FOOTNOTES:

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.

[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.

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 thetruth 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 certainof 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 philosophyis 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 anassumption 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 aboutthe 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'sword 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. Thereforephilosophy 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, notin 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 theuniverse 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 unlessWhite 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 notknowthat 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 asthey 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 assumptionshe 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 onesavantare subject to confirmation or correction by others.

[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 onesavantare subject to confirmation or correction by others.

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 itselfin 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.

The means by which this demonstration is supposed to be effected is the law of the survival of the fittest. It is shown that the law of organic life isthe survival of the fittest, and that survival is the consequence of adaptation to environment. These two laws are of course uniformities of Nature. It follows, then, that there must be a constant tendency on the part of the environment to secure better and better results in the way of organic life, for it only permits the survival of the fittest and the increasingly fittest. Man is an organism, and man's good therefore consists in his adapting himself to his environment. Thus the laws of morality are shown to be but one special case of a certain uniformity of Nature, viz. the law of adaptation to environment, which applies to all organisms and not merely to man's.

The argument, however, is in the first place circular: "fittest to survive" simply means "best adapted to the environment." Doubtless the best adapted to the environment are best adapted to the environment, but it does not in the least follow that they are therefore morally or æsthetically best. There is, therefore, no such constant tendency on the part of the environment to secure moral progress as is required by the Optimistic Evolutionist.

In the next place, on its own showing, the argument ends by proving that morality—what ought to be—is nothing more or less than what is. And though that is exactly what the optimist undertook to show—and exactly what is undertaken by every one who engages to show that faith is unnecessary in morality because the laws of morality can bededuced from the facts of science—still it may be doubted whether the conclusion "whatever is, is right" is exactly either a law of morality or a uniformity of Nature.

The question at issue between science and faith is, as we have said, not whether it is possible to gain trustworthy knowledge of the world without faith, without making assumptions, for science itself is built on faith in the reality of things and the uniformity of Nature, but whether the assumptions of science are the only assumptions that we need make. One way of proving that they need not be assumed would be to show that they can be proved by science. But that way failure lies, as is shown by the optimist's ill-success. But there is yet another way of cutting down the common faith of mankind to the narrower creed of science, and that is to show that the remaining articles of faith, the assumptions not necessary to science, are inconsistent with science. That is the method adopted by the Pessimistic Evolutionist. He does, indeed, go further with the common faith than the optimist did. Impressed by the failure of the optimist to exhibit the laws of morality as the mere outcome of the laws of Nature, and the reality of our moral ideals as derived from the reality of material things, he accepts the common faith of mankind in the law of morality as being just as rational as his and their faith in the uniformity of Nature. But having taken this one step,having adopted this additional article of faith on faith, he refuses to go any further. He accepts without evidence the assumption that there are certain things which we ought to do, just as he accepts without evidence the assumption that Nature is uniform. But he refuses to accept the assumption that will is free, because that is opposed to the evidence. He admits that we ought to choose certain things, but denies that we can choose them; and his forecast of the future is in accordance with the premises from which it is inferred. It is a pessimistic picture of man being steadily driven to do the things that he ought not, ending with the triumph of what must be over what ought to be, of physical necessity over the morally right.

The object of science is to discover what we ought to believe, to substitute reasoned knowledge for ignorant conjecture; and the fundamental faith of science is that we ought not to believe anything that is contrary to the uniformity of Nature. Nothing ought to shake our faith in that article of our creed: no amount of evidence will convince a really scientific man, a true believer in the faith, that any alleged violation of the uniformity of Nature can be real. No amount of evidence would be sufficient, for instance, to warrant the belief in miracles. Either the alleged violation is only apparent, and will, with further knowledge, turn out to be a fresh instance of the truth that Nature is uniform; or elsethe evidence will prove on examination to be untrustworthy. To admit that any evidence could suffice for such a purpose would be to admit that the uniformity of Nature is not the fundamental reality in the world of science, or the ultimate base of our knowledge of what does actually take place in Nature.

A little reflection is enough to show that this is an entirely self-consistent line to take up. No amount of evidence can shake what is itself built on no evidence. If the belief in the uniformity of Nature depended on evidence in its favour, then evidence against it might overthrow it. But, as it rests on faith, it is superior to evidence.

