysis to the prothyle of evolutionism, it appears that the more certainly it can reduce the whole sensible and material world to a pure potentiality, the more necessary does it make the existence of a prior actuality, as the cause of the evolution of the sensible. And that actuality must be not only prior (in Time, if the process is conceived as one in Time, or only in idea, or in both), but, by the very terms of the hypothesis, external to the evolv- ing world, non-material and non-phenomenal. For since the whole of the material and phenomenal was supposed to have been derived out of the pure potentiality, the reality pre-supposed by that potentiality cannot itself have formed part of the material and phenomenal world. And thus, so far from dispensing with the need for a Divine First Cause, the theory of Evolution, THE ACTUAL PRIOR TO THE POTENTIAL. 1 99 if only we have the faith in science to carry it to its conclusion, and the courage to interpret it, proves irrefragably that no evolution was possible without a pre-existent Deity, and a Deity, more- over, transcendent, non-material and non-pheno- menal. And for the power of such a Deity to produce the world, the pure potentiality with which evolu- tionism starts is merely the expression. And the world as actual is prior to the germ which potent- ially contains it, simply because the world-process is the working out of an anterior purpose or idea in the divine consciousness. And as all things are, as far as possible, directed to the realization of that end or purpose, the real nature of things is to be found in their final cause, and not in their historical antecedents, which, just because they take prece- dence in Time, are means to an end, and of inferior significance in truth. Thus it is not true, in the last analysis, that the lower explains the higher, or that the antecedent is truer than the final cause. On the contrary, it is only from the standpoint of the higher that the lower can be explained, and it is only by a recog- nition of final causes that the conception of caus- ation can be cleared of its difficulties {cf. iii. § ii). The evolutionist method, which was to have a- bolished teleology, turns out itself to require the most boldly teleological treatment. § 19. And the same conclusion as to the ne- cessity of teleology may be reached, perhaps more clearly, from an investigation of the other meta- physical Implications of evolutionism. It has been already stated (§ 4) that the evolu- tionist method involved the conception of a world- 200 THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION. history and the belief that that history had a meaning, and was capable of rational formulation. But we may now go a step further and assert that the conception of the world as an evolution is the conception of the world as a process. In applying to the world the conception of evolution, we apply to it the metaphysical conception of a process, and hence we continually hear evolutionists talking of " processes of evolution." But they hardly perhaps realize how much metaphysic is contained in that single word. § 20. In the first place, a process is necessarily finite and involves a beginning or starting-point and an end, as two fixed points, between which the process lies. For a process consists in A's be- coming B ; but if neither A nor B is fixed, the becoming cannot be described as a process. In order to describe what happens we must have a definite and determinate starting-point in A, and a definite and determinate end in B. And even if the real does not, strictly speaking, appear to possess this definite character, we must asstmie it in idea for the purposes of knowledge. For our thought, and the language which is the expression of that thought, can only work with definite and determinate conceptions, and would be rendered unmeaning if the flux of the Real extended to them, and a term did not mean one thing to the exclusion of everything else. For this reason mere Becoming, which nowhere presents any salient phases which our thought can seize upon as fixed points for a process, is unknowable (ch. iv. § 22, ch. iii. § 13). Nothing that happens, therefore, can ever be described except as a process, for our thought cannot grasp nor our language express a N' THE METAPHYSICS OF A PROCESS. 201 becoming which does not indicate, however vaguely, something definite happening within fixed Hmits. If, e.g., we say, as vaguely as possible, " something became something else," we do at least Imply that the Ill-defined "something" was at least not any- thing and everything else ; for In that case It would have been the "something else," and nothing would have happened at all, seeing that the "some- thing " was the *' something else " already, and so did not have to become it, and thus there would have been no becoming at all, and the original statement would have been false. But if both the " somethings " mean something with a definite though unspecified character, then the becoming Is limited. In this case also, by the initial something at the one end and the final something at the other. All this may be illustrated by the old and famous example of the Q,gg and the chicken. Supposing we are considering the process of the hatching of the chicken, then the ^gg will represent the fixed starting-point A, and the chicken the fixed end B, and the process will consist in A's becoming B. Now let us suppose per impossibile that neither A nor B is fixed, i.e., that no chicken ever results. In that case we may give any name we please to the manipulations to which we subject the ^g Assuredly we can not: nothing compels us to go behind the contradiction. At the utmost all it proves is that there is a lack of correspondence between the constitution of our minds and that of the world, and there is no need to regard this con- flict as likely to be permanent. If, therefore, we are not satisfied with saying that the world must be finite, though we cannot, while our intuition of Space remains what it is, see how, a solution is yet possible through a change in that intuition.