Chapter VIII: The Objective Element (2)

Metaphysical Realism professes to be the improvement of scholars upon the unsifted notions of the vulgar. It is the system to which, in its earlier and cruder form, Berkeley a century ago gave what once appeared to be its death-blow, but what may perhaps turn out to have been a wound sufficiently severe to cause prolonged insensibility, but not absolute extinction. It is not, however, with the purpose of completing the work of destruction, but of examining whether it affords a possible escape from the necessity of the religious postulate, that I refer to it here. Metaphysical Realists perceived clearly enough that the apparent qualities of sensible objects could not be the objects themselves. Even if they did not recognize this with regard to all the apparent qualities, they did so with regard to those termed "secondary," such as taste, smell, and color. Later representatives of the school, such as Kant, extended the process by which this conclusion was reached to all apparent qualities, whatsoever. Below the apparent qualities, however, these thinkers assumed a substance, "_substantia_," in which they inhered, and by which they were bound together, so as to constitute the object. And this substance—something unperceived underlying the qualities perceived—was their notion of matter. Observe now the position we have arrived at. No sooner does Realism abandon the untenable hypothesis that the qualities of the object are the object itself, than it is driven upon the assumption of an utterly unknowable and inconceivable entity; a matter which is not perceptible by any of our senses, which is below, or in addition to, phenomena concerning which we can predicate nothing, and whose relation to the qualities it is supposed to support we cannot understand. But the necessity of some such assumption is the very assertion implied in all forms of religious faith. Realism, then, does not escape the pressure of this necessity, even though the entity it assumes is not precisely of the same character.

But is the difference in its character one that tells in favor of this variety of Realism, or in favor of religion? Assuredly substance, or matter, imagined as the bond between apparent qualities, is not an easier, simpler, or more intelligible conception than that of a universal power as the origin, source, or objective side of all physical phenomena. Granting even that the latter conception cannot be represented to the mind, a representation of the former is equally impossible. But does it explain the facts better? Let us see. In the first place, we must demand an accurate definition of what this supposed matter is. Is it passive, inanimate, incapable of independent action, and unable to develop out of itself the living creatures which in some way have come to exist? If so, we plainly require another entity in addition to matter, both to account for the active forces of our universe, and to originate the phenomenon of life. For if the qualities of body need a substratum, so also do those of mind. If it be held that the power from which mind emanates be the same as that which is evinced in so-called physical forces, then we have two distinct, if not independent, substances, beings, or whatever we may prefer to call them: matter, pervading material objects in their statical condition, and force or life, pervading both consciousness and material objects in their dynamical condition. Or if the first be regarded as sufficient to account for motion as well as matter, then we have still two powers, one subsisting throughout the physical, the other throughout the mental world. How are these two substances related to one another? Is the substance of mind supreme, governing its material colleague? or is that of matter at the head of affairs, and that of mind subordinate? or are they equal and coördinate authorities, as in the Gnostic philosophy? Suppose we endeavor to elude these difficulties by the assertion that there is nothing else but the unperceivable substratum supporting material objects, and that in this all modes of existence take their rise, we are met by further and still more troublesome questions. For if, under the manifestations of this substance we include consciousness, then the distinction between matter and mind has vanished, and in calling this substance matter we are simply giving it an unmeaning name. In fact, it is a substance supporting not only the qualities of bodies, but also the chemical, electric, molar, molecular, and other forces throughout the universe, as well as sensation, thought, and emotion. Matter in short does everything which deity can be required to do; it originates motion; it produces living creatures; it feels; it thinks; it lives. Thus we have but stumbled upon God in an unexpected quarter. Suppose, however, that we take what is in this system the easier and more natural hypothesis of a substance of matter, a substance of mind, and a still more hidden power superior to both, and from which both are derived, then we have but abandoned the perplexing questions raised by metaphysical Realism to take refuge in the religious position from which it seemed to offer a plausible deliverance.

Does Idealism help us? Idealism is of several forms. That represented by Berkeley need not occupy us here, for Berkeley not only admitted, but expressly asserted, the existence of an all-comprehending Power, and without this his philosophy would have appeared to himself unmeaning and incomprehensible. Nor need we stop to examine that more recent species of Idealism, as I hold it to be, which its illustrious author, Mr. Herbert Spencer, has christened Transfigured Realism. Whatever differences may exist between Spencer and Berkeley—and I believe them to be more apparent than real—they are at one in the cardinal doctrine that sensible phenomena are but the varied manifestations of this ultimate Power. All such Idealism as this is in harmony with religion. But there are two forms which seem to be at variance with it, one of which I will term Moderate, and the other Extreme Idealism.

