04.02 - Part 4, Chapter 2

CHAPTER II ’ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS’

IF, as is not unlikely, there are readers who are unwilling to acknowledge this kind of equality between the different branches of knowledge who are disposed to represent Science as a Land of Goshen, bright beneath the unclouded splendours of the midday sun, while Religion lies beyond, wrapped in the impenetrable darkness of the Egyptian plague I would suggest for their further consideration certain arguments, not drawn like those in an earlier portion of this Essay from the deficiencies which may be detected in scientific proof, but based exclusively upon an examination of fundamental scientific ideas considered in themselves. For these ideas possess a quality, exhibited no doubt equally by ideas in other departments of knowledge, which admirably illustrates our ignorance of what we know best, our blindness to what we see most clearly. This quality, indeed, is not very easy to describe in a sentence; but perhaps it may be provisionally indicated by saying that, although these ideas seem quite simple so long as we only have to handle them for the practical purposes of daily life, yet, when they are subjected to critical investigation, they appear to crumble under the process; to lose all precision of outline; to vanish like the magician in the story, leaving only an elusive mist in the grasp of those who would arrest them.

Nothing, for instance, seems simpler than the idea involved in the statement that we are, each of us, situated at any given moment in some particular portion of space, surrounded by a multitude of material things, which are constantly acting upon us and upon each other. A proposition of this kind is merely a generalised form of the judgments which we make every minute of our waking lives, about whose meaning we entertain no manner of doubt, which, indeed, provide us with Our familiar examples of all that is most lucid and most certain. Yet the purport of the sentence which expresses it is clear only till it is examined, is certain only till it is questioned; while almost every word in it suggests, and has long suggested, perplexing problems to all who are prepared to consider them.

What are ’ we ’? What is space? Can ’ we ’ be in space, or is it only our bodies about which any such statement can be made? What is a ’ thing ’? and, in particular, what is a ’ material thing ’? What is meant by saying that one ’ material thing ’ acts upon another? What is meant by saying that ’ material things ’ act upon ’ us ’? Here are six questions all directly and obviously arising out of our most familiar acts of judgment. Yet, direct and obvious as they are, it is hardly too much to say that they involve all the leading problems of modern philosophy, and that the man who has found an answer to them is the fortunate possessor of a tolerably complete system of metaphysic.

Consider, for example, the simplest of the six questions enumerated above, namely, What is a ’ material thing ’? Nothing could be plainer till you consider it. Nothing can be obscurer when you do. A ’ thing ’ has qualities hardness, weight, shape, and so forth. Is it merely the sum of these qualities, or is it something more? If it is merely the sum of its qualities, have these any independent existence? Nay, is such an independent existence even conceivable? If it is something more than the sum of its qualities, what is the relation of the ’ qualities ’ to the ’ something more ’? Again, can we on reflection regard a ’ thing ’ as an isolated ’ somewhat,’ an entity self-sufficient and potentially solitary? Or must we not rather regard it as being what it is in virtue of its relation to other ’ somewhats,’ which, again, are what they are in virtue of their relation to it, and to each other? And if we take, as I think we must, the latter alternative, are we not driven by it into a profitless progression through parts which are unintelligible by themselves, but which yet obstinately refuse to coalesce into any fully intelligible whole?

Now, I do not serve up these cold fragments of ancient though unsolved controversies for no better purpose than to weary the reader who is familiar with metaphysical discussion, and to puzzle the reader who is not. I rather desire to direct attention to the universality of a difficulty which many persons seem glad enough to acknowledge when they come across it in Theology, though they admit it only with reluctance in the case of Ethics and ^Esthetics, and for the most part completely ignore it when they are dealing with our knowledge of ’ phenomena.’ Yet in this respect, at least, all these branches of knowledge would appear to stand very much upon an equality. In all of them conclusions seem more certain than premises, the superstructure more stable than the foundation. In all of them we move with full assurance and a practical security only among ideas which are relative and dependent. In all of them these ideas, so clear and so sufficient for purposes of everyday thought and action, become confused and but dimly intelligible when examined in the unsparing light of critical analysis.

We need not, therefore, be surprised if we find it hard to isolate the permanent element in Beauty, seeing that it eludes us in material objects; that the ground of Moral Law should not be wholly clear, seeing that the ground of Natural Law is so obscure; that we do not adequately comprehend God, seeing that we can give no very satisfactory account of what we mean by ’ a thing.’ Yet I think a more profitable lesson is to be learnt from admissions like these than the general inadequacy of our existing metaphysic. And it is the more necessary to consider carefully what that lesson is, inasmuch as a very perverted version of it forms the basis of the only modern system of English growth which, professing to provide us with a general philosophy, has received any appreciable amount of popular support.

Mr. Spencer’s theory admits, nay, insists, that what it calls ’ ultimate scientific ideas ’ are inconsistent and, to use his own phrase, ’ unthinkable.’ Space, time, matter, motion, force, and so forth, are each in turn shown to involve contradictions which it is beyond our power to solve, and obscurities which it is beyond our power to penetrate; while the once famous dialectic of Hamilton and Mansel is invoked for the purpose of enforcing the same lesson with regard to the Absolute and the Unconditioned, which those thinkers identified with God, but which Mr. Spencer prefers to describe as the Unknowable. So far, so good. Though the details of the demonstration may not be altogether to our liking, I, at least, have no particular quarrel with its general tenor, which is in obvious harmony with much that I have just been insisting on. But when we have to consider the conclusion which Mr. Spencer contrives to extract from these premises, our differences become irreconcilable. He has proved, or supposes himself to have proved, that the ’ ultimate ideas ’ of science and the ’ ultimate ideas ’ of theology are alike ’ unthinkable.’ What is the proper inference to be drawn from these statements? Why, clearly, that science and theology are so far on an equality that every proposition which con siderations like these oblige us to assert about the one, we are bound to assert also about the other; and that our general theory of knowledge must take account of the fact that both these great departments of it are infected by the same weakness.

