014. IV. The Anthropological Argument.
IV. The Anthropological Argument. This argument is sometimes called the psychological, and often the moral argument. As it may properly deal with other matters than the distinctively psychological and moral nature and history of man, anthropological, as broader in its application, is preferable to either. This argument differs from the cosmological and teleological more in its sphere than in its logical principles. In proceeding with the nature and endowments of mind the proof of the divine existence, the principle is the same as in the cosmological argument. Then in proceeding with the adaptations of mental endowment to our manifold relations, the principle is the same as in the teleological argument. Further, there are facts of man’s moral nature which clearly reveal a moral nature in the author of his being.
1. Special Facts of Organic Constitution.—In his organic nature man belongs to the sphere of the teleological argument. But there are some special facts of his constitution which furnish special illustrations and proofs of divine finality, and may therefore properly be included in the present argument. In complexity and completeness of structure and symmetry of form the human body stands at the head of organic existences, so far as known to us. The harmony of these facts with his higher mental nature is the reflection of a rational intelligence in the author of his being. His erect form becomes his higher plane of life and fits him for the many offices which minister to his well-being. The hand is admirably fitted for its manifold uses. It is true that many useful and ornamental things are now made by machinery; but back of the machinery is the hand, without which it could not have been made. So that back of all the material products of our civilization is this same wonderful hand. Sometimes the skeleton of this hand and that of an ape are sketched side by side, and in the interest of evolution it is suggested that the seeming difference is but slight. The idea is that, if the primordial fire-mist could through a succession of differentiations and integrations construct the ape’s hand, then by a little further advance on the same line it could produce the slightly varying human hand. But the Duke of Argyll has well observed that to get the real difference between the two we must compare the work of one with that of the other. In this view the difference is almost infinite. It might be said that the superior brain of man accounts for this difference; but this would not give the real truth. With only an ape’s hand only the rudiments of civilization could ever have been attained. The brainwork of the great inventors could have had but little outcome without the skill of the hand. What could the mental genius of Raphael and Angelo ever have achieved without the cunning hand to set in reality their ideal creations? The voice goes most fittingly with the human mind. Such a voice could have no special function even in the highest animal orders. The intelligence is wanting for the special uses of which it is capable. That a parrot may articulate a few words or a bullfinch pipe a few notes of a tune is in no contradiction to this statement. For man this voice has many uses, and uses of the highest value. It is the ready means of intelligent intercourse in human society. It serves for the intelligent and intelligible expression of all the inner life of thought and feeling and purpose, and from the simplest utterances up to the highest forms of eloquence and song. The organ which makes possible this voice in all its high uses is as wonderful as the voice itself.
It is impossible to account for the perfect harmony of these facts without a ruling mind. These notable facts, the erect posture, the cunning hand, and the voice, with the organ which makes it possible, how else could they come separately and into such happy harmony with the mental grade of man? In the absence of such a mind the only resource is in matter and force, and a process of differentiations and integrations, and the influence of the environment. But down in this plane every force is blind, utterly blind. Here there can be no purposive agency. Then fortuity or necessity is all that remains. Fortuity is too absurd for any respectful consideration. To allege such a necessity is to assume for matter and physical force qualities utterly alien to their nature. A ruling mind is the only rational account of the special facts we have found in the organic constitution of man.
2. Rational Mind a Spiritual Essence.—Phenomena must have a ground in essential being. Outright nihilism is outright hallucination. All qualities, properties, attributes, all process change, motion, force, must have a ground in being. Idealism may question or even deny the reality of a material world, but on such denial must posit something essentially real as the ground of the sensations which seemingly arise from the presence and influence of such a world. In the definition of matter as the permanent possibility of sensations Mill really admits the necessity of some substantial ground of such sensations. The agnosticism which posits the infinite or absolute as the ground of finite existences, and then pushes it away beyond all reach of human knowledge, must still hold the essential reality of such ground. We have no immediate insight into being, but our reason affirms its reality as the necessary ground of phenomena. “We could just as reasonably deny the fact of a phenomenal world as to deny to it an underlying reality of being. Whatever else we may question or deny, unless utterly lost in the hallucinations of nihilism, we must concede reality of existence to the conscious subject of sensations and percipient of phenomena. Extension, form, inertia, divisibility, thought, sensibility, spontaneity must have a ground in being. Being and its predicates, whether of properties, agency, or phenomena, must be in scientific accordance. The same principle may be put in this form: Being and its predicates cannot be in contradictory opposition. There may be such opposition simply in one’s affirmation, but cannot be in the reality of things. This is not a truth empirically discovered, but is a clear and certain truth of the reason. The mind to which it is not clear and certain is incapable of any processes of thought properly scientific. It follows from the same principle that all predicates of the same subject must admit of scientific consistency, and must exclude all contradictory opposition. If two predicates of the same thing are in such opposition, then what is affirmed in the one is really denied in the other. To say of the same thing that it is at the same time both cubical and spherical in figure is to violate the law of contradiction as completely as to say that a thing is and is not at the same time. To predicate inertia and spontaneity of the same subject is to affirm of it contradictory properties, which must refuse all scientific consistency. These principles are intimately related to the question concerning the nature of the ground of mental facts.
