THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 V
 
 THE CHALLENGE 
 OF THE UNIVERSE
 
 THE CHALLENGE 
 OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 A POPULAR RESTATEMENT OF THE 
 ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. CHARLES J. SHEBBEARE 
 
 M.A. Ch.Ch. OXFORD ; SELECT PREACHER IN THE UNIVER- 
 SITY OF OXFORD; RECTOR OF SWERFORD 
 AUTHOR OF "RELIGION IN AN AGE OF DOUBT" 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING 
 CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 LONDON: 68 HAYMARKET, S.W. 
 NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918
 
 3D 
 
 SYLLABUS OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE xv 
 
 CHAPTER I : THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 1 
 
 " If there were a God, no evil would be found in the world. 
 But evil is found in the world. Therefore there is no God." 
 This argument has seemed to some minds to gain new 
 cogency from the events of the war. But is it really un- 
 answerable ? Perhaps not — if we reflect that the conquest 
 of evil, through patience, courage, and other efforts of a 
 rational will, is among the highest of rational acts ; and 
 thus that a Universe in which there was no evil to be con- 
 quered could not conceivably attain perfection. 
 
 CHAPTER II : THE FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 12 
 
 If we once see that the existence of evil is not an obviously 
 unanswerable objection to religious faith, then it is worth 
 our while to inquire candidly whether " Naturalism " or 
 Christianity best meets the intellectual challenge which the 
 Universe presents to us. Mr. Bertrand Russell has written 
 a noble description of a religion of freedom based upon 
 Naturalism and an " unyielding despair." We must face 
 the questions which Ms essay raises. Does the constitution 
 of the Universe take any account of man as such, and of 
 his moral and spiritual interests ? Or is human life but the 
 accidental outcome of purely mechanical forces ? Is there, 
 outside man and human efforts, any Power — personal or 
 impersonal, conscious or unconscious — which " makes for 
 righteousness " and spiritual progress ? 
 
 CHAPTER III: THE PLAIN MAN'S ARGU- 
 MENT 21 
 
 The favourite popular argument, in defence of religious 
 hope, is that which is known as the " Argument from Design," 
 or sometimes as the " Teleological Proof." This argument 
 points to the orderliness of Nature. There are in Nature 
 many qualities which, if we found them in the work of 
 man, we should regard as results of intelligence : the same 
 sort of qualities as distinguish the work of an adult from 
 that of a child, the work of a sane man from that of a lunatic, 
 the work of an artist from that of a mere craftsman. 
 Nature exhibits uniformity even where there is no direct 
 
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 pagi: 
 
 mechanical contact to explain this. Each sheep is physically 
 separate from the other members of the flock : yet all are 
 going through similar processes of nutrition. In every ear 
 of corn matter is being collected and arranged in a similar 
 complex structure. This uniformity cannot be taken as 
 a matter of course, of which the explanation is obvious. 
 Nor can it be a mere accident. Thus — it is argued — the world 
 looks so like a plan or design that it must surely be one. 
 But if the world is the result of design, does not this imply 
 that it is the work of a Designer ? 
 
 CHAPTER IV : THE ARGUMENT EXAMINED 26 
 
 This popular argument seeks, in effect, to show that the 
 world is governed (1) by general principles, and therefore 
 (2) by a Conscious Mind in which those principles dwell. 
 It is, however, an error to assume that government by 
 principles necessarily implies government by a Mind. The 
 example of Geometry would be enough by itself to disprove 
 this assumption. Let us first ask, then — not " Is the world 
 governed by a God ? " nor " Is it governed by principles 
 of wisdom ? " — but " Is it governed by general principles at 
 all ? " The value of the popular argument lies in the fact 
 that it points to certain phenomena which become highly 
 significant if they are considered together : viz. (1) the 
 pervading regularity of Nature; (2) the appearance of co- 
 operation among the parts of plants and animals ; (3) the 
 delicate and complex schemes of form and colour which 
 physical processes produce ; and (4) certain facts which 
 suggest that the Universe is a single system, a rationally 
 ordered Whole. There are many cases in Nature where 
 a large number of bodies or particles behave according to 
 one single formula or rule of action. It is a common evasion 
 to say that formulas, rules, laws, principles dwell in our 
 minds only, and except in the case of human agency exercise 
 no influence upon the outside world. Yet we all assume in 
 our predictions — e.g. of eclipses, of the fall of a stone left 
 without support, of the regular return of night and morning, 
 winter and spring — that we are dealing in each case with a 
 principle of regularity to which, in the future as in the past, 
 events in the outside world must conform. Can we then 
 deny that we regard the principles as really governing the 
 phenomena ? But granted that Nature is governed by 
 principles, are the principles that govern Nature purely 
 mechanical in character ? Are the colour-schemes of the 
 landscape beautiful by mere accident ? Are they the mere 
 by-product of mechanical uniformity ? Or is Nature in 
 some sense governed by specifically aesthetic principles ? 
 It is not unreasonable to ask questions of this sort, nor to 
 maintain that to the unphilosophic mind — if to no other — 
 the readiest explanation of the artistic appearance of the 
 Universe is that the Universe is in truth the work of a 
 divine architect. 
 
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 page 
 CHAPTER V : A CHAPTER OF HISTORY 44 
 
 Before we attempt to restate this argument in the light 
 of the criticisms directed against it in modern times, it is 
 well to recall how it has been formulated by distinguished 
 thinkers in the past, e.g. Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, St. 
 Thomas Aquinas. 
 
 CHAPTER VI: MORAL KNOWLEDGE 58 
 
 It is also well to recall the argument which Kant and others 
 have sought to substitute for it, viz. the " Moral Proof " 
 of God's Existence. This latter argument can be so stated 
 as (1 ) to furnish in itself a direct refutation of " Naturalism " ; 
 (2) to form an important element in that very restatement of 
 the Argument from Design of which we are in search. 
 Naturalism denies that the laws of the Universe take 
 account of the spiritual interests of man, We find, however, 
 that there are laws relating directly to our most important 
 spiritual interest of all, our knowledge of Right and Wrong. 
 We find, first, that there are fundamental moral principles 
 which we can all be made to see and accept if only they are 
 put before us with sufficient clearness. Further, we find that 
 the Moral Ideal is a connected Whole, and that our minds 
 are so constituted that, if they are familiarized with certain 
 of the leading principles of morality, they pass on from these 
 by a natural sense of affinity to other elements in the Moral 
 Ideal as occasion brings them to light. We trust the man 
 of good feeling to act rightly in quite novel circumstances. 
 The " Law " on which we rely is that familiarity with right 
 moral principles breeds general sympathy with the true 
 Moral Ideal. This is the law on which we base our educa- 
 tional methods : and this law cannot be successfully ex- 
 plained away by any naturalistic hypothesis. These hypo- 
 theses, if carried out consistently, have to treat our moral 
 convictions as illusion, and we all know in our hearts that 
 they are not illusion. 
 
 Again, an ideal for human conduct presupposes some ideal 
 for the Universe at large. It is a law that the mind of man 
 is so constituted as to recognize, in its main outlines, the 
 true ideal for the Universe when this ideal is clearly set 
 before us. To this truth the literature of all ages bears 
 witness. The union of virtue and happiness in a setting 
 of physical uniformity and aesthetic beauty, has called forth 
 the praises of poets from the days of the Jewish Psalmists to 
 our own. 
 
 CHAPTER VII : THE ARGUMENT RESTATED 70 
 
 The fundamental thought which the popular argument 
 embodies may now be reformulated as follows : 
 
 (I) The basis both of our everyday predictions of natural 
 events, and of those made by systematic science, is to be 
 found in the belief that the world is in some sense a rational 
 Whole governed by a rational system of laws, i.e. in the 
 
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 PAQB 
 
 belief that reality conforms to a rational standard or ideal. 
 No sane man believes in a world which conflicts with the 
 ideal which he himself seriously accepts. It is for this reason 
 that we positively reject (though we can have no direct 
 proof that they are untrue) the myths of Paganism and all 
 similar absurdities. For what other grounds of rejection 
 can we have ? It is easy to refute the error that our rejection 
 of the myths and our prediction of eclipses, etc., is due to 
 the unaided influence of past experience. (See Mr. Russell's 
 parable of the chicken, Problems of Philosophy, p. 98.) 
 
 But (II) we have seen already that one of the laws of Nature 
 is that men's minds tend towards a reasonable conception 
 of what the Universe ought to be. (See chapter vi.) 
 
 If this is so, then we may ask (III) whether we could 
 possibly call a system of laws rational, which prescribed, 
 on the one hand, that men should tend towards a true con- 
 ception of what the Universe ought to be, and yet prescribed, 
 on the other hand ; that this conception should be quite left 
 out of account in the actual ordering of the Universe itself? 
 If a conscious Creator produced such a world — deliberately 
 implanting in men high aspirations and yet dooming these 
 aspirations to ultimate disappointment — we should conceive 
 such a Creator, not as God, but as a mischievous fiend. Such 
 a plan would exhibit the height of irrational perverseness. 
 But if such a plan is irrational when consciously framed and 
 carried out, this is because it is irrational in itself. If then 
 we are right in attributing to the Universe a general rationality 
 (in the sense in which rationality is an object of admiration) 
 and in basing our predictions upon this belief (as we shall find 
 that we do), then the world cannot be the perversely ordered 
 scheme we have just imagined. The conclusion suggested 
 is that the System of Laws which governs the Universe 
 and which, among other things, implants a rational ideal 
 as (in spite of much incidental difference of opinion) a fixed 
 element in the human mind, also orders the Universe at 
 large in accordance therewith. Thus the admission that 
 there is in the human mind a tendency to form correct 
 judgments about good and evil may be regarded — as 
 unbelievers have themselves often regarded it — as the 
 " thin end " of the Theistic or Optimistic " wedge." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII : THE WORLD AS WORK OF 
 ART 82 
 
 But is this notion of a world so ordered as to fulfil rational 
 ends, and to embody a rational ideal, consistent with the 
 pursuit of Physical Science ? Can the notion of physical 
 " law " and moral and aesthetic " ends " be united in a 
 single system ? The answer is (1) that a world whose nature 
 is to embody an ideal must in many respects resemble a work 
 of art, (2) that the greatest works of art exhibit prominently 
 the element of regularity, (3) that, if the Universe resembles 
 these works of art in this respect, its regularity can be 
 made the object of special study, its elements can be 
 
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 PAGE 
 
 tabulated, its uniformities recorded even by those who are 
 quite blind to the higher ends which it is achieving. Some 
 of the best results in Nature have been attained through 
 the struggle for existence : but this does not prove that 
 their attainment was left to chance. Even the believer 
 who regards Nature as we know it as but a subordinate 
 part of God's creation — playing its part within a comprehen- 
 sive teleological system or " Kingdom of Ends " — may 
 yet quite consistently make Nature and its uniformities 
 the object of his inquiries. 
 
 On the other hand, while the success of Natural Science 
 is no argument against a teleological theory of the Universe, 
 the discovery of one single teleological law is a complete 
 refutation of " Naturalism." 
 
 CHAPTER IX: ORGANIC LIFE 93 
 
 Can we, then, find any unquestionable teleological laws — 
 i.e. laws which prescribe the realization in Nature of such 
 " ends " as beauty, fife, knowledge, or are all the laws of 
 Nature purely mechanical ? We have already recognized 
 one non-mechanical law in chapter vi. But does this 
 stand alone or are there others ? Is there, e.g., in the 
 particles of which a plant or animal is composed any ten- 
 dency towards organic co-operation as such ? Is it a law, in 
 regard to these particles, that in certain given conditions 
 just those relative movements take place which conduce to 
 the life and health of the whole ? It should be noticed 
 (1) that actual co-ordination where there is no co-ordinating 
 principle is accident pure and simple. If the parts of which 
 plants and animals are formed have no tendency towards 
 organic co-operation as such — just as a civilian crowd may 
 have no tendency towards military co-operation — organic co- 
 operation if it occurs will be either due to accident or to 
 some external influence. It is no more likely that we should 
 meet with a long succession of lucky accidents in botany 
 than in warfare. Thus, in the case of the plant, we seem 
 driven to choose between the conception of an external 
 Creator or Artificer, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, 
 of the influence of an unconscious inward * principle of life, 
 co-ordinating the various processes of which the history of 
 the plant consists. We may notice (2) that according to 
 Darwin : " Science as yet throws no light on the essence 
 or origin of life " (Origin of Species, chapter xv ; cf. chapter 
 viii). Darwin, therefore, does not profess to have explained, 
 or explained away, the difference between inorganic existence 
 and organic life. 
 
 * If some one objects, " You have not exhausted all the possibilities : 
 Why not (A) an external unconscious, or (B) an internal conscious, 
 principle ? " The answer must be, " Not B, because the parts of 
 the plant do not themselves think. Not A, because, in relation to 
 the view maintained in this essay, the description of laws as external 
 influences would be unmeaning." The common talk about divine 
 " transcendence " and " immanence " has covered much loose thinking. 
 
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 PAGE 
 
 CHAPTER X: BEAUTY OF LINE AND 
 
 COLOUR 111 
 
 Again, is there in Nature any tendency towards beauty — 
 towards the formation of harmonious schemes of colour ? 
 Or are such schemes when they occur the result of pure 
 chance ? A good colour-scheme might conceivably be 
 produced by pure chance, e.g. by pigments placed at random 
 on an artist's palette ; just as a tune may be played by 
 chance by an unskilled person striking at random on the keys. 
 But such accidents are rare : and it is obvious that natural 
 beauty is too constant a phenomenon to be a parallel case 
 to these. Nor can Natural Beauty be successfully explained 
 on Darwinian principles. Thus we must accept it as a law 
 of Nature that mutually harmonious colours are placed 
 together as such ; even if we are unable to decide whether 
 the aesthetic principles which thus govern Nature work 
 by the agency of a conscious Mind, or govern the facts of 
 Nature in somewhat the same sort of unconscious way as 
 the facts of geometry are governed by the principles enunciated 
 by Euclid. 
 
 CHAPTER XI: SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 137 
 
 In the realm of "spiritual experience," again, there are 
 certain uniformities which are just as much entitled to be 
 called " laws of Nature " as are the uniformities of Chemistry 
 and Physics. Consider the laws of moral and intellectual 
 influence. No less definite than the laws of the response 
 of Western Europe to the influence of Greek literature and 
 art, are the laws of the response of the mind and conscience 
 of man to the influence of Jesus. Yet obviously such laws 
 cannot be stated in terms of mere mechanism. It is in the 
 realm of spiritual experience (in the specific sense) that 
 we meet with some of the chief facts which have led men 
 to regard God as conscious and " personal " : to develop 
 their Optimism in the form of Theism. 
 
 CHAPTER XII: THE CLAIMS OF AGNOS- 
 TICISM 149 
 
 " But why has this teleological argument, which, in one 
 form or another, has been before the world for ages, so 
 often failed to produce conviction ? " Partly because of 
 certain inveterate prejudices and confusions of thought. 
 
 (I) There are those who speak as if Natural Science denied 
 everything which it does not affirm, and claimed therefore 
 by itself to give us a complete theory of the Universe. 
 
 (II) There are those who make the opposite mistake, and 
 speak as if Natural Science confined itself strictly within 
 the limits of experience, and must therefore be held more 
 trustworthy than Philosophy or Religion. But Natural 
 Science, in truth, passes the limits both of experience and of 
 demonstration, whenever it predicts future events or infers 
 
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 SYLLABUS OFCONTENTS 
 
 PAOB 
 
 occurrences which took place before man appeared on the 
 earth. Apart from a tacit assumption that the Universe 
 as a whole agrees with an ideal which we can accept as 
 rational, we have no ground for making any single prediction, 
 or even for rejecting the wildest absurdities of mythology 
 or superstition. What ideal then can we accept as rational ? 
 The man who can confidently give one clear answer to this 
 question has a settled faith, whether it be Naturalistic or 
 Christian. Naturalism has no right to claim superiority 
 here as more " scientific." We must let the rival ideals 
 enter the discussion on equal terms. (Ill) There is much 
 confusion of thought as to the meaning of the word " acci- 
 dent." If we ask whether the beauty, order, and rational 
 appearance of the world are due to accident, we are told 
 that since Nature has no free will, therefore of course beauty 
 is no accident, since all that happens happens by necessity. 
 But this does not follow. Take the case of the rock * 
 resembling a human countenance. The form of the rock is 
 due to natural forces. It took this form by necessity. But 
 the resemblance is none the less accidental, and is the kind 
 of accident not likely to be repeated. Is the agreement 
 between Nature and aesthetic principles an accident of this 
 same kind ? The assertion that all natural events are 
 necessary is an irrelevant answer, and merely enables us to 
 evade the question. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII: SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 171 
 
 Apart, however, from these prejudices, religion has obstacles 
 to encounter from its own inherent difficulties. First, there 
 is the difficulty of imagining a future life. Can we conceive 
 it in a form at once attractive and complete ? Yet this 
 difficulty, perhaps, if we face it honestly, will not be found 
 to be insuperable : especially if we are contented to give up 
 the attempt to form a full detailed picture of our future 
 state, and to confine ourselves to general terms. Miss 
 Schreiner's eloquent criticism of the Christian hope of 
 heaven (see Story of an African Farm) becomes less alarming 
 the more closely it is examined. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV : GOD 184 
 
 Again there are difficulties connected with belief in God. 
 " The God," it is said," who should bring about a European 
 War because men have forgotten Him, is a God caring for 
 nothing but the satisfaction of His own vanity." But this 
 objection is based upon a misunderstanding of religious 
 language. To forget God means — in the mouth of the 
 religious man — to forget righteousness. God is not conceived 
 by religion as a mere " person " with whom we have 
 purely external relations. In falling under God's wrath 
 we fall also under our own. Men trust God's accusing voice 
 
 * At the Trou de Han, near llochefort. is a stone known as the 
 head of Socrates. 
 
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 SYLLABUS OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 because it is the voice of their own better self — the true 
 language of their own hearts. To estimate such objections 
 rightly, we must first understand the religious mind. If 
 we conceive of the ultimate law of the Universe — the ultimate 
 necessity by which men and all tilings are what they are — 
 as something fundamentally good, and also as consciovis 
 of itself in such a sense that we may enter into communion 
 with it and make it the object of our love and worship, 
 then we have the personal God which religion sets before us. 
 It is not in this form that the conception of God gives rise 
 to the objections most commonly brought against it. 
 
 CHAPTER XV: CONCLUSION 196 
 
 We can best draw this whole argument into a single view 
 if we decide — after first clearing our minds about the meaning 
 of the word " accident " — to ask and answer certain definite 
 questions. (1) Is it an accident that Nature is uniform ? 
 If this is a mere accident, have we any right to use Uni- 
 formity as a principle of prediction ? If it is not an accident, 
 have we not here a case in which Nature is governed by a 
 general principle? (2) Is it an accident that Nature is 
 beautiful ? Is the beauty of the landscape a parallel case 
 to the example mentioned above — the chance-formed 
 colour-scheme on the palette of the painter ? Is it merely 
 a lucky accident that Nature never violates the laws of 
 aesthetic harmony as these are often violated by the human 
 artist or craftsman ? Can the significance of these aesthetic 
 facts be explained away on Darwinian or any similar 
 principles ? If not, must we not admit that aesthetic 
 principles have a real influence upon Nature ? (3) Can 
 Natural Selection, or any other theory, explain away that 
 " tendency towards correctness " which we find in human 
 thought ? (4) Are not beauty in visible Nature, and cor- 
 rectness of thought in the mind of man, among the facts we 
 should most naturally give as examples of that general 
 appearance of rationality which the Universe exhibits ? 
 Again, is it not because of our belief in the rationality of 
 the world throughout its whole extent — its agreement at 
 all points with a standard we can recognize as rational — 
 that we reject the myths of Paganism ? Can we then allege 
 that the observed agreement between the world as we see 
 it, and that standard of rationality which exists in our 
 minds, is a mere accident ? If it were but an accident, 
 what ground should we have for confidence that this appear- 
 ance of rationality will continue ? Why should not the 
 wildest and most grotesque absurdities occur at any moment ? 
 If, on the other hand, the rational appearance of the world 
 is no accident, does not this imply the dominance throughout 
 the Universe of the standard which right reason sets up ? 
 
 If these considerations lead us to believe in the govern- 
 ment of the world by principles of wisdom, and hence 
 dispose us to some form of theistic belief it is clear that 
 we shall not be satisfied with belief in a God of limited 
 
 xii
 
 SYLLABUS OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 powers. If the rational appearance of the world is due to 
 the will of a personal God, whose will nevertheless is not 
 necessarily law for the Whole Universe, the rational appear- 
 ance of the world would be but a mere accident after all. 
 The devout man's insistence on the omnipotence of God is 
 but the religious form of the philosophic conviction that 
 the rational appearance of the world is no accident, but 
 follows from the fundamental necessities of the Universe. 
 On this basis a religious belief and practice can be founded 
 which shall be as fully a religion of freedom as the Naturalistic 
 Creed expounded by Mr. Russell. 
 
 EPILOGUE: A PONS ASINORUM IN 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 208 
 
 To the philosophic reader the foregoing chapters — -in spite 
 of the absence of technical language — will appear as an 
 attack upon the philosophic heresy of Conceptual ism. The 
 refutation of Conceptualism leads in the end to the Platonic 
 doctrine which makes Ideas the ultimate basis of the Universe. 
 This Platonic doctrine is consistent with a non-theistic Opti- 
 mism (for those to whom a non-theistic Optimism does not 
 seem to be in itself a contradiction in terms) : but it is not 
 inconsistent with the Christian belief in a God Whom we 
 can love and worship. 
 
 NOTE I : ON KANT 224 
 
 NOTE II : ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A COL- 228 
 LISION WHICH SHOULD THREATEN 
 DISASTER TO THE WHOLE SOLAR 
 SYSTEM 
 
 INDEX 241 
 
 Xlll
 
 ?? 
 
 PEEFACE 
 
 Among the remains of early Christian literature 
 there is nothing that possesses greater charm 
 than the Octavius of Minucius Felix. The 
 three intimate friends whose conversation the 
 book relates are divided in religious opinion. 
 Octavius and Minucius himself are Christians : 
 Csecilius is a Pagan. As they stroll along the 
 beach in the neighbourhood of Ostia on a fine 
 autumn day, a chance incident gives rise to a 
 discussion of the truth or falsehood of the Chris- 
 tian religion. 
 
 The purpose of the present volume can hardly 
 be described better than by reference to this 
 early Christian work. The fifteen chapters which 
 here follow are an attempt to open the way for 
 similar frank and friendly discussions of the 
 same great question at the present time. In 
 any age the Octavius would serve as a model 
 of outspoken and yet courteous debate. It is a 
 truly remarkable fact that such a book should be 
 written in the age of persecutions. Looked at 
 in this light, the personal details and general 
 setting of the dialogue — the walk of the three 
 
 xv
 
 PREFACE 
 
 friends along the shore, the description in elegant 
 Latin of the sand which sinks softly beneath their 
 feet, of the rising and falling of the breakers, of 
 the children making " ducks and drakes " by 
 throwing pebbles into the sea — these and many 
 similar touches are none of them irrelevant. All 
 serve to heighten our sense of the peacefulness of 
 the scene, and of the intimate and friendly rela- 
 tions among the persons of the dialogue. How 
 far the Octavius records an actual conversa- 
 tion it may not be easy to decide ; though, for 
 all we can see to the contrary, it may well have 
 been founded on fact. But this is not the impor- 
 tant question. The significant matter is that 
 such a dialogue should at such a period, when 
 memories of persecution were so recent, have 
 seemed to a Christian writer to possess sufficient 
 probability to serve even for literary purposes. 
 
 How r often has the modern Christian been 
 present at a similar discussion ? If, with so few 
 obstacles between us — compared with what must 
 have existed in the days of the martyrs — the 
 modern Christian and the modern unbeliever are 
 less disposed than Minucius and his friends to 
 discuss their deepest convictions, is this fact 
 altogether to the credit of our age ? And, if it is 
 not, ought we not each of us, believer and un- 
 believer alike, to inquire how far and in what 
 respects the blame rests upon ourselves ? The 
 believer may pay his opponents the compliment 
 of admitting that in one respect — namely, the 
 xvi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 production of popular literature — he has much to 
 learn from them. The Rationalist Press Associa- 
 tion has issued books and leaflets which set an 
 example of lucidity, of candour, of intelligibility 
 to a wide public, which all writers of the opposite 
 camp might well be proud to follow. 
 
 But if it is significant that in the Age of Martyrs 
 Christian and Pagan could be conceived as en- 
 gaging in free and friendly discussion, it is no less 
 interesting to find that the Christian apologist of 
 that period should turn in the last resort to the 
 Argument from Design. Besides defending 
 Christianity against charges now obsolete, Octa- 
 vius formulates a theory of evil, and subordinates 
 it to a view of the Universe based upon this 
 famous argument, so intimately associated in 
 our minds with the Christian rationalism of the 
 Eighteenth Century. The Christian writer who 
 to-day makes use, even in a modified form, of any 
 of the traditional " proofs of God's existence " is 
 suspected in many circles of being at heart a 
 Deist or, at least, a Unitarian. No one — it is 
 thought — will trouble himself with these natural- 
 istic and rationalistic arguments who has any 
 more religious grounds of conviction ; who rests 
 upon a sense of living communion with the Holy 
 Ghost, or feels that he shares through the Church 
 and its Sacraments the life of the risen Christ. 
 
 This suspicion rests upon a wholly groundless 
 prejudice. The Argument from Design seeks to 
 
 b xvii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 exhibit the Universe as an orderly whole in all 
 its diverse aspects ; and the real strength of the 
 argument lies, not in showing that this order is 
 the result of design, but in showing that it is not 
 the result of accident. The world's order, as we 
 shall see, includes not only mechanical uniformity 
 — though this is one of its most important aspects 
 — but also involves laws relating to aesthetic 
 beauty in Nature, to intellectual correctness in 
 the mind of man, and this a correctness which 
 includes moral knowledge and what in a specific 
 sense we call " spiritual experience." These 
 laws point to a general conception of the Universe 
 as a rational whole, such that all, even of its most 
 evil elements, are ultimately subordinate to the 
 purposes of Good. Such an ultimate Optimism 
 may be held conceivably in a non-theistic form. 
 We may regard the world as being, in Platonic 
 language, the embodiment of the " Idea of the 
 Good," rather than the work of a good God. 
 Yet, though a non-theistic Optimism is quite 
 conceivable, belief in God is the doctrine to which 
 Optimism most naturally leads. 
 
 Thus the rationalistic arguments need not lack 
 religious value except for those whose personal 
 experience has been spiritually poor. Nor can 
 we afford to despise such arguments at any stage 
 of spiritual enlightenment. If our personal ex- 
 periences have been equal to the richest ever 
 claimed for the greatest Christian saints ; if we 
 have been filled with singular gifts of the Holy 
 xviii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Ghost, the clear insight of an Athanasius, the 
 burning love and zeal of a St. Francis ; if we 
 have had visions and revelations like St. Paul ; 
 if we have witnessed physical miracles or even 
 worked them ; still we cannot take these ex- 
 periences as the grounds of a theology — of a 
 general theory of God and the Universe — except 
 on the basis of just such a belief in the rationality 
 of the world as the old-fashioned arguments seek 
 to establish. The religious man values physical 
 miracles, and special spiritual experiences, because 
 they throw light on the general character of the 
 Universe. Unless we believed already that the 
 Universe is " all of a piece," a single system such 
 that the character of one part interprets that of 
 another, then neither physical miracles nor inward 
 experience would have the significance which 
 religion attributes to them. Even the common 
 arguments which are based on the authority of 
 the Bible or the Church, all presuppose just such 
 a belief in God as it is the aim of the Argument 
 from Design to produce in our minds. 
 
 Thus the general type of reasoning to which 
 the Argument from Design is one attempt to give 
 formal expression, is common ground for Chris- 
 tians of all schools. The writer of the following 
 pages is a member of the Church of England. 
 Yet every argument here used might be employed 
 by a Methodist, a Congregationalist, or a Presby- 
 terian, whether they belonged to the right or left 
 wings in their respective Churches : and though 
 
 xix
 
 PREFACE 
 
 neither the criticism of the Argument from De- 
 sign, nor the attempted restatement of its essence, 
 proceed quite according to customary methods, 
 still it is probable that, even if the book had been 
 written within the Roman communion itself, it 
 would have required (outside the Preface and the 
 Epilogue) only a few slight alterations to enable 
 it to receive the Nil Obstat and Imprimatur of the 
 authorized judges. The argument in its best 
 known form is sorely in need of revision. But 
 the thought which lies behind it we may be 
 justly proud to claim as part of our common 
 Christian inheritance. 
 
 We must be careful, however, not to interpret 
 this claim as implying that we have here the 
 essence of " our common Christianity." Nothing 
 is more utterly misleading than to seek our 
 common Christian heritage in the mere residuum 
 of doctrine which is left when we have subtracted 
 everything about which Christians differ. The 
 essential unity of the Christian faith is seen, not 
 so much in doctrinal statements as in a common 
 attitude of will, a common standard of values. 
 It shows itself above all in a common conception 
 of the sinfulness of sin, a common assurance of 
 pardon to the penitent, a common devotion to 
 Christ, the common Lord.* 
 
 And if it is the possession of a common standard 
 
 * Enthusiastic devotion to Christ shows itself in the develop- 
 XX
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of values that is the real distinctive mark by 
 which the Christian may be known, this fact must 
 in the end decide the character of Christian 
 apology. The Argument from Design, or at 
 least some argument closely resembling it, is 
 necessary in order to convert our religious expe- 
 riences into the material for a theory of the 
 Universe. In many circles, however, at the 
 present day there is a tendency to question 
 whether a theory of the Universe is any necessary 
 part of our religious equipment. " We find," 
 it is said, " in ourselves and in our neighbours, 
 certain lofty and religious ideals whose truth we 
 recognize. By these we can live : by these we 
 can live a life of mutual co-operation ; and [if 
 we recognize them as the gift of a personal God, 
 we can regard Him as the object of our common 
 devotion without demanding that He shall be 
 the Absolute, or the Infinite, or the Ruler of the 
 whole Universe : still less that He and the 
 
 ment of what, to those who do not share them, will always seem 
 to be " extreme " views of His work or person : e.g. (a) in Evan- 
 gelical circles, the substitutionary doctrine of the Atonement ; 
 (b) in Catholic circles, the conception of His risen body as the 
 Source of our life, the food on which we feed in the Eucharist, 
 the firstfruits of the Resurrection, the first incorruptible body, 
 and therefore the starting-point from which Incorruption sets 
 out that it may at length subdue Corruption to itself, when 
 the creation which has long groaned in pain shall be delivered 
 into the glorious liberty of the children of God ; (c) in some 
 Liberal circles, the assertion that the knowledge of the true 
 God is so exclusively mediated through Christ, that we must 
 not admit, even of the Jew, that he worships the same God 
 as we. 
 
 xxi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Universe should be held to be ultimately identical. 
 We can uphold our ideals even though the Uni- 
 verse at large affords them no support. We can 
 co-operate with God's aspirations even though 
 we can have no certainty of absolute success ; 
 even though the ' doors of the future ' are so far 
 4 open,' that a good or evil issue to the struggle 
 are alike possible." 
 
 The view which such language implies is not 
 wholly false. We must first of all recognize good 
 for what it is ; we must first distinguish God and 
 His will from the many elements in the Universe 
 against which His will stands in opposition ; 
 before any worthy type of religion is possible to 
 us. It is more important to know what is good 
 than to know whether good will be ultimately 
 victorious. Therefore the writers who are seek- 
 ing to commend to us religious ideals and religious 
 standards of value, and to make these the objects 
 of our effort, quite apart from any conviction 
 that these principles are embodied in the Universe 
 at large, are doing good and heroic work. Thej^ 
 are writing for us that which must always be the 
 first and most important chapter in the defence 
 of religion. But though to commend religious 
 standards of value is the highest work of the 
 apologist, there is still a place, and a necessary 
 place, for the type of argument with which the 
 following chapters deal. Religion will not be 
 able to dispense for ever with a religious 
 theory of the Universe : nor to rest content 
 xxii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 for ever even with the sincerest worship of a 
 " finite God." 
 
 I wish to thank very heartily, for help of many 
 various kinds, not only those friends to whom I 
 have expressed gratitude on a similar occasion 
 before ; but also several friends of a younger 
 generation than theirs, with whom during the 
 past few years I have discussed some of the prob- 
 lems which are dealt with below. I may name 
 especially Mr. Miles Malleson, Mr. Leonard Hodg- 
 son (Vice-Principal of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford), 
 and my wife. I hope and believe that every page 
 in the present volume will be readily intelligible 
 to any reader of ordinary education. But if 
 this is so, it is due, in great measure, to what I 
 have learnt in discussion with my friends. 
 
 The following pages are addressed to the 
 teachers of Theology no less than to the learners 
 and inquirers. If any teacher of religion is dis- 
 satisfied with my statement of the fundamental 
 grounds of religious belief, it is incumbent on 
 him as a teacher to formulate a different one. If 
 he feels the inadequacy of the old argument, and 
 yet objects to my revised version of it, he must 
 furnish a new revision, or else construct some 
 argument that will stand criticism better. It is 
 not reasonable to put off the inquirer, who asks us 
 to give a definite reason for our faith, by alleging 
 that the various lines of Christian evidence have 
 
 xxiii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " infinite ramifications " ; that they form " an 
 immense cumulative argument whose independent 
 members converge from every department of 
 human experience upon a central point." These 
 words are quoted from a writer whom there is 
 every ground to respect. There are contexts, 
 perhaps, in which such words may be used with 
 innocent meaning. But used, as they are too 
 often used, to excuse us from answering the 
 simple and definite attacks of unbelievers with 
 equal definiteness and simplicity, they can do 
 nothing but mischief. We must remember that 
 twenty bad arguments do not make a good one. 
 
 Note. — In warm gratitude to a friend not 
 mentioned above, I should like to call the special 
 attention of the reader — and still more of the 
 reviewer — to the discussion in Note II at the end 
 of the Epilogue. 
 
 xxiv
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 If we ask what will be the effect upon the Chris- 
 tian Religion of the present strife of Christian 
 nations, the question is not easy to answer. 
 
 The story is told of a British officer who, 
 having occasion as Censor to read the letters of 
 his men, remarked that this experience had much 
 increased his belief in the value of religious faith. 
 He had found that it is to religion that men turn 
 in the extremes of sorrow and anxiety. In 
 judging of letters of this description, some 
 allowance must, no doubt, be made for expressions 
 of religious faith which are purely conventional. 
 Yet the story will bring no surprise to those who 
 in their own lives have learned the power of 
 Christianity by obeying the principles of its 
 Founder. They will be sure that whatever stirs 
 the soul to its depths will also, in the main 
 and in the end, assist the progress of Christ's 
 religion. 
 
 But obviously this is only one side of the 
 question. To many the War has appeared chiefly 
 as a severe trial of faith. Husbands, lovers, sons, 
 fathers, brothers have perished, although com- 
 mended in unceasing prayer to God's protection. 
 
 A 1
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 Why were these earnest prayers of so little avail 
 to save the lives of those for whom they were 
 offered ? Why does the God who is said to 
 number the hairs of our heads, look on in 
 silence while His children are mowed down in 
 battalions ? 
 
 The War has, in fact, raised in an acute form 
 the Problem of Evil. This problem is not new. 
 It would be good if the modern reader were more 
 familiar than he is with the treatment of the 
 subject by ancient writers both in Christian and 
 in pre-Christian times. Those who know these 
 writers best will be the last to say that the debate 
 has been useless. Definite objections have been 
 met : definite advance has been made. But the 
 truth remains that we are confronted in every 
 age, not only with examples of sorrow and 
 pain, but with the still more disconcerting fact 
 of sin ; and the magnitude of the present War 
 makes it impossible for the thoughtful mind to 
 forget either sin or suffering, and the immense 
 amount of both which is present in human 
 life. 
 
 For Religion, however, the primary difficulty 
 arises, not from the quantity of evil which exists 
 or from the special forms in which it appears, but 
 from the simple fact that there is in the world 
 any evil at all. Why should a good God permit 
 it ? "If God has no wish to suppress evil, then," 
 it is argued, " He is not good : if He wishes to 
 2
 
 PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 suppress it, but fails, then, like the rest of us, He 
 finds that circumstances are too strong for Him. 
 In a word, since evil exists, God is either not 
 good, or not almighty." * 
 
 Can we then cut the knot by simply abandoning 
 the omnipotence of God ? Though the belief 
 in a God with limited powers — unable to carry 
 out His will to the full — has been formulated 
 by writers of great ability and distinction, its 
 failure to satisfy the normal religious mind is 
 well known. We shall see below that in the 
 end it must prove equally unsatisfactory to the 
 thinker. It meets our intellectual needs as 
 little as it meets the demands of the religious 
 spirit.")* 
 
 Thus, at first sight, the problem of evil may 
 well appear, from the standpoint of religious 
 belief, to be quite insoluble. " If there were a 
 God, no evil would be found in the world. But 
 evil is found in the world. Therefore there is no 
 God. "J Such is the statement by St. Thomas 
 Aquinas of the argument of his opponent. To 
 many the argument will seem so unanswerable 
 that they will not be at the trouble to wait for the 
 reply. Moreover there are hundreds who feel 
 
 * See this argument as stated by St. Thomas Aquinas, quoted 
 in note below. 
 
 f See chapter xv, pp. 204-206. 
 
 J Summa TheoL, Pars prima, Qu. II, Art. III. Si Deus esset 
 nullum malum inveniretur. Invenitur autem malum in mundo. 
 Ergo Deus non est. The words stand in a special context. 
 But no injustice is done to the author in applying them more 
 generally. 
 
 3
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 the force of the difficulty for every one who puts 
 it into words. 
 
 There is one reflection, however, which sets 
 these matters in a new light. Those who argue 
 that " since evil exists, God is either not good or 
 not omnipotent " are assuming that a perfectly 
 good God would remove all evil from His world if He 
 found Himself able to do so. They are assuming 
 that a Universe which contains evil must necessarily 
 be less good than a Universe which is without it. 
 
 So long as we attend to the mere words, this 
 assumption may seem to be true and even self- 
 evident. If we pass beyond the words to what 
 they signify, we shall see reason to change our 
 opinion. 
 
 A Universe which contains no evil would con- 
 tain no pain and no danger ; for pain and danger 
 are both of them in themselves evil things. But 
 if there were no pain, there could be no such 
 thing as patience : and if there were no danger 
 there could be no such thing as courage. In 
 general, if there were no evil to be conquered, 
 there could be no such thing as moral and 
 spiritual victory. And yet it is just in the con- 
 quest of evil by the will of man, that the noblest 
 aspect of human life is seen. Thus, in rooting up 
 from the world the tares of pain and suffering, 
 we should be rooting up with them the wheat of 
 our highest moral virtues. 
 
 The assertion that it is good that evil should 
 4
 
 PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 exist wears at first sight the appearance of a 
 paradox. But the more we pursue this train of 
 reflection the less paradoxical will it appear. If 
 the reader will ask himself honestly whether he 
 would really prefer, to this Universe of mingled 
 good and evil in which we live, a Universe in 
 which there should be no pain and no patience, 
 no danger and no courage, no conquest of evil 
 because there was no evil to be conquered, his 
 answer can hardly be doubtful. None but the 
 most frivolous of mankind could think it good 
 that we should know only the life of the happy 
 butterfly, flitting gracefully from one pleasure to 
 another. Few would think it good that our 
 existence should consist wholly of pleasure mixed 
 with godlike contemplation, a lofty conversance 
 with spiritual and intellectual interests divorced 
 from that bracing of character which is the pro- 
 duct of sorrow and of pain. The saints of the 
 Apocalypse* remember for ever in heaven the 
 sins and the sufferings of earth. To the unbe- 
 liever the visions of John the Divine may seem to 
 be the idle fancies of an enthusiast. Even the 
 believer may regard them as figurative in an 
 extreme sense, and wholly incapable of exact 
 realization. But to believer and unbeliever alike, 
 it must surely be clear that the Apocalyptic 
 picture of a life which perpetuates the moment of 
 victory — which rejoices for ever in the marvel of 
 conquest, cleansing, and redemption, and there- 
 
 * Revelation v, 9 ; cf. vii, 14. 
 
 5
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 fore keeps in undying freshness* the memory 
 of the conflict through which the victory was 
 won — bears witness to a high nobility of con- 
 ception. " These are they who have come 
 through great tribulation, and have washed 
 their robes." When we remember that with 
 this picture there is joined the conception 
 of a God Who is Himself a partner in the 
 sufferings of mankind — afflicted in all the 
 afflictions of His people, bearing their griefs 
 and carrying their sorrows, uniting Himself 
 with their intercessions with groanings which 
 cannot be uttered| — it will be seen that a belief 
 in the goodness and nobility of suffering is 
 interwoven with the very texture of Christianity. 
 Moreover, the modern mind, for the most part, is 
 very ready to recognize that the hope of a King- 
 dom of God, entered into through much tribula- 
 tion of which at every stage God Himself is a 
 partaker, embodies a higher ideal than the 
 Aristotelian conception of a God active with the 
 endless activity of thought, a thought which 
 ever contemplates itself. Such a God, far from 
 humbling Himself to behold the things that are 
 in heaven and earth, thinks continually and 
 unchangingly of that only which is " most 
 divine and precious." To the modern reader, 
 such language suggests the notion of a God 
 exalted above the love of men and eternally 
 
 * Compare the phrase, " the Church triumphant." 
 f Isaiah lxiii, 7 ; Matthew viii, 17 ; Romans viii, 26. 
 6
 
 PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 absorbed in the contemplation of His own 
 perfections.* 
 
 The assertion of the ultimate goodness of the 
 more painful and violent of our experiences is 
 indeed singularly congenial to the mind of the 
 present day. The modern feeling on this subject 
 is well expressed in the words in which Goethe's 
 Faust speaks of his desire not so much for joy 
 as for comprehensive experience f ; and tells his 
 eagerness for the " painful delight " { of the heart 
 which closes itself to no feeling whether sweet or 
 bitter, § but rather feels impelled to share || 
 
 The fortunes, good or evil, of the Earth, 
 
 To battle with the Tempest's breath 
 
 Or plunge where shipwreck grinds his teeth. 
 
 * If the modern reader conceives the God of Aristotle as, like 
 Narcissus, vainly contemplating Himself in a mirror, he does an 
 injustice to the philosopher. It better represents the doctrine 
 if we say, not that God is always thinking of Himself, but rather 
 that He is engaged always (as we are sometimes) in the purest 
 exercise of thought when thought is its own object. In a sense 
 we must all admit that, since God can contemplate nothing greater, 
 He must contemplate Himself : and with this admission Christian 
 theology has not been afraid to reckon. The heart, then, of our 
 modern objection to the Aristotelian God is not so much that 
 He contemplates what is noblest, as that He shuts His eyes to 
 the material world and to many aspects of life which we think 
 worthy of His attention. 
 
 f See the speech beginning Du horest ja, von Freud'' ist nicht 
 die Rede. % Dem schmerzlichsten Genuss. 
 
 § mein Busen . . . 
 