^ 1 The word " intuition " here is used merely as a translation of the preciser German term " Anschauung," and has no reference to any contrast with " experience." R. of s. 258 MAN AND THE WORLD. The idea of infinity need not form part of an intuition of Space different from ours, and after all, that intuition is only subjective. Subjective not only as existing in consciousness like the whole world of phenomena {cp. § 13), but subjective also as being a peculiarity of thought unconfirmed by feeling. There is nothing, therefore, impossible in the suggestion that in the progress of Evolution the infinity of Space should disappear either with or before the intuition of Space itself It would thus turn out to be nothing more than a transitory pJiase or condition of our minds, accidental to our present imperfect development, which would cease to lay claim to ultimate reality when the upward struggle of Evolution had raised us to a more harmonious state of being. And indeed there would be nothing inadmissible even in the idea of a non-spatial and non-material existence as the goal of the develop- ment of the spatial and material, if our examination of the nature of the material should justify a doubt of the permanence of Matter as a mode of our con- sciousness (cp, §§ 17-32). Our attitude, therefore, towards Space will be twofold : speaking as scientists and accepting the phenomenal reality of Space and of the sensible world for what it is worth, we shall distinguish between our idea of Space and real Space, deny that real Space is infinite, and contend that the sensible world is finite. But this scientific postulate does not so much solve as carve through the meta- physical perplexity. To metaphysicians, therefore, the conflict between the conceptual and the sensible will suggest their reconciliation in a non-spatial " intelligible world." And with reo^ard to this in- telligible world, we must protest against two mis- SPACE A TRANSITORY FORM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 259 constructions by whicli Kant sought to damage, the conception. It is not unknowable, and has nothing to do with what Kant strangely called Noumena (objects of thought), because they were unthinkable. And, secondly, it is not the abstract conception of a world in general. It is a real existence, which is legitimately, and perhaps necessarily, inferred from the discords of the phenomenal world. And though our data may not at first enable us to assert much more than its real existence, there is no reason why similar inferences should not eventually give us more definite information as to the nature of that existence. The final solution, therefore, may be briefly stated as being that the subjectivity of Space, or at least of the infinity involved in its conception, is likely to be brouorht out in the future evolution of the world, and this solution has the advantage of har- monizing with two such important doctrines as those of Evolution and of Idealism : and Idealism would surely be a still more futile and useless doctrine than its worst enemies or wildest champions would assert, if it cannot be appealed to to rescue philo- sophy from this perplexity. § II. The infinity of Time, however, can not be disposed of so easily by a decree of subjectivity. For the reality of Time is involved in the reality of the world-process. Now a process need not be in Space (as, e.g., a process of thought), and the world-process may therefore retain its meaning, even though spatial extension be nothing more than a passing phase of that process in our consciousness ; but the subjectivity of Time would destroy the whole meaning and reality of the world-process, and negate the idea of the world as an evolution. 260 MAX AND THE WORLD. Hence theories which have regarded Time as an Illusion, as the phenomenal distortion of the Eternal, have ultimately had to confess their inability to assign any meaning to the course of events in Time, and so arrived at despair, practical and theoretical, with regard to the phenomenal world. For it is evident that a process is necessarily in Time,^ and involves a temporal connection between its suc- cessive phases. Our dilemma then is this, that if the reality of Time is denied, the whole meaning and rationality of the world is destroyed at one blow ; if it is admitted, we do not rid ourselves of Its Infinity and Its contradiction of itself and of science. A clue out of the labyrinth may be found by observing with Aristotle (Phys. IV\ 223a) that our consciousness of Time depends on the perception of motion (/c/j//;cr/?), i.e., on the changes, and the regularity of the changes, in short, on the Becoming of the world. Time, as the consciousness of suc- cession, Is not Indeed, as we feel at first sight tempted to assert, bound up with the permanence of physical motions, by which we at present mea- sure it, and regulate the subjective times of our several consciousnesses (ch. III. § 6) ; but it does seem to depend upon our consciousness of Change or Becoming in the wider sense, of which physical motion Is but a single example. If, therefore, there were no change. Time would not exist for us, i.e., would not exist at all. The question therefore arises whether we can form a conception of a state in which change is ^ A " logical process " is really a psychological one : the pro- cess is only in the mind which traces the co-existing links of logical necessity. Cp. ch. iii. § 15 s/. TIME AND. ETER:NIT¥. 