We have what we may call physical facts or phenomena, and also what we may call mental facts or phenomena. The most groveling materialism can hardly deny a very marked difference between the two classes. In those related to matter we have the properties of extension, figure, inertia, divisibility, chemical affinity. In those relating to mind we have thought, reason, sensibility, consciousness, spontaneity. The two classes have nothing in common, and must refuse all combination in either physical or mental science. If any one denies or doubts this, let him attempt the combination. Will thought combine with extension, reason with figure, sensibility with divisibility, consciousness with chemical affinity, spontaneity with inertia in any scientific construction? No material elements or animal orders differ so widely as do the facts of mind from the facts of matter. Material elements and animal orders do not differ so much. Optics and acoustics are different sciences, and must be because of the difference of phenomena. Chemistry and zoology are different sciences, and must be for the same reason. So the facts of mind cannot be scientifically combined with the facts of matter, not even in the utmost generalization of science. Their difference is not a mere unlikeness, but a face-to-face opposition. For this reason the two classes cannot become predicates of the same subject. They are in contradictory opposition, and therefore what one class would affirm of the subject the other would deny. Mental facts cannot be the predicates of matter because they are contradictory to its nature as revealed in its physical properties. Spiritual mind must be the ground of mental facts.
It is beginning to be conceded that matter as traditionally known cannot be the ground of mental facts. Respecting naturalistic evolution: “For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the mind itself—emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena—were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation.” “These evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas concerning matter which were drilled into us when young.” [136]It follows that either naturalistic evolution must be abandoned or matter must be newly defined. Spirit and matter must be considered “as two opposite faces of the self-same mystery.” “Any definition which omits life and thought must be inadequate, if not untrue.”[137] [136]
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Here is a demand for a far more radical change in the definition of matter than is required in the interpretation of Genesis in order to adjust it to the discoveries of modern science. But what is gained by the new definition? The difficulties of materialism are not diminished. If life and thought must be included in order to provide for naturalistic evolution, then they must be original and permanent qualities of matter, and must have belonged to it just as really in the primordial fire-mist of science as in the present living organism and the thinking mind. Of course there could be no actual or phenomenal existence of either. The substitution of a latent or potential form for an actual form would not relieve the case because they must none the less have been real properties of matter in that primordial state in order to their development into actual form. The notion of a double-faced matter is equally fruitless of any relief. One face represents the mental facts; the other, the physical facts. According to this view the two classes of facts must have the very same ground—that is, must be predicates of the same essence of being. But their contrariety makes this impossible. As we previously pointed out, some of them are in contradictory opposition. The same subject cannot possess the qualities of spontaneity and inertia. There is no relief in any resort to a mere potential or latent state. Mental facts must have a ground in spiritual being.
3. Material Genesis of Mind an Impossibility.—Nothing can arise out of matter not primordially in it. This is really conceded by the call for a new definition of matter which shall include in it the ground of mental facts. The notion that any thing not primordially in matter should arise out of it is contradictory to all rational thinking, and equally contradictory to the deepest principles of naturalistic evolution. How then shall we account for mind? There might be assumed an eternally existent spiritual essence, just as there is assumed an eternally existent material nature. This would avoid the direct difficulty of deriving mind from matter, or of finding in matter the ground of mental facts, but the new position would be open to much perplexing questioning. Did this assumed spiritual essence originally exist in separate portions or in a mass? If the latter, how comes its individuations into distinct personalities? If the former, how comes their mysterious union with human bodies? What is the law of affinity whereby a portion of the spiritual essence assumes each newly forming human body, or each body appropriates a spiritual mind? It would be easy to answer that on any theory the facts of mind are a mystery. It is just as easy to reply, and with all the force of logic, that the facts of mind are not contradictory and absurd on the ground of theism as they must be in any purely naturalistic theory. With a divine Creator of mind we have a sufficient account of its origin and personality. This is the only sufficient account. Human minds, with their only possible origin in a creative agency of God, affirm the truth of his existence. The impossibility of a material genesis of mind is deeply emphasized by the character and grade of its powers. We have previously shown that there are not only marked differences, but face-to-face contrarieties between these powers and the properties of matter. When studied in their intellectual and moral forms and traced to the height of their own scale, the more certain is the impossibility of a material source, and with the deeper emphasis do they affirm the existence of a personal God as their only sufficient original.
