Chapter VII: Appendix: On Bishop Berkeley's Idealism 289 (5)

This sounds so simple and so convincing that we are tempted to try it. But first let us make sure that we have learned our lesson properly. In the course of long ages mankind has slowly accumulated enough experience to warrant the confident belief that Nature is uniform. Now, primitive man was of course a savage, and knew nothing of the Uniformity of Nature; he therefore could not have had sufficient evidence for believing anything in his experience. But it is on the accumulation of such experiences--every one of which we must reject because they were not based on the Uniformity of Nature--that our belief in the Uniformity of Nature is supposed to rest. In other words, it is based on them and they were based on nothing. This result of acting strictly up to the principle of not suffering anything to pass without sufficient evidence seems somewhat discouraging, until the man of science comes to our rescue and reminds us that just as we, without knowing it, have acted all our lives on the tacit assumption that Nature is uniform, so did primitive man; and that consequently there really was sufficient evidence and scientific proof for the savage's experiences, though of course he could not have framed it in words; and so, the bases of the Uniformity of Nature are really quite sound. But even now we are not altogether out of our difficulties, for granted that the savage, like ourselves, tacitly assumed Nature to be uniform, was there sufficient evidence for the assumption? and if so, what was the evidence? It could not be the Uniformity of Nature, because that is just the question; and, if it was anything else, it was not sufficient evidence.

It really seems rather difficult to get sufficient evidence for the axiom, viz. the Uniformity of Nature, on which the whole of science is built. And yet we must have sufficient evidence for it, or else we shall have to conclude that Science has no more logical foundation than Religion.

But once more the man of science comes to our assistance and explains that in the beginning, before the Uniformity of Nature is proved, it is only probable that what has once happened will happen again in similar circumstances, and at first perhaps not very probable; but when wider and wider experience still shows that what has once happened does actually happen again under the same circumstances, the Uniformity of Nature becomes more and more probable, until at last, if not actually proved, it is still the most probable hypothesis that we possess or can possess: "our highest and surest generalisations remain on the level of justifiable expectations; that is, very high probabilities."[26]

Now, with all respect to logicians like John Stuart Mill, and men of science like Huxley, we must point out that this begs the whole question. If we assume that Nature is uniform, then it is probable that what has often happened will happen again. But if we do not assume that Nature is uniform, then the repeated occurrence of a thing does not make it in the least probable that it will occur again. To assume without proof that Nature is uniform is to ask us to accept a statement without evidence, which, if we have learnt the lesson of science, we can hardly do. On the other hand, if we begin with the admission that Nature may or may not be uniform, but that, to begin with, we no more know whether it will actually prove to be uniform than we know whether a penny, when we are about to toss it, will fall head or tail; then, according to the mathematical theory of probability, it matters not how many times you toss the penny, the chances next throw are exactly the same as they were at the first throw--it matters not how many times Nature has proved uniform in the past, she is no more likely to prove uniform to-morrow than she was on the first of days. If it is really an open question at the beginning whether Nature is or is not uniform, it remains an open question to the end. The man of science need not admit that it is an open question, if he does not want to do so; but if he does admit it, then let him stick to it throughout; and let him reflect that if he begins by admitting it and ends by denying it, he has but gradually retracted his own free admission, and unconsciously been betrayed into denying what he began by admitting to be true.

The fact of the matter is that the axioms of science--the Uniformity of Nature and the Law of Universal Causation--not only are not proved by what experience we have had of them, but "cannot be proved by any amount of experience."[27] Not only can they not be proved by any amount of experience, they are incapable of being demonstrated at all: "they are neither self-evident nor are they, strictly speaking, demonstrable."[28] If, then, they are not and cannot be proved either by experience or in any other way, on what does the man of science ground his belief in them? On Faith. "The ground of every one of our actions, and the validity of all our reasonings, rest upon the great act of faith, which leads us to take the experience of the past as a safe guide in our dealings with the present and the future."[29]

FOOTNOTES:

[25] HUXLEY, _Darwiniana_, p. 361.

[26] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 205.

[27] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 121.

[28] HUXLEY, _Method and Results_, p. 61.

[29] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 243.

IX.

CONSEQUENCES

In the last chapter, impressed by the doctrine that there is no "source of truth save that which is reached by the patient application of scientific methods,"[30] we patiently applied those methods to the foundation of science itself; and we were rewarded by the discovery that scientific, like religious, truth has its source in Faith. But the end of our difficulties is not yet.