26 1 transcended, and to- this question' we must answer yes. The ideal of perfect adaptation is such a con- ception, and in a state of perfect adaptation there would be no consciousness of change {cj>. ch. ii. § 9, p. 32; ch. iv. § 4). Unless, therefore, happiness and harmony are the illusions the Pessimist asserts them to be, we must conclude that in such a state of perfection Time would be transcended.. But transcended by what ? It is easy to answer that its place will be taken by Eternity, but less easy to explain the meaning of that much-abused word, and its relation to. Time. For nothing would be gained if Eternity were regarded merely as the neoration of Time : this would neither save the meaning of the world-process nor correspond to the positive character of happiness. Eternity must be regarded as positive, and its relation to Time must be conceived analogous to the relation of Being to Becoming. The parallelism of the two is indeed surprising. The idea of Time involves an inherent contradiction, and so also does Becoming. For though Becoming is a fact of daily experience, it remains a contradiction to thought, and cannot: be defined except as a union of Being and' Not- Being (ch. iii. § 13). And in this union Being is the positive element, the standard to which all Becoming is referred. That which becomes, is only in so far as it has Being, and in so far as it is not, it is nothing. Construed on this analogy, Time would be real only as the presage of Eternity, and Eternity would be the ultimate standard by which its contradictions would be measured and har- monized. And Time and Becoming are not only analogous, but inseparably connected. For not only does all Becoming take place in Time, but without 262 MAX AND THE WORLD. Becoming there would be no Time. And may we not then say that what Becoming is without Being, that Time would be without Eternity, viz., self- contradictory and unmeaning? Thus we begin to perceive the nature of the limits of Time. The beeinninof of Time and the birth of our present universe {cp. ch. ii. § 20 s.f.) must have been a coincident transition from equable and unchaneinor Beine, from the harmonious Now of Eternity into the unrest, struggle and discord of Becoming, and the self-contradictory flow of Time. Thus Time might be called a Corricption of Eter- nity, just as Becoming is a Corrtiptioji of Being. For in either case the chano^e must be conceived as one of decadence, and Being and Eternity as the positive conceptions from which Becoming and Time represent a partial falling away. And both Time and Becoming may be called corruptions of Eternal Being also with reference to their intimate connection with Evil and Imper- fection. For in the ever-chaneine world of Time complete adaptation and adjustment, a perfect har- mony between a thing and its environment does not and can not exist, and it is just certain aspects of this non-adaptation, non-equilibrium and discord, that we denominate evil (ch. iv. § 4). Thus Time, Becoming, and Evil form part of the same problem {cp. ch. V. § 2 s.f.), and to recognize that the question as to the origin of each is a question as to the origin of all, is the first great step towards the solution of this triune perplexity of philosophy. And the mystery of Time is in a fair way of solution when we can express it in terms of the others, and say that Time is but the measure of the inipernianence of the imperfect, and that the reason why we fail to HOW TIME PASSES INTO ETERNITY. 263 attain to the ideal of Eternity is that we fail equally to attain to the cognate ideals of Being and Adapt- ation. The question thereby resolves itself into the old difficulty (ch. v. § 5) of why the Real cannot realize the perfection of the Ideals of our reason. But if it could, is it not evident that there would be an end of Time, as of Change and of Evil, and would not Time pass into Eternity ? Regarding Eternity, therefore, as the Ideal, and not as the negation of Time, as that into which Time tends to pass in the process of Evolution, as that into which it will pass at the end of that process, it is possible to resolve the difficulty of the depen- dence of the world-process on the reality of Time. If Time is the corruption of Eternity, if it is but the imperfect shadow cast by Eternity on the pre- scient soul of man, then what is true of Time holds of Eternity sensu e77iinentiori, and in becoming a process in Eternity the world-process does not have its meaning annihilated. On the contrary, it for the first time attains to its full plenitude of import. We may conclude therefore, for the present, that the solution of the problem of Time lies in its re-attainment of Eternity. § 1 2. The next subject which awaits discussion in our relations to our environment is that of man's relation to the material world. But before entering into a discussion of the relations and functions of Matter and Spirit, it will be necessary to allude as briefly as may be to the question of Idealism and the external world. Idealism is popularly supposed to consist in a denial of the existence of an external world. But this accusation is really a corollary from the funda- mental fact of Idealism, which idealists have been 264 MAN AND THE WORLD. by no means anxious to draw. On the contrary, they have made every effort to evade it, although their opponents may uncharitably think that their efforts were either unsuccessful, or succeeded only at a disproportionate cost of further absurdities. But that idealists should strain every nerve to escape from the most obvious corollary of their doctrine was but natural. No serious philosopher cin really hold a doctrine Avhich would hardly be credible even at an advanced stage of insanity, viz., that nothing exists beside himself. Or rather, if he is all that exists, he is certainly insane.