There is no occasion to expatiate upon the intellectual powers. The history of the race is replete with their achievements. In the multiform mechanisms which minister to our present life, in the inventions which give us power over the forces of nature and make them our useful servants, in the sciences which so broaden the knowledge of nature and open its useful resources, in literature and philosophy, in the creations of poetic and artistic genius, we see their wonderful productions. These achievements spring from powers which can have no basis in physical nature.
If we deny the reality of mind as a spiritual essence, separate and distinct from matter, then we must hold the potential existence of the mental faculties, with all their achievements, in the primordial fire-mist, and as one in nature with the physical forces therein latent or operative. This is the assumption of naturalistic evolution. “But the hypothesis would probably go even farther than this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that, at the present moment, all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our art—Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael—are potential in the fires of the sun.”[138] Surely this is- a case of great credulity. Nor can we see that the believers in such potentialities of the primordial fire-mist are any less credulous. There is no support of empirical proof in either case. It is accepted as the implication or requirement of a mere hypothesis. In the light of reason our philosophy, and poetry, and science, and art are not now potential in the fires of the sun. Nor were they potential in the primordial fire-mist of science. In either case matter and physical force are the whole content. The force is of the nature of its material basis. Can this force transmute itself into intelligence, sensibility, and will—into personality—and betake itself to the study of philosophy, and the construction of the sciences, so as to trace its own lineage back through an unbroken series of physical causalities to the fire-mist of which it was born? This transcends the utmost reach of theistic faith, however possible it may seem to the faith of naturalistic evolutionists.
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“The question is this: How, in a nature without an end, does there appear all at once a being capable of pursuing an end? This capacity, it is said, is the product of his organization. But how should an organization, which by hypothesis would only be a result of physical causes happily introduced, give birth to a product such that the being thus formed could divine, foresee, calculate, prepare means for ends? To this point the series of phenomena has only followed the descending course, that which goes from cause to effect; all that is produced is produced by the past, without being in any way determined, modified, or regulated by the necessities of the future. All at once, in this mechanical series, is produced a being that changes all, that transports into the future the cause of the present—that is capable, for instance, having beforehand the idea of a town, to collect stones conformably to mechanical laws yet so that at a given moment they may form a town. He is able to dig the earth, so as to guide the course of rivers; to replace forests by crops of grain; to bend iron to his use—in a word, to regulate the evolution of natural phenomena in such a way that the series of these phenomena may be dominated by a future predetermined phenomenon. This is indeed, it must be confessed, a final cause. Well, then, can it be conceived that the agent thus endowed with the power of co-ordinating nature for ends is himself a simple result that nature has realized, without proposing to itself an end ? Is it not a sort of miracle to admit into the mechanical series of phenomena a link which suddenly should have the power to reverse, in some sort, the order of the series, and which, being itself only a consequent resulting from an infinite number of antecedents, should henceforth impose on the series this new and unforeseen law, which makes of the consequent the law and rule of the antecedent? Here is the place to say, with Bossuet: ‘One cannot comprehend, in this whole that does not understand, this part that does, for intelligence cannot originate from a brute and insensate thing.’”[139] [139]
4. Mental Adaptations to Present Relations.—That knowledge is possible is one of the most wonderful of known facts. That it is possible we know as a fact. The deep mystery lies in the mode of our knowing. Yet this mystery does not conceal the fact that we have faculties of knowledge in wonderful adaptation to our present relations. A little study of the facts concerned in the question must lead us up to a divine intelligence as the only sufficient original of these provisions.
We proceed on the assumption of a spiritual mind in man. This mind which is the knowing agent is in essence and attributes the opposite of matter. It is enshrined in a physical organism which shuts it in from all direct contact with the outer world. Here we meet the provisions for such contact as renders knowledge possible. Here are the sense-organs and the brain, with their relation to each other, and the relation of the mind to both. The sensations necessary to knowledge are thus rendered possible. Any material change in any of those provisions might prevent the sensations or so modify them as to render knowledge impossible. Further, the mental faculties must be capable of so interpreting those sensations as to reach a knowledge of the external world. What is the original of these adjustments? Their very remarkable character cannot be questioned. Nothing can seem more complex or difficult. The fitting of part to part in the most elaborate and complicated mechanism is too open and simple to be brought into any comparison. The only alternative to a divine original of these wonderful provisions is a blind physical force. Its utter inadequacy is manifest in the light of reason. Only a divine intelligence can be the original of such facts.