A man may put his faith in science, if he will, "but let him not delude himself with the notion that his faith is evidence of the objective reality of that in which he trusts."[31] About that we feel no difficulty: faith begins not merely with ignorance, but with the frank confession that we know we are ignorant, but we wish to believe, in spite of the absence of evidence. There is no evidence to show that Nature is uniform or science true, but we do not mind that: we are quite determined to believe, evidence or no evidence. That is easy enough for us, who are not scientific; but "scientific men get an awkward habit--no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit--of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral."[32] This is, if not awkward, at least puzzling, since science is based on a belief in the Uniformity of Nature, for which there is no evidence.

"It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the devil that he was a liar from the beginning. If we set out in life with pretending to know that which we do not know; with professing to accept for proof evidence which we are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully shutting our eyes and our ears to facts which militate against this or that comfortable hypothesis; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve the same character."[33] That also is puzzling. Science sets out in life with assuming, by a "great act of faith," that Nature is uniform. She is well aware that the evidence for this assumption is inadequate, that no amount of experience could prove it; but, if she is to start at all, she must make the assumption, so she proceeds to act as though it were proved, as though she knew what she does not know. These are facts; and we take it for granted that no one will wilfully shut his eyes and his ears to them, even if he has some comfortable hypothesis against which they seem to militate.

Again, belief in science is based not on any ground of reason, but upon "the great act of faith" which leads the man of science to assent to it. It is therefore again puzzling to learn that "assent without rational ground for belief is to the man of science merely an immoral pretence," and that "scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."[34]

But the reader has probably already correctly divined the solution of these puzzles: the passages quoted above are not intended to apply to science. The blind faith which is illogical, immoral, a pretence and a lie, is, of course, not faith in science, but some other kind, which may therefore be dismissed; and we may start once again with the happy feeling that there is one kind of faith at least which is logical, moral, and real and true.

It is, then, quite honest and logical to have faith sometimes; and, without evidence, to believe some things, _e.g._ the Uniformity of Nature. Here, however, some readers may interpose with the objection that the man of science has not proved that _his_ faith is logical and moral, and real and true--he has simply assumed it. Quite true; but that _is_ his faith and we must respect it, as we respect any man who holds fast to what he honestly believes to be the real truth. We do not imagine he could believe it if he thought it a pretence or a lie. And we do not call upon him to prove it before we believe him--still less to prove it before he believes it himself.

It is, therefore, we repeat, quite reasonable to believe in the Uniformity of Nature without evidence. The reluctance that is genuinely felt by many minds to take up this position is probably due to a feeling that if we may believe in one thing without evidence, then anyone may believe in anything he likes. And it would not be quite fair to make the rejoinder, What does that matter to you, as long as you are free to believe what you think right? The tendency to dogmatise, and to be intolerant of opinions not our own, is, indeed, strong enough in all of us to make us stand somewhat in dismay of a line of argument which seems to indicate not merely that other people have a right to differ from our opinions, but may quite conceivably be right in so differing. Still, this tendency does not wholly account for our reluctance. That reluctance has, in part at least, a nobler origin than narrow-mindedness and the ignorance which knows not that it is ignorance. It does matter to us what our fellow-men believe. Still more does it matter how and why they choose their beliefs.

The reluctance to admit that it is permissible to believe without evidence even in a truth so undisputed as the Uniformity of Nature, is also in part due to yet another cause. It is felt that to admit belief without regard to evidence is to invite intellectual anarchy, and to leave mankind the helpless prey of ignorance, error, and superstition. Hence, in many candid souls, a lamentable feeling of distraction and hopelessness: to abandon their old faith, even if it has no evidence, is almost more than they can bear; to retain it, knowing that it has no evidence, is to open the floodgates of a saturnalia of unreason by which the foundations of civilisation would be swept away. Hence, too, the zeal with which other minds call for the destruction of every belief, but especially religious belief, not based on evidence, and with which they denounce faith as the one unpardonable sin.

But the error into which both classes of mind fall is a simple one. It consists in imagining that if we take one thing on faith, because there is no evidence, therefore we may believe anything, even if the evidence is conclusive against it--that if we once accept faith, we must for ever abjure reason. The error has been clearly exposed by Professor Huxley, who, after pointing out that reason--ratiocination--is based on faith, says, "But it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to dispense with ratiocination because ratiocination cannot dispense with faith as a starting-point; and that because we are often obliged, by the pressure of events, to act on very bad evidence, it does not follow that it is proper to act on such evidence when the pressure is absent."[35]

It seems, then, a piece of alarmist exaggeration to say that if we admit one thing, _e.g._ the Uniformity of Nature, without evidence, we forfeit the right ever again to ask for evidence for any other statement: on the contrary, whenever evidence can be got, we must get it and abide by it. But this only shows that no disastrous consequences will necessarily ensue, if we frankly admit what in any case is the fact, viz. that there is no evidence for the postulate on which all science is built. You will not have committed high treason against the best interests of mankind by acting, in this case, on the principle that a man may sometimes believe a thing on evidence which, he is well aware, is insufficient, or on no evidence at all. On the other hand, in another case, to act on the principle might be, if not high treason, at least mischievous.