 Soil keinem Schmerzen, kunftig sich verschliessen. 
 || See Dr. Anster's paraphrase. The lines in the original are 
 as follows : 
 
 Ich fiihle Muth mich in die Welt zu wagen, 
 
 Der Erde Weh, der Erde Gliick zu tragen, 
 
 Mit Sturmen mich herumzuschlagen 
 
 Und in des Schiffbruchs Knirschen nicht zu zagen. 
 
 7
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 How frequently since Goethe's time similar senti- 
 ments have been expressed by writers both in 
 England and on the Continent is well known to all 
 students of literature. 
 
 Thus when it is argued that an almighty God 
 ought to have been able to bring about good 
 without the intervention of evil, the answer is 
 fairly obvious. It is, of course, no sufficient 
 justification for evil that evil sometimes leads to 
 good. To justify the permission of evil, we must 
 show how the highest of good things is unattain- 
 able without it. There are those, however, by 
 whom even this plea is disallowed. They contend 
 that since God must be regarded as the Maker, 
 not of the world only, but of the very nature of 
 possibility itself, He ought to have produced 
 something better than this clumsy contrivance 
 by which good is purchased only at the price of 
 evil. It is sufficient to reply by recalling the 
 example already given. To suggest that patience 
 might have existed in a world which contained no 
 pain is to use words without meaning. Patience 
 is one of those good things which in its very 
 essence is dependent upon evil. When we once 
 realize that the conquest of evil by the effort of 
 a rational will is the highest function which a 
 rational being can perform, we shall then see that 
 no world which was devoid of evil could con- 
 ceivably attain perfection. 
 
 There are, no doubt, grave difficulties which 
 8
 
 PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 still remain. The problem of sin is harder even 
 than the problem of pain, though the two may be 
 dealt with in a similar manner. Apart, say, 
 from the sufferings of Job, the patience of Job 
 could have had no existence. But similarly the 
 sin of the Penitent Thief is the necessary pre- 
 liminary to his repentance, and a true repent- 
 ance may well be judged to be a nobler spiritual 
 state even than the most heroic patience. In a 
 well-known hymn of the Church, the sin of Adam 
 is spoken of as a " happy fault " since it brought 
 to mankind the priceless blessing of redemption.* 
 On behalf of such a theory of evil many passages 
 may be quoted from the writings of St. Paul. Yet 
 there are many defenders of Christianity who 
 view all such reasonings with suspicion. They 
 fear that men will find in them an excuse, if not 
 a justification, for continuance in sin.| 
 
 In spite, however, of this and other remaining 
 difficulties, the example of the relation between 
 pain and patience has to some extent cleared the 
 ground. As we have seen, it is not the amount, 
 or the kind, of evil which exists which constitutes 
 the chief problem ; but the fact that any evil 
 should exist at all. This is the fact which the 
 opponent of Christianity can make the subject 
 of his most effective rhetoric. This is the point 
 at which his case may appear to be put most 
 
 * For the history of this hymn, sung in the Latin office of 
 Easter Eve, see Mr. Webb's Problems in the Relation of God 
 and Man, p. 259. 
 
 f See below, chapter xiv, pp. 193-194 and note. 
 
 9
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 succinctly and most unanswerably. If then this 
 main difficulty can be met, we may have hope of 
 dealing successfully with the others. 
 
 Thus one effect upon religion of our present 
 troubles is that they call us to face an old problem 
 with new resolution, and to face it in the only way 
 in which it can be effectively treated — namely, in 
 direct relation to the wider problem of the world 
 at large. Our theory of evil must depend upon 
 our general conception of the Universe. The 
 Universe offers us a confused spectacle of evil and 
 of good. It is obvious that no shallow theory is 
 sufficient. A shallow Optimism is confronted 
 with the facts of evil : a shallow Pessimism with 
 the facts of good. A theory which ignores either 
 is self- condemned. And thus the Universe pre- 
 sents a challenge to the human mind ; it 
 challenges us to find a theory adequate to its 
 divers aspects. 
 
 The search for such a theory is no unpractical 
 enterprise. For many years to come our children 
 will be drinking of the bitter cup which the events 
 of this generation have mingled for them. For 
 many years every country of Europe will have 
 to deal with urgent practical questions.* Yet 
 experience has shown that it is the mark of 
 rational humanity to " look before and after. 
 
 ■>•> 
 
 * This will be true even if the recovery after the war is sur- 
 prisingly rapid. 
 
 10
 
 PROBLEM OF EVIL 
 
 Men have never succeeded for long in separating 
 the questions of the day from the deeper ques- 
 tions which lie behind them. To all who recog- 
 nize this truth — whether they adopt towards 
 Christianity an attitude of acceptance, of doubt, 
 or of total denial — it will be evident that we shall 
 take up with better courage the challenge of our 
 times if we have first dared to take up with bold- 
 ness the challenge of the Universe. 
 
 11
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 
 
 To meet this challenge duly we have need both of 
 industry and of candour. 
 
 Mr. Wells in one of his recent novels gives some 
 excellent advice to religious teachers. The re- 
 ligion, he says, which is taught by some instruc- 
 tors of the young, may be described as " Muffled 
 Christianity." The Christianity of the School- 
 master is muffled, he thinks, both in its moral 
 and its intellectual aspects. The pupil is never 
 led to suspect that Christianity makes any such 
 demand upon his allegiance as to require him to 
 take an unpopular side or to sacrifice his own 
 career for the common good : nor, secondly, is 
 he ever allowed to hear Christian beliefs dealt 
 with in an impartial manner. He never hears 
 any honest argument against them, and therefore 
 — so Mr. Wells argues — can never have heard any 
 genuine argument in their favour. 
 
 Against this charge the Schoolmasters may be 
 able to make a good defence. Or they may 
 plead extenuating circumstances. But whatever 
 may be the value of Mr. Wells's criticisms of the 
 teaching profession, his advice to the defenders 
 of Christianity is well worthy of consideration. 
 12
 
 FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 
 
 When he advises us, in effect, to make clear that 
 Christianity calls men to a distinctive type of 
 life and service, exacting in its demands, and 
 sometimes revolutionary in its consequences, he 
 is clearly right. Such Christian service is the 
 best of Christian evidence. The simple saints 
 who, whether their intellectual gifts are high or 
 lowly, see what are the true issues of life — who 
 walk in penitence, humility, love, usefulness, and 
 self-denial, and thus exhibit in some degree the 
 sweet reasonableness of their Master — these are 
 of more value than many arguments. 
 
 Yet argument, none the less, has a value of its 
 own ; and Mr. Wells surely is right again when 
 he advises freedom of discussion. There are few 
 texts of Scripture more unblushingly disobeyed 
 than the command of St. Peter that we should be 
 ready always to give an answer to those who ask 
 a reason of the hope that is in us. The power of 
 successful argument is not a common faculty. 
 Few of us, therefore, will willingly engage in 
 argument with our juniors. As life advances, we 
 get to suspect that argument is not only socially 
 tedious, but for the most part unproductive of 
 conviction. Wc know also that men may have 
 excellent reasons for their beliefs, and yet no 
 power to express them in words. 
 
 Nevertheless reflection shows the wisdom of 
 St. Peter's advice. Man, after all, is funda- 
 mentally rational. In the long run we all distrust 
 a belief for which no reason can be given. In 
 
 13
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 intellectual matters absolute honesty is the first 
 and great commandment. There is in the world 
 much honest doubt on religious subjects ; and 
 honest doubt, however crudely or even offen- 
 sively expressed, deserves an honest answer. 
 
 The truth is that a reasoned treatment of re- 
 ligious beliefs is most neglected just where it is 
 most required. On specific issues — on the doc- 
 trines which divide Roman Catholics from 
 Protestants, or Churchmen from Dissenters — 
 excellently clear books are written. But these 
 books are of no value to the many who are 
 doubting whether any part of religion is true ; 
 whether the hopes of the Christian have any 
 foundation whatever. 
 
 Let us turn our attention then, first and fore- 
 most, to the great fundamental questions. Does 
 the constitution of the Universe take any account 
 of man as such, and of his moral and spiritual 
 interests ? Or is human life but the accidental 
 outcome of purely mechanical laws ? It is on 
 the answer to this question that the truth or 
 falsehood of all religious hope depends. 
 
 On this subject we meet with two sharply 
 contrasted views. On the one hand we have the 
 doctrine of Special Providence ; the belief in a 
 loving Father Who takes heed of our smallest 
 concerns, and orders all things with a view to the 
 highest interests of mankind. This view has its 
 14
 
 FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 
 
 classical statement in the New Testament. Of 
 the man who conceives the Universe as con- 
 structed for the private benefit of himself, his 
 friends, and his relations, the modern world is 
 characteristically intolerant. It is important 
 therefore to notice that from the New Testament 
 all such narrow-mindedness is absent. The New 
 Testament writers are men conversant with 
 great interests, with those eternal problems of 
 good and evil which are the deepest concern of 
 mankind at large. It is indeed no more true that 
 the believer in Providence is necessarily a person 
 of narrow mind than that the upholder of the 
 opposing view is necessarily a man of low 
 spiritual vitality. 
 
 This opposite view is expressed with peculiar 
 force in an early essay by Mr. Bertrand Russell 
 entitled The Free Man's Worship. The world 
 which physical science presents for our belief 
 seems to Mr. Russell to be a world without pur- 
 pose.* " Blind to good and evil, omnipotent 
 matter rolls on its relentless way " *j* ; and so " the 
 individual soul must struggle alone, with what of 
 courage it can command, against the whole 
 weight of a Universe which cares nothing for its 
 hopes and fears." J 
 
 " That man," he says, " is the product of 
 causes which had no prevision of the end they 
 were achieving ; that his origin, his growth, his 
 
 * Philosophical Essays, p. 60. f Ibid., p. 70. % Ibid., p. 68. 
 
 15
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but 
 the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms : 
 that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought 
 and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond 
 the grave ; that all the labours of the ages, all 
 the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday 
 brightness of human genius are destined to ex- 
 tinction in the vast death of the Solar System, 
 and that the whole temple of man's achievement 
 must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a 
 Universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite 
 beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no 
 philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. 
 Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only 
 on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can 
 the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." * 
 In such a world the problem for man is how to 
 preserve untarnished the higher aspirations of 
 his soul. Though " man with his knowledge of 
 good and evil " be " but a helpless atom in a 
 world which has no such knowledge," man need 
 not therefore worship force. We may " preserve 
 our respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of 
 perfection which life does not permit us to 
 attain : though none of these things meet with 
 the approval of the unconscious Universe." f 
 Nor need our attitude be one of mere defiance. 
 " Christian resignation," as Mr. Russell perceives, 
 " is wiser than Promethean rebellion. "{ And, 
 
 * Philosophical Essays, p. 60-61. 
 t Ibid., pp. 63-64. 
 % Ibid., pp. 64-65. 
 
 16
 
 FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 
 
 further, " in the spectacle of Death, in the en- 
 durance of intolerable pain, in the irrevocableness 
 of a vanished past, there is a sacredness, an over- 
 powering awe, a feeling of the vastness, the depth, 
 the inexhaustible mystery of existence, in which, 
 as by some strange marriage of pain, the sufferer 
 is bound to the world by bonds of sorrow. In 
 these moments of insight we lose all eagerness of 
 temporary desire, all struggling and striving for 
 petty ends." * And so, in Mr. Russell's view, it 
 comes about that " to abandon the struggle for 
 private happiness, to burn with passion for 
 eternal things, this is the free man's worship." f 
 
 Thus it is that Mr. Russell would have us bear 
 the cross without hoping for the crown. Such 
 an attitude of Christian resignation, as, divorced 
 from the support of Christian consolation and 
 hope, it has been exhibited by more than one 
 unbeliever in our time, is one of the noblest 
 spectacles which life has to offer. 
 
 Yet it cannot be denied that Mr. Russell's 
 theory of the Universe — the theory which is 
 now commonly called " Naturalism " — presents us 
 with a view of life gloomy in the last degree. It 
 affirms that the laws of Nature are absolutely 
 indifferent to man and his interests : it forbids 
 us to extend our hopes beyond the grave : it leaves 
 us, as Mr. Russell himself confesses, to an " un- 
 yielding despair." In the search for truth we 
 
 * Philosophical Essays, p. 67. f Ibid., p. 69. 
 
 B 17
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 must not allow our conclusions to be dictated by 
 our wishes. The " Will to believe " must never 
 be admitted as an argument. But, so long as we 
 do not allow our wishes to bias our thinking, we 
 may frankly admit that it would grieve us to find 
 Mr. Russell's conclusions correct, and would 
 please us to find that they could be triumphantly 
 refuted. The desire to lift the cloud of depression 
 into which an acceptance of Naturalism would 
 plunge us, is a perfectly legitimate motive for 
 candid and searching inquiry. 
 
 Can we find, then, any valid argument by which 
 Mr. Russell's confident assertions can be dis- 
 proved ? If this is done, can we advance further, 
 and find reasons to justify a general Optimism ? 
 Can we find reasonable support for the Christian 
 belief that, in spite of evil or by means of it, the 
 spiritual interests of mankind will show them- 
 selves completely victorious in the end ? 
 
 We must not hastily assume that Naturalism 
 and Christian Optimism are alternatives. It is 
 an interesting fact that for many minds the 
 choice does lie between these two. They feel 
 that if they reject the one they must immediately 
 accept the other. The reader on careful self- 
 examination may perhaps find that this is the 
 case with himself; and the significance of this 
 fact may appear below. Meanwhile, however, 
 we may confine ourselves to the simple question 
 whether Naturalism is true or false : whether the 
 Universe is, or is not, so constituted, that its 
 18
 
 FREE MAN'S WORSHIP 
 
 laws have reference to the spiritual interests of 
 mankind.* 
 
 This question, it should be noticed, is not 
 identical with the question whether the world is 
 governed by a Personal God. The conception of 
 God as a Person has played in all ages a great 
 part in religion. The faith that behind the 
 mysteries of Nature lies a mind and heart similar 
 to the mind and heart of man, belongs to religion 
 in some of its humblest, but also in some of its 
 noblest, developments ; and those who have 
 poured scorn upon this belief have evinced little 
 understanding of the profound human instinct 
 which it expresses. Yet it is a mere fact of 
 experience and history that other views of God 
 have had, and have still, a great influence on 
 human thought. The evidence of this fact which 
 is most familiar to the general reader is the 
 well-known phrase of Matthew Arnold, who con- 
 ceives God, not as a self-conscious Person, but 
 as the " Power not ourselves which makes for 
 righteousness." 
 
 As against Mr. Russell, Matthew Arnold and 
 the orthodox believer are on the same side. For 
 Mr. Russell the " power not ourselves which 
 makes for righteousmess " is as much a figment 
 as the divine Governor of the world. For Mr. 
 
 * Mr. Russell speaks of a fortuitous concourse of atoms. 
 Many who accept his Naturalism would reject this phrase. Are 
 we to praise Mr. Russell for having the courage of his opinions, 
 or to blame him for giving away his case ? On this question the 
 future chapters will throw light. 
 
 19
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 Russell there is not even any " power not our- 
 selves which makes for beauty." In admiring 
 Nature, he thinks, the " insight of creative 
 idealism " is finding the " reflection of a beauty 
 which its own thoughts first made." In other 
 words, he conceives us as " reading in " to the 
 Universe what apart from us it would not contain. 
 For the present moment, then, let us keep in 
 mind one single question. Let us inquire 
 whether, outside man and human efforts, there is 
 any Power — personal or impersonal, conscious or 
 unconscious — which makes for righteousness and 
 spiritual advance ; and let us examine in relation 
 to this question the well-known arguments which 
 in all generations have supported the religious 
 faith of mankind. 
 
 20
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PLAIN MAN'S ARGUMENT 
 
 Of the various arguments devised in past times 
 to prove the existence of God — and incidentally 
 to refute a Naturalism like Mr. Russell's — the 
 clearest and simplest is the familiar " Argument 
 from Design." 
 
 This argument points to certain facts of Nature 
 which look like evidences of design or arrange- 
 ment ; and draws the conclusion that the world 
 is so like_ a plan that it must really be one ; that 
 is, that it resembles a work of intelligence in 
 too many respects for this resemblance to be 
 accidental. 
 
 At the present moment the Argument from 
 Design is out of favour : partly because it is 
 supposed to have been demolished by Darwin ; 
 partly because it seems to ignore the sufferings, 
 the inequalities, the injustices of life, to which 
 the modern mind is so peculiarly sensitive. If a 
 wise God designed those elements in the world 
 which are pleasant and profitable, what explana- 
 tion are we to give of the evil and the pain ? 
 
 In some quarters, however, this argument still 
 holds its own : nor is its influence confined to 
 ignorant men unacquainted with Darwin, nor to 
 
 21
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 simple souls who know nothing of the ills of life. 
 Yet it has never in modern times been the special 
 argument of the philosophic thinker. In contrast 
 with other arguments preferred by the learned, 
 the Argument from Design has been called* the 
 " argument of the plain man." Employed mostly 
 by men versed in the hard facts of life rather than 
 in philosophic systems, it is often seen in its most 
 impressive shape when stated in the most in- 
 formal manner. 
 
 Take, for example, the well-known question of 
 Napoleon and the comment made upon it by 
 Carlyle, " During Napoleon's voyage to Egypt " 
 — says Carlyle on the authority of Bourrienne — 
 " his savons were one evening busily occupied 
 arguing that there could be no God. They had 
 proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner 
 of logic. Napoleon, looking up into the stars, 
 answers, ' Very ingenious, messieurs ; but who 
 made all that ? ' The atheistic logic runs off 
 him like Water ; the great fact stares him in the 
 face : ' Who made all that ? ' " 
 
 In all such popular arguments we have to dis- 
 tinguish what is said from what is meant. If we 
 ask, " Who made the world ? " the unbeliever may 
 readily answer, " Why should it have been made 
 by any one ? How can you prove that nothing 
 
 * See Mr. Webb's Problems in the Relation of God and Man, 
 p. 159. 
 
 22
 
 PLAIN MAN'S ARGUMENT 
 
 can exist which is not the work of a conscious 
 being ? " But such an answer implies a mis- 
 understanding of the issue. The force of Napo- 
 leon's argument depends, not upon the fact that 
 there exists a world of some kind, but simply and 
 solely upon its character.* Had he found himself 
 confronted with a world of Chaos, instead of a 
 world of Order, his question would never have 
 been asked. 
 
 The mind of the man of action contemplating 
 the works of Nature is impressed always by the 
 " orderliness " which they exhibit. In some 
 languages, as is well known, a word signifying 
 the " Order " — Cosmos, Mundus, Monde — is the 
 very name by which the world is called. The 
 word " Order," it must be admitted, is often 
 somewhat vaguely employed — sometimes to 
 signify a wise and well-considered arrangement, 
 sometimes to signify mere arrangement as such 
 without deciding whether it is good or evil. But 
 to the plain man Order in either sense suggests 
 intelligence. Even the uniformities and simi- 
 larities which are recorded by Physical Science 
 seem to him to call for some explanation such as a 
 purely physical theory cannot offer. Napoleon's 
 question indicates that he sees in the world the 
 same sort of qualities which we should regard as 
 the results of intelligence if we found them in the 
 work of man ; the qualities which distinguish the 
 
 * In this respect the Argument from Design is in contrast to 
 the " Cosmological Proof." 
 
 23
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 work of an adult from the work of a child, the 
 work of a sane man from that of a lunatic, 
 the work of an artist from that of a mere 
 craftsman. 
 
 In human work — in a Gothic Cathedral and 
 equally in a steam-engine — the idea of the Whole 
 comes first and the parts are subsecpLjent. It is 
 with "reference to "TheTdea^oTtne Whole that the 
 parts are formed or selected. In the machine 
 the parts come together as means to a common 
 end. In a work of art every feature is an end in 
 itself, and exists for the sake of its own beauty. 
 But the various features are still parts of a Whole 
 and co-operate to produce the general " effect ' 
 under the influence of a governing conception. 
 Even in simple cases, as when plants or stortesfare 
 arranged in rows or circles, we recognize that an 
 idea has come first. The position of each indivi- 
 dual plant has been governed by a single principle 
 which takes account of them all. Indeed the 
 " government of separate objects by a single 
 principle " is, in these cases, the very essence of 
 what " order " or " arrangement " means. 
 
 Is the world, then, similar to human work in 
 this respect ? There is much to suggest that it 
 is. I look around, and am aware that every 
 blade of grass is going through a similar process 
 of growth : that all the sheep on the hill-side are 
 going through similar processes of nutrition : 
 that in every ear of corn matter is being collected 
 24
 
 PLAIN MAN'S ARGUMENT 
 
 and arranged in a similar complex structure. Yet 
 these are not cases of direct mechanical contact ; 
 they are not like the case where a number of 
 levers move in a similar manner because all are 
 worked by a single crank. Each individual 
 sheep is physically separate from the others. 
 Whence then this unity of behaviour ? Has not 
 the student of Physical Science been too much 
 disposed to take th e Uniformity of Nature f or 
 granted, asTFbecause it is familiar it was there- 
 fore understood and explained, and need cause 
 no further question ? Has he not sometimes 
 spoken as if by Natural Selection we could explain 
 the uniform behaviour of organic bodies, while 
 in truth he is compelled, like other people, to pre- 
 suppose this uniform behaviour as the starting- 
 point of his explanations ? The Uniformity of 
 Nature is a sufficientl y rema rkable fact. _JTo^ the 
 plain man disposed towards religion uniformity 
 is itself a religious argument. Whenever we see 
 in articles of manufacture the same unity of 
 character or behaviour as we find in natural 
 objects, we know what to conclude ; they have 
 all been formed according to one rule or pattern ; 
 one principle has governed all the cases : and 
 this implies the work of a governing or designing 
 mind. And so, he argues, it is with the world ; 
 Nature goes by rules, and rules, he thinks, can only 
 act through the agency of a mind which can grasp 
 them. " The world," said a thoughtful artisan, " is 
 a System, and every System has its Master." 
 
 25
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 The plain man's argument, then, has two stages : 
 first, he concludes that the world is governed by 
 principles ; secondly, that it is governed by a 
 Conscious Mind. 
 
 These two stages should be kept distinct. At 
 its second stage — as must be frankly admitted — 
 the argument tries to move too fast. We have no 
 right to jump to the conclusion that " government 
 by a principle " is the same thing as " government 
 by a mind." There are clear cases where these 
 are not identical. The measurements of all the 
 triangles in the world — in all their variety of 
 shapes and sizes — are governed by the single 
 principle that the three interior angles of each are 
 equal to two right angles.* Yet it would not 
 
 * There are many people, unacquainted with Geometry though 
 otherwise well educated, to whom the measurement of angles 
 
 conveys no meaning. Yet if we agree to call a right angle an 
 angle of 90 degrees it is easy to see what is meant by an angle of 
 45 degrees, or of 30, 15, 135, etc. ; and hence to understand the 
 
 26
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 occur to any one who understood the Euclidean 
 proof to speak of the triangles as subjected to 
 this principle by divine decree, or to interpret the 
 law in terms of conscious Will or Purpose.* 
 
 Thus it is not the aim of the present volume to 
 defend the popular argument as it stands ; but 
 rather to show that the fundamental thought 
 which it enshrines can be restated in a less 
 questionable form. The chief criticisms directed 
 against the Argument from Design are due to 
 Kant t and to Darwin. We must seek to rewrite 
 it, bearing these criticisms in mind. Yet a brief 
 discussion of the argument in its popular form is 
 an excellent introduction to the whole subject, 
 
 meaning of the statement that the three interior angles of any 
 triangle are together equal to two right angles, i.e. that the 
 three numbers representing the three angles will, if added to- 
 gether, always come to 180, e.g. 
 
 ' 
 
 45 \ 
 
 For the proof of the statement we must look elsewhere (Euclid, I, 
 :V1). liut what is said here should be enough to make plain, 
 even to the most ungeometrical person, the drift of the argument 
 in the text. 
 
 * See below, Epilogue, p. 219. 
 
 f There will be no explicit reference in this book to Kant's 
 criticism. But the attempt has been made consistently to state 
 the argument in a form to which these criticisms shall not apply. 
 See Note at end of Epilogue. 
 
 27
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 and will serve to familiarize us with ideas which 
 are not too prominent in the thoughts of this 
 generation. 
 
 Even if the Argument from Design fails to 
 prove what it sets out to prove, still it proves 
 something. It points to certain groups of facts 
 which become significant if they are considered 
 together. 
 
 It points, first, to the regularity of Nature, to 
 the fact that everywhere Nature conforms, itself 
 tommies. It points, secondly, to the appearance 
 of co-operation among the various parts of Nature, 
 especially among the organs of organic bodies. 
 Thirdly, it inquires whether it can be a mere 
 accident that the physical processes of Nature 
 are so admirable in their aesthetic effects, in the 
 schemes of line and colour which they produce. 
 Fourthly, it points to the fact that similar laws 
 hold good in all parts of the known universe, and 
 points to certain other facts likewise which sug- 
 gest unity of system. The appeal of Carlyle is 
 to the " great fact " which stares us in the face. 
 That the world has a " M aker " is not an observed 
 fact, r^TTf^an~mference. But the regularity, the 
 mutual co-operation, the aesthetic harmony of 
 Nature in its various parts, and in some sense also 
 its unity, are facts which all schools of thought 
 will admit. The question is how far recent dis- 
 covery and recent thought — and especially the 
 doctrines of Darwin — have robbed these facts of 
 28 
 
 ^>3L
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 significance for religion. Men, as we saw, have 
 found, or have fancied, that the world possesses 
 those qualities which belong to the best kind of 
 human work, the work of the grown man, the 
 sane man, the competent artist. Before we 
 reject the old argument as worthless, we must ask 
 whether the world does possess these qualities or 
 not ; and, if we find that it does, we must then 
 inquire whether our own theory of the world, 
 whatever it be, takes this aspect of Nature suffi- 
 ciently into account. 
 
 I. Take, one by one, the facts mentioned 
 above. Take, first of all, regularity. Nature 
 unquestionably conforms itself to rules. Is it 
 also governed by them ? 
 
 We saw that the question "Is a Naturalism 
 like that of Mr. Russell true or false ? " is not 
 identical with the question whether there is or is 
 not a Personal God. For the present moment, 
 then — instead of asking " Is the world governed 
 by a Person ? " or even " Are the principles which 
 govern the world wise ones ? " — we will confine 
 ourselves to the question which justly comes first, 
 " Is the world* governed by principles at all ? ' 
 
 There are those who totally deny it ; who 
 assert that the Laws of Nature, and all other 
 general principles too, exist in the human mind 
 only. These thinkers regard the outside world 
 
 * That certain geometrical facts are so governed we have seen 
 already. Is this true also of the world at large ? 
 
 29
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 as a collection of isolated individual things — 
 bodies, molecules, atoms, or smaller units* — 
 separate one from another in their own nature, 
 while the bond which binds them together in our 
 minds is a purely mental fact, an afterthought by 
 which the mind compendiously sums up its ex- 
 periences and observations. 
 
 On this theory Nature consists of blind iso- 
 lated particles moved by blind brute forces, nor 
 is there anything which bears even the most 
 remote resemblance to a " spiritual principle in 
 Nature." In the words of Democritus of old, 
 nothing is " real " but " atoms " and " void " ; 
 and though we must not assume that his modern 
 followers are at one in all respects either with him 
 or with one another, we have still to reckon with 
 the opinion (strongly and even obstinately held) 
 that in Nature apart from man all is separateness 
 and isolation ; that the bond which binds the 
 units together is mental, the creation of the 
 human mind. 
 
 It is, however, a pure mistake to suppose that 
 this kind of " atomistic " doctrine gains any 
 genuine support from modern discovery. It is 
 true that recent additions to our knowledge have 
 greatly changed the outlook. The constancy and 
 immutability of Natural Law revealed itself to 
 primitive mankind in the regular changes of the 
 seasons, the constant properties of fire and water, 
 
 * There is, of course, no intention here to deny the value of 
 these conceptions for the purposes of Physics. 
 
 30
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 the daily rising of the heavenly bodies, the moon 
 " appointed for certain seasons." the sun which 
 " knoweth his going down." For us the regular 
 seasons are explained by astronomic motions : 
 these in their turn by the mutual attraction of 
 innumerable particles of matter ; this again, 
 perhaps, by the action of still minuter parti- 
 cles. Yet, after all, the element of regularity 
 has merely shifted its ground. The regularity of 
 the larger bodies presupposes the regularity of 
 the smaller. The smaller particles may follow 
 laws which are less complex even than New- 
 ton's formula of gravitation* ; but, whether the 
 ultimate laws be complex or simple, we always 
 come back in the end to a number of separate 
 particles behaving according to one single rule of 
 action. From this conception we cannot escape. 
 Moreover, our prediction, whether it be the 
 astronomer's prediction of eclipses, or the ordi- 
 
 * The jet of water, reaching the ground after it is propelled 
 from a horizontal spout, describes a parabola. It is easy to 
 argue that in Nature itself we have merely the downward pull 
 and the outward thrust. Yet here on any showing we have a vast 
 number of distinct particles all subject to a real necessity quite 
 independent of our minds. This necessity is also a general 
 necessity. We predict the fall of the water with confidence, 
 because we believe that all the particles must conform to a single 
 rule of behaviour. Thus — even if the principle of the parabola 
 and (as some will argue) the principle expressed in the Newtonian 
 formula, belong to our minds only — we get back sooner or later 
 to a general principle to which separate facts must conform ; by 
 which, in other words, they are " governed." Our prediction of 
 natural events assumes, what in the case of Geometry we can 
 prove, that a certain group of facts must conform themselves to 
 a single principle. 
 
 31
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 nary man's expectation of the alternations of 
 seed-time and harvest, day and night, assumes 
 that this regularity " must " continue ; and 
 therefore that those ultimate movements of 
 minute particles * upon which all this visible 
 regularity depends will inevitably continue to 
 proceed according to the same rules as heretofore. 
 It assumes, too, that this regularity will affect, 
 not only those particles whose effects come within 
 our ken, but all similar particles in all parts of the 
 Universe. If, then, in the case of each Law of 
 Nature we assume — as we do — that we are deal- 
 ing with a principle of regularity to which the 
 movements of matter " must " conform, why 
 should we hesitate to say that the movements are 
 " governed ' by the principle — if not through 
 the agency of a Conscious Mind, then in somewhat 
 the same sort of unconscious way in which the 
 measurements of triangles are governed by the 
 laws denned by Euclid ? 
 
 II. We come, secondly, to the co-operation of 
 one natural object with others, especially the 
 mutual co-operation of organs in plants and 
 animals. Nature, as we have just seen, is sub- 
 
 * It is a common mistake to speak as if we arrived at our 
 knowledge of the regularity of visible processes through our 
 knowledge of the invisible regularities which Physics has to assume 
 as their foundation. The truth is that we assume future regu- 
 larity in these invisible movements of minute particles, only 
 because we have already assumed it in the case of those with 
 which we are more familiar. 
 
 32
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 ject to general laws. Are there any special 
 laws which regulate co-operation ? The parts 
 of Nature do, as a fact, work together. Are 
 there laws which order these helpful relations ; 
 or is this co-operation but the chance result of 
 laws purely mechanical — laws which do not 
 prescribe co-operation as such ? 
 
 In pre-Darwinian days the organic body was 
 treated as an evidence for religion. In the 
 formation of such bodies there is much that 
 looks like selection on definite principles for a 
 definite purpose. The eye is a highly complex 
 structure : an assemblage of different substances 
 of which each appears to be necessary for the 
 function which the eye performs, since even slight 
 injury impairs its power.* It is not every kind 
 of matter which will form an eye. A selection, 
 then, it would seem, must consciously or un- 
 consciously take place whenever an eye is formed. 
 Yet this selection is actually accomplished with 
 success in the myriad eyes of men and animals. 
 The question is whether the whole apparent 
 marvellousness of these facts, which has seemed 
 to lend them a significance for religion, is ex- 
 plained away by the Darwinian theory. 
 
 The appearance of selection and co-operation 
 has led the religious mind to two divergent con- 
 clusions. The commonest view, no doubt, has 
 been that animals and plants are made by God 
 
 * The defects of structure mentioned by Helmholtz do not 
 remove this impression of general success in adaptation. 
 
 C 33
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 as watches are made by a watchmaker * ; with 
 the difference, tacitly if not explicitly recognized, 
 that the watchmaker merely puts together 
 pre-existing material. But, side by side with 
 this conception of a Divine Architect working 
 from without, stands the rival theory of an 
 unconscious but quasi-purposive principle within 
 the organ itself. There have been times when, 
 in the words of Haeckel, " physiology has 
 substituted for the conscious Divine Architect 
 an unconscious creative ' vital force ' — a mys- 
 terious, purposive, natural force, which differed 
 from the familiar forces of Physics and Chemistry, 
 and only took these in part during life into its 
 service." f We are not concerned just now to ask 
 whether the principles which govern Nature are 
 best conceived as conscious or unconscious. Our 
 present question is more general. Is there any 
 special principle which regulates the co-operation 
 of part with part, or is this co-operation when it 
 occurs the mere by-product of " the familiar laws 
 of Physics and Chemistry " ? 
 
 The doctrine of a special principle regulating 
 the co-operation of our organs is commonly 
 dubbed " Vitalism " : and Vitalism has been a 
 singularly unfortunate doctrine, unfortunate in 
 
 * A popular hymn says that God " paints the wayside flower 
 and lights the evening star." It is probable that many whole- 
 hearted believers in the Christian religion would strongly resent 
 the imputation that they took these words quite literally. They 
 believe, they would say, in an " immanent " rather than a 
 " transcendent " God. f Riddle of the Universe, chap. xiv. 
 
 34
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 its defenders,* unfortunate in the examples 
 quoted in its support. | This subject, however, 
 though it has become a matter of considerable 
 popular interest — especially in relation to the 
 question whether a living organism might con- 
 ceivably be produced by artificial means in the 
 laboratory of the chemist — is too intricate to be 
 conveniently dealt with in the present chapter. 
 It will fall better into its place below. At the 
 point we have now reached one single remark will 
 be sufficient. 
 
 It should be remembered that Darwinism, as 
 Darwin himself understood it, does nothing to 
 account for the development of living organisms 
 from inorganic matter. The theory of Natural 
 Selection J presupposes the distinction between 
 living organisms and inorganic matter, and it 
 assumes as a starting-point the living organism as 
 already in existence. If, then, Darwin presupposes 
 the living organism he cannot justly be said to 
 explain it.§ 
 
 III. With regard to our third group of facts, 
 those relating to beauty in Nature, the common 
 
 * After running one career of error in the past, Vitalism, under 
 the guidance of M. Bergson, seems to be preparing another career 
 of error for the future. 
 
 f For some remarks on the well-known case of formic acid, see 
 Religion in an Age of Doubt, p. 7. 
 
 X See chap, ix, p. 97, etc. 
 
 § See Origin of Species, chap, viii, opening paragraph : " I have 
 nothing to do," etc. Cf. chap, xv : " It is no valid objection," 
 etc., in paragraph beginning " It can hardly be supposed that a 
 false theory," etc. 
 
 35
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 argument is that Natural Beauty is a persistent 
 and very remarkable fact which calls for an 
 explanation such as Physical Science by itself 
 cannot give ; and therefore leads us on, either to 
 the belief in a divine creative Artist, or at least 
 to some theory in which the blind atoms and 
 forces of Naturalism are not the last word in 
 explanation. 
 
 Now, whatever we may think of this argument, 
 there is no ground for saying that it has been 
 made obsolete by Darwin. In certain cases, no 
 doubt, Darwinism has valuable explanations to 
 offer. The bright colours of male birds can be 
 explained by sexual selection — by the preferences 
 shown generation after generation by the female 
 for the brightly coloured partner. The bright 
 colours of flowers can be explained by their power 
 to attract the fertilizing insects. But these and 
 all similar explanations cover a very narrow field. 
 If there is an y one who still thinks that he can 
 give a gene ral explanation oT~a3sth ejac^facts by 
 evolut ionary arguments of this simple sort,* we 
 may invite his attention to the colour-schemes of 
 inanimate Nature — to the Alpine snows, to the 
 clouds at sunset or at dawn, to the wide prospects 
 of rock and sand, of stream and sea. Here we 
 have colour- schemes as delicate as in the colour- 
 ings of flowers or birds ; yet here there is no 
 question of heredity, and therefore no place 
 
 * For a different form of evolutionary explanation of beauty, 
 see below, p. 37. 
 
 36
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 for this particular kind of evolutionary explana- 
 tion. 
 
 Again, throughout Nature we have not merely 
 beauty, but harmony; and here Darwin has no 
 advantage whatever over the explanations which 
 were open to Physical Science in pre-Darwinian 
 days. To the eye of the painter the landscape 
 is an assemblage of coloured points. We may 
 explain by Chemistry the colour of each point 
 taken separately. But neither Chemistry, nor 
 Physics, nor Biology, nor all these sciences 
 together, do anything to explain the delicate 
 harmony of the whole. Why, again and again, 
 do just those colours occur together which form a 
 harmonious scheme ? This is a question which 
 Physical Science as such cannot answer. If it 
 were true, as a Philistine might think, that any 
 colours would look well together, if only there are 
 enough of them and they are sufficiently bright 
 and varied, then the harmoniousness of natural 
 colour might seem to call for no special ex- 
 planation. But, as every one with an eye 
 for colour knows well, the laws of harmony 
 in colour are at least as strict as the laws of 
 harmony in music. The plain man, then, is 
 right in thinking that some special explanation 
 is wanted. 
 
 A more ingenious form of evolutionary theory 
 seeks to explain, not the beauty of Nature itself, 
 but human taste. It is suggested that we like 
 the colour-schemes of Nature because these have 
 
 37
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 been familiar to us and to our ancestors for gen- 
 erations : or, again, that our aesthetic tastes are 
 somehow to be accounted for by their utility in 
 the struggle for existence. These theories, as we 
 shall see below,* break down utterly when they 
 are confronted with the facts. 
 
 So, again, do all theories which deny the 
 reality of Natural Beauty, and treat it as some 
 illusion or creation of our own. There are those — 
 of whom Mr. Russell is one — who speak of beauty 
 as the product of our creative imagination. But 
 are they quite in earnest ? Do they consistently 
 think that all those elements in the world which 
 excite our admiration are read into Nature by us 
 — that there is nothing worthy of aesthetic ad- 
 miration in the world as it stands ? The claim 
 when so stated will be at once rejected. The crea- 
 tive imagination is powerful no doubt ; but the 
 sugg'estion that it alone produces beauty, and 
 that Nature itself contributes nothing, is clearly 
 absurd. If this were so, why should one thing be 
 pronounced more beautiful than another ? If 
 Mr. Russell, thirsting for beauty, is confined 
 to his bedroom just as he is starting for Italy 
 and the Alps, it will hardly console him to 
 propose that he should stimulate his creative 
 fancy by a contemplation of old files of the 
 Times and an extensive view of bricks and 
 mortar. 
 
 The fact is that Nature, as actually presented 
 
 * Chap. x. 
 38
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 to our senses, conforms itself to aesthetic prin- 
 ciples — to the principles of delicacy, congruity, 
 and harmony. It is for this very reason that the 
 artist takes Nature for his model. If, then, we 
 once perceive that the colour-schemes of Nature 
 conform to these principles, we are driven to 
 suppose either that the principles have in some 
 way an influence upon Nature, or else that the 
 conformity of natural scenes to these principles 
 is a mere accident — just as much a pure coinci- 
 dence as if a picture were formed by pigments 
 smeared in the dark upon an artist's palette, or a 
 tune played by men blowing at random into 
 organ-pipes lying in confusion in a builder's shed. 
 When we think of the vast number of coloured 
 points involved, we shall see that in the case of 
 the landscape a coincidence of this kind is 
 inconceivable. 
 
 The beauty of the landscape is due on any 
 theory to physical particles and the manner in 
 which they are disposed. Is there, then, any 
 necessity that just those particles should exist, 
 and just those very dispositions of them should 
 always take place, which are fitted to produce a 
 harmonious effect ? If there is no such necessity, 
 then it is a piece of pure good luck that the world 
 possesses the beauty which, as a matter of fact, 
 is found on every side. But Nature is beautiful 
 so constantly that we seem forced to believe that 
 it is in some sense under a necessity to be beauti- 
 ful. If this is true, then it follows that Nature 
 
 39
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 is in some sense governed by aesthetic as well as 
 by purely physical principles. 
 
 IV. Our fourth heading involves but little 
 difficulty. That there are facts which suggest 
 that the world is a systematic Whole is shown by 
 the almost universal influence which this con- 
 ception possesses. Atheist, Agnostic, and Chris- 
 tian alike assume that the world as a whole is 
 based on some intelligible scheme, the character 
 of which can be grasped, at least in outline, by 
 the mind of man. Nothing could be further from 
 the truth than to suppose that we know only the 
 facts nearest to us in Space and Time, and have no 
 conception of the Universe outside these limits. 
 In fact, if the world were dark to us outside 
 certain narrow limits, it would be hardly less 
 dark to us within them. For if we knew nothing 
 of the world outside, how could we know that it 
 might not at any moment upset, suddenly and 
 totally, all those computations upon which our 
 daily actions depend ? If immense masses of 
 matter, of unknown powers, might, for all we 
 knew, be rushing upon us at an unknown degree 
 of rapidity, none of our predictions would be 
 worth a moment's purchase.* Bodies w r hich 
 now are too far off to be perceptible by the most 
 delicate instruments might within a few seconds' 
 time alter the whole physical state of the Solar 
 System. Thus it is only by possessing some 
 
 * Cf. chap, xv, p. 202, and see Note II at end of Epilogue, p. 228. 
 40
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 conception of the world as a whole that we can 
 have any confident knowledge of the nature of 
 its parts. 
 
 We see, then, the general tendency of the 
 Argument from Design. It points to the orderly 
 and systematic character of Nature, and espe- 
 cially to those respects in which Nature bears 
 resemblance to a work of art. We have no right 
 to assume that such regularity as we find in 
 Nature is a matter of course ; and if its regularity 
 is not a matter of course, still less so is its har 
 mony, its beauty, its general artistic appearanc 
 
 ^WTTen, therefore, the supporters of Naturalism 
 argue that the orderliness which makes such an 
 impression upon the religious mind is after all 
 but the result of that fixity of law which is the 
 postulate of Physical Science, an effective answer 
 lies ready to hand. " P^ven if you are entitled 
 to take uniformity for granted, as something 
 which needs no further explanation, still mere 
 uniformity as such does nothing to explain 
 beauty. A world might be marvellously uniform 
 and yet not at all beautiful. Granted the exis- 
 tence of just those material particles which the 
 world actually contains, and granted that they 
 contain just those forces and properties which do 
 actually belong to them, then certainly it is 
 absolutely necessary that we should have as a 
 result just that Universe with which we are 
 
 41
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 acquainted. But it is mere stupidity * which 
 thinks that the beauty of the world is thus 
 accounted for. An important question remains 
 unanswered. Is there any special reason why 
 just those particles, forces, and properties exist 
 which produce a harmony of colour, not once or 
 twice, not here or there, but in all the diverse 
 landscapes which Nature exhibits ? " 
 
 The believer's argument is not simply that 
 " Naturalism is false because it cannot explain 
 beauty." To such an argument there would be 
 an easy retort : " Neither can you yourself give 
 an explanation which is complete." The sound 
 argument is that Naturalism, in denying that 
 there is in Nature any tendency towards beauty 
 and aesthetic harmony as such, is hereby treating 
 the beauty of Nature as a mere accident ; and 
 this, we rightly feel, is utterly incredible. 
 