Moderate Idealism agrees with Berkeley in dismissing to the limbo of extinct metaphysical creatures the substance supposed to lurk beneath the apparent qualities of bodies. It holds that there is no such substance, and that these qualities, and therefore bodies themselves, exist only in consciousness. But it differs from Berkeley in omitting to provide any source whatever, external to ourselves, from which these bodies can be derived. Not only are they in their phenomenal aspect mere states of our own consciousness, but they have no other aspect than the phenomenal one, and are in themselves nothing but phenomena. Rather inconsistently, this school of Idealism does not push its reasoning to its natural results, but concedes to other human beings something more than a merely phenomenal existence. Nothing exists but states of consciousness; but those peculiar states of my consciousness which I term men and women may be shown, by careful reasoning, to possess (in all probability) an existence of their own, even apart from my seeing, hearing, or feeling them. The process by which we reach this conclusion "is exactly parallel to that by which Newton proved that the force which keeps the planets in their orbits is identical with that by which an apple falls to the ground."[98]

Those peculiar modifications of color, and that special mode of filling up empty space which I term "my friend," do indeed seem, if we push matters to an extreme, to come into existence only when he enters my room, and to cease to exist the moment he quits it. If he has any further vitality, it is only in the shape of that state of consciousness which is known as recollection. But Moderate Idealism escapes from this consequence, on the ground that modifications of body and outward actions, since they are connected with feelings in ourselves, must be connected with feelings also in the case of those other phenomena which we term human beings, and perhaps in the case of those we term animals.[99] But if this be so, how did so extraordinary a fact as that of consciousness arise? _Ex hypothesi_, there was nothing before it. Did it then suddenly spring into being, full-grown like Minerva, but, unlike Minerva, with no head of Jupiter to spring from? Or was it a gradual growth, and if so, from what origin? Go back as far as you will, you can find nothing but consciousness, and that the consciousness of limited beings (either men or animals); and it is no less difficult to conceive the beginning, from nothing at all, of the least atom of conscious life, than to conceive that of the profoundest philosopher. Observe, there is no world of any kind, and in this no-world (the contradiction is unavoidable) there suddenly arises, from no antecedent, a consciousness of external objects which are no-objects. Geology upon this theory is a myth; so is that branch of astronomy which treats of the formation of our planetary system from nebular matter. Stars, suns, planets, and crust of the earth only arose when they were perceived, and will cease to be when there is no living creature to perceive them any longer. Since, however, conclusions like these are in reality unthinkable, whatever efforts metaphysicians may make to think them, Moderate Idealism must of necessity complete its fabric by the admission of a Power from which both consciousness and the objects of consciousness have taken their rise. Should it persist in denying anything but a mental reality to the objects of consciousness, it must still suppose an unknown source from which consciousness itself has been derived; otherwise it will entangle itself in two unthinkable propositions. First, that before men (or animals) existed there was absolute nothingness, an idea which we cannot frame; secondly, that where there was nothing at one moment there was the next moment something, a process which we _cannot_ realize without supposing a time antecedent to that something, and which we _may not_, without the contradiction of introducing time in the midst of nothingness, realize by supposing a time antecedent to that something.

It was no doubt the vague feeling of these perplexities that forced John Stuart Mill, the most eminent defender of this school of thought, to denominate matter a Permanent Possibility of Sensation. This singular phrase well exemplifies the difficulties of his position. For is matter an external substance, existing independently, or not? If it is, then what becomes of the Berkeleyan doctrine? Mill and his followers are simply metaphysical Realists. But if not, what becomes of the permanence? It is not in us, for our sensations are not permanent; it is not in the matter, for there is none. And what is there a possibility of? Causing sensation, or having it? Not the former, for there is nothing to cause it; not the latter, for the possibility of our having sensations is a mere fact of our nature, and cannot serve to define matter. And where is the sensation located? The phraseology would seem to imply, that matter is in the permanent condition of possible feeling; just as the nerve may be in the permanent condition of possible excitation. But this would be placing sensation in the wrong quarter. And if sensation be in us, we have not a permanent possibility, but a permanent actuality of sensation. So that unless the words be construed to mean that there is outside of us a permanent something which excites sensation, of which the modes vary (for this is the sense of possibility), they have no assignable meaning whatever. Mill, in fact, had been compelled, without wishing it, to recognize an ultimate power in nature; and his perception of this truth conflicted strangely, in his candid mind, with his idealistic prepossessions.

