04.01 - Part 4, Chapter 1

PART IV SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS A PROVISIONAL PHILOSOPHY

CHAPTER I THE GROUNDWORK

WE have now considered beliefs, or certain important classes of them, under three aspects. We have considered them from the point of view of their practical necessity; from that of their philosophic proof; and from that of their scientific origin. Inquiries relating to the same subject-matter more distinct in their character it would be difficult to conceive. It remains for us to consider whether it is possible to extract from their combined results any general view which may command at least a provisional assent.

It is evident, of course, that this general view, if we are fortunate enough to reach it, will not be of the nature of a complete or adequate philosophy. The unification of all belief into an ordered whole, compacted into one coherent structure under the stress of reason, is an ideal which we can never abandon; but it is also one which, in the present condition of our knowledge, perhaps even of our faculties, we seem incapable of attaining. For the moment we must content ourselves with something less than this. The best system we can hope to construct will suffer from gaps and rents, from loose ends and ragged edges. It does not, however, follow from this that it will be without a high degree of value; and, whether valuable or worthless, it may at least represent the best within our reach. By the best I, of course, mean best in relation to reflective reason. If we have to submit, as I think we must, to an incomplete rationalisation of belief, this ought not to be because in a fit of intellectual despair we are driven to treat reason as an illusion; nor yet because we have deliberately resolved to transfer our allegiance to irrational or non-rational inclination; but because reason itself assures us that such a course is, at the lowest, the least irrational one open to us. If we have to find our way over difficult seas and under murky skies without compass or chronometer, we need not on that account allow the ship to drive at random. Rather ought we to weigh with the more anxious care every indication, be it negative or positive, and from whatever quarter it may come, which can help us to guess at our position and to lay out the course which it behoves us to steer.

Now, the first and most elementary principle which ought to guide us in framing any provisional scheme of unification, is to decline to draw any distinction between different classes of belief where no relevant distinction can as a matter of fact be discovered. To pursue the opposite course would be gratuitously to irrationalise (to coin a convenient word) our scheme from the very start; to destroy, by a quite arbitrary treatment, any hope of its symmetrical and healthy development. And yet, if there be any value in the criticisms contained in the Second Part of these Notes, this is precisely the mistake into which the advocates of naturalism have invariably blundered. Without any preliminary analysis, nay, without any apparent suspicion that a preliminary analysis was necessary or desirable, they have chosen to assume that scientific beliefs stand not only upon a different, but upon a much more solid, platform than any others; that scientific standards supply the sole test of truth, and scientific methods the sole instruments of discovery. The reader is already in possession of some of the arguments which are, as it seems to me, fatal to such claims, and it is not necessary here to repeat them. What is more to our present purpose is to find out whether, in the absence of philosophic proof, judgments about the phenomenal, and more particularly about the material, world possess any other characteristics which, in our attempt at a provisional unification of knowledge, forbid us to place them on a level with other classes of belief. That there are differences of some sort no one, I imagine, will attempt to deny. But are they of a kind which require us either to give any special precedence to science, or to exclude other beliefs altogether from our general scheme?

One peculiarity there is which seems at first sight effectually to distinguish certain scientific beliefs from any which belong, say, to ethics or theology; a peculiarity which may, perhaps, be best expressed by the word ’ inevitableness.’ Everybody has, and everybody is obliged to have, some convictions about the world in which he lives convictions which in their narrow and particular form (as what I have before called beliefs of perception, memory, and expectation) guide us all, children, savages, and philosophers alike, in the ordinary conduct of day-to-day existence; which, when generalised and extended, supply us with some of the leading presuppositions on which the whole fabric of science appears logically to depend. No convictions quite answering to this description can, I think, be found either in ethics, aesthetics, or theology. Some kind of morality is, no doubt, required for the stability even of the rudest form of social life. Some sense of beauty, some kind of religion, is, perhaps, to be discovered (though this is disputed) in every human community. But certainly there is nothing in any of these great departments of thought quite corresponding to our habitual judgments about the things we see and handle; judgments which, with reason or without it, all mankind are practically compelled to entertain.

Compare, for example, the central truth of theology ’ There is a God ’ with one of the fundamental presuppositions of science (itself a generalised statement of what is given in ordinary judgments of perception) ’ There is an independent material world.’ I am myself disposed to doubt whether so good a case can be made out for accepting the second of these propositions as can be made out for accepting the first. But while it has been found by many, not only possible, but easy, to doubt the existence of God, doubts as to the independent existence of matter have assuredly been confined to the rarest moments of subjective reflection, and have dissolved like summer mists at the first touch of what we are pleased to call reality.

