But theteleologicalargument is that which has been most popular in England. It has carried (apparent) conviction to many minds that have seen the futility of theà prioriprocesses of proof. It is the stock argument of British 'natural theology;' in explanation and defence of which volume upon volume has been written. It is, as Kant remarked, 'the oldest, the clearest, and the most adapted to the ordinary human reason.' Nevertheless, its failure is the more signal, considering that its reputation has been so great, and its claim so vast. The argument has at least three branches, to which we have already referred. We confine ourselves meanwhile to the first of the three, the techno-theological argument, or that which reasons from the phenomena of design.
Stated in brief compass, that argument amounts to the following inference. We see marks of adaptation, of purpose, or of foresight in the objects which, as we learn from experience, proceed from the contrivance of man. We see similar marks of design or adaptation in nature. We are therefore warranted in inferring a world-designer; and from the indefinite number of these an infinite designer; and from their harmony His unity. Or thus,—we see the traces of wise and various purpose everywhere in nature. But nature could not of herself have fortuitously produced this arrangement. It could not have fallen into such harmony by accident. Therefore the cause of this wise order cannot be a blind, unintelligent principle, but must be a free and rational mind. The argument is based upon analogy (and might be termed analogical as strictly as technological). It asserts that because mind is concerned in the production of those objects of art which bear the traces of design, therefore a resembling mind was concerned in the production of nature.
The objections to this mode of proof are indeed 'legion.' In thefirstplace, admitting its validity so far, it falls short of the conclusion it attempts and professes to reach. For,
1. The effects it examines, and from which it infers a cause, are finite, while the cause it assumes is infinite; but the infinity of the cause can be no valid inference, from an indefinite number of finite effects. The indefinite is still the finite; and we can never perform the intellectual feat of educing the infinite from the finite by any multiplication of the latter. It has been said by an acute defender of the teleological argument, that the number of designed phenomena(indefinitely vast) with which the universe is filled, is sufficient to suggest the infinity of the designing cause. And it may be admitted that it is by the ladder of finite designs that we rise to some of our grandest conceptions of divine agency; but this ascent and survey are only possible after we have discovered from some other source that a divine beingexists. The vastest range of design is of no greater validity than one attested instance of it, so far as proof is concerned. It is not accumulation, but relevancy of data that we need. But,
2. At the most we only reach an artificer or protoplast, not a creator,—one who arranged the phenomena of the world, not the originator of itssubstance,—the architect of the cosmos, not the maker of the universe. Traces of mind discoverable amid the phenomena of the world cast no light upon the fact of its creation, or the nature of its source. There is no analogy between a human artificer arranging a finite mechanism, and a divine creator originating a world; nor is there a parallel between the order, the method, and the plan of nature, and what we see when we watch a mechanician working according to a plan to produce a designed result. The only real parallel would be our perception by sense of a world slowly evolving from chaos according to a plan previously foreseen. From the product you are at liberty to infer a producer only after having seen a similar product formerly produced. But the product which supplies the basis of this argument is unique and unparalleled, 'a singular effect,' in the language of Hume, whose reasoning on this point has never been successfully assailed. And the main difficulty which confronts the theist, and which theism essays to remove, is precisely that which the consideration of design does not touch, viz., theoriginand not the arrangements of the universe. The teleological analogy is therefore worthless. There is no parallel, we repeat, between the process of manufacture, and the product of creation, between the act of a carpenter working with his tools to construct a cabinet, and the evolution of life in nature. On the contrary, there are many marked and sharply defined contrasts between them. In the latter case there is fixed and ordered regularity, no deviation from law; in the former contingency enters, and often alters and mars the work. Again, the artificer simply uses the materials, which he finds lying ready to hand in nature. Hedetachesthem from their 'natural' connections. He arranges them in a special fashion. But in nature, in the successive evolution of her organisms there is no detachment, no displacement, no interference or isolation. All things are linked together. Every atom is dependent on every other atom, while the organisms seem to grow and develop 'after their kind' by some vital force, but by no manipulation similar to the architect's or builder's work. And yet again, in the one case, the purpose is comprehensible—the end is foreseen from the beginning. We know what the mechanician desires to effect; but in the other case we have no clue to the 'thought' of the architect. Who will presume to say that he has adequately fathomed the purposes of nature in the adjustment of one of her phenomena to another? But,
3. The only valid inference from the phenomena of design would be that of aphenomenalfirst cause. The inference of a personal Divine Agent or substance from the observation of the mechanism of the universe is invalid. What link connects the traces of mind which are discerned in nature (thosevestigia animi) with an agent who produced them? There is no such link. And thus the divine personality remains unattested. The same may be said of the divineunity. Why should we rest in our inductive inference of one designer from the phenomena of design, when these are so varied and complex? Or grant that in all that we observe a subtle and pervading 'unity' is found, and as a consequence all existing arrangements point to one designer, why may not that Demiurgos have been at some remote period himself designed? And so onad infinitum.
But, in thesecondplace, not only is the argument defective (admitting its validity so far as it goes), even partial validity cannot be conceded to it. The phenomena of design not only limit us to a finite designer, not only fail to lead us to the originator of the world, or to a personal first cause, but they confine us within the network of observed designs, and do not warrant faith in a being detached from or independent of these designs, and therefore able to modify them with a boundless reserve of power. These designs only suggest mechanical agency, working in fixed forms, according to prescribed law. In other words, the phenomena of the universe which distantly resemble the operations of man, do not in the least suggest an agent exterior to themselves. We are not intellectually constrained to ascribe the arrangement of means to ends in nature to anything supra-mundane. Such constraint would proceed from our projecting the shadow of ourselves within the realm of nature, and investingitwith human characteristics, a procedure for which we have no warrant. Why may notthe arrangements of nature be due to a principle of life imminent in nature, the mere endless evolution and development of the world itself? We observe that phenomenonAfits into phenomenaB,C, andD, and we therefore infer thatAwas fitted to its place by an intelligent mind. But suppose thatAdid not fit intoB,C, orD, it might in some way unknown fit intoX,Y, orZ,—it would in any case be related to its antecedent and consequent phenomena. But our perception of the fitness or relationship gives us no information beyond thefact of fitness. Any other (larger) conclusion is illegitimate.