 If, on the other hand, there is in Nature a real 
 
 tendency towards beauty, we have advanced at 
 
 least one step towards the religious man's view 
 
 of the world. The world is no longer utterly cold 
 
 and purposeless. The laws and tendencies of 
 
 matter are no longer wholly hostile or indifferent. 
 
 That tendency towards beauty to which our 
 
 argument points, is a very different thing from 
 
 the conscious purpose of a personal God. Yet 
 
 the plain man who identifies the two is not without 
 
 * That this is not too strong a word may be shown by con- 
 sidering any parallel case. Take the case, supposed below (chap. 
 v, p. 55), of the rock which resembles the face of a well-known 
 statesman. 
 
 42
 
 ARGUMENT EXAMINED 
 
 excuse. The fact that the world is like a work 
 of art does not prove that there is a conscious 
 Creator, but it does suggest it. This resemblance 
 is no chance resemblance, as when the glowing 
 embers of the fire resemble faces, or the clouds 
 resemble a camel or a whale ; it is a matter of 
 settled principle and constant law. To the un- 
 philosophic mind, therefore — if to no other — the 
 readiest explanation of the artistic character of 
 the world is that it is in truth the plan of a Divine 
 Architect. 
 
 43
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 The Argument from Design, then, even in its 
 least systematic shape, seems worthy of some 
 respect. This opinion will perhaps be confirmed 
 if, before leaving the pre-Darwinian period, we 
 glance at two or three of the more formal and 
 literary statements of the same argument. 
 
 For our first example we may go to Aristotle. 
 In a well-known passage of the Metaphysics* 
 he describes how men first became dissatisfied 
 with Thales and the purely physical school. To 
 this dissatisfaction, he thinks, thev were " forced 
 by the truth itself." The earlier philosophers 
 had sought for the explanation of the world in 
 material causes : earth, air, fire, or water. But 
 it was noticed that many things which exist or 
 come into being are " well and beautifully 
 formed." Of this goodness and beauty it is not 
 reasonable to look for the cause in earth, or fire, 
 or any similar substance : nor is it likely that 
 even the earlier philosophers themselves would 
 have thought that it was. Nor, again, can we 
 
 * Rook I, p. 984b. 
 
 44
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 reasonably attribute so great a matter as the 
 goodness and beauty of the world to mere chance. 
 When, therefore, some one said that Mind was 
 present in the world, as it is in living beings, and 
 was the cause of the order,* and all the arrange- 
 ment which we observe in Nature, he appeared 
 like a sane man amid the wild talk of the earlier 
 thinkers. 
 
 The arguments here are in effect two. First, 
 we cannot regard the beauty and goodness of the 
 world as due to chance. Secondly, we can find no 
 adequate explanation of it in purely physical 
 causes as such. The mere qualities which belong 
 to earth as earth, or to fire as fire, afford no ex- 
 planation of the goodness and beauty which be- 
 long to many of the things around us. Yet some 
 special explanation seems to be called for, unless 
 we are contented, as we are not, to attribute them 
 to chance — to say that they come " of them- 
 selves." The suggestion that the beauty and 
 goodness of Nature are due to " Mind as in 
 animals " does at least recognize that there is 
 something to be explained and makes a serious 
 attempt to explain it. 
 
 A similar, but more extended, piece of reasoning 
 is to be found in the Memorabilia of Xcnophon.f 
 A discussion is recorded in which Socrates — in 
 
 * See Index in the Teubner edition, noo-pos <ai ra^is. 
 t Book I. 
 
 45
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 converse with a friend who " neither sacrificed 
 to the gods nor prayed,* nor used divination, 
 but laughed to scorn those who did so " — asks 
 whether it is more wonderful to make dead images 
 (as do the artists whom his friend admires) or to 
 make living animals. " To make living animals," 
 is the reply, " would be much the more wonderful, 
 if it is true that they are indeed the work of in- 
 telligence and not due to chance." " Suppose," 
 says Socrates, " we distinguish from one another 
 the things which have no obvious use or purpose, 
 and the things which are manifestly beneficial, 
 which would you think to be due to chance, and 
 which to intelligence ? " "It is reasonable," 
 answers his friend, " to attribute to intelligence 
 the things which serve a useful purpose." So- 
 crates then proceeds to enumerate, in a manner 
 fairly familiar in all ages, the various appearances 
 of benevolent design which seem to him to indi- 
 cate that intelligence rather than chance has 
 presided over the production and development 
 of man and the animals. " You believe," he 
 says, " that you yourself possess some intelligence. 
 But do you think that no intelligence exists else- 
 where ? You know that you have within your 
 body but a small part of the dry matter of the 
 world, and but a small part of the liquid matter 
 of the world, and so with other elements ; while 
 there is much of each of these things outside you. 
 
 * Following the conjecture — which, though elegant, is very 
 
 dOUbtful OVTQ fV^UfMfVOV. 
 
 46
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 Do you think then — in regard to mind alone — 
 that you have by some lucky chance snatched it 
 together from nowhere, while Nature with its 
 vastness and its innumerable contents is brought 
 into order by some kind of thoughtlessness ? ' 
 When his friend replies that he is led to this view 
 because he does not see the masters of the world, 
 as he does see the makers of the statues and the 
 poems, Socrates rejoins that by this reasoning we 
 might conclude that human acts themselves are 
 due to chance and not to intelligence, since we can 
 no more see our own souls than we can see the 
 Gods. He then proceeds to a lofty and religious 
 treatment of the whole subject. If the eye of 
 man can take in a wide range of visible objects, 
 why may not the eye of God see all things at a 
 single moment ? If the mind of man can give simul- 
 taneous consideration to the concerns of Greece, of 
 Sicily, and of Egypt, may not the wisdom of God be 
 sufficient to embrace all things at once within its 
 care ? Such teaching, thinks Xenophon — anxious 
 always to defend his Master against the charge 
 of impiety — cannot but have a good moral effect, 
 since if men believe that divine eyes are always 
 upon them, they Avill be led to abstain from wicked- 
 ness as much in their moments of solitude as when 
 they are in the presence of human witnesses. 
 
 Even more interesting than this Socratic dia- 
 logue is the discussion on the same subject which 
 
 47
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 Cicero, in his De Natura Deorum, describes him- 
 self as hearing at the house of his friend Caius 
 Cotta. The discussion consists of a defence of 
 the Epicurean doctrine by the senator Velleius, 
 and of the Stoic view by Lucilius Balbus : while 
 Cotta himself, as an Academic, replies to both his 
 guests in a vein of scepticism. Cicero is a mere 
 auditor, but his sympathies are on the side of 
 belief, and he welcomes the Stoic defence of it. 
 
 It is the speech of the Stoic which bears most 
 directly upon our present subject. Balbus, at a 
 certain point in his discourse, after commenting 
 in much the same manner as Socrates does upon 
 the admirable adaptation of the parts of Nature to 
 various purposes of use and beauty, asks again the 
 old question * : Are the usefulness and beauty of 
 Nature due to chance ? " Do the parts of Nature," 
 he inquires, "come together fortuitously, or is 
 their arrangement such as could never have taken 
 place except under the government of intelligence 
 and divine forethought." " If the productions of 
 Nature," he argues, " are better than those of 
 art, while yet it is only by means of reason that 
 art can work, we cannot regard Nature as itself 
 irrational. When we see a statue or a picture, 
 we know that the skill of the artist has been 
 employed. When we watch the course of a 
 distant vessel, we do not doubt that it is guided 
 by skill and reason. When we see a clock — 
 whether it be a sundial marked out with lines f 
 
 * Book II, §§ 87, 88, etc. f Reading discriptum. 
 
 48
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 or a water-clock — we know that it tells the time 
 by art and not by chance. How, then, can we 
 consistently regard as devoid of wisdom and 
 reason that world within which all these types of 
 skill, the artists who exhibit them, and everything 
 else besides, are together embraced ? If some one 
 took to Scythia or to Britain that mechanical 
 sphere, recently constructed by our friend Posi- 
 donius, which by each revolution imitates the 
 movement accomplished in a day and night by 
 the sun, the moon, and the five planets, who in 
 those barbarous regions would doubt that this 
 sphere was a work of reason ? Yet our philo- 
 sophers doubt whether the world, from which all 
 things arise and take their being, is itself the 
 result of chance or of some blind necessity,* or 
 on the contrary is the product of reason and divine 
 intelligence." " The man," he continues later, 
 " who can believe that the adornment and beauty 
 of the world has arisen from the fortuitous con- 
 course of separate bodies, borne along by force 
 and gravity, ought (so far as I can see) to think it 
 possible that if innumerable alphabets of letters 
 — each letter cut out in gold or some other 
 material — were to be somewhere thrown together, 
 we might produce a continuous copy of the Annals 
 of Ennius by just tossing out these letters on to 
 
 * It is interesting to compare with this phrase the following 
 sentence of Hegel. Speaking of Nature as mere Nature, abstracted 
 from what it is in its deeper significance, he says : " Die Natur 
 zeigt in ihrem Daseyn keine Freiheit, sondern Nothwendigkeit 
 und Zufalligkeit."— Encijcl., 1st ed., § 193, p. 127. 
 
 D 49
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 the floor ; whereas I do not suppose that good 
 luck could accomplish so much even in a single 
 verse. If a concourse of atoms can form a world, 
 why should not a porch, a temple, a house, a city 
 — much less laborious achievements — be formed 
 in the same manner ? ' "I approve," proceeds 
 Lucilius, " the argument of Aristotle. ' Let us 
 suppose,' says that philosopher, ' a race of men 
 who had always lived underground, in excellent 
 and brightly lighted houses, embellished with 
 statues and pictures, and furnished with all such 
 objects as are possessed in abundance by the 
 wealthy. Let us suppose that these men had 
 never come up to the surface of the earth, but had 
 heard by rumour and report of the existence and 
 power of the Gods. Let us suppose that at last 
 the jaws of the earth were one day thrown open, 
 and the prisoners were able to leave their hidden 
 dwellings and to visit the parts which we inhabit ; 
 to see all at once the earth, the sea, the sky ; to 
 perceive the vast expanse of the clouds and the 
 might of the winds ; to behold the sun, and to 
 learn his size, his beauty, and also his influence — 
 since it is he who by pouring his light abroad 
 over the whole heaven is the giver of the day — 
 and then, when night had darkened the land, to 
 see the whole sky picked out and adorned with 
 stars, to note the changes of the light of the 
 growing or waning moon, to mark the rising and 
 setting of all these heavenly bodies, and their 
 courses fixed and immutable to all eternity. 
 50
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 Surely, when all this spectacle broke upon their 
 sight, they would think that the Gods did indeed 
 exist, and that it was to them that all these great 
 works are to be attributed.' ' On this Aristo- 
 telian argument Lucilius makes an apt comment. 
 " Familiarity," he thinks, " breeds intellectual 
 quiescence." We do not ask the reasons of the 
 things we see daily. It is for this reason that we 
 evade the impression which Nature, if we came 
 to her with fresh and open minds, would infallibly 
 make upon us. 
 
 For a fourth and last example of the manner in 
 which philosophers of repute have dealt with the 
 popular argument, we may turn to St. Thomas 
 Aquinas. St. Thomas distinguishes five methods 
 of proving the existence of God ; and the fifth 
 is, in all essentials, though with considerable 
 differences of form, the same argument as we have 
 already heard from Socrates and from Lucilius 
 Balbus the Stoic. 
 
 The Argument from Design is known in the 
 technical language of philosophy as the " teleo- 
 logical proof." Teleology is the study of purposes 
 or ends or final causes in Nature. We are fami- 
 liar, even in common speech, with the distinction 
 between those things which are " means to an 
 end," and those which are " ends in themselves ' 
 — that is, are of value for their own sake. The 
 " final cause ' of a thing is called in ordinary 
 
 51
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 language its " use " or " value " or " purpose." 
 If happiness were " our being's end and aim," 
 then happiness would be the " final cause " of the 
 human race. 
 
 Now St. Thomas, differing from many modern 
 thinkers, holds that the final cause is unmean- 
 ing apart from personal agency — that the " end " 
 is not a cause " except so far as it moves the 
 agent."* It is thus that he appears to misunder- 
 stand f the half-mythological doctrine of Era- 
 pedocles who regarded strife and friendship as 
 governing principles in Nature, and taught that 
 it is through friendship that the parts of animals 
 are gathered together. This, to St. Thomas, seems 
 tantamount to alleging that the parts of animals 
 come together by chance. Yet if we take the 
 advice of Aristotle and " follow out the meaning 
 of Empedocles, rather than his inadequate ex- 
 pression of it," J it seems clear that, if mutually 
 suitable parts come together in virtue of their 
 " natural affinity " — and this, surely, is what 
 the phrase " friendship " must be intended to 
 suggest — then their union is not accidental. On 
 such a theory it would be regarded as a law 
 that those things which possess mutual suitable- 
 ness tend somehow to be brought together. St. 
 Thomas may complain that this seems to him to 
 be a wild and obscure speculation (though in 
 light of some of the facts of natural beauty we 
 
 * Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Art. II, Qu. V. 
 f Ibid., Art. II, Qu. V. J Met., 985a. 
 
 52
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 may hold that Empedocles was perhaps feeling 
 after a truth), but in any case it is not right to 
 confuse this conception with that of fortuitous 
 concourse. 
 
 The word " end," then — in the sense in which 
 St. Thomas uses it — is really, though he may not 
 admit it, a wider term than " purpose." The 
 latter necessarily implies conscious agency, the 
 former does not. And it is round the two words 
 " end " and " accident " that this whole argu- 
 ment, in all its forms, does really turn. That in 
 Nature certain things occur — such as beauty of 
 colour — which our reason is bound to recognize 
 as "ends in themselves " : that Nature (to put 
 the same thing in other words) conforms itself to 
 certain rational " ideals " ; that all this produc- 
 tion of good and admirable results is no mere 
 accident ; this, and just this, is what the teleo- 
 logical argument is concerned to show, whether 
 we meet with it in its popular or in its more 
 philosophic versions. 
 
 St. Thomas makes a clear statement of this 
 argument in the following words : " We see," 
 he says, " that some things which lack knowledge 
 — namely, natural bodies — work in reference to an 
 end. This is clear from the fact that always or 
 for the most part (semper aid frequenlius) they 
 work in the selfsame manner so as to bring about 
 that which is best. Whence it is plain that they 
 reach their end, not by chance, but as a result 
 of intention. Those things, however, which are 
 
 53
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 without knowledge do not tend towards an end, 
 except so far as they are directed by some one 
 who knows and understands ; for example, the 
 arrow by the bowman. Thus there is an intelli- 
 gent c somewhat,' by which all natural objects 
 are ordered in relation to an end (ordinantur 
 ad ftnem) ; and this ' somewhat ' we call 
 God." * 
 
 Again, in reply to certain philosophers who 
 deny that the world is governed, he remarks that 
 " we see in natural objects a constant selection 
 of the better course, either universally or in the 
 majority of cases. But this would not happen 
 unless by some forethought natural things were 
 directed towards good as an end (ad, finem boni) ; 
 and such direction is just what we mean by 
 ' government.' Thus the fixed order of Nature 
 does itself manifestly prove the government of 
 the world, just as if one entered a well-ordered 
 house one should infer from the very ordering of 
 the house the rationality of him who ordered it."t 
 Dealing with the same question in another 
 treatise, he maintains that "it is impossible that 
 it is by chance that the bodies of animals are so 
 formed that the life of the animal is preserved ; 
 for those things which happen by chance occur 
 only in the minority of cases ; whereas these 
 suitabilities and utilities in Nature happen either 
 universally or in the majority of cases ; wherefore 
 
 * Summa Theol., Pars prima, Qu. II, Art. III. 
 t Ibid., Qu. CM, Art. I, conclusio. 
 
 54
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 it is impossible that they should happen by 
 chance."* 
 
 Such, then, are some of the examples of the use 
 of the familiar argument as they may be drawn 
 from the literature of nearly two thousand years. 
 A comparison of these various statements one 
 with another shows them to possess at least two 
 important points of resemblance. 
 
 In the first place, they all insist that the order, 
 and especially the beauty of the world, is no 
 accident. 
 
 " But why," the supporters of Naturalism may 
 reply, " do you address this argument to us ? 
 We of all people in the world recognize most 
 clearly that there is no such thing as chance, 
 since everything that happens happens by neces- 
 sary law." 
 
 This reply, however, though very frequently 
 heard, is based on a very simple confusion. 
 Necessity and accident are far from being 
 mutually exclusive. If a rock, under the stress 
 of wind and weather, reproduces the profile of Mr. 
 Gladstone, though its shape is thus the result of 
 absolute physical necessity, its resemblance to 
 the eminent statesman is an accident. But if we 
 see that natural beauty is not a sheer accident of 
 this sort, then we must admit that somehow 
 (however mysterious the machinery may be by 
 
 * Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, Art. II, Qu. V. 
 
 55
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 which the result is brought about) the laws of 
 harmony in colour have a real influence upon the 
 selection of the colours in Nature, and thus that 
 Nature is really governed by a principle aesthetic 
 in its character. 
 
 The second point of resemblance in these four 
 statements is that all imply an argument which 
 is put most succinctly in the three words of 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, Non contigisset nisi : "It 
 would not have happened unless." 
 
 There are certain cases in which we all assume 
 that unless there is some special reason why a 
 certain assemblage of circumstances should occur, 
 this is in itself a strong reason why it should not. 
 Here lies the strength of circumstantial evidence. 
 "If," says the Judge, " you think it a mere co- 
 incidence that the prisoner was in the exact 
 neighbourhood where the crime was committed 
 at or about the time of its commission — that the 
 sum of money found in his possession is exactly 
 equal to that of which the murdered man was 
 robbed, that the footsteps on the ground corre- 
 spond with the very unusual measurements of the 
 prisoner's boot," and so forth through a large 
 number of concurrent circumstances — " you will 
 then doubtless bring in a verdict of ' Not guilty ' ; 
 if, on the other hand, you think the number of 
 coincidences involved in the theory of his inno- 
 cence too great to be credible, you will find him 
 guilty of wilful murder." If the question were 
 56
 
 CHAPTER OF HISTORY 
 
 asked, " Why should not these various occurrences 
 have happened quite apart from the prisoner's 
 commission of a crime ? " we should at once reply 
 that, in case of his innocence, though any of these 
 things might quite well have happened separately, 
 it is in the highest degree unlikely that they 
 should all have happened together. 
 
 The ultimate grounds — mathematical or philo- 
 sophical — on which this reasoning rests, have been 
 the subject of much embittered controversy. The 
 important matter is that we are all agreed as to 
 the soundness of the reasoning itself. It is true 
 that we do not all draw the line at the same 
 place. Some of us are prepared to attribute to 
 the " long arm of coincidence ' greater powers 
 than would be allowed to it by others. But no 
 sane man is willing to believe in the accumulation 
 of coincidences without limit. Even if a man's 
 life is at stake, we pronounce confidently, Non 
 contigisset nisi. 
 
 57
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 So much, then, for the Argument from Design in 
 its pre-Kantian and pre-Darwinian form. It is 
 not certain that the great critics of the argument, 
 Kant and Darwin themselves, would have been 
 altogether hostile to the attempt so to reformulate 
 it that it should henceforth be invulnerable to 
 their criticisms. 
 
 But before we come to this question of re- 
 statement, there is another argument which 
 demands our notice. For the Argument from 
 Design Kant sought to substitute the " Moral 
 Proof " of the existence of God* ; and in so doing 
 he was only stating in a specialized form an argu- 
 ment which has carried weight with mankind in 
 every generation. 
 
 There are three reasons why this " Moral Argu- 
 ment " should be the object of our attention. In 
 the first place, the Moral Argument can be so 
 stated as to furnish in itself a direct refutation of 
 Naturalism. Secondly, it can be so stated as to 
 form an important element in that very restate- 
 ment of the Argument from Design of which we 
 are in search. Thirdly, it is, when reduced to its 
 
 * See Critique of Judgment, § 87, etc. 
 
 58
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 simplest terms, the strongest of all supports to 
 the religious man's conception of the world, the 
 clearest answer to " Materialism." When the 
 religious man seeks to justify his beliefs in set 
 terms, he most commonly turns to some form of 
 the Argument from Design. But it is the Moral 
 Argument which has most effect upon his personal 
 faith. The deeper a man's personal interest in 
 morality, the more acute his moral sensitiveness, 
 the less satisfied is he commonly found to be with 
 a Naturalistic theory. Again the spectacle of 
 other men's fidelity to principle is at all times the 
 most effective witness to a lofty conception of 
 duty. It is thus that the blood of the martyrs is 
 the seed of the Church. Nor is it in Christianity 
 alone that this proverb is verified. It is as true 
 of Galileo, and the Martyrs and Confessors of 
 Physical Science, as of the Martyrs of Religion. 
 
 Morality — fidelity to principle — seems in fact 
 to be a kind of miracle. Why do I feel bound to 
 act against all my personal interests and inclina- 
 tions ? — to act as a man of honour though it be 
 to my own hindrance ? I may in my conduct 
 disregard this obligation of honour, but in my 
 heart I am compelled to own it. And even if 
 my strictness of principle is as inconvenient to my 
 neighbours as it is to myself, they too cannot fail 
 to respect it. The honesty of Rutilius the publi- 
 can brings upon him the implacable hostility of 
 his colleagues. Their conduct, we say, reveals 
 human nature in a contemptible aspect. Yet in 
 
 59
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 so saying we assume that they knew in their 
 hearts that Rutilius was right. It is only this 
 assumption which justifies our contempt for 
 their behaviour. 
 
 Such facts suggest a form of the Moral Ar- 
 gument immediately relevant to our subject. 
 Naturalism denies that the laws of the Universe 
 take any account of the spiritual interests of man. 
 We shall find, however, that there are laws relat- 
 ing directly to our most important spiritual 
 interest of all, our knowledge of Right and 
 Wrong. 
 
 We shall find, first, that there are fundamental 
 moral principles which we can all be made to 
 accept if only they are put before us with suffi- 
 cient clearness. Further, we shall find that the 
 Moral Ideal is a connected Whole. We trust the 
 man of good feeling to act rightly in quite novel 
 circumstances. We cannot always deduce the 
 true rule of conduct from previously admitted 
 principles. Yet our minds are so constituted 
 that, if familiarized with certain of the leading 
 principles of morality, they pass on from these by 
 a natural sense of affinity to the acceptance of 
 other elements in the Moral Ideal as occasion 
 brings these to light. The law* is that fami- 
 
 * For this use of the word " law," see chap, ix, pp. 93-95, 
 chap, vii, p. 71. The law mentioned in the text may be called 
 " psychological." It states an observed and verified uniformity. 
 To confine the word " law " to Physics is a purely arbitrary 
 proceeding. 
 
 60
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 liarity with right principles breeds general sym- 
 pathy with the Moral Ideal. 
 
 It is no disproof of this law that men do not 
 always think alike. The varieties of moral 
 opinion have amused the spectator of mankind 
 from the days of Herodotus downwards. Men 
 no more think alike on matters of conduct 
 than on questions of aesthetic taste. Yet 
 both in aesthetic and in moral experience there 
 are certain uniformities which we can count 
 upon. 
 
 Out of a thousand pupils in a Conservatorium 
 we are confident that the great majority will 
 learn, not only to know by ear when an instru- 
 ment is in tune, but also to see broadly the 
 difference between good music and bad. In the 
 majority of cases both ear and taste respond 
 correctly to training. Unless this were true, 
 musical education would be a sheer impos- 
 ture. 
 
 The case of morals is similar. Just as surely 
 as you can train a pupil to perceive for himself 
 that consecutive fifths are in most contexts a 
 bad musical progression, so you can train him to 
 perceive that treachery is base especially when 
 accompanied by ingratitude. A savage may 
 boast of a treacherous act and glory in its 
 ingenuity. But almost every one, if we use 
 the right methods, can be made to feel that 
 treachery not merely undermines public confi- 
 dence, but is base in itself. The man incapable 
 
 61
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 of being so taught is abnormal — an exception 
 to a law. 
 
 And so in less extreme cases. All cruelty, even 
 the cruelty of neglect, stirs our indignation, and 
 few can think this indignation misplaced. Few 
 are quite impervious to the argument that they 
 would not like such treatment themselves. The 
 mere fact that this simple argument is so widely 
 understood, shows a general capacity to per- 
 ceive, when it is pointed out, that we owe some 
 duty to others. This is a far-reaching principle. 
 But experience shows that under certain con- 
 ditions every one can be brought to see it, 
 and shows also pretty plainly what the conditions 
 are. 
 
 At times we need a moral shock to bring the 
 latent principles to the surface. In an Australian 
 camp a young Englishman was challenged to ride 
 a buck- jumping horse, and then urged under 
 taunts of cowardice to ride him in spurs. While 
 he was providing himself with these, one of his 
 hosts loosened the girths. Another, after he had 
 mounted, struck the horse with a stockwhip. As 
 the horse plunged forward, the saddle shifted and 
 the rider was killed. Immediately the man who 
 had loosened the girths was felled to the ground 
 by his companion. The companion had looked 
 on without protest at the cowardly deed itself ; 
 he discovered its heinousness in his horror at its 
 consequences. 
 
 Such moral shocks, however, are not always 
 62
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 needed. There are certain principles which men 
 will inevitably accept if their attention is once 
 thoroughly roused to them. If sound moral 
 principles are intelligently presented to the young 
 they will, for the most part, see for themselves 
 that they are true. This law is the basis of our 
 whole educational system. 
 
 The law is applicable to others besides children. 
 Many quite excellent men are blind to the duty 
 of suffering as Galileo did, in the cause of scientific 
 truth. Yet when once the nature of scientific 
 truth is understood — when a man has reached 
 that stage of education at which the spectacle of 
 the age-long struggle between science and super- 
 stition is revealed to him — the duty of speaking 
 the truth on these matters becomes clear to him 
 at the same time. Galileo is admired by the very 
 men who are most likely to dispute the argument 
 of this chapter. Their position is a paradox. 
 They acknowledge the absolute duty of declaring 
 that there is no such thing as absolute duty. 
 
 Take, again, the virtue of chastity. What to us 
 would be gross indecency may to a savage be a 
 religious ordinance ; and, of course, if what the 
 savage thinks and feels in the performance of 
 such rites is different from what we should think 
 and feel if we could bring ourselves to the same 
 actions, then even the strictest moralist must see 
 that it is absurd to judge him by the same external 
 standard. But this does not touch the question 
 at issue. The question is whether the normal 
 
 63
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 man can be made to see that bestial indecency is 
 wrong within the context of civilized life. 
 
 To this whole argument there are certain 
 familiar objections. " Is morality after all," it 
 will be asked, " such a miracle as you allege ? Is 
 it not merely the outcome of the necessities of 
 social life ? If we are to live in communities, 
 we must put ourselves under certain restraints." 
 It is true, of course, that we all perform many 
 duties mainly in order to enjoy the protection and 
 amenities of social life. But if the whole of our 
 conduct was based upon prudential considera- 
 tions, it would possess none of the marks of 
 morality. Every one would make a false Income 
 Tax return whenever he knew that he could 
 escape detection ; nor would any one expect him 
 to refrain from this and similar advantages. A 
 purely prudential morality would not afford the 
 mutual confidence upon which society rests. You 
 could trust no man further than you saw him. 
 
 At the present moment, however, the pru- 
 dential theory is seldom stated in this crude form. 
 It is now more often maintained that society 
 from an unconscious instinct of self-preservation 
 instils moral notions into its members ; that it 
 teaches us from our earliest years to condemn 
 the traitor because we all perceive by instinct 
 that treachery is dangerous. 
 
 Or, again, we are told to look for the origin of 
 64
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 morality in Natural Selection. " There is no 
 law " — it is said — " that men should have correct 
 notions as such, either on morality or on any 
 other subject. The law is that in our mental 
 states, as in our bodily frame, we should on the 
 whole resemble our ancestors.* Those feelings 
 and convictions which are found useful to the 
 race will be preserved, since the stocks which 
 transmit them continue to thrive, while other 
 stocks are destroyed in the battle of life. Thus 
 our moral convictions have been preserved, not 
 because they were true, but because they were 
 useful." 
 
 To all such sceptical theories there is one com- 
 pendious answer. They imply, what we know to 
 be untrue, that all our moral convictions are mere 
 illusion. If I say that the only reason why I 
 think treachery wrong is because this conviction 
 was necessary for the safety of the community, 
 or for the continuance of the human species, this 
 is tantamount to saying that treachery is not 
 really wrong in itself ; and that, if I had been 
 evolved in a different manner, I might quite well 
 have thought otherwise. If I am tempted to a 
 treacherous act, these evolutionary explanations 
 
 * The difficulty of explaining human knowledge by Natural 
 Selection is very great. Take, for example, our knowledge that 
 2+2 = 4. Is it seriously suggested that the human mind 
 might begin by holding any one of the conceivable wrong opinions 
 on this subject, e.g. that 2 + 2 = 5 or 50 or 500, and that then 
 all views except the right one are weeded out by their incon- 
 venience in practice ? 
 
 E 65
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 are all on the side of the temptation. If there is 
 no absolute right or wrong, why should I let in- 
 herited scruples stand in the way of my interests 
 and inclinations ? Why should I care for the 
 future of my race, if my own gain or pleasure is, 
 as a fact, more attractive to my feelings ? The 
 evolutionary explanation shows how our moral 
 convictions might have come into being without 
 being true. The important matter is that we 
 know that they are true, and that their truth can 
 be made evident to the normal mind. 
 
 A second objection turns upon the power of 
 bad example. " You argue that all men can be 
 taught to accept the principles of morality. 
 True. But they can be taught to accept the 
 principles of immorality likewise. Fagin can 
 teach his pupils that adroit thieving is the road 
 to human greatness." 
 
 We cannot deny that the influence of bad 
 teaching is great. Yet bad teaching when com- 
 pared with good stands in some respects at a 
 disadvantage. It does not produce the same 
 strength of assured certainty. In fact, it is not 
 in its convincingness at all, but in its agreement 
 with our inclinations, that its power lies. Fal- 
 staff defends his thieving on the ground that it is 
 no sin for a man to labour in his vocation. But 
 he knows in his heart that this excuse is not 
 good ; that he is, " if a man should speak truly, 
 little better than one of the wicked." Excuses, 
 66
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 in fact, are an acknowledgment of the principle. 
 If we did not know that dishonesty was wrong, 
 why should we seek to excuse it ? 
 
 There are cases where wrong opinions are 
 sincerely held. But in these cases it is seldom 
 found that correct moral principles have been 
 clearly grasped and deliberately rejected. What 
 has happened is that relevant principles have been 
 ignored. A military man of old time thought it a 
 dishonour to decline a challenge. He was partly 
 right. To play the coward — to fear wounds 
 more than disgrace — this is as wrong as he held 
 it to be. The objections to duelling, which have 
 made it extinct in the most civilized societies, 
 were not present to his mind. He is an example 
 rather of blindness than of error. 
 
 A.nd so with all the other hackneyed examples 
 — the Thug who regards murder as a virtue, the 
 Autolycus of Homer who prides himself on his 
 power to deceive. The Thug — we may suppose 
 — recognizes rightly that the courage and address 
 needed to dispatch an enemy are good qualities. 
 Autolycus perceives that " wisdom is better than 
 strength." They are blind to the other aspects 
 of their deeds. The power of education to dispel 
 this blindness is proved by the fact that for 
 examples of this moral obtuseness we must look 
 to primitive or barbarous societies. 
 
 The case for Naturalism, as against this " argu- 
 ment from morality," may be stated, perhaps, 
 
 67
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 in other ways besides those already mentioned. 
 But these objections need not further detain us ; 
 for the whole controversy turns upon two issues. 
 Unless our moral beliefs are either mere illusions, 
 or else, being true, are true by a lucky accident 
 only, it follows that Naturalism is false ; since 
 Naturalism denies that there are any laws of 
 Nature which prescribe, as such, correctness of 
 moral knowledge. The facts we have seen enable 
 us to rebut this denial ; and, further, to assert 
 that the Moral Ideal, in itself a connected whole, 
 acts also as a single principle in our minds, and 
 tends in some measure to shape our thoughts and 
 feelings in accordance with its demands. The 
 connexion between one virtue and another is 
 felt where it cannot be demonstrated. If my 
 friends say of me that I am a brave and honest 
 man, but spoil myself by my overweening vanity, 
 this criticism implies a connected ideal of human 
 character. The universal conviction that such 
 faults do really impair the value of our virtues 
 implies, if we think it out, both the unity of the 
 Moral Ideal and also its correctness. 
 
 One further remark remains. It is seldom 
 expressly recognized, yet it will probably not be 
 disputed, that an ideal for human conduct pre- 
 supposes some ideal for the Universe. The laws 
 of conduct are, at least in part, derived from a 
 conception of what the world at large ought to be 
 68
 
 MORAL KNOWLEDGE 
 
 and to contain. The conviction that cruelty is 
 wrong depends upon the belief that the happiness 
 of men and animals is a desirable ingredient in 
 the world. Our condemnation of cowardice and 
 vanity implies that a world containing brave and 
 modest men is better than a world from which 
 courage and modesty are absent. No one can 
 withhold admiration from a world which produces, 
 in however scant a measure, this union of virtue 
 and happiness in a setting of physical uniformity 
 and aesthetic beauty. The capacity to admire 
 these qualities in the world, when they are pointed 
 out, is witnessed to by the literature of all ages. 
 It implies the very law with which we are here 
 concerned — namely, that the mind of man is so 
 constituted as to recognize in its main outline 
 the true ideal of the Universe when that ideal is 
 clearly set before us. 
 
 It was a habit of the great Sidney Smith never 
 to admit the truth of a proposition till he knew 
 for what purpose the admission was demanded. 
 When the reader discovers in the next chapter for 
 what purpose the statements in the preceding 
 paragraph have been made, he will be free to 
 revoke any assent he may have given to them, if 
 he will and if he can. 
 
 69
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 We may now proceed to that restatement of the 
 Argument from Design — or rather of the funda- 
 mental thought which this argument embodies — 
 to which the previous chapters are intended as an 
 introduction. 
 
 This restatement may be formulated briefly in 
 three propositions which it will be necessary 
 subsequently to defend. To these three pro- 
 positions — summarized in still smaller compass 
 below * — the reader's attention is specially invited. 
 They contain the very kernel of the position 
 which this book is written to maintain. 
 
 We may start from common ground. It is 
 clear, in the first place, that we all regard the 
 world as in some sense a rational whole, governed 
 by a rational system of laws. This belief we shall 
 find to be the basis alike of Physical Science and 
 of common popular knowledge of the world ; the 
 basis also of some of those principles, such as the 
 Uniformity of Nature, which are sometimes 
 supposed to be of independent origin.f Further, 
 if Ave will notice what kind of facts they are which 
 
 * Page 73 of this chapter. f Chap, xv, pp. 200-203. 
 
 70
 
 ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 we give as examples of the world's rational 
 character — and also the kind of beliefs which we 
 reject as inconsistent with this character — we 
 shall see that this " rationality " of which we 
 are thinking implies conformity to some such 
 standard as may fairly be described as a rational 
 " ideal." We are asserting the rationality of the 
 world in a sense in which rationality is an object 
 of admiration. 
 
 But, secondly, there is at least one law of 
 Nature* which deals with something other than 
 mere bodily or mental uniformity ; at least one 
 law which is directly concerned with our spiritual 
 interests. This law has been stated in the pre- 
 ceding chapter. It is to the effect that the mind 
 of man accepts as true the various fundamental 
 principles of the Moral Ideal, if these are put 
 before him with sufficient clearness. There is 
 great uniformity in the use of the words " traitor," 
 " drunkard," " swindler," and " coxcomb " as 
 terms of reproach. Again, the tendency to 
 accept this ideal of human conduct implies, as we 
 have seen, a tendency to accept the corresponding 
 ideal for the Universe at large. On this subject 
 there is a very general agreement. Fearlessness, 
 fixedness of purpose, bodily strength, in man — 
 in nature, the songs of the birds, the colours of 
 flowers, bright skies, and spreading waters — all 
 these things we do and must admire. Our con- 
 ception of the true ideal of the Universe is, so far 
 
 * See chap, ix, pp. 93-95 ; also chap, vi, p. GO. 
 
 71
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 as its main outlines are concerned, as obviously 
 subject to law as any other phenomenon of our 
 mental or bodily life. 
 
 Thirdly, then, let us ask an unfamiliar but 
 important question. Should we dream of calling 
 the world a reasonable whole, if the system of 
 laws which governed it prescribed, on the one 
 hand, a universal tendency in rational beings 
 towards a knowledge of true ideals, and yet, on 
 the other hand, prescribed that no account 
 should be taken of these ideals in the ordering of 
 the totality of the Universe ? It is certain that 
 if a Conscious Creator ordered such a world — 
 deliberately planning that rational beings should 
 have a tendency to know what was good, and yet 
 that their aspirations should be doomed to ulti- 
 mate disappointment — we should conceive such a 
 Creator not as a God, but as a mischievous and 
 malicious fiend. We should regard his plan as 
 evincing the very height of irrational perverseness. 
 But if such a system of laws, consciously planned, 
 seems to us so supremely unreasonable, then we 
 cannot call this same system reasonable, even if 
 we dismiss from our minds the thought of a 
 Creator altogether. We cannot reasonably say 
 that, while of course only a fiend could design 
 such a world, still if it came thus of itself without 
 a designer, it is an exhibition of the highest 
 rationality. If, then, we are right in attributing 
 to the world a general rationality, in the sense 
 in which rationality is a fit object of admiration ; 
 72
 
 ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 if we are right in basing all our scientific predic- 
 tions on this belief, as we shall find that we do * ; 
 then the world is not the perversely ordered 
 scheme which we have just imagined. No one, 
 as a matter of fact, does believe in such a world- 
 scheme as this. The educated man, for the most 
 part, believes either in some form of religious 
 or philosophic Optimism, or else in a consistent 
 Naturalism which recognizes no laws which take 
 account of any of our spiritual interests as such ; 
 or perhaps he hesitates between these rival 
 opinions, each of which presents us with the 
 picture of a harmonious, homogeneous, intern- 
 ally self-consistent Universe. In such a mongrel 
 world-scheme as we have imagined above no one 
 does, or could, seriously believe. 
 
 We may now summarize these three points 
 more shortly. First, we all believe that the 
 world is a rational whole, governed by a rational 
 system of laws. But, secondly, we have seen 
 already that one of the laws of Nature is that 
 men's minds tend to a true conception of what 
 the Universe ought to be. Thirdly, we ask 
 whether we should dream of calling a system of 
 laws rational if they prescribed that all men 
 should tend to a knowledge of these right ideals, 
 and yet these ideals should not be taken into 
 account in the ordering of the Universe. The 
 
 * See present chapter, pp. 76, 77, 80, 81 ; also chap, xv, pp. 
 200-203. 
 
 73
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 conclusion suggested is that the System of Laws, 
 which implants these ideals as a fixed element in 
 the human mind, also orders in accordance with 
 them the Universe at large. 
 
 There is one sentence in this statement which 
 is certain to arouse criticism : the assertion that 
 the basis of Natural Science is the belief that 
 reality conforms to a rational standard or ideal. 
 Yet it is really clear that our ideals have a greater 
 influence on our theories of the Universe than we 
 generally acknowledge. Men seldom or never 
 believe in a world which conflicts with the ideals 
 which they themselves seriously accept, though 
 they will readily believe in a world which con- 
 flicts with the ideals of other people. Have we 
 ever met a man who believes in a Universe which 
 is to him solely an object of ridicule and con- 
 tempt ? Schopenhauer may profess himself a 
 pessimist ; yet he believes that from this present 
 evil world a way of escape is provided, and he 
 certainly describes this deliverance with con- 
 siderable enthusiasm. Mr. Russell, though he 
 uses the language of despair, is a clear example 
 of the thinker who believes in a Universe which he 
 admires. His favourite art is Tragedy. But the 
 beauty of Tragedy, he thinks, " does but make 
 visible a quality which is present everywhere 
 in life." Roth Mr. Russell and Schopenhauer, 
 though they can conceive a pleasanter Universe 
 74
 
 ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 than the Universe they believe in, do not seriously 
 feel they can conceive a better one. 
 
 Why is it, again, that the modern man rejects 
 without discussion the various mythologies of 
 Paganism ? Even the strangest incidents which 
 they relate cannot for the most part be disproved 
 by evidence. The non-occurrence of these inci- 
 dents is not an " observed fact." We have not 
 observed that Aphrodite was not wounded by 
 Diomede. Yet we never treat the truth or 
 falsehood of these stories as a matter for suspense 
 of judgment. We do not keep an open mind. 
 We do not wait for evidence. We deny them out 
 of hand. If we believed them, they would make 
 the whole world appear to be flagrantly in contra- 
 diction with anything that right reason can 
 admire or approve. We recognize that there are 
 in the world many individual things, persons, 
 and incidents, which separately and individually 
 are grotesque in the extreme ; but we cannot 
 believe in a Universe which is grotesque as a 
 whole. Indeed, the fixed habit of rejecting 
 from the world everything that is confessedly 
 contrary to the ideals of reason, is the very 
 habit which distinguishes the sane man from the 
 madman. 
 
 What, again, should we say if it were suggested 
 that, after our long experience of order, the Uni- 
 verse might suddenly relapse into Chaos ? Here 
 again we have no direct evidence. The future 
 continuance of order is assuredly no observed 
 
 75
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 fact.* Yet we should reject this suggestion of a 
 general relapse into Chaos with the same decision 
 as we reject the fables of Pagan mythology, and 
 on similar grounds. We should not think it 
 worth while to argue the case. A Universe of 
 order relapsing suddenly into Chaos is rejected 
 off-hand because of its intrinsic grotesqueness. 
 
 Thus, whatever school of thought we may 
 belong to, we do as a fact set up in our minds an 
 ideal of a reasonable and orderly world, and, for 
 the most part, our conception of the actual Uni- 
 verse is in close accordance with this ideal. 
 Whatever is in flagrant conflict with this ideal, 
 as, for example, the Pagan myths, we reject as 
 impossible and untrue. 
 
 " Yes," it will be answered, " it is true enough 
 that our conception of the real world is in this 
 sense in accordance with our ideal ; but it is not 
 because of its agreement with our ideal that we 
 think this conception true. We have a more 
 solid reason. The ultimate ground for all our 
 
 * The hypothesis of the composite nature of bodies formerly- 
 regarded as indivisible atoms — so that we are now reasoning 
 about bodies with one-thousandth part the mass of the atom of 
 hydrogen — makes it more obviously impossible to produce ocular 
 or other empirical evidence of the ultimate nature of each material 
 particle. If we do not know the nature of the ultimate cohesive force 
 which binds together the smaller bodies of which a particle is composed, 
 how can we say that this cohesive force may not in time wear out 
 — may not undergo just such a " wearing out " as would lead to 
 Chaos ? The grounds on which we rule out Chaos as a possible 
 hypothesis are clearly not empirical. The smallest particles we 
 have yet thought of may themselves be composite. 
 