Now, what are we to make of this fact? In the opinion of many persons, perhaps of most, it affords a conclusive ground for elevating science to a different plane of certitude from that on which other systems of belief must be content to dwell. The evidence of the senses, as we loosely describe these judgments of perception, is for such persons the best of all evidence: it is inevitable, so it is true; seeing, as the proverb has it, is indeed believing. This somewhat crude view, however, is not one which we can accept. The coercion exercised in the production of these beliefs is not, as has been already shown, a rational coercion. Even while we submit to it we may judge it; and in the very act of believing we may be conscious that the strength of our belief is far in excess of anything which mere reasoning can justify.

I am making no complaint of this disparity between belief and its reasons. On the contrary, I have already noted my dissent from the popular view that it is our business to take care that, as far as possible, these two shall in every case be nicely adjusted. It cannot, I contend, be our duty to do that in the name of reason which, if it were done, would bring any kind of rational life to an immediate standstill. And even if we could suppose it to be our duty, it is not one which, as was shown in the last chapter, we are practically competent to perform. If this be true in the case of those beliefs which owe their origin largely to Authority, or the non-rational action of mind on mind, not less is it true in the case of those elementary judgments which arise out of sense - stimulation. Whether there be an independent material universe or not may be open to philosophic doubt. But that, if it exists, it is expedient that the belief in it should be accepted with a credence which for all practical purposes is immediate and unwavering, admits, I think, of no doubt whatever. If we could suppose a community to be called into being who, in its dealings with the ’ external world,’ should permit action to wait upon speculation, and require all its metaphysical difficulties to be solved before reposing full belief in some such material surroundings as those which we habitually postulate, its members would be overwhelmed by a ruin more rapid and more complete than that which, in a preceding chapter, was prophesied for those who should succeed in ousting authority from its natural position among the causes of belief. But supposing this be so, it follows necessarily, on accepted biological principles, 1 that a kind of credulity so essential to the welfare, not merely of the race as a whole, but of every single member of it, will be bred by elimination and selection into its inmost organisation. If we consider what must have happened 2 at that critical moment in the history of organic development when first conscious judgments of sense-perception made themselves felt as important links in the chain connecting nervous irritability with muscular action, is it not plain that any individual in whom such judgments were habitually qualified and enfeebled by even the most legitimate scepticism would incontinently perish, and that those only would survive who possessed, and could presumably transmit to their descendants, a stubborn assurance which was beyond the power of reasoning either to fortify or to undermine? No such process would come to the assistance of

1 At the first glance, the reader may be disposed to think that to bring in science to show why no peculiar certainty should attach to scientific premises is logically inadmissible. But this is not so: though the converse procedure, by which scientific conclusions would be made to establish scientific premises, would, no doubt, involve an argument in a circle. a Cf. Note, p. 285. other faiths, however true, which were the growth of higher and later stages of civilised development. For, in the first place, such faiths are not necessarily, nor perhaps at all, an advantage in the struggle for existence. In the second place, even where they are an advantage, it is rather to the community as a whole in its struggles with other communities, than to each particular individual in his struggle with other individuals, or with the inanimate forces of Nature. In the third place, the whole machinery of selection and elimination has been weakened, if not paralysed, by civilisation itself. And, in the fourth place, were it still in full operation, it could not, through the mere absence of time and opportunity, have produced any sensible effect in moulding the organism for the reception of beliefs which, by hypothesis, are the recent acquisition of a small and advanced minority.

II

We are now in a position to answer the question put a few pages back. What, I then asked, if any, is the import, from our present point of view, of the universality and inevitableness which unquestionably attach to certain judgments about the world of phenomena, and to these judgments alone? The answer must be, that these peculiarities have no import. They exist, but they are irrelevant. Faith or assurance, which, if not in excess of reason, is at least independent of it, seems to be a necessity in every great department of knowledge which touches on action; and what great department is there which does not? The analysis of sense-experience teaches us that we require it in our ordinary dealings with the material world. The most cursory examination into the springs of moral action shows that it is an indispensable supplement to ethical speculation. Theologians are for the most part agreed that without it religion is but the ineffectual profession of a barren creed. The comparative value, however, of these faiths is not to be measured either by their intensity or by the degree of their diffusion. It is true that all men, whatever their speculative opinions, enjoy a practical assurance with regard to what they see and touch. It is also true that few men have an assurance equally strong about matters of which their senses tell them nothing immediately; and that many men have on such subjects no assurance at all. But as this is precisely what we should expect if, in the progress of evolution, the need for other faiths had arisen under conditions very different from those which produced our innate and long-descended confidence in senseperception, how can we regard it as a distinction in favour of the latter? We can scarcely reckon universality and necessity as badges of pre-eminence, at the same moment that we recognise them as marks of the elementary and primitive character of the beliefs to which they give their all-powerful, but none the less irrational, sanction. The time has passed for believing that the further we go back towards the ’ state of nature,’ the nearer we get to Virtue and to Truth.