It is often asserted that the phenomenal changes which we observe in nature, bear witness to their beingeffects. But what are effects? Transformed causes, modified by the transformation—mere changed appearances. We see the effects of volitional energy in the phenomena which our consciousness forces us to trace back to our own personality as the producing cause. But where do we see in nature, in the universe, phenomena which we are similarly warranted in construing as the effects of volitional energy, or of constructive intelligence? We are not conscious of the power of creation, nor do we perceive it. We have never witnessed the construction of a world. We only perceive the everlasting flux and reflux of phenomena, the ceaseless pulsation of nature's life,—evolution, transformation, birth, death, and birth again. But nature is herself dumb as to her whence or whither. And, as we have already hinted, could we detect a real analogy between the two, we are not warranted in saying that the constructive intelligence which explains the one class of phenomena is the only possible explanation of the other.[13]
And thus it is that no study of the arrangements and disposition of the mechanism can carry us beyond the mechanism itself. The teleological argument professes to carry us above the chain of natural sequence. It proclaims that those traces of intelligence everywhere visible hint that long agomindwas engaged in the construction of the universe. It is not that the phenomena 'give forth at times a little flash, a mystic hint' of a living will within or behind the mechanism, a personality kindred to that of the artificer who observes it. With that we should have no quarrel. But the teleological argument is said to bring us authentic tidings of the origin of the universe. If it does not carry us beyond the chain of dependent sequence it is of no value. Its advocates are aware of this, and assert that it can thus carry us beyond the adamantine links. But this is precisely what it fails to do. It can never assure us that those traces of intelligence to which it invites our study, proceeded from a constructive mind detached from the universe; or that, if they did, another mind did not fashion that mind, and so onad infinitum. And thus the perplexing puzzle of the origin of all things remains as insoluble as before.
But farther, the validity of the teleological argument depends upon the accuracy of our interpretation of those 'signs of intelligence' of which it makes so much, and which it interprets analogically in the light of human nature. But the 'interpreter' is ever 'one among a thousand.' Who is to guarantee to us that we have not erred as to the meaning of Nature's secret tracery? Who is to secure us against inerrancy in this? Before we deduce so weighty a conclusion from data so peculiar, we must obtain some assurance that no further insight will disallow the interpretation we have given. But is not this presumptuous in those who are acquainted in a very partial manner with the significance of a few of nature's laws? Who will presume to say that he has penetrated to the meaning of any one of these laws? And, if he has not done so, can he validly single out a few resemblances he has detected, and explain the nature of the infinite, by a sample of the finite? Nature is so inscrutable that, even when a law is discerned, the scientific explorer will not venture to say that he has read its character, so as to be sure that the law reflects the ultimate meaning of the several phenomena it explains. Nay, is he not convinced that other and deeper meanings must lie within them? A law of nature is but the generalized expression of the extent to which our human insight has as yet extended into the secret laboratory of her powers. But as that insight deepens, our explanations change. We say the lower law is resolved back into a higher one, the more detailed into the more comprehensive. But if our scientific conceptions themselves are thus constantly changing, progressing, enlarging, how can we venture to erect our natural theology on the surface interpretation of the fleeting phenomena of the universe? 'Lo, these are a part of His ways, but how little a portion is known of Him!'
And this conclusion we advance against those who as dogmatically deny that there can beanyresemblance between the forcesof nature as a revelation of the Infinite, and the volitional energy of man. Both assumptions are equally arbitrary and illegitimate. We shall shortly endeavour to show on what grounds (remote from teleology) we are warranted in believing that a resemblance does exist.
But, to return, if the inference from design is valid at all, it must be valid everywhere—all the phenomena of the world must yield it equally. No part of the universe is better made than any other part. Every phenomenon is adjusted to every other phenomenon nearly or remotely as means to ends. Therefore, if the few phenomena which our teleologists single out from the many are a valid index to the character of the source whence they have proceeded, everything that exists must find its counterpart in the divine nature. If we are at liberty to infer an Archetype above from the traces of mind beneath, must not the phenomena of moral evil, malevolence, and sin be on the same principle carried upwards by analogy?—a procedure which would destroy the notion of Deity which the teleologists advocate. If we are at liberty to conclude that a few phenomena which seem to us designed, proceed from and find their counterpart in God, reason must be shown why we should select a few and pass over other phenomena of the universe. In other words, if the constructor of the universe designed one result from the agency which he has established, must he not have designed all the results that actually emerge; and if the character of the architect be legitimately deduced from one or a few designs, must we not take all the phenomena which existto help out our idea of his character? Look, then, at these phenomena as a whole. Consider the elaborate contrivances for inflicting pain, and the apparatus so exquisitely adjusted to produce a wholesale carnage of the animal tribes. They have existed from the very dawn of geologic time. The whole world teems with the proofs of such intended carnage. Every organism has parasites which prey upon it; and not only do the superior tribes feed upon the inferior (the less yielding to the greater), but the inferior prey at the very same time no less remorselessly upon the superior. If, therefore, the inference of benevolence be valid, the inference of malevolence is at least equally valid: and as equal and opposite, the one notion destroys the other.
But lastly, while we are philosophically impelled to consider all events as designed, if we interpret one as such, nay, to believe that the exact relation of every atom to every other atom in the universe has been adjusted in 'a pre-established harmony,' the moment we do thus universalize design, that moment the notion escapes us, is emptied of all philosophical meaning or theological relevancy. Let it be granted that phenomenonAis related to phenomenonB, as means to an end. Carry out the principle (as philosophy and science alike compel us to do), and considerAas related by remoter adaptation to all the other phenomena of the universe; in short, regard every atom as interrelated to every other atom, every change as co-related to every other change; then the notion of design breaks down, from the very width of the area it covers. We can understand a finite mechanician planning that a finite phenomenon shall be related to another finite phenomenon so as to produce a desired result; but if the mechanician himself be a designed phenomenon, and all that he works upon be equally so, every single atom and every individual change being subtilly interlaced and all reciprocally dependent, then the very notion of design vanishes. Seemingly valid on the limited area of finite observation and of human agency, it disappears when the whole universe is seen to be one vast network of interconnected law and order.