 76
 
 ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 physical beliefs is the principle of the Uniformity 
 of Nature, a principle which arises in the mind as 
 the natural result of the perpetual repetition of 
 similar sequences in the experience of individuals 
 through successive generations." 
 
 Now it happens that Mr. Russell — so often an 
 object of criticism in the preceding pages — here 
 comes to our help. He has given the answer to 
 this deceptive argument. " The frequent repe- 
 tition," he says, " of some uniform succession has 
 been the cause of our expecting the same succes- 
 sion on the next occasion. Domestic animals 
 expect food when they see the person who usually 
 feeds them." Rut " the man who has fed the 
 chicken every day throughout its life at last 
 wrings its neck instead." Thus " when our 
 instincts cause us to believe that the sun will rise 
 to-morrow," we might conceivably be "in no 
 better position than the chicken " who, relying 
 on an uncritical expectation of uniformity, meets 
 an unexpected death. 
 
 Of course, as Mr. Russell and every one else 
 knows quite well, our expectation of future uni- 
 formity is rational and well grounded. Rut 
 what is its basis ? Not direct observation ; for 
 this cannot show us the future. Not the instinc- 
 tive tendency which past repetition breeds both 
 in man and animals ; for this instinct, as we have 
 just seen, may be utterly misleading. These 
 negative answers are easy, though also important. 
 
 Rut Mr. Russell assists us further. He helps 
 
 77
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE! 
 
 .A 
 
 us to a positive answer too. In a brilliant 
 passage in the essay already quoted,* Mephisto- 
 pheles is represented as telling Faust the history 
 of Creation. God, says the tempter, wearying of 
 the praises of the angels, thinks that He would 
 find greater amusement in receiving praises which 
 He had not deserved. So He creates Man, and 
 orders Nature as we know it, and the course of 
 human history, till this new whim is satisfied. At 
 length " when He saw that Man had become 
 perfect in renunciation and worship, He sent 
 another sun through the sky, which crashed into 
 Man's sun, and all returned again to nebula. 
 " Yes,' He murmured, ' it was a good play : I 
 will have it performed again.' " 
 
 The reader will readily guess the purpose for 
 which this little myth is invented. But let us 
 suppose that some person, of excessive simplicity 
 of mind, taking Mr. Russell's myth as a serious 
 theory, professed himself convinced that the 
 complexities of human life do really arise from 
 the desire of a jaded Creator for novelty and 
 diversion. No one, we may be sure, would laugh 
 more consumedly than Mr. Russell. 
 
 But how is it that we are so certain as we are, 
 that what Mephistopheles suggests cannot really 
 have happened ? The myth is not refuted by 
 experience ; for it presupposes just that course 
 of Nature and of human history with which ex- 
 perience actually acquaints us. All the observed 
 
 * Tfie Free Man's Worship. 
 78
 
 ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 facts on which the conclusions of Physical Science 
 are based would, if the myth were true, have been 
 just as they have been in reality. We reject Mr. 
 Russell's ingenious invention in the same peremp- 
 tory manner as we reject the fictions of the 
 heathen poets, and on similar grounds. Our 
 ground is that we can accept no belief which 
 would give to the world as a whole an appearance 
 of absurdity and grotesqueness. No other general 
 principle but this, or its equivalent, will suffice 
 to justify all the cases of peremptory rejection 
 mentioned above. Let the reader try if he can 
 frame any other general principle which will be 
 adequate for this purpose. Yet, even if the 
 failure of his attempt does not convince him that 
 the task is impossible, this is no great matter so 
 long as he admits — as he must admit— that no 
 event can happen which would turn the world 
 into a mere nightmare of grotesque absurdity.* 
 This peremptory rejection of a vast number of 
 the beliefs which have been held in past ages, 
 while yet no direct evidence of their falseness can 
 be produced, may appear to us as a mysterious 
 and even arbitrary proceeding. But it will 
 appear so no longer if we reflect how absolutely 
 certain we are in our own case both of the correct- 
 ness of these various judgments and of the 
 general ground on which they all rest. The men 
 who invented the mythologies, and believed 
 them, were men whose standards of approval 
 
 * Cf. chap, xii, p. 206, note. 
 
 79
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 and admiration were different from ours. The 
 world as Paganism represented it did not seem to 
 them contemptible, and therefore neither did it 
 seem incredible. But as standards change, so 
 beliefs as to what is possible change with them. 
 
 We may now return to the question with which 
 this chapter opened. Can we believe in a world 
 governed by a system of laws which prescribe on 
 the one hand a general tendency in rational 
 beings towards a knowledge of what is good, and 
 prescribe on the other that considerations of good 
 and evil shall be disregarded in the general order- 
 ing of the Universe ? That there is no serious 
 likelihood of our accepting such a view of the 
 world we are all probably quite strongly con- 
 vinced. But may we not go further ? May we 
 not say that the acceptance of such a view would 
 be absolutely contrary to all the principles upon 
 which our beliefs and habits are based ? If the 
 Universe had this fundamental absurdity at its 
 core — if it were just one great unconscious prac- 
 tical jest— then we must be prepared for the 
 happening of anything whatsoever, however absurd 
 or irrational : for a sudden plunge from Order 
 into Chaos ; for the occurrence of incidents which 
 we have believed to be confined to fable. In such 
 a world we should be deprived of the right to use 
 our last conclusive argument, our final protection 
 against superstition — namely, our conviction that 
 80
 
 ARGUMENT RESTATED 
 
 flagrant absurdities are impossible. In a world in 
 which unreason sat enthroned at the centre why- 
 should not trees dance, or stones speak, or the 
 mountains salute us by wagging their heads ? * 
 
 The effect of this argument is to call attention 
 to the decisive importance of the question raised 
 in the preceding chapter. The admission that 
 there are laws of Nature prescribing correctness 
 of moral thinking in the human mind has often 
 been regarded by the supporters of Naturalism 
 as the thin end of the optimistic wedge. The 
 aim of the present argument is to show that they 
 are right in this surmise. 
 
 It is obvious that by such reasoning we can 
 establish Optimism in a general form only. The 
 particular religious or philosophic creed which 
 results from it will depend on what we believe 
 that the true ideal of the Universe would con- 
 tain.! The conceptions of mankind on this 
 subject have been many and various. Yet 
 among civilized persons of normal education the 
 differences are much less important than the 
 agreements ; and these differences themselves 
 are not beyond the reach of argument. If, then, 
 the conclusions of this chapter are accepted, they 
 cannot fail to have a great effect upon our general 
 conception of the Universe. 
 
 * See chap, xv, pp. 201-202 f Cf. chap. xii. 
 
 81
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE WORLD AS WORK OF ART 
 
 The writer who propounds a chain of reasoning 
 must rely upon the co-operation of his reader. 
 Even when its separate propositions are admitted, 
 a special mental effort is required to bring them 
 into connexion. 
 
 There is a certain class of reader, however, for 
 whom this remark is, in the present context, 
 quite needless. " I understand the argument 
 perfectly," so such a reader may say, " I under- 
 stand its separate propositions : I see the alleged 
 connexion ; and I do not propose to find any 
 special fault with its logic. But nevertheless it 
 leaves me unmoved. To speak frankly, it is a 
 piece of pure scholasticism. Modern thought, 
 with characteristic modesty, is afraid of a priori 
 reasoning. It does not believe that any certainty 
 can be reached by such methods. It will not 
 put its trust in any beliefs except those which are 
 directly suggested in experience, and can be 
 directly verified thereby. It has no taste for 
 excursions into the vast unknown. Moreover 
 the conclusions of the preceding chapter seem to 
 be ultimately irreconcilable with the most settled 
 convictions of the modern man. It is all very 
 82
 
 WORLD AS WORK OF ART 
 
 well to speak of Darwin with respect, and render 
 lip-homage to his discoveries. But the whole 
 chapter, none the less, is essentially incompatible 
 with evolutionary methods of thought. If the 
 doctrine of Natural Selection is true, then some 
 of the most important matters in the world — the 
 origin and development of man, his bodily frame, 
 his mental constitution — have been in effect left 
 to chance, to the issue of a doubtful conflict. 
 This fact seems incompatible with belief in God, 
 or any form of optimistic faith. Again, you will 
 hardly dare to say that Natural Selection has 
 shaped man's body only, and has had no effect 
 on his mind. But if you admit that his moral 
 and intellectual life has been partly the product 
 of evolution, can you then introduce another and 
 wholly independent factor — this supposed ten- 
 dency to moral and intellectual correctness as 
 such ? Where is the line to be drawn between 
 these principles ? Which of our habits of mind 
 are to be traced to Natural Selection, and which 
 to this innate tendency to rationality and cor- 
 rectness ? When once we have admitted the 
 influence of Natural Selection anywhere, we are 
 surely forced by logical necessity to admit it 
 everywhere. Or — to approach the matter from 
 the opposite side — if we once allow teleology * in 
 any shape, why attempt any physical explanation 
 at all ? If we suppose that a conscious Creator 
 designed the world for the fulfilment of His own 
 
 * See chap, v, p. 51. 
 
 83
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 purposes, or if we prefer to conceive of ideals as 
 working in some mysterious way for their own 
 realization, in either case we may well ask what 
 need there is, or what room there is, for Physical 
 Science. If we are going to explain natural 
 events by the ends they fulfil, why explain them 
 also by the causes from which they originate ? 
 In a word, can the physical laws, which are 
 admitted by all, and the teleological laws for 
 which you are contending, be united together in a 
 single consistent system ? Should we not choose 
 definitely between Physical Science and Religion 
 rather than seek to ' make the ^best of both 
 worlds ' by combining the two ? " 
 
 These questions demand an answer. Faith in 
 Physical Science is a common possession of all 
 educated men. In the preceding chapter we have 
 seen reasons for a teleological conception of the 
 Universe — that is, for conceiving the world as a 
 " Kingdom of Ends,"* or, to express the same 
 thought in more modern language, as the " Em- 
 bodiment of an Ideal." Can physical law and 
 teleology, then, be united in a single system ? 
 Of the above questions this is the most funda- 
 mental. 
 
 If we are to judge the teleological conception 
 of the world fairly, we must think ourselves into 
 
 * See chap, v, pp. 52-54. 
 84
 
 WORLD AS WORK OF ART 
 
 the position of those who hold it. A world whose 
 nature is to embody an Ideal must in many 
 respects resemble a work of art. Now it is a 
 characteristic of the nobler works of art that they 
 exhibit prominently the element of regularity. 
 It is not from Bach, or from Beethoven, or from 
 their like, that we get wild rhapsodies, irregular 
 in measure, chaotic in form, beginning in one key, 
 ending in another. Beethoven, even when his 
 music is quasi una fantasia, is never wildly fan- 
 tastic. Well-marked themes recur on a regular 
 plan. His forms may be new ; they may be 
 invented for the occasion ; but they can as 
 readily be reduced to rules, they are in all essen- 
 tials as thoroughly formal, as when he follows the 
 accustomed models.* The greatest artists are 
 those who know that rules, though bad masters, 
 are good servants. If, then, we conceive the 
 world as embodying any ideal which the modern 
 man can recognize as rational, this ideal will 
 certainly express itself by uniformities and repe- 
 titions. Thus, just as a musical composition can 
 be scientifically studied and brought under rules 
 of counterpoint, harmony, and form — a study 
 which can be carried out by those who have no 
 perception of its distinctively artistic character — 
 so the world can be made the object of scientific 
 investigation, its elements can be tabulated, its 
 uniformities recorded, even by those who are 
 entirely blind to its nobler qualities. This is a 
 
 * See especially Op. 27, No. 1. 
 
 85
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 simple remark which hardly lies open to dispute. 
 Yet it contains the answer to the most serious of 
 the objections mentioned above. 
 
 The British sailor — it has been said * — regards 
 Divine Providence as a form of " celestial naval 
 discipline tempered by sentimentality." If so, 
 he recognizes, however inadequately, the two 
 elements which must be present in any system 
 which could win our full admiration. It is cer- 
 tainly rare to find any Christian believer who 
 conceives Providence in a purely sentimental 
 fashion : who conceives that, if the world were 
 the embodiment of the highest conceivable ideal, 
 the laws of Nature must aim at nothing but 
 human happiness. The religious man of the 
 present day recognizes explicitly that happiness, 
 though good, is not the sole good. He feels that 
 physical regularity is an end in itself. The 
 generation which has scaled the mountain for 
 pure pleasure of victory, takes a conscious delight 
 in the resistance of matter, in gravity as a force 
 to be overcome, as men in all ages have taken a 
 less self-conscious delight in cleaving the tree or 
 breaking the clod. We have learnt to rejoice that 
 good is attained through the clash of opposing 
 forces : to admire for its own sake the gradual 
 unfolding which belongs to all growth — first the 
 blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear 
 — to recognize with joy that the world is like a 
 drama, in which every denouement — every untying 
 
 * Naval Occasions, p. 205, 6th impression, No. 22. 
 86
 
 WORLD AS WORK OF ART 
 
 of knots—demands that there shall be knots to 
 be untied. 
 
 After these two remarks we shall solve the 
 more easily the special perplexities set out above. 
 Some of the best results in Nature have been 
 achieved by means of the struggle for existence. 
 But this does not imply that the attainment of 
 these results was left to chance. We have seen 
 that it is really incredible that it is mere lucky 
 chance which produces the colour-schemes of the 
 landscape. Yet each point of colour has its 
 separate history ; and many of the pigments by 
 which the total effect is produced can be shown 
 to be the outcome of the struggle between oppos- 
 ing forces.* The interaction of these opposing 
 forces is in no way inconsistent with the belief 
 that behind them is a law by which the har- 
 moniousness of the whole landscape is necessi- 
 tated. And so it may be with the world at large. 
 
 Thus, secondly, there is nothing to keep back 
 
 * A genuine struggle may be foreordained as regards its 
 conclusion. Indeed on almost every hypothesis a large number, 
 if not all, of the conflicts, whether in human history or in Nature, 
 are such that if we had known all the conditions we could have 
 predicted the issue. A modern Theism will wish to insist on the 
 reality of the struggle. Even in works of art, where the whole 
 is obviously under the control of a single will, the element of 
 struggle is present. When, for example, discords occur which 
 lead the ear to expect a resolution which does not come — when 
 to the disappointment of this expectation is due the very poig- 
 nancy of the artistic effect — there is a real conflict, a real tension 
 between opposing interests. 
 
 87
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 those who believe the world to be the embodiment 
 of an ideal from a systematic study of Natural 
 Science. Many such believers have been con- 
 spicuously successful in this pursuit. But — what 
 is more important — their position is intellectually 
 sound. Even the believer who regards Nature 
 as we know it as but a " part of God's ways " — 
 as created by a personal God, but rather a subor- 
 dinate part of His creation than the whole — may 
 with perfect consistency study its laws ; just as 
 we may study the laws of a watch and predict 
 with some accuracy its future behaviour, even 
 though it is but a small system within a larger 
 one, and even though it may from time to time 
 be interfered with from without. So long as the 
 watchmaker leaves the watch to work on the 
 whole in its own way, and interferes with it 
 rarely, and then only with good reason, we can 
 with a fair degree of certainty draw conclusions 
 from our knowledge of its internal mechanism. 
 The fact is that even some of the crudest con- 
 ceptions of Divine Providence are compatible 
 with physical study. 
 
 Again, we are asked how we can reconcile the 
 influence of evolution on our mental life with any 
 inherent tendency in the mind towards correct 
 thinking. Here, too, the difficulty is not so great 
 as has been imagined. We have, as we have 
 already seen, no justification for systematic 
 thinking, except on the supposition that the mind 
 has a general tendency towards truth ; that is, 
 88
 
 WORLD AS WORK OF ART 
 
 that the result of the effort we call thought leads 
 to correct results more often than not. On any 
 other theory, thinking is a dangerous or useless 
 occupation. But in truth, the evolutionary ex- 
 planation of our mental processes is a theory 
 which cannot be successfully worked out in 
 detail. How is Natural Selection to teach us 
 elementary mathematics ? Is it seriously sug- 
 gested that there is in the mind no tendency to 
 arithmetical correctness at all — that when first in 
 the history of our race the question presented 
 itself as to what was the product of two and two, 
 it was a pure matter of haphazard what the mind 
 should be disposed to answer : that the first men 
 to raise the question might have answered that 
 twice two was " five," or that it was " fifty," or 
 that it was " five hundred " ; and that the answer 
 that it was " four " has become habitual merely 
 because the inconvenience which followed from 
 the other estimates destroyed in the end the 
 stocks which made them. This suggestion, 
 absurd as it is, is the only consistent application 
 of the theory of Natural Selection to the explana- 
 tion of human knowledge. What more in the 
 way of reductio ad absurdum could we require ? 
 That there is in the mind at the least some ten- 
 dency to avoid the more egregious blunders must 
 be admitted by every one who gives a moment's 
 reflection to the subject ; and this by itself is 
 enough to establish the principle that there is a 
 certain tendency towards correctness in human 
 
 89
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 thinking. Whatever difficulty may arise in draw- 
 ing the line between the sphere where this 
 tendency has influence and the province of 
 Natural Selection,* we cannot deny that this 
 tendency exists. This would be true even if it 
 only operated to guard us against the most 
 glaring errors. 
 
 Again, why should an argument be rejected 
 because it resembles those of the Schoolmen ? 
 Congeniality with the temper of a particular age 
 is no test of truth ; nor is a lack of this quality a 
 proof of error. Though references to the " anti- 
 logical spirit of our age " are frequently introduced 
 into controversy, there are few who will seriously 
 defend the scepticism which thej^ imply. Such 
 scepticism is as dangerous to Natural Science as 
 to Religion. Chains of a priori reasoning may 
 not be to our taste ; but this is no excuse for 
 refusing the conclusion when we have once 
 admitted the premises. 
 
 The general position of the question, then, is 
 this. That system of laws, physical and psycho- 
 logical, which the Natural Sciences investigate, 
 and the world which is subject thereto, is regarded 
 by Naturalism as the whole Universe. To Reli- 
 gion, on the other hand, " this present world " 
 seems to be but part of a wider Whole : related 
 
 * Natural Selection may be called in to explain many of our 
 instincts, of which some lead to truth and some to error. The 
 full treatment of the question raised in the text would best be 
 approached by considering the relation of instinct to reason. 
 
 90
 
 WORLD AS WORK OF ART 
 
 to the Universe at large, somewhat as a Com- 
 munity within the State is related to the whole 
 Body Politic, or as a play within a play is related 
 to the drama of which it forms part. The fact 
 that we can tabulate the uniformities of Nature 
 without any reference to this more comprehensive 
 Kingdom of Ends * which Religion offers for our 
 belief, is no proof that this more comprehensive 
 Kingdom is unreal. We may tabulate the con- 
 trapuntal rules which govern an episode in a 
 musical composition without the slightest con- 
 ception of their purposive relation to the whole 
 work ; and yet the more far-seeing critic may 
 perceive that it is only in relation to the ideal 
 which the whole work embodies that the episode 
 and its details can be fully interpreted. Simi- 
 larly the success of a Natural Science which 
 eschews teleology is no proof that Nature does 
 not play its part within a comprehensive teleo- 
 logical system. If Nature is subject to laws we 
 can tabulate them. For this purpose it makes no 
 difference, one way or the other, whether those 
 laws are ultimately due, or not, to an aesthetic 
 ideal which they help to embody, or a Divine 
 Will which they help to realize. 
 
 On the other hand, while natural uniformity is 
 no argument against a teleological theory of the 
 Universe, the discovery of one single teleological 
 law is a complete refutation of Naturalism. The 
 system of Nature, as Naturalism conceives it, 
 
 * See p. 84 of this chapter ; also chap, v, pp. 51, 5li. 
 
 91
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 is homogeneous, and therefore harmonious in 
 character. But this harmony is broken, and the 
 attractiveness of the whole system destroyed, if 
 we admit even one law prescribing an end. On 
 this subject both parties to the dispute will be 
 in agreement ; since to deny all teleology is the 
 main aim of the Naturalistic theory. 
 
 92
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 We see the world, then, as subject to a system 
 of laws of which the greater part appear to be 
 concerned with physical and psychological 
 uniformities only. 
 
 But if this is true of most of the laws of Nature, 
 it is not true of all. It is a law — as we have seen 
 — that thinking leads, on the whole, not merely 
 to psychological uniformity, not merely to similar 
 conclusions in different minds, but to truth. 
 Again, there is a prima facie case* for affirming 
 two other laws which Naturalism rejects : first, 
 a law that the parts of organic bodies shall co- 
 operate to produce and maintain life ; secondly, 
 that material bodies shall co-operate to produce 
 beauty of line and colour. We are not asking 
 here whether life and beauty are due to the design 
 of a Creator. It is enough for the present if we 
 can show" that reason must recognize life and 
 beauty as ends in themselves ; and that it is a 
 law that the particles of Nature co-operate as 
 means by which these ends are brought about. 
 
 But first a word on the term " law " itself. We 
 are told sometimes that a law is nothing but a 
 
 * See chap, iv ; cf. pp. Gl, (;.">. 
 
 93
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 statement of observed facts : that science knows 
 nothing of any " necessity " in physical matters : 
 that the progress of observation has often shown 
 the assumption of universality and necessity 
 to be an error. Men thought it a fixed law 
 that a bell struck by a clapper must sound. 
 There is no such absolute necessity. In a vacuum 
 the bell will be silent. 
 
 The patience, the caution, the devotion to 
 facts, exhibited by the physical student, are 
 virtues worthy of the highest praise. But when 
 he states that his laws are never anything but a 
 statement of observed — that is, of past — facts, he is 
 forgetting the predictions which he himself bases 
 upon them. Build a bridge upon sound mechani- 
 cal principles, and, except in circumstances against 
 which we do not intend to guarantee it, it will 
 certainly stand firm. Keep a healthy plant in 
 the right environment and it must grow. Science 
 here is as confident of the future which has not 
 come within our observation as of the past which 
 has. Thus a law which is a basis for prediction 
 is something more than a statement of past facts. 
 No doubt the laws of Nature have often been 
 wrongly stated. If we find that sometimes the 
 bell when struck will not sound — if we find that 
 under certain conditions oxygen and hydrogen 
 behave in an unaccustomed manner — we must 
 revise our formula. But this revision does not 
 imply that there are in Nature no necessary se- 
 quences, but rather that there are such sequences 
 94
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 though we have not fully grasped their character. 
 If there were in Nature no necessary connexion 
 between one fact and another — if there were 
 merely single facts, but no general laws — then 
 the only reasonable course would be to abandon 
 prediction altogether.* 
 
 We may return now to the special laws — if such 
 there be — which regulate organic life and natural 
 
 * On the subject of " law " in Nature, two opposite errors 
 proceed from two opposite schools of thought. There are those 
 who still argue that law in Nature implies a legislator. One 
 main aim of the present essay is to induce the defenders of Christi- 
 anity to abandon this piece of sophistry. In all such matters we 
 should gain immeasurably by a policy of candour : and we lose, 
 as we deserve to lose, by every kind of intellectual dishonesty. 
 
 But if it is an error to think that law implies a legislator, it 
 is no less an error to suppose that the laws of Nature as we 
 actually employ them in our thinking are mere statements of 
 observed fact. If any one chooses to call a mere statement of 
 fact a law he is at liberty to do so, though this liberty will rarely 
 be exercised. He must be careful, however, not to use this law, 
 which states mere fact and not necessity, as a basis of prediction. 
 He must also distinguish between " law " when used to express 
 the necessity itself as it exists in Nature, and " law " as used to 
 express something in our own minds, our own conception or 
 formulation of this necessity. There are, in the phrase of Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, " unascertained laws " of Nature — laws not yet 
 known. These if not mere figments must obviously have an 
 existence outside our minds : for they are not yet present within 
 them. 
 
 " What is outside our mind," it may be replied, " is not a 
 general necessity, but a number of individual forces.''' But we 
 cannot reasonably argue — as we all do argue — from one individual 
 force to another, except on the tacit assumption that these are 
 bound together by some general necessity : that the forces acting 
 on two given occasions must resemble one another. The Con- 
 ceptualist really misunderstands the presuppositions of the 
 mental processes he is daily employing. Cf. Epilogue, below. 
 
 95
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 beauty. Let us begin with organic life. The 
 fact of the co-operation of the parts of bodies in 
 the maintenance of life is plain ; and at first 
 sight it might seem as if the law were as clear as 
 the fact. In the parts of a growing plant — we 
 might say — there is a tendency to behave in such 
 a way as to promote the continuance of vital 
 processes. Since the plant has no free will, this 
 tendency implies a necessary law. The tendency 
 towards healthy life may be overpowered by cir- 
 cumstances ; by the presence, say, of poisonous 
 matter in the environment. But if the tendency 
 exists at all, this implies the law that when the 
 requisite conditions are fulfilled the healthy 
 development of the plant must follow. If there 
 were no necessary laws of plant life, there would 
 be no such thing as scientific gardening. 
 
 To this argument, however, there is a familiar 
 answer. " The plant has no tendency," it is said, 
 " to health or life as such : it tends merely to 
 behave as its ancestors behaved before it. The 
 plant is subject, therefore, to the law of uni- 
 formity ; but not to any special law concerned 
 with the maintenance of life. If its fixed habits, 
 and the variations introduced in the course of 
 succeeding generations, happen to benefit the 
 plant and its descendants in the particular situa- 
 tion in which they are placed, the race will 
 continue ; if not, it will perish. Thus all that 
 appearance of selection and purposive action which 
 has so charmed the mind of the simple believer, 
 96
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 is in truth the result of chance and habit, the 
 outcome of a blind struggle for existence." 
 
 Ever since the publication of Darwin's Origin 
 of Species — one of the greatest events in the 
 history of human progress — such language is 
 familiar to us all. Nothing is more distinctive of 
 Darwin's own method than the patient accumula- 
 tion of detail by which he showed how much the 
 operation of Natural Selection may accomplish. 
 Yet, after all, the general principle is more impor- 
 tant even than the details ; and in this respect, 
 however much Darwin's conclusions may be 
 modified here and there by minor criticisms, his 
 work must always stand as a permanent achieve- 
 ment of human thought. 
 
 Moreover, for our present purpose, we are 
 concerned mainly, not with special biological 
 problems, but with the general view of the world 
 to which the work of Darwin has given rise. 
 Darwinism has become a sort of popular philo- 
 sophy ; a philosophy, since it has to do, not with 
 special physical questions, but with a theory of 
 the Universe at large ; yet popular rather than 
 scientific, because in expounding it the students 
 of physical science have sometimes left behind 
 the caution and patience which they exhibit in 
 their own sphere. Yet, whatever mistakes may 
 have been made, the influence of such Darwinism 
 on the popular mind has been deservedly great. 
 
 The theory of Natural Selection has opened 
 even to the unscientific man possibilities of which 
 
 G 97
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 he had not hitherto dreamed. It has shown us 
 how, if time enough is allowed for the process, 
 the most complex adaptations of the organs of 
 plants or animals to their circumstances may take 
 place where there is no conscious design ; and 
 also where there is not even an unconscious ten- 
 dency towards adaptation regarded as an end in 
 itself. The general rule of inheritance is that the 
 offspring closely resembles the parent. But this 
 resemblance is compatible, as we know, with the 
 occurrence of small variations in each generation. 
 An accumulation of such small changes all made 
 in the same direction — all tending, say, towards 
 the increase of the size of a particular organ, or 
 towards its better adaptation to a particular 
 purpose — may, in company with other simul- 
 taneous changes produce at the end of a long line 
 of descendants a plant or animal much unlike the 
 original ancestor. The cauliflower, the broccoli, 
 and other garden plants have been developed 
 from the wild cabbage. The bulldog, the New- 
 foundland dog, and the toy -terrier have all a 
 common ancestry. In these cases we see the 
 result of skilful selection by the human breeder. 
 But changes quite as remarkable as those which 
 the breeder deliberately seeks may be accom- 
 plished unconsciously by Nature. For example 
 — to take a hypothetical case which happens to be 
 conveniently simple — the father of many sons 
 may have some sons taller and some sons shorter 
 than himself ; but, on the whole, the sons of tall 
 98
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 parents tend to grow taller than the sons of short 
 ones. If, then, the struggle for existence should 
 be keen, should continue for many generations, 
 and should take place in circumstances in which 
 height gives an advantage, the shorter men will 
 gradually die off ; and in the whole race, fathered 
 by the taller survivors, the average height will 
 tend continually to increase. Since the qualities 
 which are thus developed and maintained are 
 just those qualities which happen to give success 
 in the particular chance circumstances in which an 
 individual or a race is cast, a collateral line of 
 descendants of the same ancestor may be be- 
 coming shorter in one land while their cousins are 
 becoming taller in another. A third line, sub- 
 jected to no severe competition, may have 
 changed backwards and forwards, and the descen- 
 dant at the end of centuries may be of the same 
 height as his ancestor at the beginning ; while 
 a fourth and fifth line may have become extinct 
 altogether, because they tended the one to height 
 where low stature was an advantage, the other 
 to shortness when it would have served them 
 better to be tall. 
 
 If such is, in a general way, the history of the 
 variations by which plants and animals have 
 become suited to their dwelling-places, we can 
 find in these proceedings much evidence of per- 
 sistence and good luck, but little either of intelli- 
 gence, or of the influence of a guiding principle 
 of any sort, whether conscious or not. Nature 
 
 99
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 produces with copious generosity a great variety 
 of types, and those which are favoured by fortune 
 survive the others. Nature makes a great number 
 of bad shots, and it would be strange if she did 
 not sometimes hit the target. Her procedure, 
 indeed, may be justly accused of being blindly 
 conservative, since in many cases she preserves 
 not only the organs which have a useful part to 
 play, but preserves with no less care others which 
 are useless, and sometimes, like the appendix in 
 man, a cause of mischief and danger. 
 
 It is clear that the Darwinian theory, even if it 
 had remained a mere theory — a mere brilliant 
 suggestion as to what was logically possible — 
 would have made havoc of many of the religious 
 arguments of old time. Yet, revolutionary 
 though it has been in its effects, it is still not 
 sufficient to justify every opinion which has at- 
 tempted to take shelter under its name. We have 
 seen how Natural Selection may bring about a 
 gradual ascent towards higher and higher organiza- 
 tion, better and better adaptation to environment. 
 The conception of " evolution " — of " gradual 
 ascent " in general — has been developed in forms 
 which find little support in Natural Selection as 
 Darwin himself conceived it. 
 
 Professor Karl Pearson, for example, has sug- 
 gested that Natural Selection* may operate in the 
 
 * Karl Pearson, Grammar of Science, pp. 422-425. 
 100
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 inorganic world ; though he is careful to point 
 out that such Selection would not be the same 
 thing as the Natural Selection of Darwin. He 
 speaks of a " perfectly gradual and continuous 
 change from inorganic to organic substance." 
 " To those," he says, " who have accustomed 
 themselves to look upon organic substance as 
 essentially differing from inorganic only by com- 
 plexity of chemical and physical structure, the 
 notions of organic and inorganic environment, of 
 the elimination of the unfit, and the destruction 
 of less stable compounds — in short, the notions 
 of biological and physical selection — shade in- 
 sensibly one into the other." Further, he holds 
 as an " unwavering belief " that Natural History 
 is " at the basis of the history of mankind." 
 " History," he argues, " can never become 
 science " until its " facts are seen to fall into 
 sequences which can be briefly resumed in scien- 
 tific formulae. These formulas can hardly be 
 other than those which so effectually describe the 
 relations of organic to organic and of organic 
 to inorganic phenomena in the earlier phases of 
 their development." 
 
 On the basis of such a conception it is possible 
 to state a theory which has a good deal of super- 
 ficial attractiveness ; and in the formation of 
 such theories the genuine man of science, such as 
 Professor Pearson, is soon outstripped by the 
 overhasty eagerness of the popular imagination. 
 If we take as a starting-point particles of matter, 
 
 101
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 governed by no general principles, but driven 
 solely by individual forces, we may then try to 
 show a gradual ascent at easy stages from inor- 
 ganic existence to highly organic life : " from a 
 primitive bacillus to the graceful palm-wood, from 
 a primitive micrococcus to the brain of Newton."* 
 " The separate particles," we shall say, " gather 
 into chemical compounds. The chemical com- 
 pounds join together to form organic bodies. The 
 earliest of these are of the simplest character ; 
 cells which propagate themselves by fission. 
 But this simple form of reproduction is gradually 
 replaced by something more complex. Again, at 
 a certain stage, among other chance variations, 
 there appears in some organic body the new 
 property of sentiency, just as other new pro- 
 perties have appeared before. This property — 
 on the principle of Natural Selection — is preserved 
 because of its utility to its possessors. And so 
 again, when as a special form of sentiency there 
 appears intelligence, this is preserved likewise." 
 
 The effect of such a theory as this is to suggest 
 that Nature is governed by blind forces and not 
 by general principles. Yet the theory does not 
 really succeed in banishing general principles even 
 from the inorganic world. It is a law | that the 
 
 * E. du Bois-Reymond, quoted Riddle of the Universe, chap. xiii. 
 
 f " We shall do well to remember," says Sir Henry Roscoe, 
 " that the Law of Combination in Multiple Proportions, being 
 founded on experimental facts, stands as a fixed bulwark of the 
 science, which must ever remain true ; whereas the Atomic 
 
 102
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 atoms of Hydrogen combining with those of 
 Oxygen in a certain definite proportion produce 
 water. We reason on the assumption that under 
 the conditions with which we are ordinarily 
 concerned * all specimens of Oxygen and Hydro- 
 gen must inevitably proceed in accordance with 
 this principle. If so, then to deny that the prin- 
 ciple " governs " the phenomena is merely to 
 reject a word when we have already accepted its 
 meaning. But this principle is as unlike as 
 possible to a blind force. It is general and not 
 individual, since all examples of Oxygen, Hydro- 
 gen, and Water obey it. Moreover, the law which 
 governs the smallest particle of Oxygen or 
 Hydrogen involves a reference to something 
 beyond the particle itself. In a consciously 
 ordered design the parts have a mutual reference 
 one to another. In the sphere of physics we have 
 seen nothing as yet to suggest conscious purpose ; 
 nothing to suggest that it is " in order that ' 
 they may combine with Oxygen that the particles 
 of Hydrogen exist. But so far as a consciously 
 ordered plan is marked by the mutual references 
 
 Theory, by which we now explain this great law, may possibly 
 in time give place to one more perfectly suited to the explanation 
 of new facts." 
 
 * If the presence of a trace of water, or if a change of tempera- 
 ture, induces the combination of substances which under otherwise 
 similar conditions are practically inert towards one another (see 
 V. H. Veley, Transactions of Chemical Society, 1893), this or 
 any similar discovery merely entails upon us the duty of stating 
 our law with the necessary conditions and qualifications. The 
 case is exactly parallel to that of the bell in the vacuum mentioned 
 at the beginning of this chapter. 
 
 103
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 of part to part, Nature, in this one respect at 
 least, resembles it. For whether we think of the 
 atom as influenced by a tendency within itself, 
 or by a power outside it, in either case the pro- 
 perties of the atom of one gas are such that they 
 cannot even be stated without a reference to 
 another. The most important properties of these 
 gases are essentially relative. Any given atom 
 of Oxygen — if we are to adopt the usual language 
 — is such that in combination with two atoms of 
 Hydrogen it produces water. Thus, even in con- 
 sidering the properties of a single inorganic particle, 
 we find ourselves dealing, not with blind brute 
 forces,* but with a general law of some complexity 
 — a law which involves a reference to something 
 else than the particle immediately concerned, f 
 
 There are those, however, who would admit 
 
 * " We do not know," says Professor Karl Pearson, " why the 
 particles dance in the presence of one another." But we do know 
 that they move in one another's presence in a definite manner, 
 and that all this movement is in accordance with definite for- 
 mulae. However far we push our inquiries, we always find, as 
 an ultimate fact, bodies which, though in a sense they are separate 
 and independent, are yet connected with one another by general 
 laws, i.e. by similar behaviour. Our confidence in the necessity 
 of these laws — which are the bases of our physical predictions — is 
 not consistent with the belief that, if we knew all, we should 
 get behind general principles and find ourselves reduced to a 
 number of separate and individual forces, the force which drives 
 each particle at each moment being ultimately and essentially 
 separate. Although, as Professor Pearson rightly says, we cannot 
 reach ultimate explanations, we do arrive at general principles ; 
 we do not end with separate and particular facts. 
 
 f In some cases physical laws involve complexity of an elaborate 
 
 104
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 that Nature is governed by general laws, but 
 would deny that there are any specific principles, 
 such as Vitalism asserts, governing the behaviour 
 of the living organism. May not life be produced 
 by the co-operation of principles which in them- 
 selves are purely mechanical ? 
 
 Professor Pearson, in the book already quoted, 
 has described with great lucidity three common 
 views on this subject. If we assume that there 
 was a period when life as we know it could 
 not exist on the earth, in consequence of certain 
 conditions of fluidity and temperature, we may 
 conceive life as introduced by special creation ; 
 or we may conceive it as based upon an organic 
 corpuscle, which in suitable environment is im- 
 mortal — on this theory we must suppose that in 
 the earlier period of the earth's history there 
 
 kind — a remarkable union of generality with diversity — and 
 involve also a reference to human sensations. If we take any 
 regularly vibrating body and so treat it as to double the speed 
 of the vibrations, we raise the original note by an octave. This 
 is true whatever the original note may be. But the peculiar 
 character of this musical interval is a fact of consciousness. Only 
 the musical ear can detect it, and except to the musical ear it is 
 unmeaning. Yet apart from this fact of consciousness the law 
 discovered by the physical science of acoustics has no meaning. 
 
 In every single case where a movement in nerve or brain pro- 
 duces sensation, and this according to a fixed law, the principle 
 which connects the sensation with the movement is something 
 obviously different from any blind force. The very essence of 
 the principle is to establish generally a connexion between a 
 generic type of movement and a generic type of consciousness. 
 Such a principle cannot be stated apart from general ideas. But 
 further, it is in itself nothing apart from such ideas. See Epilogue. 
 A tendency towards the fulfilment of a general idea can neither 
 be, nor be defined, apart from the idea which is to be fulfilled. 
 
 105
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 existed forms of life capable of withstanding an 
 environment which no existing form of life can 
 endure — or, thirdly, we may conceive life as 
 generated from a special union of inorganic 
 corpuscles. 
 
 The Professor prefers the third of these views, 
 and states the reason for his preference with much 
 force. " The failure," he says, " to produce the 
 spontaneous generation of life in a laboratory has 
 thrown some discredit on the hypothesis " : but 
 — as he very justly remarks — " we ought to 
 wonder that any one should have hoped for an ex- 
 perimental demonstration of such a hypothesis 
 rather than be surprised at its absence." 
 
 The question, however, which Professor Pearson 
 is chiefly concerned to ask is whether the laws of 
 organic life can be deduced from the physical 
 laws of motion which belong to inorganic matter. 
 Can we describe life and its processes in terms of 
 mechanism ? Can we deduce from mechanical 
 laws the characteristic behaviour of organic 
 bodies ? * 
 
 Now, granted that living bodies are formed of 
 the same materials as inorganic compounds, and 
 granted that life is a function composed of chemi- 
 cal and physical processes, it is clear that, if mere 
 description is all that we want, life might be quite 
 fully described in terms of physics and chemistry. 
 If we know all the movements of matter which 
 take place in a plant, we know its whole history ; 
 
 * Grammar of Science, p. 407, etc. 
 106
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 just as we might know the whole history of an 
 army during a battle by knowing all the move- 
 ments of the separate individuals of which the 
 army was composed. Yet if we had no concep- 
 tion of the military scheme which these move- 
 ments carried out, our knowledge, though accurate, 
 would be unintelligent. Behind the movements 
 of the individual soldiers lies a general principle 
 present in the mind of their commander by which 
 these movements are co-ordinated. Is there 
 then any similar principle of co-ordination- 
 conscious or unconscious — in the case of a plant ? 
 any tendency to realize its own specific type of 
 life, to " take the physical forces into its service ' 
 for this end ? This is the question which chiefly 
 concerns us in the present context. 
 
 That co-ordination of movements — co-opera- 
 tion towards a common purpose — may take place 
 where there is no active principle of co-ordination 
 of any sort, conscious or unconscious, is quite 
 clear. Certain battles in history have been known 
 as soldiers' battles. In these cases for the most 
 part the military conditions have been simple 
 and uniform. Yet it is quite conceivable that a 
 case might arise, at any rate in military opera- 
 tions on a small scale, where an experienced 
 observer might know that the soldiers were a 
 mere savage horde, governed by pure ferocity, 
 without the design or even the instinct of co- 
 operation, and yet might perceive that by chance 
 their movements were exactly those which were 
 
 107
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 best fitted to carry out a subtle scheme of co- 
 operative attack, that by mere chance they were 
 arranging the fight just as a skilful general would 
 have ordered it. But such happy accidents, 
 though possible, are rare. Co-ordination, where 
 there is no co-ordinating principle, is accident 
 pure and simple. Is the co-operation of the 
 organs of plants a mere accident of this kind ? 
 If we watched a long series of military operations 
 all tending to one definite military end, it would 
 not occur to us that these operations could be 
 sufficiently explained by the disconnected im- 
 pulses of the individual combatants. Is it not 
 equally unreasonable to suppose that the complex 
 co-operations of organic life are fully accounted 
 for by the physical tendencies, and chemical 
 affinities, of inorganic particles ? If these par- 
 ticles have no tendency towards organic co- 
 operation as such — just as a civilian crowd (of 
 which each individual is intent on his own pur- 
 poses) has no tendency towards military co- 
 operation — organic co-operation, if it occurs, will 
 be due either to accident or to some external 
 influence. It is no more likely that we should 
 meet with a long succession of lucky accidents in 
 botany than in warfare. Thus, in the case of the 
 plant, we seem driven to choose between the 
 conception of an external Creator or Artificer on 
 the one hand, and on the other of the influence of 
 an unconscious inward principle of life, co-ordinat- 
 ing the various processes of which the history of 
 108
 
 ORGANIC LIFE 
 
 the plant consists. If these processes were co- 
 ordinated without the influence of any central 
 co-ordinating principle whatever, this would be as 
 odd a coincidence as the accidental execution of a 
 complex military movement by a horde of un- 
 trained savages. 
 
 The argument of this chapter will become 
 plainer if we think of one or two familiar facts. 
 Heredity, for example, is no case of blind inertia : 
 it is not a mere continuance of things as they 
 were ; it is rather a reproduction. Under certain 
 conditions there occurs, not an exact repetition 
 of the body and mind of the parent, but another 
 embodiment of the same type. Apart from the 
 idea of this type, the most general law of heredity 
 cannot be stated ; for the law is simply that, 
 under favourable conditions, another specimen of 
 the type will be produced. Similarly when Dar- 
 win relies upon the principle of the reappearance 
 in the offspring of some peculiarity at a period 
 corresponding to that in which it appeared in the 
 parent, he is relying upon a rule which involves 
 in its very meaning the notion of life and growth.* 
 Suppose, then, that the Chemist had success- 
 fully achieved the production of a living body. 
 There is another requisite to success besides the 
 Chemist's skill. He must rely on the tendency of 
 the various elements he has brought together to 
 
 * Origin of Species, chaps, i, iv. 
 