^ Sub- jective idealists therefore do not exist outside lunatic asylums and certain histories of philosophy. Into the various devices of idealists to avoid sub- jective idealism, it is not necessary to enter, as they mostly consist in appeals to a deits ex machina, a ** divine mind in which the world exists." But even if it should not be considered derogatory to the divine majesty that a God should be invented to help philosophers out of a difficulty of their own creation, the difficulties that beset the relation of the individual and the " universal" mind are even greater than those of Idealism. It will be more profitable, therefore, to analyse the basis of all idealism, and to consider what it proves, and whether it necessitates the inferences of Idealism. ^ 13. The primary fact of Idealism is that all things exist in our consciousness — exist as objects of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions ; that ^ Compare the remark Goethe attributes to the idealist :— " Fiirvvahr, wenn ich dies alles bin, So bin ich heute narrisch." Faust I. : Walpurgisnachtstraum. IDEALISM AND THE " EXTERNAL WORLD." 265 that which does not and can not enter into our consciousness in one of these ways is unknowable and imperceptible, and therefore nothing. It is thus the positive converse of the proposition that the unknowable is nothing (ch. ii. § 6). But this fact is just as unimportant, controversially, as it is scientific- ally irrefragable. Thinkers of all parties, who know what they are about, are agreed that it is undeniable, and that it is impossible to acquiesce in it as final. Idealists and realists alike perceive the necessity of so interpreting it as to render it com- patible with the objective existence of the phe- nomenal world : their only difference is about the means. Idealists mostly seek to preserve the verbal state- ment of the primary fact of idealism by saying that all things exist in consciousness, but in a divine consciousness, appear to a divine " I," and hence are subjective to the Absolute, but objective to us, and independent of our thoughts and feelings. But in so doing they forget that they have trans- muted a fact into a theory, if not into a fiction. "My" consciousness assures me that all things appear to me, exist in my consciousness, but it carries with it no such reference to a divine consciousness. There is only a verbal and illusory identity between my own " I " and that of God. My consciousness tells me nothing directly about the way in which things appear to God. The transition, therefore, from my consciousness to God's is an extremely hazardous one, and does not of itself imply any similarity between the contents of my consciousness and of God's. Indeed, upon reflection, it will seem pro- bable that things would appear widely different to a divine being, and one would be sorry to think that 2 66 MAN AND THE WORLD. they should appear no better. But the " objective world " is a world which appears to me, and no appearances to some one else will explain it. For the pantheistic proposition that in appearing to me, the world really appears to God, and that my own " I " is but a section of the divine *' I," is not one capable of being thought out. For the universal " I" either has another consciousness beside mine, or it has not. If it has, the objective reality of things will be things as they appear to that consciousness, and things as they appear to mine will be reduced to a subjective illusion, i.e., we fall back into the subjec- tive idealism from which we are seeking to escape. If it has not, why should the reality of things be constituted by my consciousness, rather than by that of any other self-conscious " I," w^hlch is also a fraorment of the divine self-consciousness ? Things appear differently to me and to others, but to whom do they appear as they really are ? It matters not what answer is given to this question, the result will be the same ; the worlds as it appears to every con- sciousness but one, will be an illusion. § 14. But if Idealism cannot extricate itself from the toils of illusionis77i, let us see whether Realism is more successful in getting over the primary subjec- tivity of the world. Realism will naturally seek to draw a distinction between existing: in consciousness and existing solely in consciousness. It does not follow that because the world exists in my consciousness, it exists only in my consciousness. We may cheerfully admit even that the world cannot exist 02tt of my conscLoiisness, For it may be that ultimately the in- dependence, either of the world or of the *' I," will be seen to involve the same fallacy of false abstrac- THE \VORLd's reality GIVEN WITH THE SELFS. 