It seems, then, first, that there are some things which a man may believe without evidence, and some which he may not; and, next, that he may not believe things the consequences of which would be disastrous or mischievous. But now what of the things not mischievous or disastrous? On what principle are we to choose amongst them? Let us once more follow our guide, the man of science, and ask him on what principle he elected to believe that Nature was uniform, rather than that she was not. I imagine it was once more on the ground of the consequences: grant that Nature is uniform, and then all the marvellous discoveries, the revelations of the past and prophecies of the future, which science has made, become things that we can reasonably believe in. Refuse to believe, withhold your faith, and then you have no reason to believe anything whatever, thought and action alike are paralysed. It is between these consequences that we have to choose. Our choice is an act of will; and it is on our will that our beliefs and our actions depend.

In science, then, we are offered the alternatives: either believe without evidence that Nature is uniform, or renounce all that science has to give. We want to be scientific, so we choose the former. We believe (in science) because we want to believe, not because we have any evidence. To say that we may yield to the impulse to have faith, without being unscientific, is to understate the case: we cannot be scientific without faith.

In logic, whether inductive or deductive, the case is the same. We must either believe without evidence in the axioms on which reason is based, or forego reason altogether. We want to be reasonable, so we choose to accept the axioms. But our choice is not the least evidence or proof that they are true. We believe they are true, because we wish to believe that they are true. There is no reason except there first be faith.

With morality the case is not otherwise. We believe in the principles of morality, not because we can prove them, or bring evidence to show that a man ought to do what is right, but because we wish to believe, and because we have faith in the right. There is no morality except first there be faith.

We are nothing, know nothing, can do nothing without faith. And it is not in the dead past, which is what we mean by "evidence," but in the living future that faith has its well-springs. It is because we wish to do right henceforth that we put our faith in right-doing. It is not the ghosts of our misdeeds, rising from the charnel-house of the past in evidence against us, that give us good hope of the future--it is faith, not built on evidence, on a past that cannot be altered, but on hope, on the future, on what shall be as we will it.

The future is uncertain. But that is no reason why you should be. There is no evidence that we shall succeed, that logic can be trusted, or that science is true. But fortunately it is possible to be certain without evidence. In commenting on the text "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things unseen," Professor Huxley says, "I fancy we shall not be far from the mark if we take the writer to have had in his mind the profound psychological truth, that men constantly feel certain about things for which they strongly hope, but have no evidence, in the legal or logical sense of the word; and he calls this feeling 'faith.'"[36] It is a profound psychological truth, and by the aid of the theory of evolution we may understand why it is so deep-seated in the mental and moral constitution of man. Primitive man can have had no extensive "evidence" of any kind to go upon in regulating the conduct of his daily life; and in all probability exercised but little power of criticism in judging the value of what evidence he had. At the same time, if he was to survive at all in the struggle for existence, he had to act and to act promptly. Fortunately for him it was possible to feel certain about things for which there was no evidence, _i.e._ to have faith. And he survived in consequence--in virtue of the law of the survival of the faithful, a law whose operation is possibly not confined to this world.

On the theory of evolution, again, man's wants must have aided him in the struggle for existence; and no evolutionist will doubt that the desire to be rational and to do that which is right has assisted man in his upward struggle. The victory has remained with those who have been contented to feel certain about things for which they had no evidence, and to act on faith. It is those who hesitate to do right until sacrifice of self is proved to be reasonable, who lose their chance, and consequently have been and are being, though slowly, weeded out. Those who have yielded to their inner impulse to believe, without evidence, have evidently been the better fitted to their environment, and the more in harmony with the ruling principle of the cosmos and its evolution.

Thus far in this chapter there has been no explicit mention of religious faith. We began with the fact that faith is indispensable to science as its starting-point. We do not wish to end with the suggestion that scientific faith can or ought to be stretched so as to make religious faith its logical or necessary consequence. On the contrary, the man who by a great act of faith accepts the Uniformity of Nature without evidence, and then resolves never to accept another statement without evidence, is quite safe: no one can make him believe in religion as long as he holds to his resolve--or in morality either. There is no evidence--and therefore he cannot believe--that a man ought to do what is right. If he does ever depart from his resolve as regards morality, it will be because in his heart--with its reasons which his reason knows not of--he wants to do right, not because there is any evidence.