 109
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 co-operate in a particular way when once they are 
 duly placed side by side ; and this particular kind 
 of co-operation is just what we mean by life.* 
 
 * Call the elements which the Chemist puts together, to make 
 his living creature, A, B, C, D, etc. He presupposes that the 
 tendency of A, when united with the rest, is towards the pro- 
 duction of life of a specific character. 
 
 110
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 BEAUTY OF LINE AND COLOUR 
 
 The question which is our subject throughout 
 this volume may be stated in a single sentence. 
 Are the laws which govern Nature concerned with 
 its mechanical aspect only ; or do they deal with 
 " goodness," " beauty," " life," " knowledge "— 
 that is, with what we sometimes call the " higher " 
 aspects of Nature ? 
 
 We have just seen that there is in certain con- 
 glomerations of atoms a tendency towards that 
 kind of co-operative behaviour which we call life. 
 But if there exists in Nature a tendency towards 
 the production and maintenance of life, is there 
 not also a tendency towards the production and 
 maintenance of beauty ? To produce a good 
 colour-scheme is not easy, as every one knows 
 who has tried to do it. Yet Nature surmounts 
 this difficulty daily. The colour-schemes of 
 Nature are not all of equal beauty. But even 
 the worst are good, and stand in strong contrast, 
 as objects of study and imitation, with some of 
 the products of human manufacture and art. 
 Each year the Royal Academy, in spite of the 
 exercise of much selective skill, exhibits many 
 schemes of colour which are worse than any 
 
 111
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 which a critical observer can find in Nature in 
 a lifetime. 
 
 Again, not only is natural beauty ;felt to possess 
 a distinctive character, similar to the character 
 which distinguishes one style of art from another ; 
 but further, there is one characteristic which it 
 shares with the very noblest schools of music, 
 painting, architecture, and poetry, and with these 
 only. Nature, like the best works of art — like 
 the work of iEschylus, of Shakespeare, of Titian, 
 of Bach — satisfies, not the keenest of our tastes, 
 but the most enduring. The contemplation of 
 Nature, therefore, whether in her brighter or 
 more sombre aspects, brings to the soul a sense of 
 refreshment and rest which the majority of works 
 of art are unable to afford us. The Greeks de- 
 scribed the baser types of art by a word which 
 literally translated means " burdensome." The 
 burdensomeness of bad art brings out in clear 
 relief the restfulness which is the mark of the 
 greater masters and of Nature. This character- 
 istic of natural scenery must be plain to every one 
 who gives his mind to the subject, unless he is 
 unusually deficient in artistic capacity or ex- 
 perience. 
 
 There are those whose suspicions are readily 
 aroused by anything that savours of that cant of 
 art which displeased Sterne more than the cant of 
 religion. Yet even they must admit that Nature 
 produces many beautiful scenes and beautiful 
 objects — vegetation graceful in line as well as 
 112
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 rich in colour, rocks at once delicate in grain and 
 majestic in rugged strength, expanses of green 
 plain and heaving wave, the music of the waters 
 and the woods — and that these things of beauty 
 are too numerous and too frequent to be the work 
 of pure chance. 
 
 What, then, is. the answer of Naturalism to 
 this obvious argument ? It is an answer capable 
 of effective statement. " Our sense of natural 
 beauty," it is declared, " is in essence an illusion. 
 There is no absolute standard of beauty. We 
 have no right, therefore, to speak of things in 
 Nature as really beautiful. Beauty is not a 
 quality of things themselves. It exists only in 
 the mind that perceives them. We call those 
 things beautiful which we perceive with pleasure. 
 The human organs have adapted themselves in 
 the course of ages to the objects which surround 
 them. Our eyes, whether by Natural Selection 
 or by the effect of hereditary habit, have become 
 adapted to perceiving with pleasure the green 
 hues of the trees and grass. And so we find 
 nothing uncongenial which has become familiar 
 to our race. Hence, the charm and the satisfac- 
 tion which we find in all natural scenes and 
 objects." 
 
 There are many facts which may seem at first 
 sight to support this utilitarian theory. As, on 
 the one hand, the green which we call beautiful 
 gives the eye rest, so, on the other hand, it has 
 
 H 113
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 been noticed that milliners feel pain in the eye, 
 and an unusual sense of fatigue, when they are 
 engaged for a long time in stitching together 
 ribbons of discordant colour. 
 
 Yet it is easy to collect facts on the other side. 
 Few things in Nature give the eyes more fatigue 
 and pain than a near view of snow in bright sun- 
 shine. Yet it never occurs to us to doubt that 
 sunlit snow is beautiful. There are many who get 
 a keen aesthetic enjoyment from listening to the 
 discharge of artillery ; although the explosion 
 has often produced deafness. Indeed, the theory 
 that the sights and sounds which we call beautiful 
 are simply those which produce health in the 
 organs of perception, and an accompanying sen- 
 sation of pleasure, is contradicted by facts at 
 every turn. Beauty, pleasure, and health are 
 far from coinciding in the manner which the 
 theory presupposes. 
 
 Again, if we wish to see how hard it is to build 
 up a general theory of aesthetics on an evolu- 
 tionary basis, we have only to turn to the case of 
 music. Here we find uniformities which Natural 
 Selection, and the effect of inherited habit, are 
 equally powerless to explain. There are many of 
 our tastes, no doubt, upon which Natural Selec- 
 tion may have great effect. An animal whose 
 body is suited to a warm environment is benefited 
 if this warm environment is also congenial to his 
 inclinations. Such inclinations conduce to his 
 health and strength, and therefore increase his 
 114
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 chance of long life and plentiful offspring. If he 
 has unwholesome tastes, if he prefers a hotter or 
 colder atmosphere to that in which he thrives 
 best, these tastes will hamper him in the struggle 
 for existence. But Natural Selection preserves 
 those tastes only which are profitable in a utili- 
 tarian sense. From the utilitarian point of view 
 many of our strongest musical tastes are entirely 
 useless. 
 
 The fact which here confronts us is a certain 
 uniformity of aesthetic capacity. There are cer- 
 tain melodies — Mozart's " Dalla sua Pace," the 
 Toreador Song in Carmen — which give pleasure 
 to every one who has any ear for music at all. 
 There are other cases where our tastes are equally 
 uniform if only we have first gone through a pre- 
 liminary training. The forty-eight Preludes and 
 Fugues of Bach, or the later Pianoforte Sonatas of 
 Beethoven, are not attractive to every one at first 
 hearing ; but they seldom fail to reveal their 
 charm to those who study them. Moreover, the 
 charm of all these works is individual and dis- 
 tinctive. We like "Dalla sua Pace," not for the 
 points which it has in common with other music, 
 but chiefly for that very arrangement of sounds 
 which is peculiar to itself. And the fact that 
 when these melodies were given to the world they 
 were received with a general chorus of praise, 
 prove that there lay ready in the human mind a 
 latent capacity to find pleasure in them. 
 
 But how could these uniform tastes, or capa- 
 
 115
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 cities for taste, be produced by Natural Selection ? 
 " A grain in the balance," says Darwin,* " may 
 determine which individual shall live and which 
 shall die — which variety or species shall increase 
 in number, and which shall decrease or become 
 extinct." But, in the days before Mozart lived, 
 the latent capacity to enjoy his melodies can 
 never have attained to the weight even of a grain 
 in the balance. It can never have been a factor 
 making for success in the struggle for existence. 
 We must look, then, to some other principle than 
 Natural Selection to explain w r hat is an undoubted 
 fact, this element of uniformity in musical taste. 
 Again, since that which we specially admire in 
 these musical compositions is that element in 
 them which is distinctive and new, it is clear that 
 our admiration cannot be explained on any 
 theory of hereditary habituation. 
 
 But the evolutionary explanation, perhaps, 
 may be more successful in explaining our enjoy- 
 ment of the lines and colours of the landscape. 
 The reader is probably familiar with the im- 
 pressive argument on this subject in the Origin 
 of Species.^ Darwin held what he called the 
 utilitarian doctrine of beauty in Nature. On the 
 other hand, he condemned the doctrine that 
 " many structures had been created for the sake 
 
 * Origin of Species, chap. xv. 
 
 ■f Chap, vi, under the heading" " Utilitarian Doctrine, how far 
 True ? " 
 
 116
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 of beauty " — maintained by some of his con- 
 temporaries — as " utterly fatal to his theory." 
 " With respect to the belief," he says, " that 
 organic beings have been created beautiful for the 
 delight of man, I may first remark that the sense 
 of beauty obviously depends on the nature of the 
 mind, irrespective of any real quality in the 
 admired object ; and that the idea of what is 
 beautiful is not innate or unalterable. We see 
 this, for instance, in the men of different races 
 admiring an entirely different standard of beauty 
 in their women. If beautiful objects had been 
 created solely for man's gratification, it ought to 
 be shown that before man appeared there was 
 less beauty on the face of the earth than since he 
 came on the stage. Were the beautiful volute 
 and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the 
 gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary 
 Period, created that man might ages afterwards 
 admire them in his cabinet ? Few objects are 
 more beautiful than the minute siliceous cases of 
 the diatomacese ; were these created that they 
 might be examined and admired under the higher 
 powers of the microscope ? The beauty in this 
 latter case, and in many others, is apparently 
 wholly due to symmetry of growth. Flowers 
 rank amongst the most beautiful productions of 
 Nature ; but they have been rendered conspicuous 
 in contrast with the green leaves, and in conse- 
 quence at the same time beautiful, so that they 
 may be easily observed by insects. I have come 
 
 117
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 to this conclusion from finding it an invariable 
 rule that when a flower is fertilized bv the wind 
 it never has a gaily coloured corolla. Several 
 plants habitually produce two kinds of flowers ; 
 one kind open and coloured so as to attract 
 insects ; the other closed, not coloured, destitute 
 of nectar, and never visited by insects. Hence 
 we may conclude that, if insects had not been 
 developed on the face of the earth, our plants 
 would not have been decked with beautiful 
 flowers, but would have produced only such poor 
 flowers as we see on our fir, oak, nut, and ash 
 trees, on grasses, spinach, docks, and nettles, 
 which are all fertilized through the agency of the 
 wind. A similar line of argument holds good 
 with fruits ; that a ripe strawberry or cherry is as 
 pleasing to the eye as to the palate — -that the 
 gaily coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree and 
 the scarlet berries of the holly are beautiful ob- 
 jects — will be admitted by every one. But this 
 beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and 
 beasts, in order that the fruit may be devoured 
 and the manured seeds disseminated. I infer 
 that this is the case from having as yet found no 
 exception to the rule that seeds are always thus 
 disseminated when embedded within a fruit of any 
 kind (that is, within a fleshy or pulpy envelope), 
 if it be coloured of any brilliant tint, or rendered 
 conspicuous by being white or black. 
 
 " On the other hand, I willingly admit that 
 a great number of male animals, as all our 
 118
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 most gorgeous birds, some fishes, reptiles, and 
 mammals, and a host of magnificently coloured 
 butterflies, have been rendered beautiful for 
 beauty's sake ; but this has been effected through 
 sexual selection — that is, by the more beautiful 
 males having been continually preferred by the 
 females — and not for the delight of man. So it is 
 with the music of birds. We may infer from all 
 this that a nearly similar taste for beautiful 
 colours and for musical sounds runs through a 
 large part of the animal kingdom. When the 
 female is as beautifully coloured as the male, 
 which is not rarely the case with birds and butter- 
 flies, the cause apparently lies in the colours 
 acquired through sexual selection having been 
 transmitted to both sexes, instead of to the 
 males alone. How the sense of beauty in its 
 simplest form — that is, the reception of a peculiar 
 kind of pleasure from certain colours, forms, and 
 sounds — was first developed in the mind of man 
 and of the lower animals, is a very obscure sub- 
 ject. The same sort of difficulty is presented if 
 we inquire how it is that certain flavours and 
 odours give pleasure, and others displeasure. 
 Habit in all these cases appears to have come to a 
 certain extent into play ; but there must be some 
 fundamental cause in the constitution of the 
 nervous system in each species." 
 
 Thus he concludes * that " we can to a certain 
 extent understand how it is that there is so much 
 
 * Chap, xv, " Recapitulation." 
 
 119
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 beauty throughout Nature ; for this may be 
 largely attributed to the agency of selection. 
 That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not 
 universal, must be admitted by every one who 
 will look at some venomous snakes, at some fishes, 
 and at certain hideous bats with a distorted 
 resemblance to the human face. Sexual selection 
 has given the most brilliant colours, elegant 
 patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and 
 sometimes to both sexes, of many birds, butter- 
 flies, and other animals. With birds it has often 
 rendered the voice of the male musical to the 
 female as well as to our ears. Flowers and fruit 
 have been rendered conspicuous by brilliant 
 colours in contrast with the green foliage, in order 
 that the flowers may be easily seen, visited, and 
 fertilized by insects, and the seeds disseminated by 
 birds. How it comes that certain colours, sounds, 
 and forms should give pleasure to man and the 
 lower animals — that is, how the sense of beauty in 
 its simplest form was first acquired — we do not 
 know any more than how certain odours and 
 flavours were first rendered agreeable." 
 
 These passages, though it is right to quote 
 them in full, are not in every part relevant to our 
 present question. To say that beauty exists for 
 its own sake is not the same thing as to say that 
 it exists solely for the delight of man. These two 
 statements are not identical, but opposite.* But 
 
 * To hold that the things of beauty exist solely for our delight 
 120
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 even if we ignore this confusion, it would still be 
 most unreasonable to argue that if beautiful 
 objects had been created solely for man's delight, 
 there would have been less beauty on the earth 
 before man appeared than afterwards. What 
 could be more inartistic than a world which thus 
 related its beauty to the spectator ? Such a 
 jerry-built Universe would deserve comparison 
 with the monument which roused the just wrath 
 of Mr. Ruskin, the portrait carved with minute 
 care on the side which lies outwards, but left 
 deliberately untouched, face and all, on the side 
 near the wall. If we conceive of a good God 
 
 is to find their value in something external to themselves — the 
 very opposite of the assertion that each such object is its own 
 end. There are no doubt many men who will at once translate 
 this latter assertion into religious language. They will conceive 
 the beautiful object, which is not seen by man, as existing for 
 the enjoyment of God. When Darwin says that this supposed 
 delight of the Creator is " beyond the scope of scientific dis- 
 cussion," this is really a question-begging phrase. Suppose that 
 we find things of beauty which do not gratify man nor animals 
 — e.g. the shells of the Eocene period. Suppose that their beauty 
 is too constant and too elaborate to be purely accidental. Then 
 there is nothing intrinsically unreasonable — at least for those who 
 do not understand the notion of beauty as an end in itself — in 
 framing the hypothesis of a Creator Who makes them for His own 
 delight. If there are sufficient facts to call for a hypothesis, it 
 is not always a valid objection that the hypothesis cannot be 
 experimentally verified. A more important point is that the 
 notion of an intrinsic beauty can be made perfectly intelligible. 
 There is a sublimity in Mr. Russell's conception of the world as 
 a tragedy in which " blind matter moves on its relentless way," 
 and at length overwhelms us all " beneath the debris of a universe 
 in ruins." If we feel the sublimity of this conception at all, we 
 shall feel that the tragedy will be sublime to its very end, although 
 ex hypothesi the end will have no spectator. 
 
 121
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 whose intention it was to endow mankind with 
 the scientific faculty by which men should at 
 length know the past history of their planet, we 
 shall conceive Him as desiring that the history 
 thus unrolled before them should be a worthy 
 object of contemplation ; just as, if we conceive 
 Him as an artist, we shall think of Him as delight- 
 ing in His work. 
 
 But such questions are here irrelevant. We are 
 not now concerned with speculations as to the 
 persons, human or divine, for whose sake the 
 beauty of the world was designed. We are con- 
 cerned solely with the question whether it is a 
 part of the world's order that Nature shall con- 
 form to aesthetic principles as such ; or whether, 
 on the other hand, the alleged beauty of natural 
 objects is an accidental or illusive appearance. It 
 is sometimes said that, when we call things 
 beautiful, we mean no more than that they please 
 us. But obviously this is not our meaning. 
 Even in common speech we all allow that, if our 
 taste is bad, we may be pleased with what is 
 not really beautiful. The real question, then, 
 is, first, whether the distinction between good 
 and bad taste is a sound one ; secondly, whether, 
 when Nature seems to conform itself to right 
 aesthetic principles, this is a mere accident. 
 
 It is to these issues that the arguments quoted 
 from Darwin are in the main directed. He men- 
 tions the different standards by which different 
 races judge the beauty of their women ; and 
 122
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 implies that if there were real beauty, and a fixed 
 standard of truth on that subject, these differences 
 would not exist. Such differences of liking, 
 however, do not even prove any real difference of 
 view. I may be more sensitive to the charm of 
 Rubens than to that of Fra Angelico ; and 
 another man may have the opposite preference. 
 Yet we may agree that both are great painters, 
 and may even agree entirely as to the distinctive 
 merits of each. Similarly true beauty in a Negress 
 is not to be looked for in her approximation to the 
 type of the beautiful European, but in a charac- 
 teristic beauty of her own which only the minority 
 of Europeans can justly appreciate. There is no 
 contradiction in praising one woman for a fair 
 skin, and admitting at the same time that some 
 darker types have a very genuine loveliness. 
 
 But even where our tastes come into direct 
 collision, this conflict does not prove that there is 
 no right and wrong in the matter. Our taste may 
 be plainly false. If a man avowed that he pre- 
 ferred Martin Tupper to Shakespeare, he would 
 deserve high praise for his candour ; but few 
 would defend his judgment. 
 
 Again, Darwin alleges that beauty in many cases 
 is " wholly due to symmetry of growth." Here 
 his argument is that, since symmetry is useful in 
 the struggle for existence, the beauty which we 
 admire is but the accidental result of an efficiency 
 which, in itself, has purely utilitarian value. But 
 
 123
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 beauty is something more than symmetry. It is 
 not in every case that symmetry is beautiful. The 
 symmetry of a steam-engine is more perfect than 
 that of a flower. If beauty were ever wholly due 
 to symmetry alone, the production of beautiful 
 designs would require no equipment beyond the 
 possession of a pencil and a pair of compasses. 
 
 It is essentially the same argument which under- 
 lies Darwin's reference to the colours of fruit and 
 flowers. " When a flower is fertilized," not by 
 insects, but " by the wind, it never has a gaily 
 coloured corolla." To many minds this fact has 
 seemed to prove that all beauty in Nature exists 
 for a purely utilitarian purpose. But further 
 reflection will show how halting these Darwinian 
 explanations of beauty really are. Natural Selec- 
 tion may no doubt preserve brilliant and con- 
 spicuous colours ; but the brilliancy and con- 
 spicuousness is only one part of the fact to be 
 explained. Not all brilliant colours are beauti- 
 ful : nor are all arrangements of brilliant colours 
 harmonious. Yet in Nature the brilliant colours 
 of flowers are not merely in contrast, but in har- 
 monious contrast, with their background of leaves. 
 Again, we find a similarly harmonious relation 
 between the parts of some of those humbler plants 
 which are fertilized by the agency of the wind,* 
 and therefore on Darwin's own admission lie 
 
 * A good example is the purple stalk and green leaf of the 
 common stinging-nettle. 
 
 124
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 outside the range of this particular method of 
 explanation. Again, the colouring of birds and 
 butterflies is not merely bright and gaudy. It 
 is the delicacy, and not the mere brilliancy, of the 
 colour-schemes which birds and butterflies exhibit 
 which gives them their aesthetic value. We may 
 infer with Darwin, so far as the simpler elements 
 of aesthetic taste are concerned, that " a nearly 
 similar taste for beautiful colours and musical 
 sounds runs through a large part of the animal 
 kingdom " : but it is hardly reasonable to assume 
 that a nicety of taste which is rare even now in the 
 most highly civilized races of mankind is common 
 among female birds. Yet only on this extreme 
 assumption can we account by sexual selection 
 for the delicate harmony, as distinct from the 
 mere individual gorgeousness, of the colours in 
 the plumage of their males. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the most significant of all 
 the Darwinian passages quoted above, is the asser- 
 tion that " beauty according to our sense of it is 
 not universal," an assertion fortified by a reference 
 to certain animals of peculiar hideousness. This 
 remark contains a whole theory in a nutshell. If 
 we assume with Darwin that the beauty of an 
 object means merely its capacity to produce 
 pleasant sensations through the agency of our 
 nervous system, it will not seem surprising even 
 on the ordinary laws of chances that a certain 
 number of natural objects should possess this 
 
 125
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 power. We shall then argue further that in many 
 of the most remarkable cases the attractiveness 
 of these objects is fully explained by Natural or 
 Sexual Selection. If man and the insects are 
 derived from the same original stock,* there is 
 good reason why both should possess the same 
 capacity to receive pleasure from colours, and 
 good reason also why the very colours which the 
 flowers adopt because they attract insects to 
 visit them, should produce pleasant stimulation 
 in our senses likewise. And since, while some 
 things in Nature, such as roses, are extremely 
 pleasing, while other things, such as bats and 
 venomous snakes, are extremely hideous, and the 
 rest occupy an intermediate station between great 
 ugliness and great beauty, this — it may be said — 
 is exactly the state of affairs which the laws of 
 probability would lead us to expect. 
 
 It is likely that every one who is ordinarily 
 sensitive to natural beauty will be dissatisfied 
 with this theory of its accidental origin so soon 
 as he deliberately confronts it with some of the 
 schemes of colour in certain flowering plants. 
 Others will as readily feel that Darwin has not 
 fully perceived the aesthetic value of the objects 
 which he condemns as hideous. The tragedy of 
 Macbeth would be the poorer for the omission 
 of the three witches and the hideous instruments 
 of their unlawful traffic. The Divina Commedia 
 
 * Origin of Species, chap, xv, par. beginning " Analogy would 
 lead me." 
 
 126
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 would lose much by the omission of the terrible 
 passage describing the tortures of Mahomet.* So 
 the world would be impoverished as a work of 
 art, not enriched, if it were robbed of all those 
 things which in themselves are ugly and offensive. 
 There is more beauty in the world as seen by 
 Shakespeare, where the ugly and the beautiful 
 are combined, than in the pictures in which Fra 
 Angelico with all the vividness of genius paints 
 the beauty of life alone, and altogether omits 
 what is ugly. Few will deny that the former is 
 really a worthier object of admiration. 
 
 But a stronger argument against the utilitarian 
 theory of beauty is the universal agreement of 
 Nature with certain aesthetic laws. Granted that 
 the objects of highest beauty are balanced, as 
 Darwin suggests, by other objects of extreme 
 ugliness, we still have to account for what has been 
 already mentioned above : for our impression of 
 the general beauty of Nature as a whole ; for the 
 fact that its colour-schemes at the worst never 
 fall below a certain level of beauty f ; that there 
 are certain laws of colour-harmony which they 
 never violate J ; that Nature is felt to possess an 
 aesthetic unity of character similar to that which 
 binds together the work of a single school or 
 
 * Inferno, canto xxviii, 25. 
 
 f Contrast with Nature certain cheap coloured prints. 
 
 % Though the laws of harmony in music have the advantage 
 in being able to be put into words, the painter will not admit 
 for a moment that his judgment is any more uncertain than that 
 of the musician. 
 
 127
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 individual master; and, lastly, that the contem- 
 plation of Nature both in its calm and in its 
 agitation produces a sense of restfulness such as 
 is produced in human work by the works of the 
 greatest masters only. 
 
 These are truths which, though they are not much 
 present to the common consciousness of mankind, 
 can be made clear to almost every modern man of 
 good education, if we choose the right examples. 
 Show him the worst sketch from Nature that you 
 can find ; show him trees and cattle represented 
 through the medium of gaudily coloured wool- 
 work ; and he will understand why you say that 
 these pictures are out of harmony with the spirit 
 of Nature. Show him, if you will, works good 
 of their own kind, which interpret Nature too 
 luxuriously or too severely. If the doubter is 
 still unconvinced, show him where the landscape 
 is interrupted by factory chimneys and slate- 
 roofed cottages. Every one must feel that the 
 factory chimney often introduces into the land- 
 scape a grossly inharmonious element ; and that 
 Nature itself never violates the laws of colour- 
 harmony in so gross a manner. It is just its 
 obedience to certain aesthetic laws which gives 
 Nature its distinctive character. These laws are 
 plain enough to our emotional consciousness 
 even if we cannot state them in words. 
 
 It is this widespread conformity of Nature 
 to aesthetic principle which is the insuperable 
 difficulty for evolutionary theories : as we shall 
 128
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 see if we briefly review the course of the 
 discussion. 
 
 Darwinism seeks to explain the beauty of 
 Nature without admitting that it is a law that 
 Nature shall conform itself to aesthetic principles. 
 
 Darwin himself shows that many beautiful 
 objects have a utilitarian value. Symmetry is 
 useful as well as beautiful ; so are the colours of 
 flowers and male animals. But we have seen 
 that there are many facts which these explana- 
 tions cannot touch. There is much in Nature 
 that is beautiful but not symmetrical. Some- 
 times, indeed, it is just in its departure from 
 strict symmetry that the beauty of an object lies. 
 Again, there are parts of Nature where heredity 
 never comes into play ; especially that wide field 
 which lies outside both of the animal and the 
 vegetable kingdoms. 
 
 Here, then, Darwinism must adopt another 
 form. It turns its attention from natural objects 
 to human taste. It seeks to explain how, by 
 means either of Natural Selection or of Hereditary 
 Habituation, our taste becomes adapted to what 
 Nature offers. 
 
 But Natural Selection is manifestly insufficient 
 for this purpose.* An eye which could not look 
 
 * It is worth while to point out that the problem is to explain 
 our taste — why we like and dislike certain sensations. If pain 
 is annexed to certain deleterious physical processes, this fact 
 may conserve the species by leading the individual to avoid 
 those processes, e.g. a species is the more likely to thrive if an 
 
 I 129
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 at surrounding objects without disgust and pain 
 would be an obvious disadvantage to its possessor. 
 An eagerness to look at colours which harm the 
 visual organs would, of course, be physically 
 deleterious. But the mere lack of capacity to 
 find pleasure in the delicate colour-schemes of 
 the landscape is a different matter. What harm 
 could this purely negative quality do to any one 
 in the struggle for existence ? There is no reason 
 why Natural Selection should destroy in us even 
 every taste which rebels against natural colour 
 or form. There is still less reason why it should 
 produce those positive tastes, in harmony with 
 Nature, which we actually possess. 
 
 Take a plain little plant like the narrow-leaved 
 plantain. If we look into it minutely we shall find 
 that it is far from being devoid of gracefulness. 
 Stalk and head, especially at the time of flower- 
 ing, present a humble yet harmonious scheme of 
 colours. Yet, outside the ranks of the botanists 
 and the painters, probably not one man in a 
 thousand has ever noticed this colour-scheme at 
 all. If, then, we or our ancestors had been quite 
 
 unpleasant sensation is annexed to the act of running thorns 
 into one's flesh. But here Natural Selection is merely called in 
 to explain why a particular sensation is annexed to a particular 
 physical process. It does not so readily explain why we dislike 
 that sensation. Call the physical fact — the nervous or cerebral 
 process — A : call the accompanying sensation B : call our dislike 
 for the sensation C. Are we trying by Natural Selection to 
 explain the connexion between A and B, or the connexion 
 between B and C ? The latter stage alone could throw light 
 on our taste for certain colours, sounds, smells, and flavours. 
 
 130
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 incapable of perceiving the gracefulness of this 
 little plant, or even if we had positively disliked 
 it, there is not the slightest likelihood that this 
 distaste would, at any stage of our evolution, 
 have done us any harm. We need never see this 
 inconspicuous chord of colour unless we specially 
 look for it. 
 
 But even if, by some odd chance, a taste for the 
 colours of the plantain had possessed (or had been 
 associated with some quality which possessed)* 
 a utilitarian value, is it likely that the same acci- 
 dent would have happened again and again with 
 the many thousands of different colour-schemes, 
 none of them wholly inharmonious, which Nature 
 offers ? The chances are millions to one against 
 it. And, further, even if we accepted this extreme 
 improbability, we should not have explained 
 the facts. Men not merely enjoy these colour- 
 schemes : they perceive in them the specific 
 quality of internal harmony : they see that in 
 spite of their variety they all possess a common 
 aesthetic character, and also certain qualities 
 which they share with the noblest works of human 
 art only.f If we had merely enjoyed these 
 schemes, this would have served every conceiv- 
 able purpose of Natural Selection. It is really 
 absurd to argue that we should have been killed 
 or weakened in the struggle if we had failed to 
 feel a common sensation of delight attaching 
 
 * See Religion in an Age of Doubt, p. 151, note, 
 f See above, chap, iv, also p. 112. 
 
 131
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 itself to all natural scenes,* or had failed to 
 possess these uniform capacities for intellectual 
 insight into beauty which exist as capacities in 
 most men, but for the majority remain unde- 
 veloped. 
 
 What, then, of the inherited effect of habit ? 
 It is not necessary to discuss here the doctrine of 
 Weismann which denies that characteristics ac- 
 quired by the parents in the course of their lives 
 are transmitted to their offspring. It is enough to 
 say, in the present context, that a theory of the in- 
 herited effect of habit if used to explain our aesthetic 
 tastes implies that the various colour-schemes 
 of Nature, though numerous, are at all periods of 
 history substantially the same, and that our race 
 has thus become so well accustomed to them all 
 that we find them all at least tolerable, and some 
 of them delightful. But, as quite a small change 
 of shape or colouring maj^ make a great aesthetic 
 difference, we must not assume too readily that 
 every colour-scheme has appeared very frequently 
 in the past. Again, hereditary familiarity with 
 particular sensations does not always make them 
 even negatively agreeable. The smell of manure 
 and similar odours have been present to mankind 
 
 * Our sense of unity of style implies a certain common feeling 
 which all examples of the style excite in us. See Proceedings 
 of the Aristotelian Society, vol. ii, No. 2, Part II, p. 68 (Williams 
 and Norgate, 1893). That there is in this sensation itself an 
 element of generality is an important fact, but hardly bears on 
 the present argument. 
 
 132
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 in every generation at all times of the year, 
 whereas the scents of spring belong to that one 
 season only. Again, our attitude towards even 
 the less interesting colour-schemes of Nature is 
 not one of mere toleration. Lastly, although all 
 our ancestors have been accustomed to the per- 
 ception of individual colours, and perhaps also 
 conscious of the transition from one patch of 
 colour to another, there is nothing to suggest that 
 in all generations they were in the habit of per- 
 ceiving colour-schemes as such. As the dress of 
 many women proves, to a large part of mankind 
 a colour-scheme, as distinct from the separate 
 colours that compose it, is not an object of con- 
 sciousness. And how could habituation produce 
 a sense that the scenes of Nature possess unity of 
 character ? It was remarked by the late Mr. 
 William James that if a race of dogs had lived for 
 generations in the Vatican Galleries, they would 
 still never have become art-critics. Mere habitua- 
 tion cannot produce taste apart from an internal 
 artistic capacity. 
 
 The strongest argument remains. The theory 
 on behalf of which these various evolutionary 
 explanations are brought forward, is essentially 
 a theory of illusion. Even if we insist that we 
 know what our aesthetic judgments mean — that 
 by the beautiful we do not mean what pleases, 
 but what is worthy to please — the evolutionist 
 
 133
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 returns to the charge and affirms that in that case 
 our meaning is not valid, since there can be no 
 such thing as real beauty. 
 
 Now a theory which is to convict us of lifelong 
 illusion must itself be exceptionally conclusive. 
 If it could be shown that all the forms we admire 
 are forms which cause preponderantly pleasant 
 sensations : that if we had not admired them we 
 must manifestly have sustained injury : that all 
 our actual tastes are precisely those which would 
 naturally have resulted from long familiarity 
 with the surroundings in which our race has been 
 placed : we might well say that these were highly 
 suspicious coincidences, and therefore the theory 
 of illusion must not be lightly rejected. But, as 
 we have seen, no one of these assertions can be 
 made good. 
 
 And even if they could be made good to the 
 utmost, they would not really be enough to con- 
 vince us that all our aesthetic judgments are false. 
 The answer to such sceptical suggestions lies for 
 each of us in the progress of his artistic educa- 
 tion. Ask each man the question with reference 
 to the subjects he understands. Ask the scholar 
 whether 
 
 O fortunatam natam me consule Romara 
 
 is as good poetry as 
 
 Per varios casus per tot discrimina rerum 
 Tendimus in Latium 
 
 Ask the architect whether the outside of the 
 National Gallery is as good art as the inside of the 
 134
 
 BEAUTY 
 
 Choir at Westminster. Ask the judge of dress 
 whether the fashions of Paris in the Second 
 Empire surpass in gracefulness the costumes of 
 all other periods. Ask almost any one whether 
 the Venus de Milo reaches a higher level of beauty 
 than is attained by those pictures of prize bulls 
 which sometimes adorn the houses of their 
 owners. The person questioned will not be at all 
 perturbed by evolutionary arguments. He will 
 give his own judgment with perfect confidence. 
 To those, surely, who study Nature, their con- 
 viction of its prevalent beauty must be as clear 
 as are any of the artistic judgments which have 
 just been mentioned. 
 
 It is, of course, entirely right that aesthetic 
 phenomena should be studied in their physio- 
 logical aspect. It would be absurd to deny the 
 physical basis of mental functions. It would be 
 equally unreasonable to deny that artistic judg- 
 ments and enjoyments are often associated with 
 what Mr. Grant Allen called " pleasant visceral 
 sensation." The error begins when we confuse 
 what is distinct — when we see no difference 
 between a pleasant thrill, a grateful nervous 
 tremor, on the one hand, and a judgment con- 
 cerning the Sublime and Beautiful on the other. 
 
 Note. Some one may perhaps suggest (in 
 view of the evolutionary explanations of our 
 taste and our knowledge) that "good taste' or 
 " a good head for mathematics " msiy conceivably 
 
 135
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 be a useful asset in the struggle for existence. 
 This suggestion is quite irrelevant to the present 
 discussion. Good taste, or a good mathematical 
 head, is exactly equivalent to that " tendency to 
 correct thinking ' (aesthetic or mathematical as 
 the case may be) which Naturalism on its own 
 principles must deny. The case for Naturalism 
 requires that Natural Selection should account 
 for each separate mental fact, not for a general 
 tendency to correctness as such. 
 
 136
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 We seem, then, to have found that the Universe 
 is no mere machine. Its character is revealed in 
 the laws which govern it ; and those laws which 
 govern taste in man and beauty in the world 
 cannot be expressed in purely mechanical terms. 
 
 But if the non-mechanical character of the 
 Universe is revealed in aesthetic experience, it is 
 revealed still more decisively in religion. Re- 
 ligious experience is intimately connected with 
 that knowledge of right and wrong which has 
 been discussed above. There are those who re- 
 gard Religion as a mere department of Morality. 
 But even if they are right, even if it is a depart- 
 ment, it is still a special department, of morality ; 
 since many who are familiar with morality in 
 general are quite out of their depth in dealing 
 with religion. It is in religious experience, per- 
 haps, that we shall find the full significance of 
 those laws of Nature which we have been con- 
 sidering. 
 
 In this special department, then, can we formu- 
 late any definite laws ? Some of the simplest 
 laws of religious experience have been well ex- 
 pressed by Mr. Matthew Arnold in his reflections 
 
 137
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 on the religion of Israel, that " wrestler with 
 God " who has known " the contention and strain 
 it costs to stand upright."* Put shortly, Mr. 
 Arnold's law may be summed up in the words 
 that " to righteousness belongs happiness."! He 
 recognizes the " very great part in righteousness " 
 which belongs to the " not-ourselves."{ "We 
 did not make ourselves and our nature. We did 
 not provide that happiness should follow conduct, 
 as it undeniably does ; that the sense of succeed- 
 ing, going right, hitting the mark, in conduct, 
 should give satisfaction and a very high satis- 
 faction, just as really as the sense of doing well 
 in his work gives pleasure to a poet or painter, 
 or accomplishing what he tries gives pleasure to a 
 man who is learning to ride or to shoot." Israel 
 had indeed known the humiliation of failure, had 
 known what it was for a man to acknowledge 
 transgression and to have his sin ever before him. 
 But his course was not all failure : he knew also 
 the happiness of spiritual achievement. As a 
 Prince he had had power with God and had pre- 
 vailed. Neither this sense of contact with God 
 as the " Power not ourselves which makes for 
 righteousness," nor the sense of joyful co-opera- 
 tion with this Power which the sincere pursuit of 
 righteousness produces, can be explained away 
 as a by-product of Natural Selection. Those who 
 have followed the discussions of morality and the 
 
 * Literature and Dogma, i, 3. 
 f Ibid., i. 4. J Ibid., i, 3. 
 
 138
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 aesthetic sense in the preceding chapters will not 
 need to have the case stated afresh in relation to 
 religious experience. Those who are still uncon- 
 vinced may be invited to reflect on the phenomena 
 with which Matthew Arnold deals. We find our- 
 selves wrestling, in truth, with something that 
 is not ourselves or of our own making : a law 
 which we cannot destroy or silence : a power 
 also in our inner life by which this law is 
 reinforced.* 
 
 We may take Matthew Arnold for our guide 
 again when we turn to the distinctive experiences 
 of Christianity. He well understood how, in 
 Christianity, it is " no grand performance of a 
 man's own that brings him to joy and peace, but 
 an attachment, the influence of one full of grace 
 and truth ! " In the language of Scripture the 
 law of Christ's influence is expressed in the state- 
 ment that " as the branch cannot bear fruit 
 except it abide in the Vine," so neither can the 
 Christian disciple " except he abide in Christ." 
 If we accept this statement as true, then — to use 
 the language of modern prose — we shall expect 
 that so far as we bring ourselves and keep our- 
 selves within the sphere of Christ's influence, we 
 
 * Cf. Literature and Dogma, i, 5 : " In hearing and reading 
 the words Israel has uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a 
 glow and a force they could find nowhere else. If you care about 
 conduct, your heart will burn within you, or at least you will 
 gain conviction of the truth and felicity of this language as you 
 read it." 
 
 139
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 shall find therein a source of continued strength 
 and inspiration ; the power to do what apart 
 from this inspiration is impossible ; the power, 
 say, of the Quaker to keep his temper unruffled 
 under unspeakable provocation ; the courage of 
 St. Francis to do for the lepers those services the 
 very thought of which had, in his unconverted 
 days, filled him with extreme disgust ; and all 
 other such Christian acts as are in themselves 
 most sweet and gracious, and yet to the flesh 
 most difficult. On the same hypothesis, we 
 shall expect to find that if we separate our- 
 selves from Him, if we break the contact, we 
 shall lose the power so to overcome the flesh 
 and to triumph over natural instincts and in- 
 clinations. 
 
 Now if such claims are true, they ought to be 
 easily verified : if false, they ought to be easily 
 disproved. For obvious reasons they are not in 
 all aspects particularly well fitted for public dis- 
 cussion ; they turn too much upon intimate and 
 private matters. But, so far as we ourselves and 
 our closest friends are concerned, the claim lies 
 open for verification or disproof. Moreover, the 
 general effect upon the world of Christ's life and 
 teaching, through the community which He 
 founded, and through the lives of His disciples, 
 can be discussed without any violation of deli- 
 cacy, both in reference to the past and to the 
 present. It would be much to the good if 
 140
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 every one would inquire into this subject for 
 himself. 
 
 There are, however, one or two objections to 
 such a method of inquiry which it is worth while 
 to encounter in advance. " What, after all," it 
 may be said, " is this supposed law but an identi- 
 cal proposition ? Are you not arguing in a circle ? 
 You affirm that contact with Jesus brings a 
 peculiar strength and grace. But what do you 
 mean by contact with Jesus except living accord- 
 ing to His commandments ; and what, again, is 
 the peculiar grace of Christianity except a life 
 according to the Christian standard ? Thus, in 
 effect, your law amounts to nothing but this, 
 that if a man lives the Christian life he lives the 
 Christian life." 
 
 A careful observation of Christian practices 
 will afford us an adequate reply. The types of 
 Christian piety are many and various ; but all 
 agree in adopting systematic methods of subject- 
 ing the mind to the influence of Christ's teaching. 
 All agree in the frequent and ordered reading of 
 the Gospels with the express intention of taking 
 the Central Figure in the story as a model of con- 
 duct and an inspiration for life. These practices 
 are often pursued mechanically, and sometimes 
 even insincerely. Yet, on the whole, the sys- 
 tematic " seeking " leads to a genuine " finding " ; 
 and men's lives are brought into some small 
 measure — often into a great and astonishing 
 measure — of conformitv to their model. Jesus, 
 
 141
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 according to Matthew Arnold's analysis, brought 
 into the world a temper of self-examination, of 
 self-renouncement, of " sweet reasonableness " 
 and mildness. Take the first of these, the spirit 
 of self-criticism. Those groups of persons who 
 consciously subject themselves to the influence of 
 Christ do really succeed in setting a good example 
 here.* The political orator seldom takes as his 
 theme the unfaithfulness of his party to its own 
 professed principles. The faithlessness of the 
 Church to the principles of Christ is the con- 
 stant theme of the Christian preacher. If, then, 
 Christians assert that as a result of following 
 Christ they are conscious of a certain access of 
 strength in the inner life, this is a claim worthy of 
 examination. It is no merely identical proposi- 
 tion to say that those who persistently keep 
 Christ in their thoughts do hereby make progress 
 in Christian virtue. 
 
 " But what," it will be said, " is all this but one 
 example of the well-known principle of the in- 
 fluence of a great mind ? " We are no doubt 
 right in thinking of the " influence of Jesus on 
 mankind " under the general category of " in- 
 fluence." But the important matters are : first, 
 that influence is just one of those facts which 
 cannot be explained on purely mechanical prin- 
 
 * The duty of self-criticism is not, as other duties are, habitually 
 pressed upon Christianity from outside. The world is only too 
 ready to regard it as the duty of the Church to exhibit a faithful 
 but unintelligent conservatism. 
 
 142
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 ciples ; secondly, that the influence of Christ has 
 a distinctive character of its own. 
 
 Consider, first, spiritual influence in its widest 
 sense. Take the influence of Greek literature, 
 or more generally of what we call the " spirit " 
 of Greek literature and art, in moulding the style 
 and thought of subsequent generations. Looking 
 back upon it now, we can see that the work of 
 the Greek poets and sculptors, of the Greek orators 
 and philosophers, exhibited one and the same 
 " spirit." In other words, their work conformed 
 to certain principles of taste and realized a 
 certain aesthetic ideal. It is in virtue of our per- 
 ception of these principles and this ideal that we 
 perceive the unity of character which, in spite of 
 individual differences, pervades Greek work as a 
 whole. It is in virtue of this same insight that 
 we are able to recognize how far the influence of 
 Greek art and literature has extended beyond its 
 own borders. 
 