We cannot, then, extract out of the coercive character of certain unreasoned beliefs any principle of classification which shall help us to the provisional philosophy of which we are in search. What such a principle would require us to include in our system of beliefs contents us not. What it would require us to exclude we may not willingly part with. And if, dissatisfied with this double deficiency, we examine more closely into its character and origin, we find, not only that it is without rational justification of which at this stage of our inquiry we have no right to complain but that the very account which it gives of itself precludes us from finding in it even a temporary place of intellectual repose.

I do not, be it observed, make it a matter of complaint that those who erect the inevitable judgments of sense-perception into a norm or standard of right belief have thereby substituted (however unconsciously) psychological compulsion for rational necessity; for, as rational necessity does not, so far as I can see, carry us at the best beyond a system of mere ’solipsism/ it must, somehow or other, be supplemented if we are to force an entrance into any larger and worthier inheritance. My complaint rather is, that having asked us to acquiesce in the guidance of non-rational impulse, they should then require us arbitrarily to narrow down the impulses which we may follow to the almost animal instincts lying at the root of our judgments about material phenomena. It is surely better less repugnant, I mean, to reflective reason to frame for ourselves some wider scheme which, though it be founded in the last resort upon our needs, shall at least take account of other needs than those we share with our brute progenitors. And here, if not elsewhere, I may claim the support of the most famous masters of speculation. Though they have not, it may be, succeeded in supplying us with a satisfactory explanation of the Universe, at least the Universe which they have sought to explain has been something more than a mere collection of hypostatised sense-perceptions, packed side by side in space, and following each other with blind uniformity in time. All the great architects of systems have striven to provide accommodation within their schemes for ideas of wider sweep and richer content; and whether they desired to support, to modify, or to oppose the popular theology of their day, they have at least given hospitable welcome to some of its most important conceptions. In the case of such men as Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, this is obvious enough. It is true, I think, even in such a case as that of Spinoza. Philosophers, indeed, may find but small satisfaction in his methods or conclusions. They may see but little to admire in his elaborate but illusory show of quasi-mathematical demonstration; in the Nature which is so unlike the Nature of the physicist that we feel no surprise at its being also called God; in the God Who is so unlike the God of the theologian that we feel no surprise at His also being called Nature; in the a priori metaphysic which evolves the universe from definitions; in the freedom which is indistinguishable from necessity; in the volition which is indistinguishable from intellect; in the love which is indistinguishable from reasoned acquiescence; in the universe from which have been expelled purpose, morality, beauty, and causation, and which contains, therefore, but scant room for theology, ethics, aesthetics, or science. In the two hundred years and more which have elapsed since the publication of his system, it may be doubted whether two hundred persons have been convinced by his reasoning. Yet he continues to interest the world; and why? Not, surely, as a guide through the mazes of metaphysics. Not as a pioneer of ’ higher ’ criticism. Least of all because he was anything so commonplace as a heretic or an atheist. The true reason appears to me to be very different. It is partly, at least, because in despite of his positive teaching he was endowed with a religious imagination which, in however abstract and metaphysical a fashion, illumined the whole profitless bulk of inconclusive demonstration; which enabled him to find in notions most remote from sense-experience the only abiding realities; and to convert a purely rational adhesion to the conclusions supposed to flow from the nature of an inactive, impersonal, and unmoral substance, into something not quite inaptly termed the Love of God.

It will, perhaps, be objected that we have no right to claim support from the example of systemmakers with whose systems we do not happen to agree. How, it may be asked, can it concern us that Spinoza extracted something like a religion out of his philosophy, if we do not accept his philosophy? Or that Hegel found it possible to hitch large fragments of Christian dogma into the development of the ’ Idea,’ if we are not convinced by his dialectic? It concerns us, I reply, inasmuch as facts like these furnish fresh confirmation of a truth reached before by another method. The naturalistic creed, which merely systematises and expands the ordinary judgments of sense-perception, we found by direct examination to be quite inadequate. We now note that its inadequacy has been commonly assumed by men whose speculative genius is admitted, who have seldom been content to allow that the world of which they had to give an account could be narrowed down to the naturalistic pattern.