In most men the impulse to believe expends but does not exhaust itself in reason and morality. There is also the religious belief that all that happens to us is due to a Will not our own, in which we can trust and to which we can give our lives. For this belief there is no more evidence than there is for science: if a man will receive it, he must believe in it as he believes in science, that is, without evidence. If a man will receive it, he may, on the same condition as he believes in morality or science, viz. that he wants it. Any other condition is of his own making and is an act of his own will: if he says that he fain would believe, but cannot without evidence, that is a condition of his own making, imposed upon him by his own will--what science and morality both require cannot be immoral or unscientific, and they each require belief without evidence in order that they may exist at all. What logic postulates can hardly be illogical. It can be no necessary law of reason to check the impulse which gives to reason its initial impetus. We believe that science is true for no other reason than that we wish it to be true; and for every man, with regard to religion, the question is, does he wish it to be true? if it lay with him to decide, would he have it true? if he would, then it does lie with him to decide: let him be assured it is true. If he would not, let him ask his own heart, Why? Why does he wish there were no God?

FOOTNOTES:

[30] HUXLEY, _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 233.

[31] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 245.

[32] HUXLEY, _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 65.

[33] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 54.

[34] HUXLEY, _Method and Results_, p. 40.

[35] _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 243.

[36] _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 244.

X.

THE CHESS-BOARD

We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting evolution as a fact, and by asking the question: Granted that it is a fact, what follows? What does it mean for me? What light does it throw on the meaning of life?

The answers that we may give to these questions together constitute a philosophy of evolution, which is carefully to be distinguished from evolution as a scientific theory. As a scientific theory evolution is an account, as exact as science can make it, of what actually did happen in the past, of the precise process by which things have come to be what they are. When this knowledge has been gained, we may ask the question, What value has this knowledge for the practical purposes of life? And the answer will be a contribution to philosophy, but it will not be one of the things described by science as having happened in the past, will not be part of the knowledge from which it is itself inferred, nor, if it is a false inference, will it have any right to masquerade as science and say that we must accept it as true or else deny the truth of science. Indeed, we found that two answers to the question, two philosophies of evolution, the Optimistic and the Pessimistic, have been formulated, which being contradictory cannot both be true, though both may be false.

The Optimistic theory, that evolution is progress, only established its conclusion, that the process of evolution is necessarily from good to better, by means of arguments which denied the distinction between good and bad, and implied that our moral convictions were illusions.

The Pessimistic theory, on the other hand, assumed the reality of our moral ideals, but was forced by its adoption of the theory of Necessity to conclude that it is an illusion to imagine those ideals can be finally realised.

Both philosophies in theory profess to make no assumptions, to take nothing on faith, and to base themselves on nothing but what we actually know to be facts. In practice each of them does unconsciously base itself on faith and does tacitly make certain assumptions. But as the assumptions made are not precisely the same in both cases, they reach two very different conclusions--Optimism and Pessimism. Again, if each philosophy treats as illusions certain facts--the freedom of the will and the reality of moral distinctions--which the common sense and common consciousness of mankind hold to be real, it is because each philosophy arbitrarily rejects certain of the assumptions which common sense makes, certain articles of the common faith of mankind. Consequently, when we find that each philosophy is inconsistent with itself, and ends by implying that what it assumed to be real is in fact an illusion, we are led to suspect that its assumptions may not have been adequate or well-considered, its faith not great enough to remove mountains or explain the world.

The conception of a "positive" philosophy--that is, a philosophy which confines itself to positive facts, and which is "agnostic" in the sense that it does not profess to know what it knows it does not know--is borrowed from science. It is an attempt to carry the methods of science into the domain of philosophy, to substitute science for philosophy. The attempt is made under the impression that science does not profess to know what it knows it does not know, _i.e._ makes no assumptions and takes nothing on faith. That impression, however, is, as we have argued in the last chapter but one, a false impression: the Uniformity of Nature is a pure--and rational--assumption. If, therefore, a philosophy confined itself strictly within the bounds of science, it would not be strictly positive or agnostic: it would still make some assumptions, even if only those made by science, and would still, even if it confined itself to the positive facts of science, be taking something on faith. A sound philosophy is one, not that makes no assumptions, but which seeks to find out what assumptions are made by any department of knowledge or practice--science, art, evolution, morality, religion--and how far those assumptions will carry us. The bane of philosophy is not making assumptions--all thought does--but is thinking you have made none.

Common sense assumes that the testimony of consciousness, so far as it can be verified by consciousness, can be trusted as evidence of the reality of that which is presented to it. Positive or agnostic philosophies, whether of the optimistic or the pessimistic type, on the principle of making no assumptions, reject this one, either on the ground that the Real is Unknowable (which is itself an assumption as incapable of proof or disproof as the assumption that the Real is Knowable) or on the ground that we only know our states of consciousness, and cannot know whether there is or is not any reality beyond them (which again is simply an assumption that consciousness as evidence of a reality beyond itself is not to be trusted).