267 tion {fp. ch. vi. § 2 s.f.), and that in the end ''I" can no more exist without the world than the world can exist without me {fp. ch. x. § 20). Indeed, even now the content of the Self is given only by inter- action and contrast with the world, or Not-Self. But at present this is a mere suggestion, and we must content ourselves with showing that the fact will bear the interpretation Realism puts upon it. It is a mistake to suppose that the only inference from the existence of the world in consciousness is that it exists only in consciousness, and that its existence is therefore dependent on the subject's conscious- ness. For, granting the self-existence of the world independently of my consciousness, it would yet exist for vie only as reflected in my consciousness. In other words, the fact of its existence in my consciousness would be the same, whether or not the world were self-existent. Both interpretations being thus possible, there can be no doubt as to which is preferable. Sense and science alike require us to believe that the existence of the world is not dependent on its appearance in any one's consciousness. The phenomenal world and the phenomenal self, to whom it appears, are mutually implicated facts, and we have no business to assume the existence of either out of their given context. And this mutual implication of the self and the world is equally fatal to both the extremes, both to subjective Idealism and to Materialism. We have as little ground for asserting that consciousness is merely a phenomenon of Matter, as for asserting that the material world is merely a phenomenon of any one's consciousness. But a choice is still left be- tween transcendental, or ultimate, and phenomenal, or immediate, realism. 268 MAX AND THE WORLD. This choice is decided in favour of the former, not only by the contradictions which the assumption of the ultimate reality of the phenomenal world in- volves {cp. ch. iii. §§ 2-12, and § 21), but also by the fact that one of the factors in the phenomenal world lays claim to ultimate reality. For each of us is strongly persuaded of the absolute existence of his own self. And the proper inference from this is, not that the phenomenal w^orld exists in an absol- ute Self, but that a transcendent world of ultimate reality corresponds to the reality of the Self Of this existence of ultimate realities outside our- selves we can have no direct proof: there can be no direct disproof of subjective idealism, just as there can be no direct disproof of pessimism. It is sufficient to show that it is practically impossible and absurd, and that its competitor can give an alternative interpretation of the facts, which gives a rational and harmonious solution. And indeed it is a mistake to suppose that all things require to be proved {cp. ch. ii. ^ 5), for proof is an activity of thought, and thought does not constitute the whole of consciousness. A fact may be as surely attested by feeling or will, as by the most rigorous demon- stration, and ultimately all demonstration rests on such self-evident facts. ^ The existence of a reality ^ The only alternative to this view of ultimate certainty is that which regards consistency as the basis of proof. But consistency may mean two very different things. If we mean by it that the l)remisses of arguments do not contradict one another, and that on the strength of this we can go on proving everything by every- thing else all round, we are surely deluded. For such an argu- ment in a circle is fallacious, as Aristotle pointed out long ago, even though the circle be as large as the universe. If, on the otlier hand, it means that things are so fitted together as to excite no sense of incongruity, then consistency just describes one q{ V IDEALISM VERSUS MATERIALISM. 269 outside ourselves is such a fact, irresistibly attested by feeling, and one which does not require further proof In this respect it is exactly on a par with the existence of one's self No man can pf^ove his own existence ; and, we may add, no suite man wants to. The correlative facts of the existence of Self and Not-Self are certified by the same evidence, the irresistible affirmation of feeling, and their supreme certainty cannot be touched, and much less shaken, by any idealist argument. § 15. Was Idealism, then, merely an unprofitable sophism — merely a troublesome quibble which ob- structed our path ? By no means : we may learn much from the difficulty to which it drew attention. In the first place, it brought out clearly the impor- tant distinction, which we had already anticipated in our account of Space and Time, of phenomenal and ultimate reality, and our answer depended on the distinction between them. What was reasserted against subjective idealism was the existence of ultimate reality, but we refrained from identifying this with phenomenal reality. We did not commit ourselves to the assertion of the absolute reality of every stick and every stone exactly as we now be- hold it. The world, as it now appears to us, may be but the subjective reflexion of the ultimate reality, and thus idealism would be true, at least of our phenomenal world. And, secondly, Idealism supplies the antidote to the materialism which regards consciousness as an accident without which the world is quite capable of existing. Idealism and Materialism, starting from opposite the chief characteristics of self-evidence, and becomes simply a lax statement of the rival theory. 2'JO MAN AND THE WORLD. Standpoints, are impelled by the force of all but in- superable reasonings towards contrary conclusions, and as they meet midway, the shock of their col- lision seems like to shatter the authority of human reason. For just as Idealism concluded from the fact that the world exists in consciousness, that it existed only in the individual's consciousness, so ^Materialism concludes from the fact that the world dispenses with every individual, that all may be dispensed w^ith. The exaggeration and the flaw is the same in both. Materialism overlooks that the world it speaks of is phenomenal, that the indivi- dual dispensed wath is phenomenal also ; and that what appears need not be all that ultimately is. Its arguments, therefore, do not touch the individual's conviction of his ultimate realit)'. Similarly, Ideal- ism cannot affect the individual's conviction that there must be something beside himself to account for the appearances to him. If, then, we recognize the distinction of the phenomenal and ultimate reality, the contradiction between Materialism and Idealism ceases to be insoluble. § 1 6. And to say nothing of other difficulties which it alone can solve, this fact is in itself suffici- ent reason for making;- the distinction between phen- omenal and transcendent reality, w-hich may at first sight appear somewhat needless. In so doing we are proving true to the principle of our method, by solving a conflict between thought and fact by an appeal to metaphysic. And it is certainly a more satisfactory method thus to reconcile the contending parties than for each to go on re-asserting the un- tenableness of its opponent's position from its own point of view. Students of philosophy must be well- niorh sick bv this time of hearing the well-worn WANTED A METAPHYSICAL ACCOUNT OF MATTER. 