Combining this objection with what may seem to be its opposite, but is really a supplement to it, we may again say, that we, who are a part of the universal order, cannot pronounce a verdict as to the intended design of the parts, till able to see the whole. If elevated to a station whence we could look down on the entire mechanism, ifoutsideof the universe (a sheer impossibility to the creature), we might see the exact bearing of part to part, and of link with link, so as to pronounce with confidence as to the intention of the contriver. If, like the wisdom of which Solomon writes, any creature had been with the Almighty 'in the beginning of His way, before His works of old, set up from everlasting, or even the earth was;' had a creature been with Him 'when as yet He had not made the world, when He prepared the heavens, and gave His decree' to the inanimate and animated worlds as they severally arose, he might be able to understand the meaning of their creation. And yet the moment this knowledge was gained, the value of the perception would disappear; because 'being as God,' he should no longer require the circuitous report or inference.
Thus the teleological argument must be pronounced fallacious. It is illusive as well as incomplete: and were we to admit its relevancy, it would afford no basis for worship, or the recognition of the object it infers. The conception of deity as a workman, layingstress upon the notion of cleverness in contrivance, and subordinating moral character to skill, would never lead to reverence, or the adoration of the architect.
It must be conceded, however, that there is a subsidiary value in this as in all the other arguments, even while their failure is most conspicuous. They prove (as Kant has shown) that if they cannot lead us to the reality we are in search of, the phenomena of nature cannotdiscreditits existence. They do not turn the argument the other way, or weight the scales on the opposite side. They are merely negative, and indeed clear the ground for other and more valid modes of proof.
They are of farther use (as Kant has also shown) in correcting our conceptions of the Divine Being, when from other sources we have learned his existence, in defining and enlarging our notions of his attributes. They discourage and disallow some unworthy conceptions, and enlarge the scope of others. But to leave those celebrated lines of argument which have gathered around them so much of the intellectual strife of rival philosophies, it is needful now to tread warily when we are forced to come to so decided a conclusion against them.
We do not deny that the idea of God exists in the human mind as one of its ultimate and ineradicable notions: we only dispute the inference which ontology has deduced from its existence there. We do not deny that by regressive ascent from finite sequences we are at length constrained to rest in some causal fountain-head; we only dispute the validity of the process by which that fountain-head is identified with the absolute source of existence, and that source of existence with a personal God. We do not deny the presence of design in nature when by that term is meant the signs or indices of mind in the relation of phenomena to phenomena as means to ends; we only assert that these designs have no theistic value, and are only intelligible after we have discovered the existence of a supreme mind within the universe, from another and independent source. Till then the book of nature presents us only with blank, unilluminated pages. Thereafter it is radiant with the light of design, full of that mystic tracery which proclaims the presence of a living will behind it. To a mind that has attained to the knowledge or belief in God, it becomes the 'garment it thereafter sees Him by,' as one might see a pattern issuing from a loom while the weaver was concealed, and infer some of the designs of the workman from the characteristics of his work.
The remaining lines of proof, followed, though not worked out in the past, are theintuitionaland themoral. And it is by a combination of the data from which they spring and a readjustment of their respective parts and harmonies, that the foundations of theism can alone be securely laid. As the evidence of intuition is of greatest value, and is also most generally disesteemed, we shall take its testimony first, and examine the moral evidence of conscience afterwards.
The modern spirit is suspicious of the evidence of intuition. It is loudly proclaimed on all sides by the teachers of positive science that instinct is a dubious guide, liable to the accidents of chance interpretation, variously understood by various minds; that in following it we may be pursuing anignis fatuus; that it is at best only valid for the individual who may happen to feel its force; that it is not a universal endowment (as it should be if trustworthy), but often altogether wanting; and that it can never yield uscertainty, because its root is a subjective feeling or conviction, which cannot be verified by external test. These charges cannot be ignored, or lightly passed over. And for the theist merely to proclaim, as an ultimate fact, that the human soul has an intuition of God, that we are endowed with a faculty of apprehension of which the correlative object is divine, will carry no conviction to the atheist. Suppose that he replies, 'This intuition may be valid evidence for you, but I have no such irrepressible instinct; I see no evidence in favour of innate ideas in the soul, or of a substance underneath the phenomena of nature of which we can have any adequate knowledge;' we may close the argument by simple re-assertion, and vindicate our procedure on the ground that in the region of first principles there can be no farther proof. We may also affirm that the instinct being a sacred endowment, and delicate in proportion to the stupendous nature of the object it attests, it may, like every other function of the human spirit, collapse from mere disuse. But if we are to succeed in even suggesting a doubt in the mind of our opponent as to the accuracy of his analysis, we must verify our primary belief, and exhibit its credentials so far as that is possible. We must show why we cannot trace its genealogy farther back, or resolve it into simpler elements, and we must not keep its nature shrouded in darkness, but disclose it so far as may be. This, then, is our task.
The instinct to which we make our ultimate appeal is in its first rise in the soul, crude, dim, and inarticulate. Gradually it shapes itself into greater clearness, aided, in the case of most men, by the myriad influencesof religious thought and of historical tradition,—heightening and refining it when educed, but not creating it; separating the real gold from any spurious alloy it may have contracted. Like all our innate instincts this one is at first infantile, and, when it begins to assert itself, it prattles rather than speaks coherently. We do not here raise the general question of the existence ofà prioriprinciples. We assume that the mind is not originally anabrasa tabula, but the endowments with which it starts are all gifts in embryo. They are not full-formed powers, so much as the capacities and potentialities of mental life. Their growth to maturity is most gradual, and the difference between their adult and their rudimentary phases is as wide as is the interval between a mature organization and the egg from which it springs. It is therefore no evidence against the reality or the trustworthiness of the intuition to which we appeal, that its manifestations are not uniform, or that it sometimes seems absent in the abnormal states of consciousness, or among the ruder civilizations of the world. We admit that it is difficult for the uninitiated to trace any affinity between its normal and its abnormal manifestations, when it is modified by circumstances to any extent. We farther admit that while never entirely absent, it may sometimes seem to slumber not only in stray individuals, but in a race or an era, and be transmitted from generation to generation in a latent state. It may hybernate, and then awake as from the sleep of years, arising against the will of its possessor and refusing to be silenced. Almost any phenomenon may call it forth, and no single phenomenon can quench it. It is the spontaneous utterance of the soul in presence of the object whose existence it attests, and as such it is necessarily prior to any act of reflection upon its character, validity, or significance. Reflex thought, which is the product of experience, cannot in any case originate an intuition, or account for those phenomena which we may call by that name, supposing them to be delusive. Nothing in us, from the simplest instinct to the loftiest intuition, could in any sense create the object it attests, or after which it seeks and feels. And all our ultimate principles, irreducible by analysis, simply attest and assert.