 In such a combination of unity with difference 
 there is doubtless something mysterious. These 
 examples are quite unlike the simpler cases, in 
 which a single principle is consciously applied to 
 varying subject-matter : as when subjects of all 
 sorts are dealt with under the single form of the 
 hexameter verse, a form which any mind can 
 fully grasp and define and communicate to 
 others. The spirit of the Greek style cannot be 
 digested, or taught, in the form of set rules. No 
 rules could be drawn up such that if we obeyed 
 
 143
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 them we must thereby produce works of art true 
 to the Greek spirit. This spirit is not a principle 
 formulated in a single mind, but a principle 
 stirring obscurely in the minds of many, expressing 
 itself differently in different contexts, yet per- 
 ceived to be one single impulse by the sympathetic 
 critic who reviews its work. We find that, if we 
 familiarize our minds with what Greek principles 
 of taste have enjoined in one context, we shall 
 perceive by instinct what they enjoin in another. 
 This instinct is stronger in some men than in 
 others. But this fact only makes it plainer that 
 we are dealing here, not with the arbitrary will of 
 individual men, but with a law of Nature. There 
 is some " power not ourselves ' which, when we 
 read the literature of Greece, reproduces in us 
 some of the tastes and feelings of its authors, and 
 may actually develop their principles in new and 
 untried contexts. It was said of Keats that he 
 was a Greek himself. By mere acquaintance 
 with the Greek Mythology at second hand he was 
 able to amplify it with a bold originality which 
 was yet faithful to its source. We may distin- 
 guish at many points between the spirit of the 
 Greek poets and that of their disciple. Yet the 
 effect of the Greek influence upon his poetry is 
 unquestionable. 
 
 No less definite than the laws of the response 
 of Western civilization to the influence of Greece 
 are the laws of the response of the human mind 
 and conscience to the influence of Jesus. Come 
 144
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 under the influence of Greek literature and art, 
 and you will find that you gain, not merely an 
 increasing admiration for the best Greek work, 
 but also the habit of applying the Greek standard 
 of taste in contexts of which the Greeks themselves 
 knew nothing. Come under the influence of 
 Jesus Christ, and you will find an increasing ten- 
 dency to apply a standard which you cannot fail 
 to recognize as Christian, even to problems about 
 which He in His own teaching has given no 
 explicit guidance. It is obvious, in the light of 
 what we have seen above, that such laws cannot 
 be stated in terms of mere mechanism. The 
 statement must contain such utterly non-me- 
 chanical conceptions as the " Spirit of Greek 
 Civilization," the " Christian Ideal." 
 
 Again, submission to Christ's influence in par- 
 ticular puts us in a position to judge of its value 
 for, and its application to, the whole human race. 
 It is not every one who has the faculty to under- 
 stand Greek art. But it is a loss for us all if we 
 lack that spirit of ultimate self-criticism which 
 produces the distinctive Christian virtues of con- 
 trition and repentance.* Many noble lives have 
 been lived apart from Christ, especially in pre- 
 Christian times. The typical Christian, like St. 
 Paul, is consciously struggling with a law which 
 
 * See Montefiore's The Synoptic Gospels, Introduction, pp. 
 cvii-cviii. It is significant that in the passage from Wernle, 
 which the author quotes with so much approval, repentance and 
 contrition are not even mentioned. The spirit in which the 
 author deals with Christianity is, of course, worthy of all praise. 
 
 K 145
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 brings perpetual self-condemnation. The con- 
 trast between such lives and the unruffled calm, 
 the effortless goodness, of certain good Pagans, 
 both ancient and modern, may seem at first sight 
 all in favour of the latter. Christianity is itself 
 forward to recognize that it is of " such " — of 
 dispositions like these, resembling the natural 
 innocence of children — that the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is partly built up. It is enough, however, 
 for our present purpose, if we can make good the 
 necessity of Christ's influence for those who are 
 adult, not only in years, but in mind ; for the 
 awakened modern man replete with the knowledge 
 both of good and evil. For those who gain the 
 conviction that the Christian standard is absolute 
 — who find that there is indeed in our souls a 
 power which makes for righteousness, and that 
 the upward pressure which this power exerts in 
 favour of the Christian standard is continuous and 
 increasing — for them the religious doctrine of the 
 Holy Ghost will at least not seem to err on the 
 side of exaggeration. They find themselves in 
 contact with a power which, even if they do not 
 know it to be personal, they perceive to be per- 
 petually active, and so far to satisfy their spiritual 
 needs that they can without hesitation yield them- 
 selves wholly to its guidance. 
 
 It is partly through experiences like these that 
 belief in the personality of God is reached. To 
 146
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE 
 
 this belief — it may be thought — there have been, 
 in relation to its importance, only scant allusions 
 above. The argument as developed in the fore- 
 going chapters seeks to arrive at Theism through 
 Optimism. We may be justly confident that the 
 great majority of those who on reasoned grounds 
 adopt an optimistic conception of the Universe 
 will hold this faith in a theistic form ; that they 
 will feel that a world whose central spring is un- 
 conscious of its own working is not ultimately 
 satisfactory to reason. Yet it is not always by 
 these indirect ways that men come to belief in a 
 Personal God. The religious man is ever aware 
 that he stands in the presence of a law of right 
 and wrong which he cannot disobey without 
 incurring the condemnation of his own conscience. 
 The thought of such a law is for many minds 
 inseparable from that of a righteous Judge Who 
 reads our thoughts and before Whom all our 
 secret desires lie open. To a large number of 
 our race this conception of a God Who reads 
 the heart seems so natural and obvious that, 
 when it is once put before them, they accept 
 it without hesitation. As our relations with 
 the wills of our fellow-men produce in us from 
 our earliest years the unquestioning conviction 
 that the movements of the human bodies around 
 us are directed by conscious spirits like our 
 own, so — it might be argued — our contact with 
 that law which is revealed to us in conscience 
 produces in the normal mind a like direct 
 
 147
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 conviction of the existence and personality of 
 God. 
 
 The question how the indirect knowledge of 
 God which comes by reasoning is related to the 
 direct knowledge which may be thought to arise 
 through religious experience, lies perhaps a little 
 out of the straight course of the present dis- 
 cussion. Yet it is not altogether irrelevant. 
 Suppose that by arguments like those of the 
 preceding chapters we have arrived at such an 
 Optimism as in normal minds will inevitably lead 
 on to Theism. However well grounded such a 
 faith may be, its meaning must surely become 
 clearer to the man for whom Theism has a more 
 distinctively religious character ; for whom the 
 lesson of the moral struggle expresses itself daily 
 in the Scriptural phrase, " Thou God seest me"; 
 for whom the witness of the accusing law remains 
 no mere impersonal Imperative, but seems to 
 make itself heard as the Voice of One Who is 
 about our path and about our bed and spies out 
 all our ways. Such experience, for those who 
 know it, is at the least explanatory of convictions 
 which have been otherwise attained. 
 
 148
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF AGNOSTICISM 
 
 The reader who has followed the argument thus 
 far may here wish to give voice to an objection. 
 " I am not altogether unwilling," he may say, 
 " to admit that this argument, though stated in 
 an unusual and somewhat abstract form, is on 
 the whole a fair representation of the essential 
 meaning of the plain man's defence of religion. 
 But here we have a curious fact. This same 
 argument, in one form or another, has been before 
 the world for centuries. If it is in essence sound, 
 why are so many of the best and most honest 
 minds unconvinced by it ? What is the cause 
 of the widespread scepticism that we find around 
 us?" 
 
 To the latter question we can give perhaps no 
 single answer. The causes of religious doubt are 
 different in different minds. Yet, if we are 
 thinking of intellectual obstacles only, and seek- 
 ing for the greatest of these, we shall find it, 
 surely, in the achievements, the truly glorious 
 achievements, of Physical Science.* 
 
 But this answer leads on to a further question. 
 
 * It may be objected that this answer applies rather to the 
 Victorian era than to our own : that Darwin and Wallace, 
 
 149
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 Why are Natural Science and religious faith 
 believed to be mutually hostile ? This belief 
 must have some weighty cause ; and we shall see 
 presently what it is. Meanwhile, however, it is 
 worth while to show that many of the common 
 opinions on this subject are clearly and demon- 
 strably erroneous. We shall understand better 
 the real cause why the claims of physical science 
 to a monopoly of systematic knowledge are so 
 readily allowed if we examine these errors one by 
 one. 
 
 First, there are those who speak as if Natural 
 Science denied everything which it does not 
 affirm ; who, in fact, treat Natural Science and 
 Naturalism as if they were simply identical. This 
 is a very evident blunder. We have only to 
 define the two positions to see that they are dis- 
 tinct. Physical Science assumes merely that if 
 we watch the phenomena of Nature intelligently 
 we can find the rules by which they proceed. 
 Naturalism adds that only that which direct 
 observation of Nature can verify should be ac- 
 cepted as true. Physical Science, indeed — far 
 from demanding Naturalism as its basis — is per- 
 
 Mill, Spencer, and Huxley are no longer the oracles of our 
 advanced thinkers. It is only right that these changes of 
 intellectual fashion should be respectfully and sympathetically 
 observed. Yet, after all, we must not take them too seriously. 
 It is never the strongest heads who are most affected by 
 them. 
 
 150
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 fectly compatible with Supernaturalism of the 
 very crudest sort. So long as the inquirer is an 
 accurate observer of facts, and is quick to formu- 
 late the rules which his observations establish, he 
 may attribute these rules to the arbitrary will of 
 God, or even of a syndicate of heathen deities, 
 without losing his usefulness as a man of science. 
 Naturalism has been, perhaps, the favourite creed 
 of the physical observer in all ages ; but that it 
 is not the only creed consistent with high physical 
 attainments would be proved, if we had need of 
 such proof, by the mere mention of the name of 
 Newton. 
 
 Imagine, then, the havoc which a ruthless 
 debater might make with those moving and im- 
 pressive sentences of Mr. Russell's which have 
 been already quoted.* " Mr. Russell alleges," 
 he might reply, " that the world which Science 
 presents for our belief is a world without purpose, 
 since — among other evidences of this want of 
 purpose — man is i the product of causes which 
 had no prevision of the end they were achieving.' 
 That man is the product of many unintelligent 
 causes — of the particles of which his body is com- 
 posed, of the chemical forces that move them, and 
 so forth — we shall all agree ; but this is not what 
 Mr. Russell means. He means that our existence 
 in the world is not due to the action of intelligence 
 at any point. If we weigh Mr. Russell's words 
 with care, we shall find that they are merely an 
 
 * See chap, ii, pp. 15-16. 
 
 151
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 eloquent elaboration of the simple statement 
 that there is no God and no future life. But 
 why does Mr. Russell tell us that it is ' Science ' 
 which presents these two propositions for our 
 belief ? By ' Science ' he plainly means ' Natural 
 Science' — Science pursued by the method of 
 experiment and observation. What department, 
 then, of Natural Science proves that there is no 
 God ? In what department of Natural Science 
 is this subject even dealt with ? In Chemistry, 
 or Physics, or Biology, or Psychology ? Perhaps 
 we shall be referred to the modern science of 
 Anthropology. Anthropology shows the growth 
 of religious ideas from very humble beginnings 
 in our savage ancestors ; just as it shows the 
 gradual development of other ideas, political, 
 moral, or physical, likewise. But it does not 
 always disprove a belief to show its history. It 
 is a curious piece of arbitrary behaviour to assume 
 that, if we can show the origin of the belief, say, 
 in uniform causation, we are proving it true, 
 whereas to show the origin of the belief in God 
 is to prove it false. Again, which of the many 
 subdivisions of Natural Science sets itself to prove 
 to us — in language which it must be admitted is 
 hardly redolent of the physical textbook— that 
 ' no heroism, no fire, no intensity of thought and 
 feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond 
 the grave ' ? Observation, it is true, never shows 
 us a disembodied spirit* — a conscious mind acting 
 
 * Even this will not be admitted by all members of the Society 
 
 152
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 independently of a material body. But the fact 
 that body and mind are always observed together 
 does not prove them essentially inseparable. Em- 
 pirical psychology is hardly concerned with the 
 essential nature of the soul as distinct from its 
 changing experiences. Certainly psychology has 
 not so clearly defined the soul's nature as to prove 
 that conscious personality must necessarily be 
 extinguished ' under the debris of a universe in 
 ruins.' Again, Physical Science does not even 
 disprove the impossibility of restored bodily 
 existence. Before now it has happened that a 
 physical investigator, who was at the same time 
 an orthodox believer, has held that far away a 
 world of matter already exists under laws different 
 from those which we investigate : or at least 
 that a time is to come when the present system of 
 Nature will be swept away in favour of a new 
 heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness. Such beliefs have not checked 
 his physical investigations. The man who re- 
 gards i this present world ' as part of a wider 
 system will calculate his eclipses with a proviso : 
 4 So will it be unless the end of the world comes 
 first.' The believer and the unbeliever alike can 
 employ the methods of physical observation ; 
 and the question at issue between them does not 
 belong to Physical Science as such to decide. Do 
 
 for Psychical Research. Whether the eminent men of science 
 who have engaged in these researches will have thereby enhanced 
 their reputation is still an open question. 
 
 153
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 the physical laws as we know them hold good 
 through all space and through all time ? Whether 
 we say Yes or No, or that we cannot tell, we 
 have already passed beyond Natural Science 
 to Philosophy. It is Metaphysics, not Physics, 
 which deals with the infinite and the eternal ; 
 with what in an absolute sense is everywhere and 
 for ever. And this Mr. Russell, except in his 
 lyrical moods, knows well. When therefore he 
 tells us that Science presents for*our belief a God- 
 less and purposeless world, he knows, or will 
 know if he reflects, that he is not correctly 
 describing the subject-matter of Physical Science, 
 but merely indulging in a brilliant flourish of 
 sentimental rhetoric." * 
 
 This criticism, as we shall see directly, would 
 not really be quite fair to Mr. Russell. Yet it is 
 hard to see what defence he could make against 
 it on his own principles. Still harder is it to see 
 what answer he could make, say, to Lotze when 
 he warns us f — in words which might almost have 
 been written with Mr. Russell in view — against 
 ' crediting as a prophetic announcement with 
 regard to the future " those " ingenious calcula- 
 tions which draw conclusions as to the final state 
 of the world from our experimental knowledge of 
 
 * These words are not written in forgetfulness of the admirable 
 work Mr. Russell has done. Mr. Russell has, perhaps, never 
 written with more splendid eloquence than in the essay now 
 before us : but he has sometimes written with more philosophic 
 caution. 
 
 t Metaphysic, Bosanquet's translation, vol. ii, p. 160. 
 154
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 the economy of heat." It is no doubt important 
 to consider " to what end the processes which we 
 now see in operation would lead, supposing them 
 to continue unchecked and to follow the same 
 laws." But Mr. Russell's pessimistic conclusion 
 follows only " if we assume that the given condi- 
 tions are the only ones to be taken into account," 
 and not otherwise. This assumption, as Lotze 
 points out, is perfectly arbitrary. A physicist 
 may demonstrate convincingly what would hap- 
 pen if a certain hypothesis were fulfilled. But 
 obviously the success of his demonstration does 
 not prove that the hypothesis will be actually 
 realized. " Two things," our imaginary debater 
 might continue, " need to be proved in order to 
 make Mr. Russell's conclusion. First, he must 
 show what would happen on the hypothesis that 
 the physical conditions operative at present are 
 the only conditions to be taken into account ; 
 secondly, he must show that that hypothesis will 
 be realized in fact. The complete success of the 
 physicist in dealing with the former point dis- 
 guises his total failure with the latter. So far as 
 Mr. Russell is concerned, the latter question is not 
 dealt with at all. That is where the real issue 
 lies between him and the Christian believer ; and 
 he quietly assumes what he does not attempt to 
 prove." 
 
 Thus Naturalism may be true or false ; but 
 it is not simply identical with Science. Physical 
 Science — we may say — has founded the business ; 
 
 155
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 the " goodwill of the business " is silently trans- 
 ferred to the credit of a Naturalistic philosophy. 
 Against this transference we may justly make our 
 protest. 
 
 We meet, secondly, with an exactly opposite 
 mistake. While some, as we have just seen, look 
 to Natural Science for a complete theory of the 
 Universe, others speak as if it confined itself 
 strictly within the limits of experience. " Our 
 knowledge of Nature," they argue, " rests on 
 experience alone, while Religion is concerned with 
 what goes beyond experience altogether." ' We 
 shall be wise," they conclude, "to confine our- 
 selves to beliefs which can be verified, and so to 
 accept Natural Science and reject Religion." 
 
 But while the former conception of Natural 
 Science is too wide, the latter is too narrow. 
 Natural Science, no less than Religion, takes us 
 far outside the limits of experience, and tells us 
 of what eye has not seen nor ear heard. Natural 
 Science no less than Religion rests on an act of 
 faith. Our knowledge of Nature extends both 
 into the future and into the distant past, where 
 direct experience cannot take us. We can calculate 
 the eclipses of the coming years, and we know some- 
 thing of the processes by which the earth became 
 the home of the human race. If the ignorant sceptic 
 tells us that next year's eclipses are not yet come, 
 and that when the earth was without human in- 
 156
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 habitants we were not there to see, his assertion is 
 right, but his sceptical conclusion is wrong. The 
 eclipses of the future, and certain events of the far 
 past, may be quite within our knowledge, though 
 quite outside our experience. Further, as the future 
 and the distant past lie outside the limits of expe- 
 rience, so, too, they lie outside the limits of strict 
 demonstration. There is a type of demonstration, 
 employed in pure mathematics, which admits of 
 no possible doubt ; but this — as is well known — 
 cannot be employed to prove the occurrence of 
 past or future events. Thus, in trusting the 
 conclusions of Natural Science, we are believing 
 in something which we have not seen and cannot 
 in the strictest sense demonstrate. 
 
 " But it is no great act of faith," it may be 
 replied, " when you see a stone rapidly falling 
 towards the ground, to infer that a moment ago 
 it was high up in the air, and that in a short time 
 it will touch the earth ; or, if you see water cooling 
 in a vat, to conclude that an hour ago it was 
 hotter than it is now. Yet it is only by relying 
 on simple inferences of this kind, and following 
 them out step by step, that Ave build up the 
 stupendous fabric of our physical knowledge." 
 True. The implied comparison is a just one. If 
 we take a wide enough survey, we may seem to see 
 vast physical changes taking place before our eyes ; 
 and the movements of the moon as clear and 
 certain as the path of the falling stone. But it is 
 just in this confidence that such methods of 
 
 157
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 inference may be safely followed step by step into 
 remote regions of space or time, that the act of 
 faith consists. The future path of the falling 
 stone is made plain to us by an easy — we may call 
 it an instinctive — act of imagination. We need 
 faith, however, when we soar into remote regions 
 where sight and imagination alike fail us. How 
 do we know that the gravitative pull, on which 
 the moon's motion depends, will continue for 
 all time ? It is due — so some have held * — to 
 a "strain in the medium in which all matter 
 is immersed." But even on this theory this 
 medium is unknown to us except in its effects. 
 How then can we know that it may not at any 
 moment break up, or wear out, or float away ? 
 Why, at some future time, should not part of our 
 world be immersed in this medium, and part 
 immersed in it no longer ? The effect of the 
 change would be subversive of all our expecta- 
 tions. It might cause the wildest sequence of 
 physical events. But who can show by express 
 demonstration that the change is not possible ? 
 Who can prove that it is not imminent ? On 
 such a hypothesis, it is true — as we saw in the 
 case of a similar hypothesis suggested above "f 
 — no one of our common expectations would be 
 worth a moment's purchase. Such a change would 
 involve a relapse from Order into Chaos. We 
 
 * See Sir Oliver Lodge, Elementary Mechanics, published 1888, 
 p. 15, note. Cf. Epilogue, Note II, at end of this volume. 
 f Chap, iv, p. 40. 
 
 158
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 therefore rejeet it, and rightly ; but such belief 
 in the prevalence of Order, in regions which are 
 beyond the limits both of our experience and our 
 demonstration, is unquestionably an act of faith. 
 We have not seen it ; we have not proved it : 
 yet we do not doubt it. 
 
 The fact is that the attractiveness of the 
 orderly picture of the world which Natural 
 Science presents to us, and the agreement of all 
 our friends to accept it, disguises from us the 
 boldness of the step we are taking, in advancing 
 so far beyond the limits of our direct experience. 
 We treat as a matter of course what is really a 
 stupendous venture. The physical sceptic might 
 well ask us whv we assume that Nature as a whole 
 must be orderly and not chaotic. " Order " is an 
 ideal of the human mind. " Uniformity," too, is 
 one of our conceptions. Why should we assume 
 that the actual Universe must agree with our 
 conceptions and ideals ? If we answer that 
 unless the world is in some measure uniform 
 throughout, we could not make scientific pre- 
 dictions, he may reply that the trustworthiness 
 of these predictions is the very thing upon which 
 he is throwing doubt.* So far as mere argument 
 is concerned, the position of the sceptic is strong. 
 Our one unanswerable retort to him is that he, 
 as he shows bv his conduct, believes in Natural 
 Science and its predictions just as we do. He 
 
 * Cf. Mr. Russell's remarks about the chicken, quoted above, 
 p. 77. 
 
 159
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 knows that he lives in an orderly Universe. It 
 is this knowledge which marks him as a sane and 
 rational man. It is his duty, then, as it is ours, 
 to analyse the principles on which this venture of 
 faith is based.* 
 
 " But the venture of faith made by science," 
 it will be said, " is totally different from the 
 gratuitous inventions of Religion. The doctrines 
 of Religion are invented sometimes because they 
 are in accordance with our hopes ; sometimes 
 they are the reflections of our fears. But in any 
 case there can be no evidence of their truth. So 
 far as pure purposes of knowledge are concerned, 
 
 * It may be objected that the theory advocated above is itself 
 an ultimate scepticism, since it makes all our scientific and other 
 knowledge rest on an unproved principle. But a principle may 
 be certain and well founded in reason and yet may be neither a 
 self-evident axiom nor capable of the kind of demonstration 
 which belongs to mathematics. The rationality of the world is 
 as certain as anything in mathematics, though not certain in the 
 same manner. If we say to the purveyor of sceptical arguments, 
 " You cannot believe in the absurdities of pagan mythology : 
 you cannot believe in absolute rubbish " ; he will hardly answer, 
 " Oh, yes, I can." Absurdities are logically possible, but not 
 really possible : logically conceivable, but not actually con- 
 ceivable. See p. 237. 
 
 Again, if it be objected that the principle that " absurdities do 
 not happen " is insecure — since to many minds everything un- 
 familiar seems absurd, so that, e.g. Darwinism was laughed at as 
 incredible by many quite well-educated men for a generation — 
 the answer is that, while every sane man believes the world to be 
 a rational order, many men have false standards of order and 
 rationality. Again, in the case of a new theory, it commonly 
 happens that we do not at first take in what sort of a world it is 
 which the theory presents to us. See pp. 236—237. 
 
 160
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 we do not need these religious doctrines ; and if 
 we accept the common- sense ' principle of parsi- 
 mony ' — that is, the rule that we should not 
 invent hypotheses except for the purpose of 
 explaining facts — then we are justified in denying 
 them outright. Why suppose the government of 
 the world by a God, or by any rational principle, 
 conscious or otherwise ? If matter and its powers 
 had been just what Physical Science conceives 
 them to have been, then the Universe must have 
 been just what the Universe is. Granted the 
 matter and the forces, the world, as we know it, 
 is the necessary result. The individual particles 
 of matter, and the individual forces by which 
 each is moved, would have done all that has been 
 done ; and no general principles, whether acting 
 consciously or unconsciously, are required to 
 assist them. The introduction of such principles 
 is a pure piece of gratuitous invention." 
 
 This objection has been answered in advance 
 in the preceding chapters. The answer may be 
 expressed by means of a comparison. Certain 
 vibrations of the air produce that succession of 
 sounds which we call the Ninth Symphony of 
 Beethoven. Granted that these vibrations take 
 place and that we hear them, then, however they 
 may have been produced, we have the Choral 
 Symphony. But is it therefore " gratuitous ' ' to 
 infer that these sounds presuppose the influence 
 of definite aesthetic principles ? Given the vibra- 
 tions, you have all that is necessary for the 
 
 L 161
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 aesthetic effect. But still, apart from the influence 
 of aesthetic principles, this collection of sounds 
 would not have occurred. If the orderly arrange- 
 ment of the Universe is no more an accident than 
 is the connectedness of Beethoven's music — if 
 there are certain principles of order by which- the 
 Universe is dominated — then there is nothing 
 gratuitous in predicting that whatever follows 
 from these principles will actually occur. Such 
 predictions are made both by Religion and by 
 Naturalism. Religion and Naturalism differ, not 
 because Naturalism is cautious and scientific 
 while Religion is irresponsible and romantic, but 
 because they interpret differently the principles 
 which are embodied in the Universe as it presents 
 itself to our mind and senses. Is it, then, that 
 Religion sees aspects of the world to which 
 Naturalism is blind, or that Religion imagines 
 what Naturalism perceives to have no existence ? 
 It is a common view that certain aspects of the 
 world excite our wonder because we interpret 
 them wrongly. " Wonder," it is said, " here as 
 elsewhere is the offspring of ignorance. Grasp 
 the self-evident principles of the indestructibility 
 of matter and the persistence of energy — once 
 perceive that it is impossible that something 
 should become nothing* — and you will see that 
 
 * Spencer, First Principles, Part II, chap, iv, p. 177. It might 
 very naturally be said that even though we cannot show it necessary 
 that matter and its fundamental powers should remain unchanged, 
 this necessity may quite possibly exist. Such necessity would ex- 
 plain much of the uniformity of Nature, but not the largest part. 
 162
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 all the order and uniformity which amazes you so 
 much follows directly from this simple principle."* 
 But this is a piece of extremely fallacious reason- 
 ing. Even if we granted that the indestructibility 
 of matter and energy was a self-evident truth, 
 which it is not, still this is quite distinct from 
 the principle of uniformity. It does not follow, 
 because each piece of matter retains for ever its 
 fundamental qualities, that therefore a great 
 number of separate pieces of matter must all be 
 similar to one another. The unchangeableness of 
 each is not the same thing as the uniformity of all. 
 Again, it would still be quite a new point that 
 Nature is not merely uniform, but admirable ; 
 that it adopts just those uniformities which cause 
 it to be a thing of sublimity and beauty. It is not 
 true, then, that Herbert Spencer's principle that 
 " something cannot become nothing " renders all 
 wonder needless and irrational. 
 
 The fact is that we are confronted with a 
 persistent but unsuccessful attempt to set 
 
 * The principle of the permanence of substance is treated as 
 self-evident. It is then illegitimately identified with uniformity. 
 The assumption is then made that all the orderliness which we 
 admire follows from uniformity as a matter of course. Spencer 
 is right in saying that every empirical proof of " permanence " 
 presupposes it. It is an a priori assumption, but not self-evident. 
 Annihilation is not inconceivable : it is not even unimaginable. 
 " It is here now and will be here to-morrow " are two truths, 
 not one. The principle that something cannot become nothing 
 would forbid the evanescence of feelings. 
 
 163
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 Naturalism upon a pedestal. " The supporters of 
 Naturalism," it is suggested, " differ widely from 
 the upholders of Religion. They promulgate no 
 arbitrary fancies : they rely on observation and 
 not on authority ; they modestly confine them- 
 selves to statements which can be verified ; they 
 do not deal in mysteries." 
 
 No one of these claims can be made good, 
 not even the claim to absolute independence of 
 authority. The masters of Natural Science, it is 
 true, have set a most noble example of fresh and 
 independent investigation. In this matter the 
 theologian cannot do better than humbly take 
 them as his models. But reliance on authority 
 is a matter for individual self-examination. Have 
 we not all relied much — have we not most of us 
 relied too much — on the authority of those very 
 masters who taught the lesson of free inquiry ? 
 Are we aware how many of our physical convic- 
 tions have been adopted without any personal 
 investigation at all, but simply because the edu- 
 cated men of our generation agreed to accept 
 them ? We are apt to despise the Middle Ages 
 for their reliance on Aristotle. He was the 
 greatest observer of Nature with whom they were 
 acquainted. Have we never exhibited an equally 
 uncritical trust ? 
 
 Again, though there are few virtues more at- 
 tractive to this generation than intellectual 
 modesty — a fact to which Agnosticism has owed 
 much of its popularity — it must be remembered 
 164
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 that Agnosticism does not say merely " I do not 
 know." It declares positively that on certain 
 subjects knowledge is unattainable. There is no 
 special modesty in affirming that everything in 
 heaven and earth can be described in the terms 
 of one's own philosophy. 
 
 Nor is it true that Naturalism succeeds in 
 eliminating all mystery from the world. When 
 Haeckel tells us that " the Universe or cosmos is 
 eternal, infinite, illimitable," and that " its sub- 
 stance with its two attributes (matter and 
 energy) fills infinite space and is in eternal 
 motion," he may be right or he may be wrong. 
 But unquestionably he is speaking of subjects 
 difficult to grasp. The assertion that God existed 
 from all eternity, whether true or false, is ad- 
 mittedly difficult. Why should less difficulty 
 arise with an eternal movement, an infinitely 
 extended substance ? That which is inimitably 
 extended — which possesses size and yet is of no 
 size in particular — will seem to some to be, not 
 merely mysterious, but self-contradictory. 
 
 Again, is the elimination of mystery always a 
 proof of correctness ? Can we lay it down that 
 nothing can exist except what can be readily 
 understood ? A prejudice exists against the 
 belief in a fixed objective standard of right and 
 wrong, beauty and ugliness. " If the distinction 
 between good and bad exists in our minds only, 
 then," it is said, " it is merely a mental fact, and 
 quite easily intelligible. If, on the other hand, 
 
 165
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 we hold that there is a real goodness and a real 
 beauty, independent of conscious minds, then the 
 question arises where and how this distinction 
 exists. It is not a fact in the material world ; it 
 is not a fact of conscious experience ; what then 
 is it ? Had we not better say with Huxley that 
 except material facts, and mental facts, and the 
 relations between them, there are no other 
 objects of knowledge ? Had we not better reject 
 such mysterious figments as an objective standard 
 of goodness and beauty ? ' But the interesting 
 fact is that common sense refuses to make this 
 rejection. Whatever difficulties may be subse- 
 quently raised, we all understand quite well what 
 is meant by saying that a thing is really right or 
 wrong. The supporters of Naturalism themselves 
 have given noble witness to this doctrine. They 
 maintain the duty of a Galileo to stand firm 
 against a world of persecutors. Could you hold 
 to an objective standard of duty in a more abso- 
 lute form ? 
 
 Much, then, of the common defence of 
 Naturalism rests on prejudices which will not 
 bear examination. Thus, when Naturalism 
 limits the Universe to those facts which can be 
 investigated by Natural Science — when it denies 
 God and a future life — it must surely have some- 
 thing better to go upon than the purely negative 
 principle that these things have not come within 
 166
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 our experience, and therefore they cannot be. It 
 must be tacitly employing some principle of 
 limitation of a more positive character. 
 
 In the writings of eminent Agnostics we may 
 learn what this positive principle is. They are 
 impressed with the aesthetic unity of nature as 
 they conceive it. Huxley in an eloquent passage 
 compared the course of Nature to the changing 
 scenes of a kaleidoscope ; and opined that if we 
 could only forget our individual sufferings — as of 
 unregarded animalcules who had somehow got 
 between the bits of glass of the kaleidoscope — the 
 spectacle of these changing scenes, of which each 
 is the logical result of the preceding one in accord- 
 ance with those principles which we call the laws 
 of Nature, would fill us with complete intellectual 
 satisfaction, with the Amor Intellectualis Dei. To 
 every one who has ever felt the sublimity of that 
 iron necessity, by which in Nature events appear 
 to follow events in inevitable sequence, this 
 enthusiasm will be readily intelligible. He will 
 understand the resistance which is provoked by 
 the doctrines of religion. In such a mood it is no 
 welcome thought that this iron law may be but 
 the will of a Power Who can change it, Who can 
 suspend its operation by occasional miracle, Who 
 intends to bring the whole stately procession of 
 events to an abrupt end at the Day of Judgment. 
 The modern reader, even if on reflection he is 
 still a believer in miracle himself, must feel some 
 sympathy with the youthful heroine of Bret 
 
 167
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 Harte's tale, who when a canting divine tries to 
 check her astronomical enthusiasm by the re- 
 minder that astronomical laws were for once 
 suspended, when at Joshua's command the moon 
 stood still in the valley of Ajalon, exclaims with 
 an oath that it is a lie, and that she does not 
 believe it. The breaking of natural law seems an 
 offence against aesthetic congruity ; and therefore 
 the very suggestion of such a breach is received 
 with indignation. It is as though since " the first 
 seeds whereof the world did spring " had agreed 
 (according to the poet's mythology)* 
 
 To leave their first disordered combating 
 And in a dance such measure to observe 
 As all the world their motion should preserve, 
 
 we had got the measure so beaten into our souls, 
 that even in thought we can hardly bear to break 
 the rhythm. 
 
 t( 
 
 But," the agnostic may reply, " though these 
 aesthetic comparisons are in their way quite apt, 
 though I perceive that the unchanging order of 
 Nature is sublime, it is not because of its sublimity 
 that I believe in it. Nature, as I conceive it, 
 agrees with my ideal of a rational order ; but I 
 utterly reject the principle that what is demanded 
 by this ideal must therefore occur." We can 
 only ask him whether this answer will survive a 
 searching self-examination. Our agnostic rejects 
 God and the Supernatural. Why ? Not because 
 
 * Sir J. Davies, The Antiquity of Dancing. 
 168
 
 AGNOSTICISM 
 
 these beliefs are directly opposed to experience. 
 No one can claim to have experienced God's non- 
 existence. Nor can experience show us that there 
 is no future life. On these matters sensible 
 experience and mathematical proof (as we have 
 seen) are alike silent. Nor, again, can our denial 
 rest upon the supposed self-evident principle of 
 the indestructibility of matter and energy. Grant 
 this principle to be as self-evident as you will, it 
 does not prove the continued regularity of Nature.* 
 By this process of discovering the inadequacy of 
 the reasons commonly given, we may arrive at the 
 real reason on which the denial of religious beliefs 
 is based. | An immense number of modern men 
 are so much impressed with the sublimity of 
 Nature that they cannot conceive it to be but a 
 
 * See above, chap, iv, p. 40 ; cf. p. 228. 
 
 f See Mr. Russell's Problems of Philosophy, chap, vi, p. 99. 
 He says very truly that " the belief that the sun will rise to- 
 morrow might be falsified if the earth came suddenly into 
 contact with a large body which destroyed its rotation ; but the 
 laws of motion and the law of gravitation would not be infringed 
 by that event." But he is surely wrong when he continues that 
 " the business of science is to find uniformities, such as the laws 
 of motion and the law of gravitation, to which, so far as our 
 experience extends, there are no exceptions." This at least is not 
 the sole business of science. The further you advance along 
 this path, the nearer you come to the purely formal principles, 
 such as that nothing happens without some cause, that there is 
 some order of Nature. Our aim in Science is not merely to get 
 to principles so general that they cannot be contradicted, but to 
 discover what is likely to happen. Science is a study of reality 
 — of the actual. Thus it may be of more importance, scientifically 
 as well as practically, to know that the sun will rise, than to 
 know that even if it didn't the more general laws of Nature might 
 still remain unviolated. 
 
 169
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 part of a wider whole. Their imagination utterly 
 fails to construct an artistic Whole worthy to 
 include " this present world " as a mere episode 
 within itself. " A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope," 
 said a critic of his Iliad or Odyssey, "but it is not 
 Homer." "A very charming imagination," say 
 many, speaking of the gorgeous visions of the 
 Apocalypse, " but it is not Nature." Such minds, 
 when they speak of a rational Universe, think of 
 such a Universe as filled Professor Huxley with 
 the Amor Intellectualis Dei. 
 
 It is obvious that on such grounds a vigorous 
 defence of Naturalism may be made. But it is 
 equally clear that, defended on such grounds, 
 Naturalism must descend from its pedestal. Or 
 — to change the metaphor — if the Universe as 
 conceived by Naturalism and the Universe as 
 conceived in Christian Theology are both de- 
 fended as embodiments of the ideal of reason, 
 Naturalism and Theology enter the fight on equal 
 terms. Both are forms of Optimism, and our 
 decision in favour of one or of the other depends 
 ultimately on the particular standard of good and 
 evil which we adopt. 
 
 170
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 Religion, however, as we must still admit, has 
 special difficulties of its own. 
 
 First, there is the difficulty of imagining a 
 Future Life. It is not easy to frame such a 
 picture as will satisfy the mind ; and yet it is 
 unsatisfactory if Religion presents us with the 
 prospect of a life which no one could really 
 desire. 
 
 The difficulty arises when we try to conceive 
 the Future Life in a form at once attractive and 
 complete. The heavenly scenes described in 
 certain Mediaeval hymns, and painted in certain 
 Mediaeval pictures, are full of beauty. But we 
 cannot seriously regard the heaven which they 
 depict as a home in which we could ourselves be 
 happy. The man who has come into contact 
 with the varied spiritual interests of modern 
 life — with the many subjects touched on, say, in 
 Goethe's Faust — cannot be, and ought not to 
 be, satisfied with a state of bliss adequate to 
 simpler needs : 
 
 The shout of them that triumph 
 The song of them that feast : 
 
 171
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 yet if we attempt to fill out the Mediaeval repre- 
 sentations of heaven with additions drawn from 
 the distinctive experiences of modern life, we 
 sacrifice the unity and congruity which gave 
 these earlier representations their charm, and 
 produce a mere jumble of discordant features. 
 
 There is an element of truth, then, in Matthew 
 Arnold's criticism of the conception of heaven in 
 " our English popular religion." The garlands, 
 the trees, the fountains, the flowers, the harmony 
 of falling waters, human voices, and musical in- 
 struments — of which according to him the popular 
 picture of heaven is composed — may justly be 
 described, he thinks, as " poor fragments all of 
 this low earth." In the wording of this criticism 
 we have some ground for complaint. It is 
 strange that a poet should have nothing to say of 
 roses, lilies, trees, and falling waters but that 
 they are low and poor. As elements in a perfect 
 human existence, if such an existence is con- 
 ceivable at all, these natural objects must 
 surely have their place. We should miss them 
 if they were absent. But the critic's real ob- 
 jection is not to the separate features, but 
 to the picture as a whole. " Yet who," he 
 asks, " can devise any conception of a future 
 state of bliss which shall bear close examination 
 better ? " 
 
 Now, if by devising a conception of a future 
 life he means constructing a detailed programme, 
 172
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 we may admit that this is beyond our powers. 
 If some one had actually partaken in the heavenly 
 life, and then returned again to earth, even so he 
 might well be unable to describe heaven in terms 
 intelligible to those who had not seen it. An 
 intelligent foreigner who had graduated at a Con- 
 tinental University, decided to spend a year at 
 Oxford. Meeting an Oxford man who knew 
 something of the difference between England and 
 the Continent, he asked for a description of 
 Oxford life. The description was given with some 
 wealth of detail ; but the foreigner could not 
 understand it. He was able to form no concep- 
 tion of what Oxford could be like. It was only 
 after he had lived there himself that he exclaimed, 
 " You told me, and I could not understand your 
 description. Now I come here ; and it is all 
 exactly as you said." 
 
 The moral of this story is plain. The believer 
 in a future life may be suffered to describe his 
 faith in general terms. It is unreasonable to ask 
 for details. Each age as it passes brings to man- 
 kind new forms of activity and enjoyment. In a 
 perfect life we may be convinced that every one 
 of these will be present. Heaven, if it is to be 
 heaven, must be the home of wide human sym- 
 pathies : a place where we shall all understand, 
 even if we do not all engage in them, all the 
 manifold functions both of active and of contem- 
 plative life ; where our heart will not be closed 
 even to those delights which are not specially 
 
 173
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 congenial with our natural temperament ; where 
 we shall share, at least by sympathy, the special 
 joys of the saint, the scholar, the thinker, the 
 lover, the sportsman, the warrior, the man of 
 business : where, looking back with more in- 
 telligence upon our earthly life, we shall find the 
 very divergence of taste which has divided us on 
 earth to be but a closer bond of union in heaven. 
 Just as it is often the travelled man who best 
 understands his own country, so an association 
 with all the types of humanity which have in- 
 habited this globe from the days of the palaeolithic 
 man onwards, might well lead us to understand 
 better the peculiar gifts which are individually 
 our own. We may even hope to gain such 
 increased sympathy with others that it is no 
 longer a pain, but a pure delight, to look into 
 happiness through another man's eyes. Even in 
 this life our isolation is far from being complete. 
 We may often — perhaps always except when the 
 thought of his happiness turns our minds to our 
 own privations — receive genuine happiness from 
 the happiness of another. We can almost feel 
 the pain of a man who, standing close beside us, 
 is hurt or wounded. Men have been known to 
 swoon at the breaking of another's bone. Thus, 
 if in heaven we could enter as much into our 
 neighbour's pleasure as we do here into his pain, 
 then a type of existence is at least conceivable 
 which shall contain every element of perfect 
 happiness. Yet we may be still able to frame no 
 174
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 artistic picture of a life uniting such immense 
 diversity of good things. 
 
 But apart from this general difficulty there are 
 more special ones. Since new difficulties are sure 
 to occur to the human mind in each generation, 
 this subject can never be treated with complete- 
 ness. The utmost we can do is to examine one 
 or more of the objections which sound most 
 formidable, and to show that they are not so 
 unanswerable as they appear. 
 
 Take this modern rendering of an ancient prob- 
 lem. " The thing I loved," says the hero of 
 Miss Schreiner's admirable story,* " was a woman 
 proud and young ; it had a mother once, who 
 dying kissed her little baby, and prayed God that 
 she might see it again. If it had lived the loved 
 thing would itself have had a son, who, when he 
 closed the weary eyes, and smoothed the wrinkled 
 forehead of his mother, would have prayed God 
 to see that old face smile again in the hereafter. 
 To the son heaven will be no heaven if the sweet 
 worn face is not in one of the choirs : he will look 
 for it through the phalanx of God's glorified 
 angels ; and the youth will look for the maid, and 
 the mother for the baby. And whose then shall 
 she be at the resurrection of the dead ? ' 
 
 The difficulty here raised may at first sight 
 
 * The Story of an African Farm, Part II, chap. xiii. 
 