27 I philosophic argument against MateriaHsm, that it is '' a gigantic hysteron-proteron " and a logical contra- diction. And the small impression this mode of argument has hitherto produced, might well arouse the most supine of philosophers to abandon the method of sterile and captious criticism, and to bethink himself of an alternative explanation of the phenomenal world. If Materialism is bad meta- physics, what is the true metaphysical explanation of Matter ? If self-consciousness is the primary fact of knowledge, what part does it play in the explanation of the phenomenal world ? What is the relation of Matter and Spirit? what is the mean- ing of the distinction of Body and Soul ? and what is the function and purpose of the arrangement of the material cosmos ? If we remember the primary subjectivity of the phenomenal world, and proceed by the right method, we shall be enabled to give substantially sufficient answers to these questions. And the right method will here as elsewhere be one which derives its meta- physical conclusions from scientific data and justifies them by parallels from acknowledged scientific facts. § 17. In analysing the conception of Matter, the first thing to remark is that Matter is an abstraction ' from material bodies or things. Things are all indi- vidual and no one thing is exacdy like any other. Nevertheless we detect in them certain resemblances in virtue of which we call them material, and regard them as composed of the abstraction '' Matter." Matter, therefore, like all abstractions, is an adjective but not a substantive fact {cp. ch. iii. § 15, p. 82), and it is this which justifies the philosophic protest acrainst the materialist annihilation of the mind by means of one of its own abstractions. ^ 272 MAN AND THE WORLD. This abstract Matter, moreover, stands in a curious relation to the equally abstract conception of Force. According to the ordinary scientific doctrine, which ignores the metaphysical character of Matter, forgets that it is an abstraction, and treats it as a reality. Matter is the substratum or vehicle of Force. All the sensible qualities of Matter are due to forces, gravitative, cohesive, repulsive, chem- ical, electrical, or to motions (like Heat, Sound, Light, etc.), or "motive forces." Matter itself, therefore, is left as the unknown and unknowable substratum of Force. There is no reason why the term Matter should appear from one end of a sci- entific account of the world to the other. It is not required to explain the appearance of anything we can experience, and is merely a metaphysical fiction designed to provide forces with a vehicle. Hence the idea easily suggested itself to scientists to drop out the totally otiose conception of Matter, and to regard the " atoms " of physics as Force- centres. But though physics could perfectly well employ such force-centres, their nature requires further elucidation. It is impossible, in the first place, to regard them, with Faraday, as material points, devoid of magnitude. For this would not only stultify the whole aim of the theory by reintro- ducing Matter, but involve the further difficulty that as the material points w^ould be infinitely small, the velocity which any force, however small, would im- part to them, would be infinite, and they would rush about the universe with infinite velocities, and never remain long enough anywhere for their existence to become known. If, on the other hand, the force- centres are really points, i.e., mathematical points " without parts and without magnitude," it is diffi- MATTER AND FORCE. 273 cult to see how real forces could be attached to ideal points. And again, unless each of these atomic forces were attached to some real substratum, what would keep them separate, or prevent them from combining into one gigantic resultant Force, which would sweep the universe headlong into Chaos ? In short, the whole conception of independent force-centres rests upon insufficient metaphysical analysis. A force which has no substratum, which acting from nothing, is the force of nothing, but as it were in the air, is utterly unthinkable. But is this any reason for reverting to unknowable " Matter " as the substratum, in order that our forces may inhere in it, and not stray about helplessly? It would be a great mistake to suppose this. Our " forces " may require a substratum, but there is no / reason why that substratum should be material. It is, as Mr. Mill says, a coarse prejudice of popular thought, to which science has needlessly deferred, -' to suppose that the cause must be like the effect, that a nightmare, e.g., must resemble the plum-pud- ^ ding which caused it. So there is no need to sup- pose that an unknowable *' Matter " is an ultimate reality, merely because phenomenal things have the attribute of materiality. Matter is not the only con- ceivable substratum of Force. § 18. We found just now that Force-centres, in order to be a satisfactory