The very existence of the intuition of which we now speak is itself a revelation, because pointing to a Revealer within or behind itself. And however crude in its elementary forms, it manifests itself in its highest and purest state at once as an act of intelligence and of faith. It may be most fitly described as a direct gaze by the inner eye of the spirit, into a region over which mists usually brood. The great and transcendant Reality it apprehends lies evermore behind the veil of phenomena. It does not see far into that reality, yet it grasps it, and recognises in it 'the open secret' of the universe. This, then, is the main characteristic of the theistic intuition. It proclaims a supreme Existence without and beyond the mind, which it apprehendsin the act of revealing itself. It perceives through the vistas of phenomenal sequence, as through breaks in the cloud, the glimpses of aPresencewhich it can know only in part, but which it does not follow in the dark, or merely infer from its obscure and vanishing footprints. Unlike the 'necessary notion' of the Cartesian school, unlike the space and time which are but subjective forms of thought, unlike the 'regressive inference' from the phenomena of the world, the conclusion it reaches is not the creation of its own subjectivity. The God of the logical understanding, whose existence is supposed to be attested by the necessary laws of the mind, is the mere projected shadow of self. It has no more than an ideal significance. The same may be said, with some abatements, of the being whose existence is inferred from the phenomena of design. The ontologist and the teleologist unconsciously draw their own portrait, and by an effort of thought project it outwards on the canvass of infinity. The intuitionalist, on the other hand, perceives that a revelation has been made to him, descending as through an opened cloud, which closes again. It is 'a moment seen, then gone;' for while we are always conscious of our contact with the natural, we are less frequently aware of the presence of the supernatural.
The difference between the evidence of intuition and the supposed warrant of the other proofs we have reviewed is apparent. It is one thing to create or evolve (even unconsciously) a mental image of ourselves which we vainly attempt to magnify to infinity, and thereafter worship the image that our minds have framed; it is another to discern for a moment an august Presence,other than the human, through a break in the clouds which usually veil Him from our eyes. And it is to the inward recognition of this self-revealing object that the theist makes appeal. What he discerns is at least not a 'form of his mind's own throwing;' while his knowledge is due not to the penetration of his own finite spirit, but to the condescension of the infinite.
But we admit that this intuition isnot naturally luminous. It is the presence of the transcendant Object which makes it luminous.[14]Its light is therefore fitful. It is itself rather an eye than a light; (a passive organ, rather than an active power); and when not lit up by light strictly supra-natural,—because emanating from the object it discerns,—it is dull and lustreless. The varying intelligence it reports of that object, corresponds to the changing perceptions of the human eye in a day of alternate gloom and sunlight. It is itself a human trust which ripens gradually into a matured belief, rather than a clear perception, self-luminous from the first.
It may be needful, however, as the evidence of our intuitions is so generally suspected, to examine a little more fully into the credentials of this one, in common with all its allies.
Our knowledge of the object which intuition discloses is at first, in all cases, necessarily unreflective. In the presence of that object, the mind does not double back upon itself, to scrutinise the origin and test the accuracy of the report that has reached it. And thus the truth which it apprehends is at first only presumptive. It remains to be afterwards tested by reflection, that no illusion be mistaken for reality. What, then, are the tests of our intuitions?[15]
The following seem sufficient criteria of their validity and truthworthiness. 1. The persistence with which they appear and reappear after experimental reflection upon them, the obstinacy with which they reassert themselves when silenced, the tenacity with which they cling to us. 2. Their historical permanence; the confirmation of ages and of generations. The hold they have upon the general mind of the race is the sign of some 'root of endurance' planted firmly in the soil of human nature. If 'deep in the general heart of men, their power survives,' we may accept them as true, or interpret them as a phase of some deeper yet kindred truth, of which they are the popular distortion. 3. The interior harmony which they exhibit with each other, and with the rest of our psychological nature; each of the intuitions being in harmony with the entire circle, and with the whole realm of knowledge. If any alleged intuition should come into collision with any other and disturb it, there would be good reason for suspecting its genuineness; and in that case the lower and less authenticated must always yield to the higher and better attested. But if the critical intellect carrying our intuition (if we may so speak in a figure) round the circle of our nature, and in turn placing it in juxtaposition with the rest, finds that no collision ensues, we may safely conclude that the witness of that intuition is true. 4. If the results of its action and influence are such as to elevate and etherealize our nature, its validity may be assumed. This is no test by itself, for an erroneous belief might for a time even elevate the mind that held it; as the intellectual life evoked by many of the erroneous theories and exploded hypotheses of the past has been great. But no error could do so permanently. No illusion could survive as an educative and elevating power over humanity; and no alleged instinct could sustain its claim, and vindicate its presumptive title, if it could not stand the test we mention. A theoretic error is seen to be such when we attempt to reduce it to practice; as a hidden crack or fissure in a metal becomes visible when a strain is applied, or the folly of an ideal Utopia is seen in the actual life of a mixed commonwealth. Many of those scientific guesses which have served as good provisional hypotheses, have been abandoned in the actual working of them out, and so the flaw that lurks within an alleged intuition, (if there be a flaw) will become apparent when we try to apply it in actual life, and take it as a regulative principle in action. Thus, take the belief in the Divine existence, attested, as we affirm, by intuition, and apply it in the act of worship or adoration. Does that belief (which fulfils the conditions of our previous tests,—for it appears everywhere and clings tenaciously to man, and comes into collision with no other normal tendency of our nature, or defrauds any instinct of its due) does it elevate the nature of him who holds it? The reply of history is conclusive, and its attestation is abundantly clear. The power of the theistic faith over the rest of human nature is such that it has quickened the other faculties into a more vigorous life. Its moral leverage has been vast, while it has sharpened the æsthetic sense to some of its most delicate perceptions, and in some instances brought a new accession of intellectual power. The intuition which men trust in the dark, gradually leads the whole nature towards the light. Its dimness and its dumbness are exchanged for clearness and an intelligible voice; andwhile it thus grows luminous, it gains new power, and our confidence in its verdict strengthens.