 175
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 seem insuperable. If the longings of all three 
 hearts are to be satisfied, then at the Resurrec- 
 tion, it is argued, the woman must appear at once 
 as new-born baby, grown-up girl, and aged mother. 
 But is it certain that the longings which are 
 really felt can be satisfied only under these im- 
 possible conditions ? What the mourner desires 
 above all is to meet again the identical person 
 whom he has lost, not that person in the last phase 
 in which he knew him. It happens often that the 
 great joy of meeting an old friend is to find how 
 entirely, in spite of changed opinions and changed 
 appearance, he is at heart the same person 
 whom we knew long ago. With persons of shallow 
 character it is otherwise. The boy who seemed 
 so chivalrous and original has his soul now 
 fettered to the routine work of his office. The 
 girl who was such a good companion has now no 
 characteristics except the manners of her set, and 
 no interests but the usual interests of her social 
 class. Yet even in these cases it is conceivable 
 that there may happen in heaven what sometimes 
 happens on earth. There may be a re-emergence 
 of the soul as we knew it in youth. The freshness 
 of individuality may be restored. It may even be 
 restored in a form which shows that the inter- 
 mediate period of conventionality and worldliness 
 had its own value in the development of the 
 personality. For, though it is the person as such 
 that we value most, each separate phase has its 
 charm ; the mellowness of our age, the vigour of 
 176
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 our prime, the freshness of our infancy. These 
 distinct charms — so Miss Schreiner's hero argues — 
 cannot be present together. The son, the youth, 
 the mother, must one or other of them be dis- 
 appointed. But are these various qualities es- 
 sentially incompatible ? It has been held that the 
 dead are to be restored at the Resurrection in 
 full vigour of mind and body as in the prime of 
 life. The man who has lived to old age, and then 
 has been restored to full strength at the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead, need not be conceived as losing 
 in that restoration all the special charms he has 
 acquired during the patient weariness of declining 
 years. There is nothing monstrous or unex- 
 ampled in the union of youthful fire with the 
 broad judgment of old age. There are some men 
 who cannot but recognize that they themselves 
 retain in mature life in a quite unusual degree the 
 feelings and instincts of their youth. Again, there 
 is nothing monstrous and unexampled in the 
 restoration of vigour after a temporary eclipse. 
 Men who have sunk into premature old age 
 through ill-health have sometimes regained all 
 their powers when health has come back to them. 
 Yet it is not in the least needful that as strength 
 returns they should forget the special experiences 
 of their time of weakness. There is, in fact, 
 ample earthly analogy for things which, when 
 alleged of heaven, are said to be contradictory 
 and inconceivable. Thus, it is far from certain 
 that in every case a son must experience dis- 
 
 m 177
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 appointment at the Resurrection if a mother rose 
 again as in her prime ; if that which he had sown 
 in weakness was raised in power. In the case put 
 by Miss Schreiner there is nothing essentially incon- 
 ceivable in a resurrection which should satisfy the 
 heart's desires both of the lover and the son. 
 
 The case of the dying mother parting from her 
 infant is no doubt more difficult. All depends 
 upon what she actually hoped and thought ; and 
 in such matters there is little uniformity in human 
 feelings. Her chief desire may have been that 
 the child too might die, so that she might take it 
 with her. Or, again, she may have dwelt chiefly 
 on the hope that she might be permitted to watch 
 over the child, herself unseen, during the progress 
 of its early years. In God, it is sometimes said, 
 the dead are nearer to us than the living. But, 
 whatever wide variety of feeling is conceivable, 
 it must surely be extremely rare that any mother 
 should feel the desire which Miss Schreiner's 
 argument requires. A mother can hardly wish 
 that, after growing up on earth, the child should 
 be put back to a state of infancy in heaven. If a 
 woman has once accepted as inevitable the part- 
 ing from her child, whether through death or 
 through mere absence, the very last thing she can 
 seriously desire is that its development should be 
 arrested at the moment of parting. In those 
 families where the generations have succeeded 
 each other rapidly, a man may still be thought of 
 by his mother primarily as her first-born, the 
 178
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 child she has reared — and towards her he may 
 still retain the affectionateness of boyhood — to 
 his wife he may be primarily the lad who won her 
 love, while to his grown-up sons and daughters 
 he may speak with the mature authority of a 
 father. In this case there has been no parting. 
 " He has changed," his friends may say, " but we 
 have not lost him. Yet if we had lost him, and 
 if at the Resurrection he were restored to us much 
 as he is now — if his mother had died when he was 
 a child, if he himself had died when his children 
 were young, leaving his wife a widow — need any 
 one of his family, mother, wife, or children, feel any 
 element of disappointment in such a restoration ? ' 
 The mother, it is probable, would not so much wish 
 for a different restoration from this, as complain 
 that, even in the best restoration she could hope for, 
 there is something which she has lost for ever. ' It 
 is others who nursed him. By my early death I lost 
 what not even heaven can give me back again." 
 
 Thus the real difficulty is not that which Miss 
 Schreiner suggests — namely, that the joys which 
 the three friends would chiefly desire are mutually 
 incompatible — but the sense that there are some 
 losses which nothing can make good. This is a 
 very common feeling in many varied relations. 
 To attain the object of one's desires later on is 
 not always as good as attaining it at first. There 
 are some men with whom the greatest triumphs 
 of adult life have been no compensation for 
 failure at school. It is not every one to whom the 
 
 179
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 highest parliamentary honours in his later years 
 would really make up for the disappointment of 
 losing his first election. Yet, even so, we may ask 
 whether there is any one thing in the world about 
 which we can say, " If I miss this good thing now, 
 it is absolutely inconceivable that it can ever be 
 restored to me in any context whatsoever " ? The 
 experience of life has shown most of us that the 
 disappointments of youth are not always so irre- 
 mediable as we thought at the time. It is not 
 only that we forget. The very joys of which we 
 had said, " It is now or never : unless I can have 
 it in this form I can never have it at all," have 
 sometimes come to us with complete satisfaction 
 in a new and unexpected context ; so that at the 
 end we exclaim, " The compensation here has in 
 it no element of disappointment. If I had known 
 in my keenest fits of despair just what awaited me 
 later, even then I should have felt that, when the 
 time came, the reversal of my ill-fortune would be 
 complete." The wheel sometimes, even in this 
 life, turns the full circle ; and the whirligig of 
 time brings in full its revenges and compensations. 
 Perhaps, then, all our difficulties arise because 
 we limit the possibilities of heaven unduly. The 
 answer of Christ to the Sadducee conveys the very 
 opposite moral to that which has been perversely 
 drawn from it. We err if we attribute to heaven 
 the exact limitations of this earth. 
 
 tt 
 
 Still," it may be said, " you have not touched 
 180
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 the most significant element in the pathos of 
 human life. There is always the fading of the 
 past. Even if our children live, their childhood 
 dies. That which gave us delight exists nowhere 
 in the world. We have in its stead the growing 
 boy or girl ; the substitute we have learned to 
 accept in its place. But it is only thoughtlessness 
 which sees no loss in this substitution. The sad- 
 ness which fills the mind which contemplates the 
 vanishing beauties of Venice or of Nuremburg — 
 this, if we look below the surface, gives the 
 character to human life in general ; a character 
 from which not even heaven could escape, unless 
 for the joy and movement of life as we know it 
 were substituted the lifeless repose of the Byzan- 
 tine mosaic." 
 
 Lamentations in this vein are characteristic of 
 an age that loves history. Yet it is worth while 
 to point out that the passage of time is not always 
 felt to bring loss. The sense of loss, therefore, is 
 due, not to time and change as such, but to special 
 circumstances. At the end of the performance of 
 some favourite Symphony, the First Movement 
 has already faded into the past. If this is the 
 last performance we shall ever hear from the same 
 conductor and the same performers, the conclu- 
 sion may bring feelings of melancholy and regret. 
 But under ordinary circumstances we have no 
 such feelings. The music has ended, but it has 
 not vanished. It is present and accessible ; a 
 working element in the life we live. And so it 
 
 181
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 is with all those elements of our past life and 
 history which are fully preserved for us in records 
 or in pictures, in common and public memory, in 
 their social and political effects. The victory of 
 Waterloo must have been as fully present to the 
 victor to the last day of his life as at the moment 
 when the battle was won. In such cases the past 
 lives in the present. To every mind to whom the 
 word " God ' has any meaning — indeed, for all 
 who conceive that there is in the world any such 
 element of permanence as is implied in our ad- 
 mission that statements which concern the past, 
 if true once, are true for ever — it is at least an 
 intelligible assertion that our whole past may 
 conceivably be as really present to us for all 
 eternity as the crucial events of our personal or 
 national history are present to us now. If the 
 opening notes of a melody had become nothing 
 to us before its close, we should never hear a 
 melody as such. The notes are still present and 
 effective, though they have ceased to sound. 
 There is, in principle, nothing difficult or unfami- 
 liar in the hope that in God every single incident 
 in the earthly history of our race may be present 
 and accessible, a living and working fact for all 
 eternity in the heavenly life of mankind. 
 
 Yet we must not leave this subject without 
 recurring to the note of warning. If we wish the 
 belief in a future life to be taken seriously, the 
 182
 
 SPECIAL DIFFICULTIES 
 
 whole question must be handled with boldness. 
 There is no attractiveness in a hope of heaven 
 which ignores our real aspirations. It is wise, 
 however, neither to give too free a rein to our 
 imagination, nor to be discouraged at the failure 
 of the imagination to deal adequately with these 
 matters. The great artist, as we see in the case 
 of Milton, can weld into a harmonious whole what 
 to us would have seemed beforehand to be but a 
 chaos of discordant elements. Things which have 
 seemed to us irreconcilable, the artist may unite 
 by a flash of his intuition. And Nature is an 
 artist of the first rank. For the greatest artists 
 her work is the model. But not only are the 
 artists her scholars and her copyists; they are 
 also her creation. She produces them from the 
 storehouse of her inexhaustible resources. If we 
 continue to use the word " Nature " in its widest 
 sense, our very hopes of heaven themselves are of 
 her making. What, therefore, she has blended 
 in our hopes, she may blend yet more har- 
 moniously in our fruition. 
 
 183
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 GOD 
 
 Another class of difficulties is concerned, not 
 with Heaven, but with God. " The God to which 
 the argument points," it may be said, " is cer- 
 tainly a God with plenty to do.* What could be 
 a more laborious undertaking than the ceaseless 
 planning of delicate effects of colour in every part 
 of the material Universe ? No less laborious, 
 and much more unsavoury, must be His super- 
 intendence of the processes of birth and of diges- 
 tion, of the circulation of the blood, of the 
 chemistry of respiration. Thus the Argument 
 from Design or any variant of it, so far as it gives 
 us a God at all, represents Him as devoting a 
 great part of His attention to menial tasks. Such 
 a God cannot say with Teucer in the Ajax f that 
 He practises no base mechanical art ; and this 
 difficulty has been felt acutely by religious men 
 themselves ; as is shown by the attempts of the 
 Gnostics and others to frame a theory of God 
 which shall remove Him as far as possible from 
 contact with material things." 
 
 The answer to this objection is that mechanical 
 
 * Cf. De Natura Deorurn, Bk. II, 23, 59 ; cf. Bk. I. 
 f Line 1121. 
 
 184
 
 GOD 
 
 work is base when it is divorced from thought, 
 but not otherwise. To the mountain-climber the 
 overcoming of material obstacles is an end in 
 itself. Again, there is nothing servile in the work 
 of the skilled gardener. In all ages Achilles 
 would have been reckoned a nobler type of the 
 heroic warrior than the man who merely devises 
 successful campaigns in his study. Untiring 
 activity, and a mind bent on mechanical details, 
 are consistent, not only with dignity, but with 
 mental repose. Beethoven intent on the execu- 
 tion of the runs and arpeggios of his own Sonata 
 Appassionata * is a figure neither restless nor 
 undignified. Indeed, religion might well take him 
 as an earthly parallel to those who, receiving the 
 rest that remaineth for the people of God, never- 
 theless rest not day nor night in their thanks- 
 givings and praises. There is nothing inconsistent 
 with dignity in activity as such, nor in attention 
 to a multiplicity of details, so long as the details 
 do not distract the mind from its complete unity 
 of purpose, feeling, and conception. There is 
 nothing inconsistent with freedom in the task of 
 superintending the perpetual repetitions which 
 occur in Nature ; since these repetitions resemble, 
 not the meaningless iterations of insanity, but the 
 significant iterations of the Fine Arts. It is the 
 Fine Arts, again, which afford us an analogy for 
 understanding the relation of God to human life 
 in its obscener aspects. The tragedy of Macbeth 
 
 * Op. 57. 
 
 185
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 is a greater and fuller work of art, as we saw, in 
 virtue of some of its less pleasing incidents. The 
 Divine Comedy of Dante would be impoverished 
 beyond description by the omission of the In- 
 ferno ; and some of its details which are in- 
 dividually most offensive contribute to the poem 
 as a whole an element which we could not spare.* 
 It cannot be said that here aesthetic parallels are 
 out of place ; since the whole objection we are 
 considering is based on considerations which are 
 predominantly aesthetic. The obscene elements, 
 whether in a work of human art or in the Universe, 
 can only be judged justly when seen in relation to 
 the purport of the whole. 
 
 " But," it may be said, " the chief burden of 
 the difficulty, as most men feel it, lies not in the 
 thought of a God engrossed in unworthy 
 activities ; but in the thought that He inflicts 
 manifold sufferings upon those whom He calls 
 His children and His friends. This objection is 
 twofold. First, the actual sins and sufferings of 
 mankind are such that it is hard to justify the 
 God Who allows them to happen. Secondly, if 
 even for our own good God inflicts such evils upon 
 us, does there not arise an intolerable personal 
 relation between God and man ? We could no 
 more make friends with such a God than with 
 the angel in the poem who steals his host's silver 
 cup to cure him of his excessive attachment to 
 
 * Inferno, xxviii, 22-30 ; xxi, 137-139 ; xvii, 74, 75. 
 186
 
 GOD ' 
 
 worldly possessions. Such acts, however well- 
 intentioned, are utterly averse to the spirit of 
 friendship. They must utterly destroy both 
 confidence and sympathy. The same objection 
 holds against all Providential explanations of 
 evil. Life becomes a sort of play or game ; a 
 sort of obstacle-race with obstacles which need 
 not have existed, but are planned to give our 
 faculties exercise, to test or develop our endurance. 
 Can the God Who forms such a plan look His own 
 suffering creatures in the face without shame ? 
 Can we conceive that the God of the New Testa- 
 ment — the Father of Jesus Christ — could avow 
 such a policy even to the meanest of human 
 beings ? Can we conceive Him as saying even to 
 King Bomba of Naples, ' It was I Who de- 
 liberately placed you amid strong temptations : 
 it was I Who gave you a nature prone to yield to 
 them ; the result is a career of shame and failure ; 
 but the reprobation of mankind which has fol- 
 lowed has been a witness to the dignity of the 
 Moral Law sufficient to justify the experiment.' 
 If the Creator, after so describing His policy, 
 turned to exhortation — if He said, 4 Now repent : 
 trust Me, and I will save you : ' must not the 
 answer be, ' I can never trust One Who has made 
 me the victim of an experiment so cruel and so 
 wanton ' ? " 
 
 It is well that difficulties that are felt keenly 
 should be expressed frankly. They are perhaps 
 
 187
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 less unanswerable than they seem. With regard 
 to the first objection — the difficulty of justifying 
 the various evils that exist — we ought always to 
 ask ourselves in respect to each one, Do I really 
 wish it away ? Should I seriously think the 
 world better if it had not existed — if it had lacked 
 the heroic sufferings of Socrates, the manly 
 patience of the poor and the oppressed ? In each 
 individual case it is our duty to restrain oppres- 
 sion and to punish the oppressor. But if by a 
 word we could make sure that all oppression 
 should henceforth vanish from the earth, are we 
 certain that this is a word which we should be 
 doing right to speak ? 
 
 It is often the very men who are most sensitive 
 to individual evils who are most conscious of the 
 goodness of the wiiole. The poet, whose highest 
 function is in tragedy, yet makes life the theme 
 of his praises. St. Paul, who seeks deliverance 
 from this present evil world, asserts that nothing 
 is unclean of itself, that the earth is the Lord's 
 and the fullness thereof. The saint who has 
 fought a lifelong battle against sin, exclaims on 
 his deathbed, " Glory be to God for all things." 
 Thus if we are asked, about any one evil thing, 
 whether we are absolutely certain that the world 
 as a whole would be the better for its removal, it 
 is rarely easy to give a positive answer. There 
 are some, no doubt, who hold that the world 
 would be better if it contained no evil at all. The 
 ablest upholder of this view at the present time 
 188
 
 GOD 
 
 is Dr. Rashdall. But what would Dr. Rashdall 
 feel, if he learnt that there were serious grounds 
 for suspecting that, though the dialogue narrated 
 in the Phcedo took place much as Plato reported 
 it, yet Socrates in fact was not under sentence of 
 death, but merely believed himself to be so, while 
 his friends humoured his delusion ? If the delu- 
 sion was quite complete, Socrates would still be a 
 noble figure. Yet if, after all, he was the victim, 
 not of persecution, but of persecution-mania, 
 this theory would sadly spoil the story.* The 
 decisive refutation of the theory would surely 
 be as gratifying to Dr. Rashdall as to the 
 rest of the learned world. He must surely, 
 for once, find himself rejoicing in the reality of 
 evil. 
 
 The second objection is in effect that Providence 
 — so far as it consists in the infliction of evil — is a 
 wanton playing with souls, a wanton trifling with 
 serious interests. The God — it is said — Who 
 brings about a European war because men have 
 " forgotten Him " is a God Who cares for nothing 
 so long as His own vanity is satisfied. He is like 
 the tyrant who should desolate a province 
 because its inhabitants had omitted to pay him 
 the customary acts of polite acknowledgment. 
 If we look at the matter from this point of 
 view it is natural that we should exclaim with 
 a modern writer, " Strange that believers in a 
 
 * And cf. p. 191. 
 
 189
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 divine revelation seem unable to conceive a 
 decent God ! " * 
 
 But such a view misconceives the meaning of 
 religious language. To " forget God " means, in 
 the mouth of the religious man, to forget righteous- 
 ness ; to forget just dealing, mercy, and truth. 
 If God vindicates righteousness — in which we on 
 the rational side of our nature have interest as 
 well as He— He is at least not inflicting pain for a 
 trivial reason. The punishment of the Pharaohs 
 and the Bombas is richly deserved. If they go 
 unpunished too long, it is the natural instinct of 
 mankind to demand that God shall show His 
 power ; and the dead weight of indifference which 
 is the chief enemy of every reformer — the in- 
 difference of the multitude which is careless of 
 truth, careless of human suffering — is an object 
 of just wrath, no less than are the crimes of the 
 more conspicuous sinner. If, further, we once 
 perceive that apart from evil certain of the best 
 of good things f cannot be realized — that the per- 
 mission of evil by God is the only way to the full 
 attainment of victory by the spirit of man — then 
 there can no longer be any suspicion that God's 
 providential dealing is a mere play, a cruel ex- 
 periment of which we are the suffering victims. 
 If this is the only way by which the fullness of 
 good may be attained, if moreover God Himself 
 shares with us to the full in all the sufferings we 
 
 * See Religion and the War, Charles T. Gorham, p. 11 
 (Rationalist Press Association). f See chap. i. 
 
 190
 
 GOD 
 
 endure — if He is ever " afflicted in the afflictions 
 of His people " and feels as His own the sufferings 
 of the least of His brethren* — then there is no 
 justification for the impression that God is treat- 
 ing men as mere pawns in His game. Only 
 through the overcoming of the opposition of that 
 which exalts itself against righteousness — only 
 through the evil will of man subdued after 
 success by failure, punishment, repentance — can 
 righteousness gain its complete triumph. This 
 triumph is far from being merely spectacular. 
 No one had deeper insight into the need of such 
 spiritual victory than Dante ; yet we shall hardly 
 suspect that Dante found merely spectacular 
 enjoyment in his own sufferings. As religion 
 conceives the matter, all is done in deadly earnest : 
 suffering and temptation are the only means by 
 which the perfecting of the human spirit can be 
 achieved ; and God is at all points Himself our 
 fellow-sufferer. 
 
 Thus the difficulties that we are now consider- 
 ing arise, in the main, from an arbitrary and 
 mythological conception of God, which is not 
 that of the religious man, and is not the just out- 
 come of any reasonable theistic argument. This 
 mythological conception is presupposed in the 
 dialogue which our supposed objector imagines 
 
 * Isaiah lxiii, 9 ; St. Matt, xxv, 40, 45 ; cf. Judges x, 16 ; 
 Romans viii, 26. 
 
 191
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 between the Creator and King Bomba. God, 
 however, as religion conceives Him, is not to be 
 identified with the Divine Father of the poets. 
 He is almost as unlike the God of Paradise Lost 
 as He is unlike the Homeric Zeus. The God of 
 religion is no mere character in the drama of his- 
 tory, external to us as are the other persons with 
 whom we come in contact. He is rather the 
 author of the whole ; the poet Who is at once each 
 of the characters and more than any * ; the God 
 in Whom we live and move and have our being ; 
 our own inmost self f ; the very principle of life 
 on which our own life and individuality is based, 
 Whose will is at the root of all our most personal 
 activities ; the Giver even of the very strength 
 by which we resist Him.J At the basis even of 
 the flagrant rebellion of a Bomba or a Pharaoh 
 there lies some thought, some ideal; something 
 therefore which must be conceived as having its 
 place among the conceptions of the divine reason, 
 something which is not utterly outside the sym- 
 pathy of the Divine Artist. Again, the true 
 Moral Law is not entirely absent from the mind 
 even of the worst of criminals. The wrath of 
 God speaks to them as something not wholly 
 alien from themselves, but in the accusing voice 
 of their own conscience. Thus they do not stand 
 
 * That the poet should be in turn each of his characters is 
 quite consistent with the recognition that one of them may speak 
 the poet's own ultimate view in a special sense. 
 
 f Cf. St. John, xvii, 2, 21, 23; xiv, 1, 4, 5. 
 
 $ Exodus ix, 16 ; Romans ix, 17. 
 
 192
 
 GOD 
 
 towards God in such a purely external relation 
 as is implied in our imaginary dialogue. In 
 falling under God's wrath they fall also under 
 their own. They trust His accusing Voice because 
 it speaks within themselves : because it is the 
 true language of their own heart. And this 
 trust is not always destroyed, even if they come 
 to hold that the Inward Voice speaks the will of 
 the same God Who also in His Providence has 
 hardened their hearts. For proof of this we need 
 only turn to history. The prophet is speaking 
 the language of piety, not of rebellion, when he 
 asks, " Why dost Thou make us to err from Thy 
 ways and hardenest our heart from Thy fear ? "* 
 Again, the Founder of Christianity recognizes the 
 reality of evil and God's power over it, recognizes 
 God as the sender or withholder of temptation, 
 in the very prayer in which He teaches us to 
 regard God as our Father. 
 
 Let us, then, but feel to the full the wickedness 
 of oppression, and the justice of the oppressor's 
 doom : let us but feel that the great stories of 
 the oppressor's overthrow can stir the soul more 
 deeply than almost any episode in history : we 
 shall then perceive how the oppressor himself, 
 from a changed point of view, may come to 
 rejoice in his own defeat, and even indirectly in 
 the sins and errors which gave occasion to this 
 sublime vindication of the Moral Law. '' The 
 truth of God hath more abounded through my lie 
 
 * Isaiah lxiii, 17 ; cf. xlv, 5, 7 ; Amos iii, 6. 
 
 N 193
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 unto His glory." Such a rejoicing is far from 
 making light of evil ; for only to the penitent who 
 has renounced evil can such a view of the indirect 
 value of evil have any serious significance.* 
 
 We are dealing here with difficulties which lie 
 within the religious beliefs themselves. The sug- 
 gestion we have to meet is that, even if on general 
 grounds we were inclined to believe in God, the 
 internal difficulties of the conception of God are 
 an insuperable obstacle to faith. We must ask, 
 then, what the nature of that conception is. If 
 the Theism of the plain man is based upon 
 Optimism ; if the belief that the world is a 
 rational whole is the foundation of his belief in 
 God ; if the plain man's God embodies the plain 
 man's ideal ; to what sort of a Theism does his 
 Optimism lead him ? The answer must surely 
 be that, though the God of popular religion is a 
 
 * We may compare here the case of the man who feels that 
 but for his youthful disobedience he would never have really 
 known his parents' strength of character. " In a sense," he 
 may say, " I can't regret my faults ; for but for them I should 
 never have known the patience and forbearance of my father." 
 If he added that the memory had always made him feel how 
 differently he would have behaved to his father if he could have 
 had his time over again, this remark would be perfectly natural. 
 If some one — Mr. Bernard Shaw for example — told him that in 
 strict logic he ought to feel that, if he could have his time over 
 again, he would behave at least as badly, or if he thought that 
 his father's patience could have borne yet greater strain, then 
 still worse, this advice would be taken for a joke. This com- 
 parison, if thought out, is sufficient to refute the usual objections 
 to the view expressed above. 
 
 194
 
 GOD 
 
 Person, He is never a Person merely. " God," it 
 has been said, " is everywhere present in human 
 life, but He is not a character in history." If we 
 conceive of the ultimate law of the Universe — the 
 ultimate necessity by which men and all things 
 are what they are — as something fundamentally 
 good, and also as conscious of itself in such a sense 
 that we may enter into communion with it and 
 make it the object of our love and worship,* then 
 we have the personal God which religion sets 
 before us. It is not in this form that the concep- 
 tion of God gives rise to the chief objections which 
 are brought against it. 
 
 * See Epilogue, below, p. 218. 
 
 195
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We may now draw together the heads of our 
 argument into a single view. 
 
 There is a story, now forgotten, which some 
 few years ago was often told in religious circles. 
 A certain atheist, it was said, had a friend who 
 possessed an Orrery.* The unbeliever, catching 
 sight of this machine, asked who had made it. 
 His friend answered him ironically. No one, he 
 said, had made it. It was a mere collection of 
 bits of wood and metal which had somehow come 
 together at haphazard. For why not ? If it is 
 impossible that the mechanism, by which the 
 Orrery copies on a small scale the movements of 
 the planets, should be the work of chance, is not 
 this still more obviously impossible in the case 
 of the planets themselves ? If it cannot be 
 chance that brings together the parts of the 
 Orrery, how can it be chance which brings 
 together the parts of the Universe ? 
 
 Suppose that a conversation on this subject 
 should happen to arise, among a group of men of 
 
 * Cf. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Bk. II, § 88 ; and see chap, v, 
 above. 
 
 196
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 ordinary education, in a railway carriage or a 
 smoking-room. If a believer in God countered 
 the attacks of a sceptic by telling this story of 
 the Orrery, the company would probably feel that 
 the believer had had the best of the argument. 
 The man of deep religious experience, it is true, 
 seldom cares much for such reasonings. They 
 seem to him to establish the existence rather of an 
 almighty Watchmaker whose ingenuity we can 
 admire, than of a God whom we can worship. 
 Still the common sense of the plain man finds in 
 them something attractive, and it is well worth 
 our while to inquire whether it may not be that, 
 here as so often, the plain man is partly right. 
 
 The unbeliever has at the outset an obvious 
 retort. " This argument," he will say, " is purely 
 ignorant. It can carry weight with those only 
 who know no Physical Science ; since it ignores 
 the Principle of Uniformity on which Physical 
 Science is built." 
 
 But — as we have seen above — we have no 
 right to take the uniformity of Nature as a matter 
 of course ; nor as a self-evident truth. It is mere 
 confusion of thought — though a very common 
 confusion — which identifies the uniformity of 
 Nature with the principle of inertia,* the prin- 
 ciple that things must remain unchanged until 
 something changes them. Those who compare 
 Nature with the Orrery do not ignore uniformity. 
 Rather, it is much in their minds. It is just 
 
 * See p. 163 above. 
 
 197
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 because they see this and other examples of 
 order, and perceive that such order is not a matter 
 of course, that they ask the perfectly reasonable 
 question — Is all this order and uniformity an 
 accident ? Their argument is a naive way of 
 asking this question and giving the answer No. 
 If the uniformity of Nature is an accident, what 
 right should we have to use it — as we all do use 
 it — as a principle of prediction ? 
 
 But this question and answer do not carry us 
 far on the road to Theism. When we compare 
 the Orrery and the Universe, we are thinking of 
 other things besides Uniformity. We may there- 
 fore pursue our questionings. Is the beauty of 
 the landscape a parallel case to the various 
 examples of accidental beauty already given ? 
 We call the chance -formed colour- scheme on the 
 palette an accident, because the aesthetic prin- 
 ciples to which it conforms have had nothing to 
 do with its production. If aesthetic principles 
 have equally little influence upon Nature — that 
 is, none at all — natural beauty would be equally 
 an accident. Is it, then, sheer accident that 
 Nature never violates the laws of aesthetic har- 
 mony, as these are often violated by the dress- 
 maker, the gardener, or the architect ? 
 
 Especially we must ask whether beauty can 
 be explained away on Darwinian principles. The 
 attempts at such explanation rest chiefly, as we 
 saw, on the notion that the sense of beauty is an 
 198
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 illusion : that when we profess to discriminate 
 between what is more or less beautiful, we are 
 merely thinking of what we have found to be 
 more or less pleasant. It is probable, however, 
 that Sullivan's Pinafore has given more pleasure 
 in a decade than the Passion Music of Bach has 
 given in a century. Yet the admiration we ex- 
 press for classical music is not all of it in- 
 sincere. Most men have the faculty to perceive 
 that the melodies of Mozart are more truly 
 graceful than a ball-room waltz, even though, 
 in our lower and more normal moods, the 
 waltz may please us most. And most men, too, 
 can be made to perceive that Nature produces 
 many forms as truly graceful as the best of 
 Mozart's tunes, even though some of these 
 forms pass unnoticed and give little pleasure 
 except to the chosen few who love them. Thus, 
 distinguishing the beautiful from the pleasant, 
 we shall see how little of the world's beauty can be 
 explained by natural selection.* 
 
 Again, can natural selection explain that ten- 
 dency to correctness which we find in human 
 thought ? It would be well that those who think 
 so should try their skill on some of the laws of 
 permutations and combinations, Any man of 
 normal intelligence can be made to see that on 
 three bells we can ring six changes and no more. 
 Yet at what stages in our development can this 
 
 * See chap, x, above. 
 
 199
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 knowledge have been of service in the preserva- 
 tion of the species ? 
 
 But suppose that we acknowledge in Nature a 
 tendency towards physical beauty and mental 
 correctness. We still cannot state these ten- 
 dencies in the form of unqualified laws. Not all 
 thinking leads to true results. Not all forms in 
 the world are beautiful, as is plain from the 
 extreme hideousness of much recent architecture. 
 Is there, then, any wider or more fundamental 
 truth than these, which, being true universally, 
 is fit to be used as an absolute principle of pre- 
 diction ? 
 
 " The ultimate principle of scientific predic- 
 tion," it may be said, " is that principle of uni- 
 formity which we have already considered in 
 another connexion." But uniformity is not abso- 
 lutely universal. Some things in Nature remain 
 the same ; others become different. History 
 repeats itself sometimes ; it does not repeat 
 itself always. The sunrise is repeated daily ; 
 the changes of the seasons every year ; the brain 
 of Shakespeare never. When and where, then, 
 are we to expect uniformity ? Mere unthinking 
 observation will not decide the question. If we 
 reflect, we shall see that the mind requires to 
 grasp some general plan or scheme of the world's 
 procedure, to enable us to decide when to expect 
 uniformity and when to expect change. 
 
 That our predictions are thus based upon our 
 200
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 conception of a plan, rather than on rules or laws 
 in the narrower sense of these terms, will be more 
 readily admitted if we remember that the power 
 of predicting natural events belonged to mankind 
 before the growth of the systematic science 
 of modern times. Our modern prediction of 
 eclipses is not a whit more rational than the 
 confidence of our ruder ancestors in the regular 
 return of spring. Our systematic science is built 
 upon a foundation of sound, though unsystematic, 
 knowledge. This unsystematic knowledge was 
 not based on the special formulations which are 
 new — the Law of Uniformity, the Permanence of 
 Substance, the Conservation of Energy — but on 
 that ancient insight into the world's order which, 
 when compared with our more modern formula- 
 tions, is seen to be at once more comprehensive 
 and less abstract than they. 
 
 Can we state this confidence in the world's 
 order in the form of a law true without exception ? 
 We hold it a universal law that no utter ab- 
 surdities can find a place in the Universe. If we 
 ask why the Pagan myths are incredible, the 
 distinctively modern principles in science do not 
 help us to an answer. The Greek gods are no 
 more inconsistent with the bare principle of 
 uniformity than any other exceptional person- 
 alities. The story of the Olympian hierarchy 
 does not in its entirety conflict with any of the 
 formulated principles of chemistry or physics. 
 If we know nothing of the universe except 
 
 201
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 what direct experience tells us — if we have no 
 knowledge of its character as a complete whole — 
 then, as we saw above,* there may be be- 
 yond the reach of our telescopes particles of 
 matter of unknown powers, rushing towards us in 
 unknown numbers at an unknown speed. Given 
 so many unknown factors, who can say that such 
 an incursion might not repeat at any moment the 
 alleged miracles of Orpheus or Amphion ? Thus 
 if any one chose to put up a defence of the Myths, 
 the formulated principles of Natural Science 
 could by themselves do little against him.f 
 
 Still we should not accept the Myths : we should 
 continue to reject them. We are convinced that 
 the Universe agrees with our conception of a 
 rational world, not in respect of uniformity only, 
 but in all other respects likewise. If, then — 
 pursuing our interrogations — we ask, " Is the 
 observed agreement of the world with this 
 standard of rationality an accident ? " we shall 
 answer that the world must agree with this 
 standard, and that it is on this conviction that 
 we base our predictions. We are not infallible ; 
 but just so far as we are convinced that an 
 alleged occurrence would make the world utterly 
 grotesque and absurd, so far are we convinced 
 that the alleged occurrence did not take place. 
 And the negative principle, that absurdities do 
 not happen, is not really separable from the 
 positive one that the Universe must conform 
 
 * Chap, iv, p. 40. t See Note II at end of Epilogue. 
 
 202
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 itself as a whole to the ideal of right reason. 
 Here we find the thought which the popular 
 arguments are seeking to express. When men 
 compare the Universe to an Orrery — when they 
 argue that if we saw a fair city we should know 
 that it was built by men, not by mice or weasels,* 
 and therefore a fortiori that the Universe is not 
 the product of blind forces and unconscious 
 atoms — what lies behind such arguments is the 
 conviction that the world is governed by rational 
 principles. The comprehensive law that the 
 world agrees with the ideal of reason, can cover 
 all such minor laws as those which prescribe 
 uniformity and beauty in Nature, and some 
 correctness in human thought. The full reali- 
 zation of the ideal of reason is the supreme end 
 which includes the realization in due measure of 
 these lesser ends within itself. 
 
 Our questions have brought us to a point at 
 which we can deal with several difficulties that 
 may already have occurred to the reader's mind. 
 We can see, for one thing, why men who have 
 held a materialistic creed sometimes swing round, 
 and accept some form of thoroughgoing ortho- 
 doxy, with an apparently uncritical haste. We 
 saw that no one really believes in a Universe 
 which is in conflict with his own serious ideal. 
 To many a man the orderly Universe presented 
 
 * De Natura Deorum. 
 
 203
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 to him by Naturalism seems wholly satisfactory. 
 The strict orderliness of the physical events 
 appears to him as the sole rational interest. But 
 if such a man comes to see that reason has other 
 interests no less rational : if he comes to feel that 
 the ultimate defeat of morality and justice — the 
 ultimate triumph of dead matter over life and 
 reason — is no less a blot on the world's rationality 
 than a plunge into physical chaos, that the ulti- 
 mate victory of right is no less demanded by 
 reason than is physical order, the whole founda- 
 tion of his naturalistic creed is shaken. The 
 prospect that, as the sun burns out and the earth 
 cools, civilization must be overwhelmed and at 
 length conscious life must itself perish, affords no 
 hope that the defeat of our best spiritual interests 
 can be averted. Nor, when we come to this point, 
 is it easy to see how the hope of full spiritual victory 
 can be realized apart from a future life and bodily 
 resurrection, or, at least, apart from something 
 which to Naturalism must seem supernatural and 
 miraculous . But if once the rationality of the world 
 seems to involve the future life, what difficulty is 
 there in principle in accepting occasional miracles 
 during our present existence ? Few of us have 
 the mental energy to think out a creed for our- 
 selves. Why, then — it is asked — should we not 
 accept, as at least approximately correct, the 
 traditional beliefs of the churches ? 
 
 What, again, are we to say of those who profess 
 204
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 belief in a God of limited powers ? Our argument 
 rests on the conviction that the many agreements 
 we perceive between the actual world and our 
 ideal of what a rational world should be, are no 
 accident. But if the principle which orders the 
 world in accordance with the rational ideal is not 
 the ultimate law of the Universe ; if this prin- 
 ciple is but one tendency among others which may 
 at times overpower it ; any agreement there may 
 be between the world and the ideal of reason is 
 but an accident after all. On such a theory the 
 principles of right reason may be overpowered at 
 any point whatsoever. On this theory, why 
 should not God be destroyed, or grow weak, or 
 go mad ? Our one guarantee against absurdities 
 — against the utter triumph of unreason — can be 
 found only in the certainty that the world is 
 rational as a whole. Hence, the importance, 
 which common sense has always perceived, of 
 the problem of evil. If in the whole scheme of 
 the Universe any single event occurs which, in 
 view of its place in the Universe at large, is ulti- 
 mately and absolutely indefensible, the whole 
 basis of Optimism and religious faith is destroyed. 
 What other principle have we behind right reason 
 to regulate the departures from the rational 
 standard ? Our real God, on such a theory, is 
 the ultimate principle which keeps a ring in the 
 battles of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Since ex hypo- 
 thesi this ultimate principle is not subject to right 
 reason, what guarantee have we as to its action ? 
 
 205
 
 CHALLENGE OF UNIVERSE 
 
 If the demands of right reason are not the last 
 word, who can say whether these demands will be 
 fulfilled mostly, or often, or but seldom ? 
 
 Again, we see how to answer those who deny 
 religious beliefs on the simple ground that they are 
 contrary to experience. They are no more contrary 
 to experience than is the state of the world in the 
 days when (as some have held) the " glowing ball 
 of the earth was formed out of a gaseous mass."* 
 It is only the ignorant man who limits his beliefs 
 within the bounds of what he has seen. Reason, 
 starting from a basis of experience, builds up a 
 theory of the Universe as a whole, including the 
 far past and the future. And every such theory, 
 materialistic or religious, must lead us to believe 
 in events which are unlike anything we have 
 ourselves experienced. *j" 
 
 Lastly, we learn how to meet the criticism of 
 popular and traditional religion implied in Mr. 
 Russell's phrase, " The Free Man's Worship." 
 
 * Haeckel, Riddle of the Universe, chap, xiii, 11 : " Monistic 
 geogeny." 
 
 t The man who says that he cannot believe, e.g., in a future 
 life, because it is " contrary to experience," is at one with those 
 who interpret the principle of uniformity as equivalent to the 
 statement that " the future resembles the past " or that " all 
 parts of the world are alike." So interpreted, the law is simply 
 untrue. If, again, we interpret uniformity as equivalent to 
 " universal causation," we have here a principle so purely formal 
 that it could never by itself be the basis of any prediction. Re- 
 flection as to what the uniformity of Nature means will deliver us 
 from many errors. 
 
 206
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We must meet it in part by confessing that it is in 
 part just. Religion has at times dwelt too much 
 upon rewards and punishments. It has spoken 
 the language of bondage rather than of freedom. 
 It has degraded the service of God to the pru- 
 dential avoiding of His judgments. 
 
 Yet the degradation has often been in words 
 rather than in thought. Even on the punitive 
 conception of religion we must not be unfairly 
 severe. It has been the foe to sentimentality, which 
 is in religion a deadly enemy to the soul. The 
 frail woman who loves to conceive herself under 
 sentimental categories — " a charming sinner," a 
 " fair penitent " — may learn by the Puritan's stern 
 lesson to see wrongdoing as it is. Nor is false sen- 
 timent a vice of one sex only. But sentimentality 
 has no place in a religion of true freedom.* 
 
 The whole course of this argument should have 
 served to bring to light the relation between re- 
 ligion and morality. The sudden passage from 
 unbelief to orthodox faith is often the direct 
 result of a newly acquired sense of the absoluteness 
 of moral obligation ; just as the opposite change 
 from orthodoxy to unbelief is often the result of 
 some moral disillusionment. Moral insight can 
 give men grounds for belief — sound, if not explicit 
 — apart from evidential reasoning. And it is 
 good that so it should be. It is the few who can 
 follow chains of reasoning ; but moral obligation, 
 in which true freedom lies, is intelligible to all. 
 
 * Cf. Preface, p, xxii. 
 
 207
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 A PONS ASINORUM IN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Throughout the course of the fifteen chapters 
 which make up the body of this volume, no use 
 has been made of the technical language either 
 of the Philosopher or of the Theologian. Tech- 
 nical language is useful as a sort of intellectual 
 shorthand. But there is always a danger that 
 it may conceal obscurity and inconsequence of 
 thought. And even where it does not tend to 
 confuse the mind of the writer, it often leaves the 
 reader with a needless sense of difficulty where 
 the subject in itself is quite plain. It is therefore 
 good for every writer to practise himself in putting 
 his thoughts into plain untechnical English, even 
 though technical language may save space and 
 labour. 
 
 In the few words, however, that still remain to 
 be said, this self-denying ordinance need no 
 longer be maintained. As the philosophical 
 reader will already have noticed, an important 
 part of the argument has been in essence an attack 
 upon the doctrine known as Conceptualism. 
 Conceptualism asserts that the only real things 
 in the world are those which are individual and 
 208
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 separate ; and treats all the relations between 
 them, and all the general notions under which we 
 conceive them, as nothing better than mere 
 creations of the mind. " Terms," said Newman, 
 " sometimes stand for certain ideas existing in 
 our own minds and for nothing outside of them. 
 All things in the exterior world are unit and in- 
 dividual, and are nothing else ; but the mind has 
 the gift of bringing before it abstractions and 
 generalizations, which have no existence, no 
 counterpart, out of it."* 
 
 Now Conceptualism is in this curious position 
 that, though no intelligent man who really faces 
 the argument against it can continue to hold it, 
 yet it was as a matter of fact the creed, not only 
 of Newman, but of the great majority of intelli- 
 gent men through the whole course of the nine- 
 teenth century. We may be sure, too, that it 
 will crop up again and again in the future. The 
 doctrine seems, at first sight, both attractive and 
 convincing. It is also one of those doctrines which 
 men are tempted, when they have learnt them, 
 to expound in a rhetorical and vituperative 
 manner. " Do our pundits at Oxford still need 
 to be taught the self-evident truth that general 
 ideas exist, and can exist, in the mind alone ? ' 
 " Is it really necessary at this time of day to 
 correct the erroneous fancy of the Mediaeval 
 Schoolmen that Universals can have an ex- 
 
 * Grammar of Assent (Longmans, New Impression, 1916), 
 p. 9. 
 
 o 209
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 istence independent of the mind which knows 
 them ? " 
 
 Among the philosophers, however, of the 
 present moment Conceptualism finds few de- 
 fenders. The case against it is strong and plain. 
 The sun and moon, for example, are unit and 
 individual — two separately existing things. The 
 knowledge of the relation between them — that 
 one is larger than the other — is open only to the 
 mind that compares them. Hence, says the Con- 
 ceptualist, this relation is a purely mental fact. 
 It is based upon the mental act of comparison. 
 
 But this is to put the cart before the horse. 
 For let us suppose that no mind had ever com- 
 pared them. Their difference of size would not 
 be the less real. The relation, then, which is 
 expressed when we make a mental comparison of 
 their sizes, is not purely in the mind. Only a 
 mind can perceive it ; for only a mind can per- 
 ceive anything. But it is not the mental com- 
 parison which creates the relation. It merely 
 recognizes a relation which is there whether 
 recognized or not. 
 