There are other facts which vitally concern the possibilities of knowledge. Here is a profound fact. The mental faculties must be in proper adjustment to the realities of nature. The mind might have been so constituted as to be capable of knowing only individual things. In this case no scientific knowledge would have been possible. Nor could any relief come from all the orderly forms of nature. On the other hand, rational faculties could not of themselves make any science possible. For any such result the orderly and rational forms of nature are just as necessary as the proper rational cast of the mental faculties. Hence the necessity for the proper adjustment between these faculties and the realities of the world. No science could else be possible. For knowledge every thing would be purely individual. There could be no genera or species, classes or families; no abstraction or generalization; no philosophy. The Comtian positivism, low as it is, is a lofty height compared with such a state. Any noble manhood of the race would be impossible. If subsistence were possible, the merest childhood of the race would be perpetual. The harmony of our rational faculties with the rational forms of nature is the possibility of science in its many spheres. Thus comes the elevation of man, the broad knowledge of nature, the sciences with their manifold utilities in our civilization, and the philosophy which underlies all true knowledge. There is a cause for all these facts—the rational cast of mind, the rational forms of nature, and the harmony of the one with the other, so that knowledge in its manifold forms is possible. Again, there are the only two alternative resources: blind force, or a divine intelligence. The utter inadequacy of the former excludes it. The facts prove the existence of a divine intelligence as the only rational account of themselves. The sensibilities are as remarkable for their adaptation to ends as the mental faculties or the bodily organs. Mere intellectual faculties could not fit us for the present life. The springs of action are in the sensibilities. In them are the impulses to forms of action necessary to the present life. Inquisitiveness and acquisitiveness both have their impulse in the appropriate sensibilities. Without the former there could be but little attainment in knowledge; without the latter, no necessary accumulation of property. The domestic affections are the possibility, and the only possibility, of the family. Neither wealth, nor station, nor intellect, nor culture, nor all combined can make the home. Love makes the home. The home is the profoundest necessity and the crowning benediction of human life. Some good agency, with wise intent, must have ruled the deep implanting of that love in the human soul which creates and blesses the family, and blesses mankind in this blessing. Society and the State are possible only through the appropriate sensibilities. These are richly provided in the constitution of human nature. There is the social affection which finds satisfaction in the fellowship of others. There are all the kindly affections which are the life and beauty of society. Patriotism, native to the human soul, is the life and strength of the State. The aesthetic sensibilities open to us a world of beauty and pleasure in the forms of nature and the creations of artistic genius. Is all this mere fortuity, or the work of physical force? It cannot be. In those endowments of mind which so widely and beneficently provide for so many interests of human life we see the purposive agency of a divine intelligence.[140] [140]
5. Proofs of a Moral Nature in God.—In natural theology the chief proofs of a moral nature in God are furnished in the moral constitution and history of man. There is some light from a lower plane: for instance, in the provisions for happiness in the sentient, intellectual, and social forms of life. As provisions above all the requirements of subsistence, happiness must be their end. Hence their author must be of benevolent disposition and aim. We could not assert an absolute impossibility of benevolence apart from a moral nature. Conceivably, there might be generous and kindly impulses in a nature without moral endowment. But in the facts of human history we see that benevolence, especially in its higher forms, is ever regarded, not only as praiseworthy, but as morally good. This is certainly the case when we recognize benevolence as the constant and ruling aim. Such we must think the benevolence of God in the many provisions for the happiness of his creatures. Thus in God, as in man, we find in a moral nature the source of such benevolence. However, it is still true that in the moral constitution and history of man we find the chief expression and proof of a moral nature in God. Of course, we here view the question entirely apart from the Scriptures as a supernatural revelation from God. In the present argument we require the proof of two things: first, that man is constituted with a moral nature; and, second, that the moral nature of man is the proof of a moral nature in God.