We have now stated what seems to us the general nature of the theistic intuition, and added one or two criteria by which all intuitions must be tested. It remains that we indicate more precisely the phases which it assumes; and the channels in which it works. Though ultimate and insusceptible of analysis, it has a triple character. It manifests itself in the consciousness which the human mind has of the Infinite (an intellectual phase); in its perception of the world-soul, which is Nature's 'open secret' revealed to the poet (an æsthetic phase); and in the act of worship, in which an object correlative to the worshipper is revealed in his very sense of dependence (a moral and religious phase).
It is not only essential to the validity of the theistic intuition that the human mind has a positive though imperfect knowledge of the infinite, but the assertion of this is involved in the very intuition itself. If we had no positive knowledge of the source it seeks to reach, the instinct, benumbed as by an intellectual frost, and unable to rise, would be fatally paralysed; or if it could move along its finite area, it would wander helplessly, feeling after its object, 'if haply it might find it.' And it will be found that all who deny the validity of our intuition, either limit us to the knowledge of phenomena, or while admitting that we have a certain knowledge of finite substance adopt the cold theory of nescience. From the earliest Greek schools, or from the earlier speculation of the Chinese mind, a powerful band of thinkers have denied to man the knowledge of aught beyond phenomena, and from Confucius to Comte the list is an ample one. In our own day this school includes some of the clearest and subtilest minds devoted to philosophy. Comte, Lewes, Mill, Mr. Bain, Herbert Spencer, and the majority of our best scientific guides (however they differ in detail) agree in the common postulate that all that man can know, and intelligibly reason about, are phenomena, and the laws of these phenomena, 'that which doth appear.' There is, however, a positivist 'religion,' which consists now in the worship of phenomena, and again in homage paid to mystery, to the unknown and the unknowable which lies beyond the known. Comte deified man and nature, in their phenomenal aspects, without becoming pantheist; and the instinct of worship though outlawed from his philosophy (which denies the existence of its object), asserted itself within his nature—at least in the second period of his intellectual career—and led him not only to deify humanity, but to prescribe a minute and cumbrous ritual, as puerile as it is inconsistent. It is true that worship is philosophically an excrescence on his system. The advanced secularist who disowns it is logically more consistent with the first principle of positivism. To adore thegrande êtreas personified in woman is as great a mimicry of worship as to offer homage to the law of gravitation. Comte, says his acutest critic, 'forgot that the wine of the real Presence was poured out, and adored the empty cup.' But we may note in this latter graft upon his earlier system a testimony to the operation of that very intuition which positivism disowns; its uncouth form, when distorted by an alien philosophy, being a more expressive witness to its irrepressible character.
Mr. Spencer, on the other hand, with some of our scientific teachers, bids us bow down before the unknown and unknowable power which subsists in the universe. The highest triumph of the human spirit, according to him, is to ascertain the laws of phenomena, and then to worship the dark abyss of the inscrutable beyond them. But there is surely neither humility nor sanity in worshipping darkness, any more than there would be in erecting an altar to chaos: and the advice seems strange coming from those who claim to be the special teachers of clear knowledge and comprehensible law. If we must at length erect an altar at all, we must have some knowledge of the existence to whom it is erected, and have some better reason for doing so than the blank and bland confession that we have not the smallest idea of its nature! Mr. Spencer undertakes to 'reconcile' the claims of science and religion; and he finds the rallying-point to be the recognition of mystery, into which all knowledge recedes. But if religion has any function, and a reconciliation between her and science be possible, the harmony cannot be effected by first denying the postulate from which religion starts, and quietly sweeping her into the background of the inconceivable, consigning her to the realm of the unknowable, and then proclaiming that the conciliation is complete. This is to silence or annihilate one of the two powers which the philosopher undertook to reconcile. It is annexation accomplished by conquest, the cessation of strife, effected by the destruction of one opposing force, not by an armistice, or the ratification of articles of peace. Mr. Spencer does not come between two combatants who are wounding each other needlessly, and bid each put his sword into its sheath, for they are brethren;but he turns round and (to his own satisfaction) slays one of them, and then informs the other that the reconciliation is effected.
We must therefore ask the positivist for his warrant, on the one hand, in denying the existence of a world of substance, underneath the fleeting phenomena of being,out of which a revelation may emerge, apprehensible by man; and on the other, in denying to man positive knowledge of the infinite as a substance. We must remind him that infinite and finite, absolute and relative, substance and phenomena, are terms of a relation: while we ask him for his warrant in differentiating these terms, and proclaiming that the one set are knowable and known, the others unknown and unknowable. He arbitrarily singles out one of the two factors which together constitute a relation, and are only known as complementary terms, and he bestows upon it a spurious honour, by proclaiming that it alone is intelligible, while he relegates the other term to the region of darkness. We ask him on what ground he does so? and whether the law of contrast does not render phenomena as unintelligible, without substance, as substance without phenomena? Can we pronounce the one to be known and the other unknown, merely because the former reaches us through the five gateways of sense, and the latter through the avenue of intuition? Now, no wise theist ever asserted that God was phenomenally known. God is no phenomenon, but the noumenal essence underlying all phenomena. We have admitted and contended that no study of the laws of the universe can give us direct information as to the first cause; for a first cause could never be revealed to the senses, nor be an inference deduced from the data which sense supplies. The assertion therefore, that nature (of which the physical sciences are the interpretation) does not reveal God by its phenomena, is as strongly asserted by the theist as by the positivist. It may reveal his footprints, but we only know whose foot has left its mark on nature when we have learnedfrom another sourcethat Heis. As little, however, can the laws of nature discredit faith in a first cause, which springs from a region at once beneath, above, and beyond phenomena. And our theistic faith is not aninference; it is apostulate: an axiomatic truth, affirmed on the report of that intuition, of which the root is planted so firmly in the soil of consciousness, that no form of the positivist philosophy can tear it thence. Let science, therefore, march as it will, and where it will, being hemmed in by the very laws of the universe which give rise to it, and of which it is the exposition, it cannot interfere with or encroach upon the theistic intuition. If there be a region behind phenomena and their laws, accessible to knowledge or to philosophic faith, no conclusion gathered from the scientific survey can touch it, whether to discredit or attest.