scientific explanation of things, required some agency to prevent the indi- vidual atomic forces from coalescing into one. This postulate is realized if the force-atoms be endowed with something like intelligence, and thus enabled to keep their positions with respect to one another, i.e., to keep their positions in Space. We shall then say that they act at or from the points where they R. ofS. T 2 74 ^lAN AND THE WORLD. appear, and shall have substituted a known and knowable substratum, viz., Intelligence, for unknow- able "Matter." Our " force-atoms " wall have deve- loped into " mo7tads" spiritual entitles akin to our- selves. Thus the dualism of Matter and Spirit would have been transcended, and the lower, viz. Matter, would have been interpreted as a phenom- enal appearance of the higher, viz. Spirit. § 19. And a similar result follows from the ana- lysis of the conception of Force. Just as Matter was a conception which could not be applied to ultimate reality at all, so Force is a conception w^hlch inevitably implies the spiritual character of the ult- imate reality. Historically it Is undeniable that Force is depersonalized Will, that the prototype of Force is Will, which even now is the Force par' ex- cellence and the only one we know directly. The sense of Effort also, which Is a distinctive element in the conception of Force, is irresistibly suggestive of the action of a spiritual being. For how can there be effort without intelligence and will ? It is this closer reference to our own consciousness which makes Force a more satisfactory explanation of things than Matter : It is nearer to the higher, and hence more capable of really explaining than the lower. And we see this also by the issue of the attempt to interpret Force In terms of lower concep- tions. Force Is frequently defined as the cause of motion {cp. ch. iii. § 10), and if this definition w^ere metaphysically true, the sooner Force were obliter- ated from the vocabulary of science the better. Its association with the sense of effort would lead to groundless suggestions of similarity with the action of our wills, which could only be misleading. But, as we saw (ch. iii. § 1 1, 8), the conceptions of cause and X MATTER ULTIMATELY REDUCIBLE TO SPIRIT. 275 motion are even more replete with contradiction and perplexity, and to explain Force In terms of cause and motion is to explain what is imperfectly known in terms of what is still less known. When we assert that the Becoming of things, is due to the action of forces, we can form some sort of inadequate idea of how the process works, but we have not the least idea of what causation consists in as soon as we rigidly exclude all human analogies. To use caus- ation without a reference to our own wills is to use a category which has been reduced to a mere word without meaning, a category, moreover, the use of which involves us in the Inextricable difficulties of an infinite regress. § 20. If, on the other hand, we admit that Matter may be resolved into forces, and that the only pos- sible substratum of Force Is Intelligence, the way is open for a reconciliation of the metaphysics of Ideal- ism with the requirements of science. Idealism admits the phenomenal reality of the " material " world, and science recognizes that It has neither need nor right to assert its ultimate reality. The unity of philosophy and of the universe Is vindicated by the discovery of the fundamental Identity of Matter and Spirit, and the ultimate reduction of the former to the latter. And not only has science no need to assert the ultimate reality of Matter, but it actually benefits, in a hardly less degree than metaphysics, from the interpretation of the phenomena of Matter we have propounded. If Matter Is not and can not be an ultimate mode of being, it follows that the pseudo- metaphysical speculations as to its ultimate consti- tution lead only to a loss of time and temper. The conceptions of atoms, ether, space, etc., are not / 276 ^MAN AND THE WORLD. capable o( being 'cleared of their contradictions, because they have only a relative validity In the phenomenal world, and the phenomenal world taken by Itself is full of contradictions. Science therefore need not concern Itself to pursue Its assumptions beyond the point at which they are most useful practically, nor attempt the hopeless task of solving the perplexities which arise when it is essayed to give them an ontological validity. And this is the true answer to the sceptical criticism of the first principles of science (ch. Hi. §§6-ii). Hence it will be sufficient to assume as many undulating agencies as are requisite to explain the phenomena of light and electricity, without troubling whether the assumption of the reality of a luminiferous ether would not involve impossibilities. The difficulties inherent in the conceptions of Matter, Motion, and Infinity, puzzles like that of the Infinitude of the material universe, of the infinite divisibility of Matter and the relativity of Motion, lose their stinor, when we cease to imagine that the facts with which they are concerned are ultimate. It Is enough to know that we shall never eet to the end of the world, or come to a particle we cannot divide. But though Matter ultimately be but a form of the Evolution of Spirit, difficulties remain in plenty. Before the reconciliation can be considered com- plete, e.g:, it is necessary to determine the nature of the intelligence w^hich Matter is divined to conceal, and to discover what is the function of this disguise of Spirit. § 21. After the dispersion of the doubts which Scepticism had cast on the first principles of science, we must consider the nature of the intelligence of the Force-atoms. It is possible either to regard THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF ''ATOMS. 