We study the mind in its phenomena, and thus reach a knowledge of its endowments. This is the common method of science. We thus find the mind to be rationally constituted. This is one of the certainties of psychology. In like manner we determine the several forms of intellectual faculty. In the same manner we find the mind to be constituted with sensibility, and distinguish the different forms of feeling. Further, we find the choosing of ends and voluntary endeavors toward their attainment, and determine the mind to be endowed with a faculty of will. The several classes of mental phenomena are conclusive of these several forms of mental endowment. No phenomena of mind are more real, or constant, or common than the phenomena of conscience. But conscience means a moral nature, and can have no psychological explication without such a nature. Thus with the utmost certainty of scientific induction we reach the truth of a moral constitution of the mind. The phenomena of rational intelligence, of feeling, and of volition, which reveal themselves in the consciousness, no more certainly determine the mental endowments of intellect, sensibility, and will than the phenomena of conscience determine the moral constitution of the mind. Further statements may set this truth in a yet clearer light. The history of the ages, the religions of the world, philosophy and poetry witness to the profound facts of conscience proofs of a in human experience. The profoundest students of our mental nature unite in this testimony. Conscience is present in all minds, and asserts its right to rule all lives. This right is not disputed, however its authority may be resisted. In the sensibilities there are many incitements to action, and, in the absence of a supreme law, the question as to which should prevail would be merely a question of secular prudence. “But there is a superior principle of reflection or conscience in every man, which distinguishes between the internal principles of his heart, as well as his external actions; pronounces determinately some actions to be in themselves just, right, good; others to be in themselves evil, wrong, unjust: which, without being consulted, without being advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and approves or condemns him, the doer of them, accordingly.” “Thus, that principle by which we survey, and either approve or disapprove, our own heart, temper, and actions, is not only to be considered as what is in its turn to have some influence; which may be said of every passion, of the lowest appetites: but likewise as being superior; as from its very nature manifestly claiming superiority over all others: insomuch that you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, without taking in judgment, direction, superintendency. This is a constituent part of the idea, that is, of the faculty itself, and, to preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength, as it has right; had it power, as it has manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world.”[141] “Every man has conscience, and finds himself inspected by an inward censor, by whom he is threatened and kept in awe (reverence mingled with dread); and this power, watching over the law, is nothing arbitrarily (optionally) adopted by himself, but is interwoven with his substance.”[142] [141]
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While conscience is thus at once the central fact and the proof of a moral nature in man, it is the clear proof of a moral nature in God. “Hence, while the direct function of conscience is to discriminate the right and wrong in actions, while its immediate sphere is the human will, it goes far beyond this. In fact, it can perform those functions only in this way. It carries the soul outside of itself, and brings the will before a bar independent of its own impulses. It inevitably awakens in the soul the perception of a moral law, universal, unchangeable, binding under all circumstances; in short, of a moral order of the world analogous to the physical order which it is the province of science to trace and illustrate. The moral consciousness of man refuses to stop short of this conclusion. Man feels himself, not merely related to physical laws, but even more closely and more vitally related to moral laws, laws which not only enter into the structure of his own being, and go to form the frame-work of human life, but laws which extend beyond himself and his own hopes and struggles, and assert themselves as every-where supreme. Such recognition of the moral order of the world is not only the highest, but the only conclusion that can satisfy the educated moral consciousness of mankind.”[143] [143]
“Now it is in these phenomena of Conscience that Nature offers to us far her strongest argument for the moral character of God. Had he been an unrighteous being himself, would he have given to this, the obviously superior faculty in man, so distinct and authoritative a voice on the side of righteousness? . . . He would never have established a conscience in man, and invested it with the authority of a monitor, and given to it those legislative and judicial functions which it obviously possesses; and then so framed it that all its decisions should be on the side of that virtue which he himself disowned, and condemnatory of that vice which he himself exemplified. This is an evidence for the righteousness of God, which keeps its ground amid all the disorders and aberrations to which humanity is liable.”[144] [144]
Thus in the moral consciousness of man there is the recognition of a moral law of universal obligation, and also of a supreme moral ruler to whom we are responsible. The moral nature of man is thus the manifestation of a moral nature in God. In the cosmological argument we found in the existence of the cosmos, as a world originating in time, conclusive proof of the existence of an eternal and infinitely potential being as its only sufficient cause. On the same grounds we found that this being must possess the power of self-energizing—must indeed possess an infinite potency of will. In the teleological argument we found in the adaptations of means to ends the proofs of a divine intelligence as their only sufficient cause. Then in grouping these truths thus attained we already have the proof of the divine personality. This same truth is confirmed by the nature and faculties of the mind as presented in the anthropological argument. The moral nature of man is his highest endowment and the crowning proof of his divine original. It is specially the manifestation of a moral nature in God; and the truth of a moral nature in God is the truth of his holiness, justice, goodness.