III But a more serious objection to the point of view here adopted remains to be considered. Is not, it will be asked, the whole method followed throughout the course of these Notes intrinsically unsound? Is it not substantially identical with the attempt, not made now for the first time, to rest superstition upon scepticism, and to frame our creed, not in accordance with the rules of logic, but with the promptings of desire? It begins (may it not be said?) by discrediting reason; and having thus guaranteed its results against inconvenient criticism, it proceeds to make the needs of man the measure of ’ objective ’ reality, to erect his convenience into the touchstone of Eternal Truth, and to mete out the Universe on a plan authenticated only by his wishes.

Now, on this criticism I have, in the first place, to observe that it errs in assuming, either that the object aimed at in the preceding discussion is to discredit reason, or that as a matter of fact this has been its effect. On the contrary, be the character of our conclusions what it may, they have at least been arrived at by allowing the fullest play to free, rational investigation. If one consequence of this investigation has been to diminish the importance commonly attributed to reason among the causes by which belief is produced, it is by the action of reason itself that this result has been brought about. If another consequence has been that doubts have, been expressed as to the theoretic validity of certain universally accepted beliefs, this is because the right of reason to deal with every province of knowledge, untrammelled by arbitrary restrictions or customary immunities, has been assumed and acted upon. If, in addition to all this, we have been incidentally compelled to admit that as yet we are without a satisfactory philosophy, the admission has not been asked for in the interests either of scepticism or of superstition. Reason is not honoured by pretending that she has done what as a matter of fact is still undone; nor need we be driven into a universal license of credulity by recognising that we must for the present put up with some working hypothesis which falls far short of speculative perfection.

But, further, is it true to say that, in the absence of reason, we have contentedly accepted mere desire for our guide? No doubt the theory here advocated requires us to take account, not merely of premises and their conclusions, but of needs and their satisfaction. But this is only asking us to do explicitly and on system what on the naturalistic theory is done unconsciously and at random. By the very constitution of our being we seem practically driven to assume a real world in correspondence with our ordinary judgments of perception. A harmony of some kind between our inner selves and the universe of which we form a part is thus the tacit postulate at the root of every belief we entertain about ’ phenomena ’; and all that I now contend for is, that a like harmony should provisionally be assumed between that universe and other elements in our nature which are of a later, of a more uncertain, but of no ignobler, growth.

Whether this correspondence is best described as that which obtains between a ’ need ’ and its ’ satisfaction/ may be open to question. But, at all events, let it be understood that if the relation so described is, on the one side, something different from that between a premise and its conclusion, so, on the other, it is intended to be equally remote from that between a desire and its fulfilment. That it has not the logical validity of the first I have already admitted, or rather asserted. That it has not the casual, wavering, and purely ’ subjective ’ character of the second is not less true. For the correspondence postulated is not between the fleeting fancies of the individual and the immutable verities of an unseen world, but between these characteristics of our nature, which we recognise as that in us which, though not necessarily the strongest, is the highest; which, though not always the most universal, is nevertheless the best. But because this theory may seem alike remote from familiar forms both of dogmatism and scepticism, and because I am on that account the more anxious that no unmerited plausibility should be attributed to it through any obscurity in my way of presenting it, let me draw out, even at the cost of some repetition, a brief catalogue of certain things which may, and of certain other things which may not, be legitimately said concerning it.

We may say of it, then, that it furnishes us with no adequate philosophy of religion. But we may not say of it that it leaves religion worse, or, indeed, otherwise provided for in this respect than science.

We may say of it that it assumes without proof a certain consonance between the ’ subjective ’ and the ’ objective ’; between what we are moved to believe and what in fact is. We may not say that the presuppositions of science depend upon any more solid, or, indeed, upon any different, foundation.

We may say of it, if we please, that it gives us a practical, but not a theoretic, assurance of the truths with which it is concerned. But, if so, we must describe in the same technical language our assurance respecting the truths of the material world.

We may say of it that it accepts provisionally the theory, based on scientific methods, which traces back the origin of all beliefs to causes which, for the most part, are non-rational, and which carry with them no warranty that they will issue in right opinion. But we may not say of it that the distinction thus drawn between the non-rational causes which produce the immediate judgments of senseperception, and those which produce judgments in the sphere of ethics or theology, implies any superior certitude in the case of the former.

We may say of it that it admits judgments of sense-perception to be the most inevitable, but denies them to be the most worthy.

We may say of it generally, that as it assumes the Whole, of which we desire a reasoned knowledge, to include human consciousness as an element, it refuses to regard any system as other than irrational which, like Naturalism, leaves large tracts and aspects of that consciousness unaccounted for and derelict; and that it utterly declines to circumscribe the Knowable by frontiers whose delimitation Reason itself assures us can be justified on no rational principle whatsoever.