Now, granted that common sense makes an assumption here, as it assuredly does, it is one such as can only be rejected by making a counter-assumption: to refuse to trust consciousness as evidence of a reality beyond itself is to make the assumption that it is not trustworthy--which may or may not be true, but is just as much an assumption as the supposition of its trustworthiness is. The positive and agnostic philosophies, therefore, do not succeed in avoiding assumptions in this matter: they only tacitly add another to that which they have already unconsciously made by assuming that Nature is uniform.

If, now, they adhered to these assumptions, we might proceed to ask what conclusions they deduced from them. We should not, indeed, expect their conclusions to be the same as those reached by persons starting from the opposite hypothesis, viz. that consciousness is trustworthy. And we should not agree that they were superior to those reached by the common sense and drawn from the common faith of mankind. We should only admit that they were different, because drawn from different premises. The argument that the teaching of a philosophy which makes no assumptions must be superior to one that does, is an argument which, whatever its value, we should have to set aside in this case, on the ground that the agnostic philosophies are not so ignorant as they modestly profess to be: they do know something--they know that Nature is uniform, and that consciousness as evidence of reality is not to be trusted--or they assume they know.

But the positive philosophies do not adhere to their assumptions. Few philosophers do. The optimistic evolutionist takes back his remark about the untrustworthiness of consciousness, so far as material things are concerned: matter and motion at any rate are real, and consciousness is good evidence, as good as can be got, of their reality. The pessimistic evolutionist also repents him, as far as our moral convictions are concerned: they are fundamentally real; our consciousness of the moral ideal is our best evidence for it.

On the other hand, both the optimistic and the pessimistic evolutionist adhere with perfect consistency to their rejection of the evidence given by consciousness to the freedom of the will. But here, too, the assumption of common sense cannot be rejected without a counter-assumption: if it is a pure assumption to say that things could have happened otherwise than they did, it is equally mere assumption to say they could not.

Finally, there is one other assumption made by the common faith of mankind and rejected by positive philosophies. It is that the world, _i.e._ everything of which man's consciousness is aware and to the reality of which his consciousness is evidence, is the expression of self-determining will, human and superhuman, manifesting itself directly to his consciousness. This assumption, too, has its counter-assumption--that there is no self-determining will, human or superhuman--and to reject the one assumption is to accept the other. To say that you do not know whether a man's word may be trusted or not is literally agnosticism, and may be the only rational attitude to assume, _e.g._ if the man is an absolute stranger, as most witnesses in court are to the judge who tries the case. But on the ground of your ignorance to refuse to pay any attention to his evidence when given is to abandon your agnosticism--if a judge directs the jury to disregard the evidence of the witness, the presumption is that he assumes it to be false. So, too, if we disregard the evidence of consciousness on this or any other point, we do not thereby succeed in avoiding assumptions, we only assume that consciousness is not trustworthy.[37]

The idea that in philosophy it is possible permanently to maintain an agnostic attitude with regard to the trustworthiness of consciousness is the outcome of a conscientious attempt to apply scientific methods to the solution of philosophic problems. Science does not find it necessary to assume either that there is or that there is not a God: on either assumption it is certain that bodies tend towards each other at the rates specified in the gravitation-formula. Philosophy must be made scientific. Therefore philosophy must carefully avoid making either assumption. Why, the very reason why science has progressed and philosophy never moves is that science builds only on demonstrated fact, philosophy only on undemonstrable assumptions. Proof, and therefore truth, is impossible if you start from assumptions which never can be proved to be either true or untrue.

The truth is that it is possible to maintain the agnostic attitude, and to avoid making assumptions, just so long as we do not need to form an opinion or take action on the matter which the assumption affects.

If my interests, practical or speculative, are not affected by a certain trial now proceeding in the law courts, I can avoid making any assumption as to the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of a witness's evidence. I do not know whether he is trustworthy or not, and I can refuse to make any assumption whatever on the subject--there is no reason why I should. But the moment circumstances call on me to form an opinion, I find myself beginning to make one assumption or the other, or perhaps at first one and then the other, though I am just as ignorant whether he really is trustworthy or not as I was when I refused to make any assumptions; I know no more about his previous career or his antecedent credibility than I did before he entered the box.