A more consistent and rigorous form of Idealism is that which has been referred to as the strict consequence of Moderate Idealism. This form, which I will term Extreme Idealism, denies the existence of persons as well as things. The Extreme Idealist believes himself to be the only being in the universe. There is to him no period preceding his own existence; none succeeding it. Past and future, except in his own life, have no meaning for him. We cannot reason with him, for all we may say is only a transient mode of his own sensations. Obviously, to such a philosophy there is no reply but one: it is simply unthinkable. Were any one seriously to defend it, the very seriousness of his defense would prove that he did not believe it. For against what or whom would he be contending? Against a phantom of his own mind. And the more pains he took to prove to us that he believed us to have no existence but as a part of himself, the less credit should we attach to his assertions.

Philosophy, therefore, is under a logical compulsion to make the same fundamental assumption as Religion—that of an ultimate, unknown, and all-pervading Power Origin, or Cause. Science, in a variety of ways, does the same. It does so, first, in its belief of a past and a future in the history of the solar system far transcending the past and future of humanity, or indeed of any form of life whatever. Passing at a glance over our brief abode on the face of the earth, Geology pushes its researches back into a time preceding by innumerable ages the existence of mankind, while her elder sister Astronomy carries her vision to a still remoter age, when even the planet we now inhabit was but a fragment in one indistinguishable mass. But it is not only these two sciences that assume the continuance of nature quite independently of our presence or absence; every other science does the like. The botanist, the chemist, the physicist, all believe that the facts they assert are facts in an external nature, the relations of which as now discovered by their several sciences held good before man existed, and will hold good after he has ceased to exist. But to say this, is to say in effect that there is something more than the mere phenomena disclosed by investigation; namely, an external reality persisting through all time in which the varied series of phenomena take their rise.

More clearly still does Science assert some such reality in its great modern doctrine of the Persistence of Force. Not that this doctrine is entirely new; for regarded in its metaphysical rather than its physical aspect it is but an expression in the language of the day of a truth which has long been realized as a necessity of thought. It is the converse of the ancient axiom, "_Nihil ex nihilo fit_," for if nothing can be made from nothing, neither can something pass into nothing. The Persistence of Force is an expression of the fact that every cause must have an adequate effect; that in nature nothing can be lost, no particle of force pass into nonentity. Concentrated forces may be dissipated, and dissipated forces may be concentrated; or one variety of force may pass into another. But the ultimate fund of force remains ever unchangeable; nothing is ever created, nothing destroyed.

Observe, then, that Science, however cautiously it may keep within the range of the material world, however eagerly it may repudiate all investigation of ultimate causes as fruitless and unprofitable, cannot take one single step towards proving the propositions it advances without tacitly laying down an ontological entity as the basis of its demonstration. For to speak of its discoveries as laws of nature is simply to predicate a constant, unvarying force, which under like conditions always produces like results. And to declare the uniformity of nature, is merely to say that the methods of that force do not change—that it is the same now as it ever was, and will be the same throughout the eternal ages.

"Thus," writes Mr. Herbert Spencer, "by the Persistence of Force, we really mean the persistence of some Power which transcends our knowledge and conception. The manifestations, as occurring in ourselves or outside of us, do not persist; but that which persists is the Unknown Cause of these manifestations. In other words, asserting the Persistence of Force, is but another mode of asserting an Unconditional Reality, without beginning or end" (Spencer's "First Principles," § 60, p. 189).

Philosophy, or Reasoned Thought, and Science, or Reasoned Observation, have both led us to admit, as a fundamental principle, the necessary existence of an unknown, inconceivable, and omnipresent Power, whose operations are ever in progress before our eyes, but whose nature is, and can never cease to be, an impenetrable mystery. And this is the cardinal truth of all religion. From all sides then, by every mode of contemplation, we are forced upon the same irresistible conclusion. The final question still remains, Is this ultimate element of all religion "the correlative of any actual truth or not?"

But for the prevalence, in recent times, of a philosophy which denies all connection between the necessity of a belief and its truth, I should have regarded such a question as scarcely worth the answering. To say that a belief is necessary and to say that it is true, would appear to all, but adherents of the extreme experiential school, one and the same thing. But in the present day this cannot be taken for granted, and I should be the last to complain that even that which seems most obvious should be tested by adverse criticism.