The fundamental doctrine of both the schools of nescience is the relativity of human knowledge, and that doctrine as taught by the Scottish psychologists (and notably by Scotland's greatest metaphysician since Hume, Sir William Hamilton) has been wrested out of their hands, and turned against the theism they also advocate. Mr. Spencer would exhibit them all as 'hoist with their own petard.' It is necessary, therefore, to enquire whether this doctrine of relativity favours a theory of nescience, or warrants a counter-doctrine of the knowledge of the infinite, or is indifferent to both.
With us the relativity of knowledge is a first principle in philosophy. But to affirm it, is merely to assert that all that is known occupies a fixed relation to the knower. It is to affirm nothing as to the character or contents of his knowledge. As regards the objects known we further maintain that they are apprehended only in their differences and contrasts. We know self only in its contrast with what is not self, a particular portion of matter only in its relation to other portions which surround and transcend it. So also and for the same reason, with the finite and the infinite. The one is not a positive notion, and the other negative; the one clear, and the other obscure. Both are equally clear, both sharply defined, so far as they are given us in relation. If the one notion suffers, the other suffers with it. In short, if we discharge any notion from all relation with its opposite or contrary, it ceases to be a notion at all. The finite, if we take it alone, is as inconceivable as the infinite, if we take it alone; phenomena by themselves are as incogitable as substance by itself: and the relative as a notion cut off from the absolute which antithetically bounds it, is not more intelligible than the absolute as an essence absolved from all relations. And thus the entire fabric of our knowledge being founded on contrasts, and arising out of differences, involving in its every datum another element hidden in the background, may be said to be a vast double chain of relatives mutually complementary. It looks ever in two directions, without and within, above and beneath, before and after.
We maintain, therefore, that we have positive knowledge of the infinite. Whosoever says that the infinite cannot be known contradicts himself. For he must possess a notion of it before he can deny that he hasa positive knowledge of it, before he can predict aught regarding it. And so he says he cannot know what he says, though in another fashion, that he does know. It could never have come within the horizon of hypothetical knowledge, never have become the subject of discussion, unless positively (though inadequately) known; and thus the infinite stands as the antithetic background of the finite. Sir William Hamilton's and Dr. Mansel's doctrine of nescience, no less than Mr. Spencer's, we regard as absolute intellectual suicide. It implies that we have no knowledge of that which we are compelled to conceive in order to know that it is unknowable. We could not compare the two notions, if the one were unthinkable. For if all knowledge is a relation, in each act of knowing I must know both the terms related. The one term causes us no difficulty, being admitted on both sides. But the other which so perplexes our teachers of nescience, is, it must be owned, as to its contents a somewhat vague residuum. It is without an outline. It is not given us with the luminous clearness that its correlative is given. Nevertheless, it is a real term in a real relation. The moment we proceed to analyse our consciousness of the relative, we find it as the penumbra of the notion, its shadowy complement. We may never obtain more than a vague, and what we might call a moonlight view of it: nevertheless behold it we do; apprehend it we must.
But it is objected that as human knowledge is always finite, we can never have a positive apprehension of an infinite object; that as the subject of knowledge is necessarily finite, its object must be the same. Let us sift this objection.
I may know an object in itself as related to me the knower, or I may know it in its relation to other objects also known by me the knower. But in both and in all cases, knowledge is limited by the power of the knower, therefore it is always finite knowledge. But it may be finite knowledge of an infinite object, incomplete knowledge of a complete object, partial knowledge of a transcendent object. The boundary or fence may be within the faculty of the knower, while the object he imperfectly grasps may not only be infinite, but be known to transcend his faculties in the very act of conscious knowledge. For example, I may know that a line is infinite while I have only a finite knowledge of the points along which that line extends. And similarly my knowledge of the Infinite Mind is partial and incomplete, but it is clear and defined. It is definite knowledge of an indefinite object. We may have a partial knowledge not only of a part, but of the whole. Thus, I have a partial knowledge of a circle, because I know only a few of its properties; but it is not to a part of the circle that my partial knowledge extends, but to the whole which I know in part. In like manner as the Infinite Object has no parts, it is not of a portion of His being that we possess a partial knowledge, but of the whole. We know Him as we know the circle, inadequately yet directly, immediately, though in part. He is dark to us by excess of light. Thus, although our knowledge of the infinite may bevivified, it is not reallyenlargedby goading our thought to wider and wider imaginings, or spurring our faculties onwards over areas of space, or intervals of time. That knowledge is directly revealed while we are apprehending any finite object, as its correlative and complementary antithesis.