This, however, is not the inference drawn by Mr. Spencer. The idea that the conclusions of science should be profaned by speculative questionings is to him intolerable. He shrinks from an admission which seems to him to carry universal scepticism in its train. And he has, accordingly, hit upon a device for ’ reconciling ’ the differences between science and religion by which so lamentable a catastrophe may be avoided. His method is a simple one. He divides the verities which have to be believed into those which relate to the Knowable and those which relate to the Unknowable. What is knowable he appropriates, without exception, for science. What is unknowable he abandons, without reserve, to religion. With the results of this arbitration both contending parties should, in his opinion, be satisfied. It is true that religion may complain that by this arrangement it is made the residuary legatee of all that is ’ unthinkable ’; but then, it should remember that it obtains in exchange an indefeasible title to all that is ’ real.’ Science, again, may complain that its activities are confined to the ’relative’ and the ’dependent’; but then, it should remember that it has a monopoly of the ’ intelligible.’ The one possesses all that can be known; the other, all that seems worth knowing. With so equal a partition of the.spoils both disputants should be content.

Without contesting the fairness of this curious arrangement, I am compelled to question its validity. Science cannot thus transfer the burden of its own obscurities and contradictions to the shoulders of religion; and Mr. Spencer is only, perhaps, misled into supposing such a procedure to be possible by his use of the word ’ ultimate.’ ’ Ultimate ’ scientific ideas may, in his opinion, be ’ unthinkable ’ without prejudice to the ’ thinkableness ’ of ’proximate ’ scientific ideas. The one may dwell for ever in the penumbra of what he calls ’ nascent consciousness,’ in the dim twilight where religion and science are indistinguishable; while the other stands out, definite and certain, in the full light of experience and verification. Such a view is not, I think, philosophically tenable. As soon as the ’unthinkableness ’ of ’ ultimate ’ scientific ideas is speculatively recognised, the fact must react upon our speculative attitudes towards ’proximate’ scientific ideas. That which in the order of reason is dependent can not be unaffected by the weaknesses and the obscurities of that on which it depends. If the one is unintelligible, the other can hardly be rationally established. In order to prove this if proof be required we need not travel beyond the ample limits of Mr. Spencer’s own philosophy. To be sure he obstinately shuts his ears against speculative doubts respecting the conclusions of science. ’ To ask whether science is substantially true is [he observes] much like asking whether the sun gives light.’ 1 It is, I admit, very much like it. But then, on Mr. Spencer’s principles, does the sun give light? After due consideration we shall have to admit, I think, that it does not. For the question, if intelligently asked, not only involves the comprehension of matter, space, time, and force, which are, according to Mr. Spencer, all incomprehensible, but there is the further difficulty that, if his system is to be believed, ’ what we are conscious of as properties of matter, even down to weight and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by objective agencies, which are unknown and unknowable.’ 2 It would seem, therefore, either that the sun is a ’ subjective affection,’ in which case it can hardly be said to ’ give light ’; or it is ’ unknown ’ and ’ unknowable,’ in which case no assertion respecting it can be regarded as supplying us with any very flattering specimen of scientific certitude. The truth is that Mr. Spencer, like many of his 1 First Principles, p. 19. * Principles of Psychology, ii. 493. predecessors, has impaired the value of his speculations by the hesitating timidity with which he has pursued them. Nobody is required to investigate first principles; but those who voluntarily undertake the task should not shrink from its results. And if among these we have to count a theoretical scepticism about scientific knowledge, we make matters, not better, but worse, by attempting to ignore it. In Mr. Spencer’s case this procedure has, among other ill consequences, caused him to miss the moral which at one moment lay ready to his hand. He has had the acuteness to see that our beliefs cannot be limited to the sequences and the co-existences of phenomena; that the ideas on which science relies, and in terms of which all science has to be expressed, break down under the stress of criticism; that beyond what we think we know, and in closest relationship with it, lies an infinite field which we do not know, and which with our present faculties we can never know, yet which cannot be ignored without making what we do know unintelligible and meaningless. But he has failed to see whither such speculations must inevitably lead him. He has failed to see that if the certitudes of science lose themselves in depths of unfathomable mystery, it may well be that out of these same depths there should emerge the certitudes of religion; and that if the dependence of the ’ knowable ’ upon the ’ unknowable ’ embarrasses us not in the one case, no reason can be assigned why it should embarrass us in the other.

Mr. Spencer, in short, has avoided the error of dividing all reality into a Perceivable which concerns us, and an Unperceivable which, if it exists at all, concerns us not. Agnosticism so understood he explicitly repudiates by his theory, if not by his practice. But he has not seen that, if this simple-minded creed be once abandoned, there is no convenient haltingplace till we have swung round to a theory of things which is almost its precise opposite: a theory which, though it shrinks on its speculative side from no severity of critical analysis, yet on its practical side finds the source of its constructive energy in the deepest needs of man, and thus recognises, alike in science, in ethics, in beauty, in religion, the halting expression of a reality beyond our reach, the halfseen vision of transcendent Truth.