Ingenious, however, as their arguments are, philosophers of this school, when driven to reason out their views, cut their own throats. They commit a logical suicide. For what is the test of truth they hold up to us in lieu of necessity? Experience. But what in the last resort does our belief in experience rest upon? Simply upon a mental necessity. Nobody can tell us _why_ he believes that the laws of nature will hold good to-morrow as they do to-day. He can indeed tell us that he has always found them constant before, and therefore expects them to remain so. But this is merely to state the belief, not to justify it. Experience itself cannot be appealed to, to support our confidence in experience. True, we habitually say that we believe such and such results will follow such and such antecedents _because_ we have always found them follow before. But our past experience is not the whole of the fact involved in the belief. It is our past experience, conjoined with the mental necessity of thinking that the future will resemble the past, that forms the convictions on which we act. Experience alone, without that mental necessity, could teach us nothing. If therefore our necessary beliefs need not be true, the belief in experience falls to the ground along with the rest, and experience cannot be put in place of necessity as a test of truth. In fact, every argument drawn from the past fallibility of the test of necessity might be retorted with tenfold force against the test of experience. Observation has constantly misled mankind, and thousands of alleged facts, accepted upon imagined experience, have been disproved by more accurate examination. Observation and reasoning combined (as they often are) are exposed to the double danger of false premises and false inferences from true premises; while the addition of an element of testimony (a circumstance common in scientific inquiries) exposes every conclusion to a threefold possibility of error. Human beings are no more exempt from the possibility of mistaken science than from that of hasty metaphysics. But as, in matters of physical research, we do not discredit the use of our eyes because their perceptions are sometimes inaccurate, so in matters of metaphysical inquiry we need not discredit the use of our minds because their apparent intuitions are now and then fallacious. In the one case, as in the other, the proper course is not to cast contempt upon the only instruments of discovery we have, but to apply those instruments again and again, omitting no precaution that may serve to correct an observation and to test an argument. But when we have done our utmost to attain whatever certainty the nature of the subject permits, we cannot reasonably turn round upon ourselves and say: "True, my eyes assure me of this fact, but human eyes have erred so often that I cannot accept their verdict;" or, "No doubt my mind forces this conclusion upon me as a necessity of thought, but so many assumed necessities have turned out not to be necessary at all that I must refuse to listen to my mind:" for this is not really the caution of science, but the rashness of philosophic theory. For we can have no higher conviction than that arising in a necessity of thought. Nothing can surpass the certainty of this. Grant that we may yet be wrong: we can never know it, and we can have no reason to think it. To oppose to a necessary belief such a train of reasoning as this:

Necessary beliefs (so-called) have often proved false:

This is a necessary belief (so-called):

Therefore it may prove false,

is in reality to seek to overthrow a strong conviction by a weak one; an intuition by a syllogism; a proposition felt immediately to be true by an inference open to discussion. Arguments like this resemble the procedure of a man who should tell us, when we meet a friend, that we cannot possibly be sure of his identity because on some previous occasion in our lives we mistook Jones for Thompson.

Exaggerated as this doctrine of the experiential school is thus seen to be, yet it has done good service by putting thinkers on their guard, not to accept as necessary and ultimate some beliefs which are only contingent and dissoluble. Two conditions must be fulfilled in order to effect a presumption of necessity. The belief must always arise under certain conditions; that is, it must be universal in the only sense in which that term can fitly be applied. Having arisen, it must be incapable of expulsion from the mind; its terms must adhere together so firmly that they cannot be parted by adverse criticism, either our own or that of others. Both these conditions are fulfilled by the fundamental postulate of religion. Given the appropriate conditions—human beings raised even a little above the lowest savagery—and it at once takes possession of their minds. After this, it persists in spite of every attempt to do without it, and the highest philosophy is compelled to give it the place of honor in the forefront of its teaching.

Observe now, that what this philosophy accepts and incorporates into its system is religion and not theology. These two must be broadly distinguished from one another. Religion might be described as the soul of which theology is the body. Religion is an abstract, indefinable, pervading sentiment; theology a concrete, well-defined, limited creed. The one is emotional; the other intellectual. The one is a constant element of our nature; the other fluctuates from generation to generation, and varies from place to place. Theology seeks to bind down religion with immovable forms. Against these forms there is constantly arising both an intellectual and an emotional protest. The intellect objects to them as untrue in the name of science (in the largest sense); the emotions struggle against them as cramping their freedom in the name of religion itself. Thus between the human mind and dogma, between the religious sentiment and dogma, there is going on a perpetual warfare. Religious sentiment is no sooner born than the tendency to limit and to define makes itself felt. It is confined within a set of dogmas, and forbidden under every species of pains and penalties to pass over its allotted bounds. Sooner or later, religious sentiment bursts through every restriction; seems for a moment to breathe the invigorating air of freedom, but falls again into the hands of new theologians, with another framework of dogmas; to be again broken through in its turn when its fettering influence can be no longer borne. In carrying on this continually renovated contest—which is seen in its highest activity in great religious reformations—the religious sentiment seeks the alliance of intellect, which latter supplies it with deadly weapons drawn from the armories of science, logic, and historical research. Thus the overthrow of theology is in great part an intellectual work. But it must not be forgotten that the very deepest hostility to theological systems is inspired by the very emotion to which these systems seek to give a formal and definite expression.