So, too, the truth is not that science makes no assumptions, but that she makes no assumptions except those which are necessary for her purposes. The man of science assumes--and it is pure assumption--that he can trust the evidence of his consciousness as to the reality of the chemicals he experiments on, the plants he classifies, or the stars he observes. He assumes that they are real. He also assumes without proof that what has produced a certain effect once will produce it again in the same circumstances, that if a thing has occurred the conditions essential to its occurrence must also have occurred--in fine, that Nature is uniform. But so long as he is engaged exclusively in scientific work, in finding out what actually does happen or has happened in Nature, he need make no assumptions as to whether a certain witness is trustworthy or not, or whether there is a God or not: he can maintain a perfectly agnostic attitude on both questions. He can say, if he chooses, "God or no God, two and two make four"; or, to put it more precisely, whether the evidence which consciousness gives in spiritual experience to the reality of a God can or cannot be trusted, I do trust the evidence which consciousness gives in sense-experience to the reality of material things; whether the assumption that every event is the expression of self-determining will is true or not, at any rate I believe in the assumption that Nature is uniform.

And if man had nothing to do but investigate the actual course of Nature, and had nothing else to form an opinion about except whether this phenomenon is followed by that, it would be possible permanently to avoid making any assumptions save those required by science. But man has (let us suppose) to know, not only what does happen, but what ought to happen, and to decide what shall happen. The ordinary man, in making those forecasts of the future which he must make for the ordinary business of daily life, assumes, quite unconsciously, that Nature is uniform and that material things are real. In deciding what he ought to do and what he will do, he assumes, without knowing that he is making any assumptions at all, that his moral ideals are real, that his will is free to choose this course or that, and that the God with whom he communes in his heart is real.

Let us now take the question raised by agnosticism as to these assumptions, which constitute a large part of the common faith of mankind. The question is not whether these assumptions are right: the agnostic declines to discuss that question; he does not know whether they are right or wrong, he has no means of deciding, they are too high for him. The question is whether the agnostic himself succeeds in making, as well as endeavouring to make, no assumptions on these points. We have already argued he fails: he succeeds, not in making no assumptions, but only in making the counter-assumptions to those assumed by common sense.

This, let us hasten to add, does not at all amount to saying that his counter-assumptions are wrong: it only amounts to saying that he cannot form a resolution to steal or not to steal, to lie or not to lie, without (consciously or unconsciously) making some assumption as to the reality of the moral ideal.

But there is little need of argument to show that agnostic philosophy fails to avoid making assumptions, _i.e._ fails in practice to be agnostic. Professor Huxley admitted that the Uniformity of Nature was an assumption; he assumed that our moral ideals were real; he took it for granted that the will was not free. We need only point out that the attempt to carry on philosophy and explain the universe on purely scientific principles breaks down: science makes no assumption about the reality of our moral and æsthetic ideals; philosophy, even an agnostic philosophy, finds it necessary to assume the reality of both. Even if philosophy could be made scientific, it would not get rid of unprovable assumptions: it would still be based upon those made by science. And the excellence of philosophy, or of any explanation of the universe, consists, not in agnosticism, not in making no assumptions, but in making the right ones.

Science, as we have said, makes no assumptions save those which are necessary for her purpose, which is to ascertain and describe what actually takes place in Nature. Conversely, it is vain to imagine that from those assumptions anything can be deduced except conclusions of the kind which they are framed to cover, viz. conclusions as to what actually does take place. To say, therefore, that all knowledge--philosophy and religion--must become scientific before it can be regarded as trustworthy is simply to say that nothing can be regarded as true, except what is deduced from the assumptions of science: conclusions drawn from any other assumptions have no scientific truth. The assumptions of science are constructed only to lead to conclusions as to what is: we can therefore have no scientific, _i.e._ no real, knowledge of what ought to be. With the assumptions she makes, Science can only describe the way in which things happen; why they should so happen it is therefore impossible to know. The idea that all things are the expression of self-determining will is not one of the assumptions of science; no conclusions from it, therefore, can be considered valid.

Without staying to consider why the unproved and unprovable assumptions of science are so superior to all others as to be set up as the sole source of truth, the only fount of genuine knowledge, let us consider what sort of a picture of the universe they give us. Perhaps a simile will best help us.

Let us imagine a game of chess in course of being played by invisible players in presence of a scientific philosopher who knows nothing about the game--or who assumes that he knows nothing--except what his senses tell him.

What he sees will be simply material chess-men moving in space. He may either consider them to be merely sense-phenomena, merely affections or modifications of his sense of sight and touch, or he may consider them to be real, material things. In either case he makes an assumption. The latter assumption leaves it quite an open question whether the reality is something insentient or is the expression of conscious will. The former precludes the question, _i.e._ assumes that there is neither conscious will nor insentient matter behind them.