2/7 each atom, with Leibnitz and Lotze, as a meta- physical entity or monad, and to regard their Inter- actions as constituting the material universe, or to ascribe them to the direct action of divine force. Nor is it a question of vital importance which we prefer. For, on the one hand, we cannot dispense with the divine force in trying to understand the arrangement of the world and the aim of its pro- cess, and, on the other, it is not very much more difficult to conceive of an atom as possessing rudi- mentary consciousness and individuality than to do this in the case of an amoeba. But perhaps, it is better, in the present state of our knowledge, and until Mr. Crookes' theories of the individualities- of atoms (ch. vii. § 1 1) have received fuller confirmation, to recognize the distinction between organic and inorganic being, and to ascribe consciousness only to living beings, out of which it is historically pro- bable that our highly evolved consciousness has directly developed. An atom, then, may be defined as a constant manifestation of divine Force or Will, exercised at a definite point. In this definition, which moreover can be easily adapted to new requirements, should the old conceptions of atoms cease to be serviceable, expressions for the scientific facts, the constancy of the: divine Will excludes the association of caprice, while the localization prevents the fusion and confusion, of the force-atoms. It must not, however, be supposed, that there is any intrinsic connection between the forces and the mathematical points at which they act. It is merely that at these points we come under the influence of a certain intensity of divine Force. That this intensity is a constant and definite one, and that we can therefore measure it in num- '278 MAX AND THE WORLD. bers of force units, and speak of the conservation of mass and energy, is a fact given only by experi- ence, and one which need hold good only in so far as it subserves to the idea of the whole. And if it be objected that a thing can not act where it is not, it may be replied that the divine Force is omnipresent, or its action in matter may be com- pared to a piece of machinery which remained in action in the absence of its constructor, which affected us on reaching certain spots, and which might fairly ■be -said to represent a constant will of its constructor. But if we penetrate a little deeper, the difficulty v/ill appear gratuitous. For we have seen (§ 10) that Space can not be an ultimate reality, but must be regarded as a creation of the divine Force on precisely the same footing as Matter, and need not ;appear real to us except in our present condition. Thus the " objective " world in Space and Time would be the direct creation in our consciousness of the divine Force, and represent merely a state or condition of our mind, which need not be true or exist at all, except for a being in that condition. And yet it would be the only reality and the primary object of knowledge for such a consciousness. § 22. We have spoken hitherto of the world as a manifestation of divine Force, and treated the physical forces from the point of view of the sub- ject of which they were forces. But Force, to be real, requires at least two factors, and cannot act upon nothing, any more than it can be the force of nothing. We must consider, then, the objects also upon which the divine F'orce acts. It must be a manifestation to (something or) somebody, it must act upon (something or) somebody. Upon whom ? Upon us, surely, for it is to us that the THE WORLD A STJ^£SS BETWEEN GOD AND SPIRITS. 279 world appears. But that it should appear to us implies a certain independence and distinction from the Deity. For Force implies resistance, and there would be nothing for the divine Force to act upon, if we were not distinct and resisting entities. Or rather, we should remember that the conception of Force is imperfect, if we regard only the force which acts, and not that which it acts upon, and which calls it out by its resistance, that every action implies reaction, and that to speak of forces is but a convenient but inaccurate way of speaking of a Stress or Inter-action between two factors. And of these factors each must be real in order to make pos- sible the existence of the force exercised by either. When, therefore, we call the universe a manifestation of divine Force, we are not speaking with perfect precision, but leaving out of account the other half of the Stress, viz., the Reaction of the Ego upon that force. The cosmos of our experience is a stress or inter-action between God and ourselves. And in such interaction both sides are affected. If God appears to us as the world,, if the splendour of perfection can be thus distorted in the dross of the material, the Self also, which is a factor in that interaction, cannot app^ear in its fulness. We must distinguish therefore between the Self as it ultimately is, and as it appears to itself in its interaction with the Deity. This distinction may be marked by calling the Self as it appears, the phenomenal self, and the self as the ultimate reality, the Transcendental E.go. By the latter name it is intended to express its transcendence of the limit- ations of our ordinary consciousness and of our phen- omenal world, and yet to emphasize its fundamental kinship with our normal self And in agreement 28o MAN AND THE WORLD. with Kant's phraseology, it is called "transcend- ent^/," because its existence is not directly pre- sented, but inferred, based upon a metaphysical inference from the phenomenal to the transcendent} On the other hand, our ordinary selves 2