The historical progress of religion is thus in some degree a counterpart of the progress described by Heine (in the lines heading this Book) as that of his individual mind. First of all there arises in the mind of man, so soon as he begins to speculate on the world in which he lives, the idea of a Creator. He cannot conceive the existence of the material objects with which he is familiar without conceiving also some being more powerful than himself who has made them what they are. His notions of creation may be, no doubt often are, extremely limited. He may confine the operations of his God to that small portion of the universe with which he is most familiar. But that the idea of an invisible yet preëminent deity arises very early in the mental development of the human race, and remains brooding dimly above the popular idolatry, has been abundantly shown. This is the belief in God the Father. The second stage, so closely interwoven with the first as to be inseparable from it in actual history, is the incarnation of this idea. The supreme Creator is too lofty, too abstract, too great, to be held steadily before the mind and worshiped in his unclouded glory. The children of Israel cannot bear the immediate presence of Jehovah, nor can even Moses meet the brightness of his face. Hence the material shapes in which the objects of adoration are embodied. When divine attributes are given to idols; when a golden calf is taken instead of the invisible God; when the Father is said to assume the form of a man to live a human life, and die a human death, when apostles, saints, and virgins are addressed in prayer or celebrated in praise, an incarnation has occurred. In the language of the traditions we have quoted, the supreme God has gone away and left the government of the world to his inferiors. Practically, such incarnations belong to the earliest period of religion, and no popular creed has ever been entirely without them. No sooner is the religious idea conceived in the mind, than it begins to be clothed in flesh and bones. But in the order of thought these two stages are separable. For idols are not worshiped until the notion of some power which is not human, of which the nature is not understood, has arisen in the worshipers. Then a concrete expression is desired, and we have in poetical language the belief in God the Son.

Last of all comes the belief—more properly an emotion than a belief—in the Holy Spirit. With this step a far higher grade of religious sentiment is reached. For God is now conceived, not only as creating or as governing the world without, but as entering into the mind of man to inspire his actions and influence his heart. A relation which up to this point was merely external—like that of the Creator to the created, or of superior to inferior—is rendered internal and intimate. The Holy Spirit not only speaks _to_ our souls, but it speaks in them and through them. We receive, not the arbitrary command of an almighty potentate, but the inspiring force of a being who, while raising us above ourselves, is still a part, the best part, of ourselves. This indeed, in the deep imagination of the poet, makes all men noble.

Yet not in such a creed as this, sublime as it is in comparison with those that have gone before it, is the final resting-place of religious feeling. For every word or phrase in which we endeavor to give form to that feeling tends to lower and to corrupt it by the admixture of elements which are foreign to its genuine nature. To clothe this sentiment in language is itself an incarnation. For whether we speak of a Force, a Power, or a Spirit, of an ultimate Cause, or an all-pervading Essence; of the Absolute, or of the Reality beyond phenomena, these terms are but symbols of the Supreme, not the Supreme itself.

"Name ist Schall und Rauch
Umnebelnd Himmelsgluth."

All that we can say is, that while we _know_ nothing but that which either our senses perceive, or our minds understand, we _feel_ that there is something more. Both the world without and the world within, both that which is perceived and that which perceives, require an origin beyond themselves. Both compel us to look, as their common source, to a Being alike unknown and unknowable, whose nature is shrouded in a mystery no eye can pierce, and no intellect can fathom.

This is the great truth which religion has presented to philosophy, and which philosophy, if she be truly (as her name implies) the love of wisdom, will not disdain to incorporate with the more recently discovered treasures belonging to her peculiar sphere. For it is not the part of wisdom to spurn as worthless even the childish lispings prompted by the profound idea that has inspired the faith of men, from that of the far past to that of the present hour, from that of the rudest African to that of the most enlightened European. Rather is it the part of wisdom to excavate that idea from amidst the strange incrustations under which it is hidden, to understand its significance, and to recognize its value. Thus may we assign to it a fitting place within the limits of a system which does equal honor, and accords equal rights, to the scientific faculty and to the emotional instinct.