Again it is said that to know the infinite is to know the sum of all reality, and as that would include the universe and its source together, it must necessarily include on the one hand the knower along with his knowledge, and on the other all the possibilities of existence. The possibility of our knowing the Infinite Being as distinct from the universe is denied, since infinite existence is said to be coextensive with the whole universe of things. But that the source of the universe must necessarily exhaust existence and contain within himself all actual being is a mere theoretic assumption. The presence of the finite does not limit the infinite as if the area of the latter were contracted by so much of the former as exists within it. For the relation of the infinite being to the finite is not similar to the relation between infinite space and a segment of it. It is true that so much of finite space is so much cut out of the whole area of infinite space—though, if the remainder is infinite, the portion removed will not really limit it. But as our intuition of the infinite has no resemblance to our knowledge of space, we believe that the relations which their respective objects sustain have no affinity with each other. The intuition of God is a purely spiritual revelation, informing us not of the quantity but of the quality of the supreme being in the universe. And to affirm that the finite spirit of man standing in a fixed relation to the infinite spirit of God limits it, by virtue of that relation, is covertly to introduce a spatial concept into a region to which it is utterly foreign, and which it has no right to enter.[16]
We therefore maintain, in opposition to the teachers of nescience, that a positive knowledge of the Infinite is competent to man, because involved in his very consciousness of the finite. And when psychologically analysed, this intuition explains and vindicates itself.
But there is another aspect, no less important, in which it may be regarded. To say that the infinite is wholly inscrutable by man, is to limit not man's faculty only, but the possibilities of the divine nature itself. If God cannot unveil himself to man through the openings of those clouds which ordinarily conceal His presence, can His resources be illimitable, can He be the infinitely perfect? It is said, on the one hand, that the unknown Force reveals itself in the laws of nature, but cannot disclose its essence; and, on the other, that the infinite being reveals His handiwork, from which He permits us to infer His existence, but cannot reveal Himself. Such assertions are either subtle instances of verbal jugglery or manifest contradictions in terms. All revelation of whatever kind, presupposes some knowledge of the revealer. That knowledge may be imparted the moment the revelation is made, or prior to it, and from an independent source; but no revelation could be made, were the being to whom it was addressed ignorant of the source whence it came. Is there really any special difficulty in supposing that the infinite intelligence can directly disclose His nature to a creature fashioned in His image, the disclosure quickening the latent power of intuition, which, thus touched from above, springs forth to meet its source and object?
The question between the theist and the positivist is brought to its real issue when the latter is forced to recognise that the God of theism is no inference from phenomena, but if we may so speak, apostulate of intuition. And hence it is so necessary to concede frankly the failure of the teleological argument from final causes, as well as the ontological argument from the necessary notions of the intellect. We not only admit, we are forward to proclaim that by inductive science we can never rise higher than phenomena; and hence at the end of our researches we should be no nearer God than at the outset. But though we cannot reach Him by induction, we may do so before we begin our induction, by simply giving the intuition of the soul free scope to rise towards its source. And to dislodge the theist from his position, his opponent must succeed in proving that this intuition, whose root springs from a region beneath phenomena, and which in its flight outsoars phenomena, is as baseless and unauthenticated as a dream.
There are two principles, one of them metaphysical, and the other scientific, which are helpful at this point in our inquiry. These are the principle of causality, and the doctrine of the correlation of forces, or the conservation of energy. We cannot discuss them at any length, but we shall briefly state their nature, and their relation to the theistic intuition.
The phenomena of nature (using that term in its widest sense) are not only a series of sequences, they are also the revelation of a mysterious Power or living Force. All that we perceive by the senses, and, inductively register in nature, is a series of phenomena, of which the laws of nature are the generalized expression and interpretation. But every change is a revelation not only of succession, but of causal power. No matter where we take our stand along the line of sequence, mental or material, always and at every point this conviction is flashed in upon the mind, 'there is a hidden Power behind.' But we instinctively ask, 'what is this power or force determining the changes of the universe?' Is it material or spiritual? Can the force which moves the particles of matter be material? We do not perceive it by the senses, which take note only of the modified phenomena of matter. It is neither visible, nor audible, nor tangible. It is invisible; must we not therefore believe it to be incorporeal? We cannot reach it by analysis. We conclude that it is not physical but hyper-physical, not natural but supranatural. We have an intellectual intuition of it. It announces its presence in every change that occurs, but it nowhere shows its face as a material entity. It is a mystic agency endlessly revealing its existence, everywhere concealing its source. We watch its evolutions, but it escapes our scrutiny; we try to detain it, and we find that it is gone; yet it reappears in the next thing we examine, and in the very phenomena of our search for it; the agency is manifest, but it is the Agent we wish to discover. Must it be, like the sangreal of mediæval legend, sought for in many lands, but nowhere found by any wanderer in quest of it?
Before attempting an answer, we shall state the scientific principle referred to,which is entitled to rank as one of the greatest of modern discoveries. All the forms of force are convertible amongst themselves. They are all ultimately identical, and are endlessly passing and repassing into each other: the mechanical, the chemical, the vital, are all one. 'The many'are'the one,' its varying phrases, its protean raiment. In short, there is but a single supreme force, ubiquitous and plastic, the fountain of all change. It now evolves itself in heat, now masks itself in light, reveals itself in electricity, or sleeps in the law of gravitation: one solitary pulse within Nature's vast machine, and behind the barrier of her laws. This force, thus endlessly changing, is neither diminished nor replenished; it is not added to, nor subtracted from; it is perennial, and is its own conservator. It is not synthesis, but analysis that has resolved it into unity. But can synthesis combine its manifold phases under one regulative notion? In realizing its general character we cannot discharge from our minds in turn all the known features of particular forces, so as to leave a vague resultant common to all, yet especially identified with none. The diverse types must have anarchetype. What is that archetype?
It seems to us self-evident that we must seek for it, not in nature, but in man; not in the lower plane of the cosmical forces, but in the humanwill, the root of our personality. Comte begins with the lowermost grade of force (to wit, the mechanical), and ascends with it, bringing all the finer and more subtle forms under its sway, and interpreting the higher by the lower. We, on the contrary, begin with the highest known type, that which lies nearest ourselves, with which we are earliest acquainted, and whence we derive our notion of force beyond ourselves; and we descend with it as a light to guide our footsteps amongst the lower. This we hold to be the correct, to be indeed the only admissible philosophical procedure. If it is only through the consciousness of force within ourselves that we have any intelligible notion of it in nature (and are thus first initiated into the idea), we must come back to the will for an explanation of what the one force external to us is. Our own personality supplies us with the archetype of which we are in search. We thus throw the plank across the chasm between man and nature; we interpret the latter by the former (not the reverse); and the discovery of the correlation of forces, and the conservation of energy, becomes the scientific equivalent of the doctrine of philosophical theology, that one supreme Will pervades the universe, that in nature lives and moves and has its being.