 And if the truth that the sun is larger than the 
 moon holds good apart from our knowledge of it, 
 it is so with other truths also. Take the highest 
 number that has ever been individually conceived 
 by any mind, divine or human. Suppose it 
 multiplied by the next highest number. Ex 
 hypothesi the product of this operation has never 
 210
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 dwelled in a mind. Yet obviously there is a right 
 answer to this long sum ; though no one may 
 ever take the trouble to find it. Similarly it was 
 true, before the time of the early geometer who 
 first discovered it, that the interior angles of a 
 triangle are equal to two right angles. The 
 geometer merely discovers the truths with which 
 he deals ; he does not invent them. They would 
 have been just as true as they are now, if no 
 one had ever known them. That two straight 
 lines cannot enclose a space must be clear to 
 every rational mind which faces the question. 
 But this impossibility would have been just as 
 absolute as it is, if no mind had ever faced 
 the question at all ; and it is equally valid for 
 Theist and for Atheist. 
 
 But here we may take a further step. If we 
 see that certain truths are prior to their discovery 
 by a thinking mind, it follows that the ideas which 
 these truths involve have a like independence. 
 They are not the mind's own creation. The 
 mind recognizes that they have meaning : but it 
 is not this recognition which gives them meaning. 
 If in the nature of things two straight lines cannot 
 enclose a space, then in the nature of things there 
 must be such a thing — such an idea — as straight- 
 ness. This truth is hard to express in suitable 
 language ; for language has grown up among men 
 unaccustomed to specifically philosophic think- 
 
 211
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 ing. But the thought with which we are here 
 concerned has in itself no special difficulty, if we 
 will face it. If the axioms are prior (as we have 
 seen) to our thinking ; the ideas which these 
 axioms imply are prior to our thinking in like 
 manner. The meaning of ideas is something fixed 
 and firm ; something which no thinking can think 
 away. It is conceivable, perhaps, that nothing 
 need have had actual existence ; it is not conceiv- 
 able that " being " should have had no meaning ; 
 nor that " equality ' and " inequality " should 
 have had no meaning, nor that there should have 
 been no difference between them. 
 
 Thus we are brought by simple stages — or 
 stages which, if difficult, have no difficulty ex- 
 cept because such thought is unfamiliar — to the 
 Platonic doctrine which makes ideas the ultimate 
 basis of the Universe ; the ultimate basis of all 
 truth and of all reality.* The idea cannot be 
 thought away. If the Universe rests on ideas, 
 it rests on a foundation which cannot be shaken. 
 Popular Materialism rests on an unexplained 
 atom. Popular Theism is, philosophically, in no 
 better case.f It rests on an unexplained Mind. 
 Only so far as we conceive the world as resting on 
 ideas — as following from what these ideas are 
 and mean — have we any true finality. We need 
 
 * Cf. Religion in an Age of Doubt, pp. 158-160, 190-194, 
 especially p. 158, note. 
 
 f It is in his religion, not in his theology, that the plain man 
 exhibits his deepest thought. His theology is often curiously 
 shallow. Cf. Religion in an Age of Doubt, pp. 161, 191, etc. 
 
 212
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 explanation ; and explanation can come through 
 ideas only. But we can only explain through 
 ideas that which, in its own nature, follows from 
 them. In Geometry our explanation is complete. 
 We can show every link in the chain of sequence. 
 In other cases our explanations are incomplete. 
 We can show some links of the chain, but have to 
 assume others. But unless we took this assump- 
 tion seriously — if we thought that, wherever there 
 are gaps in our knowledge there are also gaps in 
 the real sequence of connexions which our ex- 
 planation presupposes — the whole explanation 
 would come to nothing. 
 
 The assertion that not only truths, but actual 
 things, can be conceived as following from the 
 meaning of ideas, may at first sight seem extra- 
 ordinarily difficult. Yet it may be illustrated 
 for the unphilosophical man from his own beliefs. 
 He conceives Space as a really existing thing — 
 the receptacle within which all matter dwells — 
 really extending indefinitely on all sides. If asked 
 why he thinks that it thus extends on and on 
 without limit, he can only answer that it must do 
 so, since the notion of a limit is contradicted by 
 the very idea of Space itself. Therefore he holds 
 (though he would not say so) that this infinite 
 extension, which he takes as a hard fact, follows 
 from the meaning of an idea. 
 
 This Platonic thought has had curiously in- 
 adequate recognition by subsequent philosophers. 
 
 213
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 But we may make a favourable exception in the 
 case of Hegel. In spite of his doctrine of the 
 Subject- Object,* Hegel is probably in his inmost 
 thought far less subjective than most of his 
 disciples. At least he protests strongly against 
 the view that an idea is something in our heads. 
 
 From this protest, if we accept it, there follows 
 a result of great importance to philosophy. We 
 get rid, in the first place, of a way of speaking 
 that has done harm in England to the cause of a 
 sane Idealism. We shall eschew such phrases as 
 that " mind is the only ultimate reality," that 
 " whatever exists, exists for mind and in mind 
 alone." Such language arose because, first, men 
 saw T clearly that every existing thing could exist 
 only under a universal idea, and further, that every 
 existing thing implied the reality of relations ; 
 while, secondly, they assumed erroneously that 
 both Universals and Relations are dependent for 
 their existence upon a mind that knows them. 
 This erroneous assumption is but a form of Con- 
 ceptualism ; and it illustrates well the difficulty 
 which many minds feel, even among the philosophi- 
 cally trained, in rejecting Conceptualism entirely. 
 We may thus fairly regard the total rejection of 
 Conceptualism as a Pons Asinorum for the philo- 
 sopher. If we fail to make this rejection the failure 
 may confuse all our further thinking. 
 
 For with Conceptualism there should perish at 
 
 * See, e.g., Encyklopadie der Philosophischen Wissenschaften, 
 1st edition, § 162, p. 112. 
 
 214
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 least one famous chimera, the Universal Ego ; 
 and perhaps also another, the Unconscious Self. 
 The doctrine of the Unconscious Self has, for 
 psychology, a certain value. It enables us to 
 recognize certain familiar facts. We wake on the 
 eighth stroke of the clock, and recognize the cumu- 
 lative effect of the seven strokes that have preceded 
 it, of which (as it is said) we have been " uncon- 
 sciously aware." " I cannot paint," says Keble,* 
 
 to Memory's eye 
 The scene, the glance, I dearest love — 
 Unchang'd themselves, in me they die, 
 Or faint, or false, their shadows prove. 
 
 But is the language which is now usual any more 
 satisfactory than phrases which avoid the palpable 
 contradiction involved in speaking of an " un- 
 conscious knowledge " ? If we say, rather, that 
 we were not aware of the seven earlier strokes, 
 when they fell on our sleeping ear, but became 
 aware of them when the eighth stroke waked us — 
 if we say that we are so far aware of the real 
 nature of the scene, or the face, which we love, 
 that we recognize the falseness or inadequacy of 
 the picture which is all that our imagination 
 presents to us — is this expression any less true 
 than the phrase " unconscious knowledge "as an 
 account of the phenomena which we are seeking 
 to describe ? 
 
 The " Universal Ego," identified with God, 
 lands us in more serious error. Like the phrase 
 
 * The Christian Year, Fourth Sunday in Advent. 
 
 215
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 ' unconscious knowledge," it involves the assump- 
 tion* that truth can have no existence outside a 
 mind. But as an attractive short cut to Theism 
 it has special dangers of its own. The argument 
 implied is, briefly, that since there are many 
 truths and many relations which are not yet 
 known, and may never be known, to the mind of 
 man, these — since truths and relations imply a 
 thinking mind — must exist in the mind of God. 
 But, since truth (as we have seen when we re- 
 nounced Conceptualism) is prior to the mind that 
 knows it, such an argument is not really valid. 
 The Universe involves a scheme of relations ; 
 but it is not therefore a self-conscious mind. This 
 argument could never give us such a God as 
 religion can seriously accept. If God is a mere 
 Knower, He has but a secondary position in the 
 Universe. He is posterior to, and dependent on, 
 the truths which He, like us, is aware of. If God 
 is — as religion maintains — the " all in all," the 
 Source of Truth, we must revise a conception 
 which represents Him as merely dependent on 
 truth, dependent on ideas, as knowing them. 
 Necessity — necessary truth- — implies a truth 
 which cannot be thought away ; which must 
 hold good ; which cannot without open or hidden 
 
 * This doctrine of an " unconscious self " (except so far as it 
 is merely a convenient facon de parler for psychology) may be 
 taken to rest on the following argument : There are certain truths 
 which, though my knowledge presupposes them, I do not know. 
 But truths cannot exist outside a mind, therefore (if I do not 
 wish to drag in the divine mind) I will say that they are in my 
 mind, but unconsciously. 
 
 216
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 contradiction be denied. For if without contra- 
 diction it may be thought to be otherwise, what 
 right have we to call it necessary ? If this argu- 
 ment is rejected, how can we distinguish between 
 necessity and mere fact ? The necessary is that 
 which not only does exist, but must exist, because 
 it cannot without contradiction be conceived as 
 non-existent. Thus all necessity — whether of 
 general truth or of individual fact — is in its 
 own nature intelligible necessity — necessity which 
 could be seen to be necessary if we had sufficient 
 knowledge — even though we may not as yet 
 understand the necessity nor see the contradic- 
 tion involved in this denial. A God Who is to be 
 the " all in all " must be conceived as not merely 
 knowing this truth, but as including it within 
 His own Nature. 
 
 The Platonic theory conceives the world as 
 following from the Idea of the Good, somewhat 
 as the truths of Geometry follow from the idea of 
 straightness, of line, of circle, or of triangle.* 
 This Platonic doctrine may be interpreted perhaps 
 in more ways than one. But some such concep- 
 tion — some belief that the world must follow from 
 what the " Good " means — is involved in any such 
 optimistic theory as we have seen to be implied 
 in our practical faith in the world's rationality. 
 We have seen how we assume in all our predic- 
 tions that the world is a rational whole, and 
 how we can give to this rationality no definite 
 
 * See references at foot of p. 212. 
 
 217
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 meaning unless by interpreting it in an optimistic 
 sense. 
 
 Is such a conception of God consistent with the 
 belief in a conscious God Whom we can worship ? 
 Can the ultimate necessity of all truth and of all 
 things be conceived as conscious of itself? If 
 the ultimate necessity in virtue of which all 
 things are what they are is fully conscious of 
 itself, can such a distinction between God's mind 
 and our own be drawn as the relation of the 
 worshipper and the Object of worship demands ? 
 In a Universe so conceived is there any place for 
 human freedom ? 
 
 Such are the questions we must dare to ask : 
 and it is worth while to consider here some 
 possible answers. Suppose that some one says, 
 " Your real God, on your own showing, is the 
 1 Idea of the Good,' or the ' ultimate necessity 
 of things ' : and even if, in some mysterious way, 
 this necessity could be conceived as conscious of 
 itself, still this consciousness — this mere know- 
 ledge — is, as you admit, but secondary and an off- 
 shoot, since every being who knows the Universe 
 is posterior to the Universe which he knows. 
 How then can you worship such a God as this ? " 
 It is possible here to call to our aid certain de- 
 finite Christian conceptions and experiences. The 
 Christian who, with full consciousness of what he 
 is doing, has been driven by irresistible spiritual 
 attraction to worship One Who grew in wisdom 
 218
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 and stature — One Whose humanity and finitude 
 we acknowledge even in the very act of wor- 
 shipping Him ; One Who even as eternal Son is 
 distinguished from the Source and Fountain of 
 Godhead — will at least understand how God, the 
 ultimate reality, may be felt to be in such sense 
 identical with a conscious person (although in 
 this identity there is still distinction) that in wor- 
 shipping that Person, we are in contact with the 
 ultimate reality itself. It is not needful to 
 develop this argument here. The question of 
 worship can only be raised intelligently by those 
 who have themselves worshipped. The subject 
 does not lend itself to contentious treatment. 
 The type of mind which most naturally raises this 
 question will see, in what has just been said, at 
 least the germ of an answer. 
 
 A more difficult question concerns the relation 
 of God to the mathematical axioms. As we have 
 already seen, it is not natural to speak of God as 
 laying down these axioms — as ordaining by His 
 supreme will that two straight lines should be 
 unable to enclose a space. Are the mathematical 
 axioms, then, conditions, existing externally to 
 God's own will, to which His will has to submit ? 
 The view, expressed in Platonic language above, 
 seeks to avoid Dualism by regarding the world, 
 all its laws and all its contents, as following from 
 the Idea of the Good. But can all the laws of the 
 Universe — can the axioms of Geometry — follow 
 from this supreme idea ? Is it conceivable that, 
 
 219
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 even if we became omniscient, we could deduce 
 Geometry from this supposed central truth ? 
 What has " the Good " to do with Geometry ? 
 And — even if some one replied that we have no 
 right to assume that there is no connexion between 
 two ideas, merely on the ground that we our- 
 selves cannot see any intermediating links between 
 them — still we should be disposed to say, " This 
 deduction of geometrical truths from the Idea of 
 the Good is unmeaning, because the axioms are 
 ultimate and self-evident, and so cannot be 
 deduced from anything." This perhaps might be 
 our considered reply. 
 
 But let us reflect further. Is it certain that 
 every truth which seems independent, on the 
 ground that we can see its evidence without 
 looking beyond it, is therefore so absolutely 
 independent that it could not conceivably be 
 subsumed under any truth or law wider than 
 itself ? Take the case of some of the principles 
 with which we come in contact in our aesthetic 
 experience. Any man who has advanced beyond 
 the notion that art-criticism is all mere moon- 
 shine can be made to recognize that there are 
 certain laws binding upon the artist which are 
 not the arbitrary creation of the human will. 
 For example, it is true that the trombone-player 
 who in playing the Lobgesang wished to amend 
 the opening theme of the Symphony by substi- 
 tuting an F, preceded by a turn, for the first 
 E Flat, was not improving the music, but spoiling 
 220
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 it.* And this is not merely a truth, but a necessary 
 truth. Such an alteration of the passage, whenever 
 repeated, must inevitably and always spoil its 
 beauty. This again is a truth which a musical 
 man, even if we imagine him unacquainted with 
 the rest of Mendelssohn's work, can at once 
 perceive. The character of the movement de- 
 mands the rejection of the trombone-blower's 
 emendation. Indeed, if this variation had been 
 by some accident introduced into all the printed 
 copies, there are probably many musicians who 
 would have had the insight to restore the true 
 reading on purely a priori grounds ; and if this 
 had happened — so clear is the witness of aesthetic 
 necessity and suitability in such cases — it is pretty 
 certain that the restoration would soon have won 
 its way to general acceptance. This probability 
 will be admitted by those who know the history 
 of the restoration of corrupt passages, and of 
 artistic emendation and restoration in general. 
 
 Yet whenever we can say, " This emendation 
 or restoration is imperatively required by the 
 immediate context : we need not go beyond the 
 immediate context to see its necessity," we can 
 also recognize the same aesthetic requirement as 
 
 * The proposed emendation was as follows : 
 
 See Stainer and Barrett's Dictionary of Musical Terms, under 
 Cadenza. 
 
 221
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 connected with the general character and law of 
 the style to which the work we are restoring 
 belongs. The incapacity of Mendelssohn's phrase 
 to admit without loss the suggested alteration is 
 connected with the whole character of Mendels- 
 sohn's style. It is by recognizing what is and 
 what is not possible in various passages, by recog- 
 nizing their distinctive character, that we evince 
 our knowledge of the character of his style in 
 general. The special aesthetic demands, whose 
 force we feel in particular passages, fall into their 
 place in our conception of the style. These par- 
 ticular demands, and the law of the style as a 
 whole, mutually throw light on one another. 
 Without following out this comparison into de- 
 tails, we may see in it enough to show that a law, 
 which carries its own evidence within it, may 
 still be subsumed under a law wider than itself. 
 Each passage in a sense stands alone ; its 
 character and its beauty is within itself, so that it 
 cannot be said to derive its charm wholly from 
 outside. But this independence is not complete. 
 The phrase gains some of its beauty and signifi- 
 cance from its context : some from other works 
 of the same composer and other composers of 
 the same period. This is why the accomplished 
 musician sees in almost any good work charms 
 that will be unperceived by the beginner 
 
 This same musical example throws light, for 
 those who will reflect upon it, upon the other 
 problem of combined dependence and indepen- 
 222
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 dence which has been already mentioned. It 
 does something to help us to conceive how our 
 will may have independence and freedom — how 
 each act of choice may have within itself its own 
 necessity and raison d'etre — and may yet be con- 
 ceived as subsumed under that wider necessity 
 which dominates the whole Universe ; how (if 
 we prefer to employ the language of religion) 
 our wills may be our own, and we may be respon- 
 sible for our own choice, while all the time it is 
 God that worketh in us both to will and to do. 
 
 It is not desirable that any of these analogies 
 and suggestions should be here worked out in 
 full. Still it is good that something should be 
 said to suggest that, in the argument stated above, 
 there are philosophical implications which might 
 be dealt with at full length on a fitting occasion. 
 No harm will be done if the reader has carried 
 away the belief that Theism has its difficulties. 
 If we can grasp firmly the conviction that the 
 rational appearance which the world wears in so 
 many and varied aspects is no accident, we then 
 have a positive ground for faith. For a faith so 
 grounded, intellectual difficulties will be rather a 
 stimulus than a discouragement. 
 
 223
 
 NOTE I 
 
 The name of Kant, sprinkled freely over the 
 pages of a religious book, tends to give the im- 
 pression that the book is difficult and obscure. 
 In the above arguments, therefore, Kant has 
 been but very rarely mentioned. Two of his 
 criticisms, however, must be quoted before we 
 leave the subject.* 
 
 (I) " According to the physico-theological argu- 
 ment," he says, " the connexion and harmony 
 existing in the world evidence the contingency of 
 the form merely, but not of the matter — that is, 
 of the substance — of the world. To establish the 
 truth of the latter opinion, it would be necessary 
 to prove that all things would be in themselves 
 incapable of this harmony and order unless they 
 were, even as regards their substance, the product 
 of a supreme wisdom. But this would require 
 very different grounds of proof from those pre- 
 sented by the analogy with human art. This 
 proof can at most, therefore, demonstrate the 
 existence of an architect of the world ( Weltbaumeis- 
 ter), whose efforts are limited by the capabilities 
 of the material with which he works, but not of a 
 
 * Meiklejohn's translation (pp. 384-386) is somewhat free, but 
 it will serve for our present purpose. German paging, 654, etc. 
 
 224
 
 NOTE I 
 
 creator of the world, to whom all things are subject 
 (aber nicht einen Weltschopfer, dessert Idee alles 
 unterworfen ist). 
 
 (II) " It cannot be expected," he continues, 
 " that any one will be bold enough to declare that 
 he has a perfect insight into the relation which 
 the magnitude of the world he contemplates 
 bears (in its extent as well as in its content) to 
 omnipotence, into that of the order and design 
 in the world to the highest wisdom, and that of 
 the unity of the world to the absolute unity of a 
 Supreme Being. Physico-theology is, therefore, 
 incapable of presenting a determinate conception 
 of a supreme cause of the world, and is therefore 
 insufficient as a principle of theology — a theology 
 which is itself to be the basis of religion." 
 
 With regard to the former of these criticisms, 
 the reader should observe that the teleological 
 argument as stated in the present volume does 
 not confine itself to a comparison between natural 
 beauty and human art ; but goes on to insist 
 that all our prediction (of eclipses and other natural 
 events) implies the belief that the agreement of the 
 world in general with the ideal of right reason is no 
 accident. Yet this — we saw — would be an acci- 
 dent, unless it be a necessary law that everything 
 in the world — matter itself no less than its ar- 
 rangement — should be subject to this ideal. If 
 the supreme law of the Universe were that " all 
 things with certain exceptions must be in accord- 
 
 p 225
 
 NOTE I 
 
 ance with the ideal of right reason," these three 
 qualifying words * would make the law self- 
 contradictory, and absolutely useless as a principle 
 of prediction. 
 
 The opinion expressed in the second of these 
 quotations is an opinion so natural to man that 
 we can only rejoice that it should have found 
 expression in such impressive language. Yet it 
 is not too much to say that Kant in this passage 
 is stating the very principle of all unbelief in its 
 opposition to faith. He asserts, in effect, that 
 while we recognize the world as good — even as 
 astonishingly and immeasurably good (see Meikle- 
 john, p. 385) — no one can dare to say that it is 
 perfect, or can dare to say how much needs to be 
 added to the world as we know it, to bring it to 
 the point at which it would comprehend " all 
 possible perfection and completeness." Now 
 faith exhibits just this audacity which Kant 
 condemns. Not in detail, but in outline, it pre- 
 sents to us (under the conception of a Universe 
 in which all things in heaven and earth are sub- 
 jected to Christ) the ideal of a perfect world. 
 The " mind of Christ " is imperfectly fulfilled in 
 this present world ; therefore, it is argued, this 
 world is but part of a wider whole in which His 
 ideal is fully realized. Faith lives among these 
 absolute standards of value which Kant in this 
 passage is denying our power to set up. And 
 
 * See chap, xv, pp. 204-206 ; cf. also Religion in an Age of 
 Doubt, pp. 156-158. 
 
 226
 
 NOTE I 
 
 here faith has the support of common sense. If 
 some one said that absolute perfection lies so far 
 beyond our ken that (for all we can know to the 
 contrary) there may be a type of humanity as far 
 superior to that exhibited by Christ, as Christ is 
 superior to Nero — or that there may be an in- 
 tellectual attitude as far superior to the honest 
 search for truth as the honest search for truth is 
 superior to wilful obscurantism and sophistry — 
 the plain man would soon declare himself an 
 Absolutist, as against such consistent Relativism 
 as this. 
 
 For the rest, Kant's criticism of the Argument 
 from Design depends mainly upon his doctrine 
 of the impotence of " mere ideas " to carry us 
 beyond the limits of experience. The examples 
 given in the course of the preceding chapters are 
 enough to show how even our common everyday 
 knowledge disproves the limitations which Kant 
 would put upon our faculties. 
 
 227
 
 NOTE II 
 
 On the Possibility of a Collision which should 
 threaten Disaster to the Whole Solar System 
 
 An astronomical friend, who has been good 
 enough to read the present essay in proof, makes 
 objection to the phrase on p. 40 : "If immense 
 masses of matter of unknown powers might, for 
 all we knew, be rushing upon us at an unknown 
 degree of rapidity." He objects to the hypo- 
 thetical form of the sentence. " The possibility," 
 he says, " is a real one." " I really think," he 
 writes, " that there is some probability, more 
 or less remote, of the suggested catastrophe. 
 The phenomena connected with 'new' stars 
 suggest collisions amongst stars, one or both 
 being previously dark stars. There is ample 
 evidence for the belief that multitudes of dark 
 stars exist — viz. stars too cold to be luminous 
 and therefore visible. There may be such a star 
 on its way towards the sun in a sufficiently direct 
 line to threaten disaster at some future date. 
 Celestial bodies possessing very great speeds are 
 known, and a body such as is here suggested 
 might possess a speed great enough to ensure its 
 existence and proximity remaining unrecognized 
 until it was within a few days' journey of us, at 
 228
 
 NOTE II 
 
 any rate. Viewed in the light of an observational 
 knowledge of the solar system and the stellar 
 universe, however, the probability of such an 
 occurrence can be estimated, and is found to be 
 extremely small, even during a period of millions 
 of years. Hence, while the possibility, in my 
 opinion, cannot be dismissed, it need not seem 
 alarming." " Such a catastrophe," he adds, 
 " would not in the least invalidate the laws of 
 Nature." 
 
 The same critic has made many very valuable 
 suggestions which I have gratefully followed. 
 But here, I venture to think, he has misunderstood 
 the character of my hypothesis, and has confused 
 it with a more sober one. He has not noticed 
 the word " unknown " — " of unknown powers," 
 ' If we knew nothing of the world outside," etc. 
 (p. 40). He is thinking simply of the supposition 
 that a dark star might come into collision with 
 the sun, while the properties of matter in general 
 remained unchanged. Now even on this hypo- 
 thesis, surely, it would be too much to say that 
 ' the laws of Nature would not be invalidated 
 in the least" The catastrophe as conceived must 
 seriously affect the well-known law that the sun 
 rises daily : though here an astronomer would 
 doubtless reply that what he chiefly means by a 
 law of Nature is not that an individual material 
 object should behave in its accustomed way, but 
 that any natural object should behave in a way 
 calculable from the general laws of physics and 
 
 229
 
 NOTE II 
 
 chemistry ; and thus he will rightly insist that 
 an utterly unprecedented event may be as much 
 in accordance with natural law as what has 
 happened daily without interruption since human 
 memory began. This is mainly a question of 
 words. 
 
 But if we are at liberty to suppose a dark star 
 in collision with the sun, why are we not at 
 liberty to frame also, purely for purposes of 
 argument, a still more violent hypothesis ? Why 
 may we not ask what would follow if we knew 
 nothing — literally and absolutely nothing — about 
 the special nature, powers, and properties of 
 such material bodies as may lurk beyond the 
 confines of the known universe ? Suppose that 
 we knew nothing of these bodies beyond what is 
 involved (1) in the negative truth that we cannot 
 show the existence of such bodies to be impossible, 
 (2) in the definition of a material body as such, 
 and (3) in those demonstrable or self-evident 
 truths which must hold good everywhere and 
 always. On this hypothesis, particles of unknown 
 character — with unknown and unexampled powers 
 of influencing other bodies which they may 
 approach — might be moving upon us with un- 
 exampled speed from any conceivable variety of 
 directions. Their behaviour when they arrived 
 might be as fantastic as anything which — to use 
 the phrase of Hume — the " most whimsical imagi- 
 nation can invent." They might make their way 
 harmlessly through great distances within our 
 230
 
 NOTE II 
 
 known world, and then, like bombs provided with 
 a time-fuse, might suddenly produce unprece- 
 dented movements, and so by assailing the smaller 
 particles might change the behaviour of the 
 larger bodies. " The electron," says a modern 
 writer, " is one hundred thousand times smaller 
 than the atom, and the spaces between electrons 
 perhaps one hundred million times the diameter 
 of an electron. This suggests an arrangement 
 like a planetary system." If we accept this 
 view of the contents of space — or even if we go 
 no farther than to regard it as possibly and 
 conceivably correct — then, under the effects of 
 such a bombardment as we have been imagin- 
 ing of our known world by particles from 
 outside, the physical world which we know 
 might be so much changed that almost any law 
 we can think of might be swallowed up in its 
 exceptions. 
 
 The legitimacy of a hypothesis depends upon 
 the purpose for which it is constructed. The 
 main purpose of the present volume is to show — 
 (1) that we all believe that the whole universe is 
 framed on some intelligible scheme, and, further, 
 that it is ordered according to some ideal which 
 we can recognize as rational ; (2) that apart from 
 this act of faith we should have no basis for those 
 predictions on which our daily life depends, since 
 the few self-evident or demonstrable principles 
 which our minds possess are not enough to give us 
 any working knowledge of Nature, or to rule out 
 
 231
 
 NOTE II 
 
 as impossible even some of the grossest absurdities. 
 To support these two conclusions we may point 
 to one absurd hypothesis after another, and may 
 ask with regard to each — How could you disprove 
 this absurdity, apart from that act of faith we 
 have mentioned ? 
 
 The only valid objection to this procedure in 
 this connexion would be if it could be shown that 
 —quite apart from any faith in the general 
 rationality of the world — these various absur- 
 dities must be held impossible each on its own 
 merits ; that in framing such hypotheses we are 
 advancing something which is unmeaning or 
 internally self-contradictory, something which 
 contradicts principles the truth of which is 
 evident a 'priori. 
 
 With a disputant who adopted this method, it 
 might be worth while to challenge his supposed 
 a priori principles one by one. But another 
 method of reply would be to grant them all for 
 purpose of argument, and then to show that, in 
 spite of them, fantastic hypotheses can be 
 invented which, if accepted, would make our 
 everyday predictions insecure. 
 
 This task might be carried out in detail. But 
 for any one who has understood the point at issue 
 it is hardly necessary that this should be done. 
 The onus probandi lies on the objector. Will any 
 one have the boldness to maintain that he can 
 show — on a priori principles such as that " matter 
 cannot be annihilated," that " nothing can act 
 232
 
 NOTE II 
 
 but where it is," that " two pieces of matter 
 cannot simultaneously occupy the same place," 
 etc. (even if the truth of all those principles 
 be granted) — the impossibility of every absurd 
 hypothesis which the most ingenious imagination 
 can suggest ? 
 
 Take the extreme case alluded to in chapter xv, 
 the supposed miracles of Amphion and Orpheus, 
 when 
 
 Trees uprooted left their place 
 Sequacious of the lyre. 
 
 " The ultimate nature of gravitation," wrote 
 Sir Oliver Lodge in 1888, " is not at present 
 known, and it may turn out to be a property 
 really inherent in matter. But it is more probable 
 that it is not a pulling property inherent in matter 
 at all, but a pushing property of some external 
 energetic arrangement not at present understood, 
 due probably to a strain in the medium in which 
 all matter is immersed."* 
 
 This statement may be open to many criticisms. 
 Yet we are at any rate on safe ground if we say 
 that the gravitative tendency of gross matter 
 is either due to " some external energetic arrange- 
 ment," or is not due to this. In the former case, 
 this external energetic arrangement may in its 
 turn be influenced by some other arrangement 
 external to itself, and so on. How, on such a 
 theory, could we possibly be sure that the gravi- 
 
 * Elementary Mechanics, p. 15, note. 
 
 233
 
 NOTE II 
 
 tative tendency of gross matter may not be 
 destroyed in consequence of the irruption into 
 our world of particles of unknown character 
 arriving from a great distance, that this irrup- 
 tion might not occur in such a way that some 
 particles retained their attractive power while 
 others lost it? If anything of this kind 
 happened, we should be dealing with the 
 destruction of the gravitative tendency, as dis- 
 tinct from the familiar cases where it is merely 
 overpowered. 
 
 Suppose, on the other hand, that we reject the 
 notion of this external energetic arrangement 
 altogether. The mere fact that gravitation had 
 no such physical explanation behind it would 
 not prove that the gravitative property was 
 " inherent " in matter in the sense of being 
 permanent and unchangeable. But if, apart 
 from our general faith in the rationality of the 
 universe, we can have no guarantee of the un- 
 changeableness of what we are accustomed to 
 regard as the fundamental properties of matter, 
 then — apart from this same faith — we can have 
 no assurance that we may not any day witness 
 the very miracles that are associated with the 
 names of Orpheus and Amphion. 
 
 If the man of science is indignant at being 
 asked to discuss these nonsensical possibilities, 
 his very indignation is a tacit admission of the 
 conclusion we are seeking to reach. It shows that 
 he rejects these suggestions simply because they 
 234
 
 NOTE II 
 
 are in themselves fantastic. His ultimate con- 
 viction is — exactly as we are maintaining — that 
 the world in which we live is not an " unsub- 
 stantial fairy place," but a rational Universe. 
 He feels that these fantastic hypotheses are not 
 worth the trouble of refuting, just because, being 
 fantastic, they cannot be true. 
 
 But if, apart from our faith in the rationality of 
 the Universe, we cannot show these wild sup- 
 positions to be impossible, may we not at least 
 show them to be highly improbable ? An im- 
 pressive answer to this question may be found in 
 the following quotation from Lotze * : " The 
 one supposition of there being a universal inner 
 connexion of all reality as such, which alone 
 enables us to argue from the structure of any one 
 section of reality to that of the rest, is the 
 foundation of every attempt to arrive at know- 
 ledge by means of experience, and is not derivable 
 from experience itself. Whoever casts doubt 
 on this supposition, not only loses the pros- 
 pect of being able to calculate anything 
 future with certainty, but robs himself at the 
 same time of the only basis on which to found 
 the more modest hope of being able under 
 definite circumstances to consider the occurrence 
 of one event as more probable than that of 
 another." 
 
 This quotation helps to show the difference 
 
 * Metaphysic, Book I, Introduction, iii. 
 
 235
 
 NOTE II 
 
 between the two hypotheses which we are here 
 concerned to distinguish. I — for purpose of 
 argument — am venturing to think away the 
 " one supposition " of which Lotze speaks. My 
 critic, in his hypothesis concerning the dark star, 
 is maintaining it : for otherwise how could he 
 speak of " probabilities " in reference to that 
 part of the Universe which lies beyond our 
 observation ? 
 
 My critic denies that he finds the prospect of 
 possible collision alarming. There is a certain 
 type of scientific thinker who, in the shock of such 
 a collision, would be anxious only to find evidence 
 that the fundamental laws of physics were not 
 contradicted, and when satisfied on this head 
 would exclaim, like Wolfe at Quebec, " Then I die 
 happy." Of such a one we may quote the noble 
 words of Horace : 
 
 Si fractus illabatur orbis 
 Impavidum ferient ruinae. 
 
 But, for most of us, the real ground of confidence 
 which keeps us calm is the conviction that we 
 know enough of the Universe at large to be pretty 
 sure that the suggested catastrophe will not occur, 
 and to be absolutely * sure that, if it does, it 
 
 * My critic objects to this word " absolutely." He admits that 
 science rests upon the " act of faith which we all make with 
 regard to the rationality of the material Universe," but denies 
 that, even on this fundamental question, he himself would ever 
 rise to absolute assurance, such assurance as would exclude all 
 possibility of his being mistaken. He refers to Poe's " Thousand 
 and Second Tale of Scheherezade " to show how men may be 
 
 236
 
 NOTE II 
 
 will only occur as part of a world-scheme which 
 as a whole our reason must approve. This 
 latter conviction is common to the scientific 
 
 mistaken in rejecting as utterly incredible what may after all 
 turn out to be true. 
 
 Now the belief in the rationality of the Universe may be ex- 
 pressed, negatively, in the assertion that " absurdities cannot 
 happen." We are tacitly using a syllogism of which the major 
 premiss is " Absurdities cannot happen," the minor premiss 
 " A or B is an absurdity," and the conclusion " A or B cannot 
 happen." The Sultan in Poe's tale is incorrect in his minor 
 premiss only. He thinks that his friend's accurate prophecies of 
 modern life are fantastic and incredible merely because the life 
 they depict is unfamiliar to his mind. (See note to chapter xii, 
 p. 160, above.) We are all liable to similar errors. But even in 
 face of such warnings — even with a vivid memorj' - in our minds 
 of our own mistakes and those of other people — there are still 
 certain particular suggestions which we should reject as absurd ; 
 there are certain "tall stories" (to use the colloquial phrase) 
 that we should absolutely refuse to accept. 
 
 It is the major premiss, however, which most concerns us here. 
 Surely, if we remember (1) that this act of faith in the rationality 
 of the world is presupposed in all our ordinary proofs, physical, 
 historical, and legal, (2) that, as Lotze points out, apart from our 
 general conception of the Universe as a whole, we have no ground 
 for regarding even the " tallest " of " tall stories " as in the least 
 degree improbable, we must admit that our belief in the world's 
 rationality is a matter of absolute certainty in our minds. We 
 know that certain absurdities will not really happen. It is an 
 interesting fact to the philosopher that there are certain con- 
 nexions of thought in which we are all tempted to say, of these 
 very same absurdities, " Of course I cannot disprove their 
 possibility : they may happen after all," while at the same time 
 we should be indignant if our friends seriously attributed to us 
 the credulousness which these words imply. To say, " These 
 events are not in the least impossible, and yet I know that they 
 cannot really take place," is an obvious piece of inconsistency. 
 If we are tempted to speak in this inconsistent manner, we ought 
 to inquire very carefully into the meaning of our own words. 
 In what sense are we alleging that these things, which we do not 
 at all believe, are nevertheless quite credible ? 
 
 237
 
 NOTE II 
 
 man whose faith in physics would not be dis- 
 turbed by the overthrow of the solar system, 
 and to the religious man who would still trust 
 in God, though the heavens should pass away 
 with a great noise, and the elements melt with 
 fervent heat.* 
 
 In these discussions it is always worth while 
 to remember that the advance of science will in 
 all probability continue in the future as it has 
 in the past : that new hypotheses will be sug- 
 gested, while theories which are much in our mind 
 to-day may pass into oblivion. It is even 
 possible that in some future day the necessity of 
 each physical event may be demonstrated, so 
 that the behaviour of matter may be as clear to 
 men's minds as are the properties of circles and 
 triangles. Men would then no longer need to rely 
 upon a general faith in the rationality of the 
 universe. 
 
 Yet, even so, the argument of this essay would 
 not really be out of date, except for those who 
 should have the hardihood to maintain that all 
 the methods which we to-day employ are totally 
 incorrect, that our results when right came right 
 by mere accident. So far as our present methods 
 are sound, an argument is valid which rests upon 
 a correct analysis of the principles which those 
 methods presuppose. And it is well worth while 
 
 * See 2 Peter iii, 10. 
 238
 
 NOTE II 
 
 detaching in our minds such general reasoning 
 from the special hypotheses which may happen 
 for one reason or another to be prominent in 
 the discussions of the present moment. The 
 former may well have more permanent value 
 than the latter. 
 
 289
 
 INDEX 
 
 Achilles, 185 
 
 ^Eschylus, 112 
 
 African Farm, Story of an, 175-179 
 
 Ahriman, 205 
 
 Ajax, 184 
 
 Allen, the late Mr. Grant, 135 
 
 Amphion, 202, 233, 234 
 
 Angelico, Fra, 123, 127 
 
 Aphrodite, 75 
 
 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 3, 51-55, 56, 57 
 
 Aristotelian Society, Proceedings of, 132 
 
 Aristotle, 6, 7, 44, 50-51, 52, 164 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 19, 137-139, 142, 172 
 
 Athanasius, St., xix 
 
 Atomic theory, 102 
 
 Atonement, substitutionary doctrine of, xxi 
 
 Australian camp, Story of an, 62 
 
 Autolycus, 67 
 
 Axioms, how related to the Will of God, 219 
 
 Bach, J. S., 85, 112, 115, 199 
 
 Beethoven, 85, 115, 161, 162, 185 
 
 Bergson, 35 
 
 Bomba, King, 187, 192 
 
 Bourrienne, 22 
 
 Bret Harte, 168 
 
 Carlyle, 22, 28 
 Carmen, 115 
 
 Censor, Story of military, 1 
 Cicero, 48-51, 196, 203 
 
 Collision, destructive of Solar System, 40, 169, 202, 228-238 
 
 q 241
 
 INDEX 
 
 Conceptualism, 95, 208, etc. 
 Conservatorium, pupils in, 61 
 Cosmological proof, the, 23 
 Counterpoint, rules of, 91 
 
 Dante, Inferno, 126, 186, 191 
 
 Darwin, 21, 27, 33, 35, 36, 37, 44, 58, 83, 97-101, 116-133, 
 
 149 
 Davies, Sir J., 168 
 Democritus, 30 
 Divine immanence, ix, 34 
 
 Electron, the, 231 
 Empedocles, 52, 53 
 Ends, kingdom of, 84, 91 
 Euclid, 27, 32 
 
 Fagin, 66 
 
 Falstaff, 66 
 
 Final Cause, the, 51-52 
 
 Francis of Assisi, St., xix, 140 
 
 Galileo, 59, 63, 166 
 Gladstone, Mr., 42, 55 
 Goethe, 7, 8, 171 
 Good, Idea of the, xviii, 218-220 
 Gorham, Mr. C, 190 
 
 Haeckel, Professor, 34, 165, 206 
 
 Hegel, 49, 214 
 
 Helmholtz, 33 
 
 Herodotus, 61 
 
 Homer, 170, 192 
 
 Horace, 236 
 
 Hume, 230 
 
 Huxley, 95, 150, 166, 167, 170 
 
 Hydrogen, 103 
 
 Idea of the Good, the, xviii, 218-220 
 
 Inertia, not identical with Uniformity, 163, 197 
 
 242
 
 INDEX 
 
 James, William, 133 
 
 Kant, 27, 58, 224-227 
 Keats, 144 
 Keble, 215 
 
 Law, of Nature, 29, 60, 93, 95 
 
 the term not to be confined to Physics, 60, etc., 72 
 Life, origin of, 32-35, chap, ix 
 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 158, 233 
 Lotze, 154, 155, 235, 237 
 
 Macbeth, 126, 185 
 Mahomet, 127 
 Martyrs of Science, 59 
 Mendelssohn, 220, 222 
 Mephistopheles, 78 
 Mill, J. S., 150 
 Milton, 183, 192 
 Minucius Felix, xv, xvi 
 Montefiore's Synoptic Gospels, 145 
 Morality, a miracle, 59, 64 
 Mountain-climbing, 86, 185, cf. pp. 4-8 
 Mozart, 115, 116, 199 
 
 Napoleon I : his belief in God, 22, 23 
 
 Nature an artist, 183 
 
 Naval Occasions, 86 
 
 Newman, Cardinal J. H., 209 
 
 Newton, 31, 102 
 
 Nero, 227 
 
 Nuremburg, 181 
 
 Octavius of Minucius Felix, xv, xvi 
 
 Order relapsing into Chaos, 76, 80, cf. pp. 40, 202, 228 
 
 Ormuzd, 205 
 
 Orpheus, 202, 233, 234 
 
 Orrery, story of an, 196 
 
 Oxygen, 103 
 
 243
 
 INDEX 
 
 Parabola, the, 31 
 Paul, St., xix, 9, 192, 193 
 Pearson, Professor Karl, 100-106 
 Plato, xviii, 189, 213, 217, 219 
 Poe, E. A., 236 
 Posidonius, his sphere, 49 
 
 Rashdall, Dr. Hastings (Dean of Carlisle), 189 
 
 Rationalist Press Association, xvii, 190 
 
 Roscoe, Sir H., 102 
 
 Rubens, 123 
 
 Ruskin, 121 
 
 Russell, Mr. Bertrand, 15-21, 29, 38, 74, 77, 78, 79, 121, 151- 
 
 155, 159, 169, 206 
 His parable of the chicken, 77 ; his conception of world 
 
 as tragedy, 121, note 
 Rutilius, 59, 60 
 
 Scepticism, moral, compendious answer to, 65, cf. 68 
 
 Schopenhauer, 74 
 
 Schreiner, Miss, 175-179 
 
 Scholasticism, charge of, 82, 90 
 
 Second Empire, fashions of the, 135 
 
 Shakespeare, 112, 123, 127 
 
 brain of, 200 
 Shaw, Mr. Bernard, 194 
 Smith, Sidney, 69 
 Socrates, 45, 47, 51, 188, 189 
 Spencer, Herbert, 150, 162, 163 
 Sterne, 112 
 Sullivan, Sir A., 199 
 Stinging-nettle, the, 124 
 
 Teleology, definition of, 51 
 Titian, 112 
 Tupper, Martin, 123 
 
 Uniformity, distinct from Inertia, 163, 197 
 Universal Ego, a philosophic fiction, 215 
 
 244
 
 INDEX 
 
 Veley, Mr. V. H., 103 
 
 Venice, 181 
 
 Virgil, 134 
 
 Vitalism, an unfortunate doctrine, 34, 35 
 
 some truth in its fundamental meaning, 105, etc. 
 
 Wallace, 149 
 
 Webb, Mr. C. C. J., 9, 22 
 
 Wells, Mr. H. G., 12, 13 
 
 Wernle, 145 
 
 Wolfe, General, 236 
 
 Xenophon, 45, 47 
 
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