But in neither assumption is there anything to prevent the philosopher in question from studying the movements of the chess-men and the way in which at every move or moment they are redistributed. At first their movements would probably be rather bewildering; but in course of time he would note, we may assume, that Black never moved unless White had previously moved, and that any movement of White was followed by one on the part of Black. He might therefore be tempted to lay it down as a rule that Black never moved unless White moved first--that an effect never occurred without a cause; and that a movement of White was always followed by a move on the part of Black--that a cause was always followed by its effect. But if he yielded to this temptation he would be making an assumption, for--inasmuch as he professes to know nothing to begin with--he does not _know_ that the pieces always will move in this way; he only knows (assuming that memory is not a mere delusion, as it may be, for anything he knows) that they have moved thus, not that they always will move thus. He may, however, assume that they will continue to move in that way. But with every fresh assumption he becomes less and less of an agnostic. He may, indeed, if he likes, further assume, not only that the pieces will move in this way, but that they must. This assumption does not, indeed, seem necessary; for if we know (or assume that we know) that they will follow this course, it seems superfluous to say that they must.

It seems well, therefore, to try to see on what principle we are to make our assumptions. It is an ancient rule, and one followed by science, to make as few as possible--that is to say, the fewest that will suffice for the purpose in hand. If, therefore, the purpose of our study of the chess-board is merely to find out how and according to what rules the pieces actually do move, have moved, and will move, it seems sufficient to assume that they will move as they have done, not that they must. If, on the other hand, we want to know why they move in the way that we assume them to move, then the assumption that they do so because they must is certainly in form legitimate, though it may or may not be the right one in fact.

Some people refuse to discuss such questions as "Why this universe?" "What is the reason of this unintelligible world?" on the ground that they cannot be answered except by making assumptions which cannot be proved.

But is that really a good reason for refusing? If it is, then none of the questions which science exists to answer can be discussed, for they also can only be answered by assuming, without proof or possibility of proof, that Nature is uniform, that the chess-men will continue to move as they have done.

Be this as it may, our philosopher, if he assumes that the course of Nature is not only uniform, but necessary, is making an assumption which is not required for the purposes of science, though it may be for his philosophy. It is, as we have said, quite legitimate for him to make the assumption for philosophical purposes, and to adhere to its logical consequences. But in the interests of clearness of thought it should be recognised that those consequences flow from it, and not from any of the assumptions necessary for the purposes of science. He will be able to show on this assumption that there is nothing in the history of the universe, or in the facts of science, to countenance the idea that the universe is the expression of self-determining will. We only wish to point out that this conclusion, even if true, is not an inference from the facts of science, but from the initial assumption that nothing which takes place in Nature is the result of free will.

To say, "Science does not find it necessary to assume the existence of self-determining will, neither therefore will I assume it," is true, but is only half the truth. Science does not find it necessary to assume the non-existence of self-determining will. But the philosopher who explains the facts of Nature on the hypothesis that they happen of necessity, does assume that self-determining will is non-existent. It is therefore quite natural that the history of the universe and the facts of science, interpreted in this way, should lend no countenance to the opposite theory.

The history of the universe may also be interpreted as a manifestation of the Divine will, the process of evolution as a progressive revelation; and if any be tempted to say with a sigh, "Ah! but it all requires us to believe that there is a God, to begin with," let them reflect that the other interpretation cannot even begin without the assumption that there is no God.

But to return to our chess-men. A closer study of the game would reveal--in addition to the invariable sequence of Black, White, Black--the fact that the various pieces had various properties and moved in various ways, some only one square at a time, some the whole length of the board; some diagonally, some parallel to the sides of the board. Further, our philosopher would observe that each piece when it moved tended to move according to its own laws: in the absence of counteracting causes, _e.g._ unless some other piece blocked the way, a bishop tended to move diagonally the whole length of the board. As a man of science, he would state these observed uniformities in the hypothetical form rightly adopted by science: if a castle moves it tends to move in such and such a way. Thus eventually he would be able to foretell, whenever any piece began to move, what direction it tended, in the absence of counteracting causes, to take. He might not, indeed, be able to say beforehand which of White's pieces would move in reply to Black, but his knowledge of the game would eventually become so scientific that he would be prepared for most contingencies, _i.e._ be able to say approximately where any piece would move if it did move. That knowledge could be attained without making any assumption as to whether free-will or necessity was the motive force expressed in the game; and it would be equally valid whichever of the two assumptions he chose to make. His science would have nothing to hope or fear from either assumption.