If we can vindicate this procedure, and prove our right to interpret the forces, if not the phenomena of nature, as the outcome of a living will, the energy of a nature like our own, our goal is reached. But, say the Comtists, that is a mere imagination of theology, the creation of a superstitious mind, 'transcendant audacity,' 'a form of the mind's own throwing,' just as much as the teleological explanation of nature. It has been spoken of as presumptuous, as well as fanciful, betokening a lack of humility and philosophic caution; it being sheer egotism to interpret nature by what we are, and a return to the Protagorean doctrine that 'man is the measure of all things.' In reply, we give only hints and suggestions, for the region is high, and the atmosphere rarefied.
In the first place, it is to be observed that we do not take one class of phenomena to explain the inner nature of another class; the phenomena of will to explain, say those of electricity, in outward nature; for in that case we might as well, with just as much reason and plausibility, with just as much authority, take the latter class of phenomena to explain the former; and we should learn quite as much, that is to say, we should learn nothing at all. But we take a certain specialnoumenalforce, one that is transcendant but revealed in our innermost life and consciousness, in the will'sautocracy, and by the help and suggestion of this known force we explain (not the phenomena of Nature nor her laws), but the darker, the unknown noumenal Force, the pulse of nature.
In the next place, it is also to be observed that as the human will, while noumenally free, is phenomenally under law and governed most rigidly by motives, so the force which we interpret as the expression of personal will in nature, acts in perfect conformity to law. The laws of nature are the expression of its bondage. The minor scattered forces, which may be spoken of as the messengers and servitors of the supreme will, are no more fitful but no less capricious than is the human will, in which the causal nexus is not broken while it remains free. The supernatural reveals itself in an orderly fashion through the natural. Its will is expressed by law.
In the third place, so far as bridging the chasm between the two orders of phenomena, it is not accomplished by the poetic intuition (to which we shall immediately refer), but by the human intellect, it seemslegitimated byanalogy. In our inductive interpretation of nature we perceive resemblances, and infer a likeness. 'Analogy is the soul of induction.' If, therefore, it be an illicit act of the reason which ventures to trace a parallel between nature and man, and interpret the former by the latter, how fares it with the foundations of human knowledge, and with the pillars of science herself? Is not all physical science the rational interpretation of nature? If we may not read the meaning of the great central force in the light of that force which we carry in the will, how can we warrantably interpret the laws of nature, in the light of that which we carry in the intellect? Are we not left in uncertainty as to the character of the entire fabric of our knowledge? The oracle is altogether dumb. If the way which seems to lead from the interior of the human will into the temple of outward nature be really acul-de-sac, what warrant have we for opening a door on the other side, and walking down the avenues of positive science, imagining that in these pathways we shall find the only key to nature? To bring the analogy into effect, let us take two instances: the force with which I discharge a projectile and the force of gravitation. The former proceeds from the will, which is the originating power, though mechanical and physiological causes intervene. Since, therefore, similar effects have similar or resembling causes, it is a strictly analogical inference that as the effects correspond, the causes will resemble each other, and the essential part of the correspondence will not consist in the apparatus used (the phenomena), but in the will underlying, which is noumenal.[17]
In the fourth place, as the force of the will is both higher and better known than the mechanical, chemical, and vital forces of nature, we are warranted in interpreting the lower by the higher, and not in reducing the higher to the level of the lower. As we ascend in nature from the lowest vital forms to the highest type of organization, we find that the higher is not only an advance upon the lower, but that itincludesit; and no naturalist would describe a vertebrated animal by that which it held in common with the mollusca. That in which it differs from the types beneath it is held to be its distinctive and descriptive feature. When, therefore, we reach man at the top of the scale, separated by a distinct endowment from the classes beneath him, yet conserving all their main characteristics in his nature, and describe him not by what he has in common with the lower animals, but by that in which he differs from them, we act on the principle of selecting the highest feature we can find, and taking it as our guide. And similarly when we are in search of the Supreme Principle of the universe, thecausa causarum, we interpret it by the highest features in human nature, because that nature is the highest with which we are experimentally acquainted. And we may validly throw the burden of proof upon the positivist, and ask why the great cosmical force that rules in nature should be radically different from the volitional force which is the root of our personality? Reverting again to the force of gravitation, why should it not be the outcome in nature of a Will vaster than man's, resembling, yet transcending it? To what does that force amount? The phenomenalist cannot arrest our inquiry by simply drawing the veil of nescience over it. He cannot slip a lid over the end of our telescope turned skyward by merely exclaiming 'mystery of mysteries, all is mystery.' And it seems to us that we must either divest the word gravitation of all intelligible meaning, or while perceiving the unlikeness at a glance, we must 'invest it with a human orquasi-humanvitality.'
Quasi, for again in the fifth place, this all-pervasive protean force assumes many a phase which is exceedingly unlike the operations of a personal power. In many of her moods, Nature has the countenance of the sphinx. She is sublimely silent as to her inmost essence. Cold, stern, inflexible, neutral, taciturn, apathetic—all these terms seem applicable to her at times, as we gaze across the chasm between man and the universe. But the regulative idea, which we find in the analogy of the human will, is not to be regarded as exhaustive or exclusive of other notions which may unite with it. The personal force may at the same time be more than personal. Its highest quality becomes to us what we have called its regulative idea; but it contains elements within the infinite compass of its nature, different from those features of which we find the mirror in ourselves.[18]It is sufficient if we know that thecausa causarum, the all-pervading life of the universe, can in any sense be describedas personal, that we can speak of 'the soul of nature,' without being the dupes of a fanciful analogy, dealing merely with figure and hyperbole. Be it admitted by every theist that there are myriad facets which the subtle life of nature may present to the beholder. We not only may, we must think of it as