With regard to matter and motion, he would note that a piece might be removed and deposited by the side of the board, but was never destroyed, and he would infer that matter is indestructible and could never have been created. As for motion, the condition, the only invariable and necessary condition, of movement is previous movement, Black must move before White can: the only condition of change in the distribution of the pieces on the board would be some previous change. If the suggestion were made to him that possibly the real condition of all movement and every change was the purpose of an unseen agent, and that real knowledge was impossible without some idea of that purpose, he might as a man of science decline to accept the suggestion. The object of science is not to conjecture why things happen, or with what purpose, but to describe positively the way in which they actually do happen, or perhaps merely to describe the motions of material things in space. It does not matter with what purpose a shot or a mine is fired, or even whether with any or none: the results are just the same, if it is fired in just the same way. Science neither assumes nor denies the existence of purpose, because neither the assumption nor its rejection would in the least help her to discover the things that she wants to know. But are the things she wants to know the only things worth knowing? Every man is entitled to answer that question for himself. Are they the only things that can be known? They are the only things that can be known--on her assumptions. Just as the world can only be explained scientifically on the assumptions of science, so it can only be interpreted morally or religiously on the assumptions made by religion and morality. The only end that could be subserved by assuming a Divine purpose would be at most to enable us in some slight degree to argue what the purpose of some things might be--and that is of no interest or value to science. She declines to look for a final cause: her business is with efficient and mechanical causes.

The suggestion, then, that the chess-men may be moved with a purpose is not rejected, but is set aside as useless for a scientific comprehension of the game. Invisible agents--and we are all invisible, though our bodies are not--moving the chess-men with a purpose, or cross-purposes, are hypotheses valueless for science, which aims only at positive facts, the laws according to which the pieces actually do move. By the aid of these laws our philosopher might succeed in reconstructing the past history of the game which he was watching. From the positions occupied by the pieces now he might infer the positions from which they came (or think he could), and so back, step by step, until he reached the order in which the pieces are arranged at the beginning of a game. When he reviewed the knowledge thus obtained he would see in the process of the game a certain evolution from the relatively simple movements of the pawns which began the game to the highly complex movements of the queen. Then, whatever the order in which the pieces happened to be brought out and their qualities developed in the particular game he was watching, he might argue on the theory of necessity that that was the only order in which those properties could have been evolved. On the principle that efficient and mechanical causes were sufficient to provide a scientific explanation of the game it would follow that the higher powers manifested by castles and queens, the latest pieces to come out into the game, were caused by the previous action and movements of the less highly developed pawns--that life and consciousness are due to material causes. The idea that the movements of queens and pawns alike were due to the will of an unseen agent acting with purpose is, as we have said, a suggestion quite valueless to science, because any conclusions it might lead to would not be scientific knowledge. If we assumed the existence of purpose, and even could conjecture dimly its nature, we still should have made no addition to those positive facts which are the only things that science is concerned to establish: it would be neither more nor less true than before that bishops move diagonally, pawns one square at a time, gravitating bodies at the rate of sixteen feet in the first second, and so on. It would be neither more nor less true than before that pawns actually were the first pieces to move in the game, that lifeless matter preceded the evolution of organisms. Above all, it would be neither more nor less true than before that the conclusions of science are the only conclusions that a rational man will accept.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] To say that my consciousness offers no such evidence is, if true, irrelevant. We are concerned with the consciousness of mankind generally. In astronomy the personal equation is allowed for; and in science generally the observations of one _savant_ are subject to confirmation or correction by others.

XI.

THE COMMON FAITH OF MANKIND

It is an article of the common faith of mankind that consciousness is good and trustworthy evidence of the reality of that of which we are conscious. It is also characteristic of that common faith to believe in the trustworthiness of the Power which manifests itself in that of which we are conscious. The man of science shares in the common faith of mankind up to a certain point: he accepts the testimony of consciousness to the reality of material things, and he believes that the Power which manifests itself in them can be trusted to behave when it is (in time or space) beyond the range of his observation in exactly the same way as it does within. But to walk in the common faith further than this point is unscientific. It is rational to trust the evidence of consciousness when it testifies to the reality of material things, but not when it testifies to the reality of our moral ideals, or the freedom of the will or the reality of God. It is scientific to trust the Power which manifests itself in consciousness to behave with the same uniformity in the future as it has done in the past, and rational to formulate our science and stake our material interests on that uniformity. But it is not rational or scientific to trust that Power to will freely the good of all things, or to trust our lives to that will.

The reason of this sharp division between science and faith is the mistaken idea that science involves no faith and is a body of knowledge built up without any assumption. But even if we got the man of science to admit that science would be impossible if things were not real and Nature not uniform, it would still be open to him to say that he considered any other assumptions unnecessary; and there is a way in which he could prove them to be unnecessary. He might show that they were no assumptions at all, but logical consequences from established scientific facts. That was in effect the object aimed at, as far as our moral ideals are concerned, by the optimistic philosophy of evolution.

For the optimistic philosopher, then, who refuses to begin by taking the difference between right and wrong on faith, the problem is, granted the reality of material things and the uniformity of Nature, to show that the moral law is simply one particular case of the uniformity of Nature.