Now, what is true and self-consistent in the case of science in its own sphere is equally so in the case of morality. It is the common belief of mankind that we can, and are able to, choose what is right; and just as no amount of evidence will convince a really scientific mind that a violation of the uniformity of Nature is possible, so there is no evidence which will convince a really moral man that he could not have done right when he did do what was wrong. "We ought, therefore we can," does not exactly express the facts. Rather, it is the other way: we can love, be merciful, tender, compassionate, therefore we ought. Liberty itself is a law to the free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of Him "whose service is perfect freedom."

The pessimist, then, who thinks, by producing evidence, to show that what ought to be cannot be, is adopting in morality a form of argument which in science, when it is a question of miracles, he condemns as inherently vicious and illogical. Further, the evidence which he does produce is not altogether above suspicion. It takes the form of the statement that the uniformity of Nature is a uniformity of necessity and not of a will freely purposing a good end by means of a voluntary uniformity.

If that statement could be proved to be a logical consequence from the facts of science, then it would indeed be proved that one article in the common creed of mankind was inconsistent with the rest. But, as we have argued already, it is not implied either in the admitted uniformity of Nature or in any of the facts deducible from it. To revert to the simile of the chess-board, it is as though one should say that because Black could not have moved his knight unless White had moved his pawn, therefore White was bound to move the pawn.

We cannot, therefore, consider that the pessimist has succeeded in showing that the articles of the common faith which he accepts require in their logical consequences the rejection of the rest. In saying that man ought to choose the right, but has no choice between right and wrong, he is not formulating a consequence of the facts of science, he issimply assuming without evidence the existence of a universal necessity of which the changes in Nature and the actions of man are but the varying though inevitable expression—an assumption which invalidates morality without adding to the truth of science.

There are those whose belief in demonology furnishes them with a reason and an excuse for the misdeeds of man. The belief in necessity exhibits demonology as a doctrine of science: man would fain do right, but the uniformity, which is the necessity, of Nature allows him no choice. It is Nature, the environment, which is the abode and headquarters of necessity, the enemy of the ethical process, the arch-demon of scientific demonology. And the proof that he exists is that he must. What must be, must be, because it must.

The attempt to render morality scientific ends in a result fatal to morality; and the reason seems clear. It is that science is not morality, nor are the principles of science those of morality. Science is knowledge, morality is action. Knowledge, to be knowledge, has to presuppose that Nature is uniform and that the things it deals with are real. So, too, action, to be moral, requires the belief that our moral ideals are real and that we are free to choose between good and evil. The optimist who would have us believe that science includes all the remaining articles of the common faith, and the pessimistwho argues that it excludes them, alike fall into the error of imagining that science, the knowledge of what is, is the whole of knowledge, and that the assumptions which are required in order to describe what is will enable us to do and to know what ought to be. Science, which is a true description of part of our experience, becomes a misleading half-truth when it is offered as an exhaustive account of the whole. If, knowing the rules of chess and having a record of the moves in a solitary (and unfinished) game, we refused to inquire why the pieces moved, on the ground that if we succeeded in the inquiry we should have made no addition to our knowledge of the way in which the pieces do move, we should never understand the game. But we should be nearer the truth than if we assumed that a piece caused its own movements or those of the other pieces; and that will or purpose was quite incompatible with the uniformity of their movements.

The fact is that we have to play the game—we are not merely spectators—and as a matter of fact, also, men do assume that they can freely choose what moves they will make and that there are certain moves which they ought to make. The assumptions which they make, not exactly for the sake of playing the game, but in the act of playing it, are neither included in the assumptions of science nor excluded by them. To play the game at all,it is necessary to have some knowledge (or to act as though we had some knowledge) of how the pieces move, to know that bishops move diagonally, that bodies tend to gravitate at a certain rate. Man cannot indeed act or make the slightest movement without deflecting or starting some of the processes of Nature and of his own psychological mechanism: it is through them that he operates, and by means of them that he plays the game. In the beginning he has but little knowledge of what the consequences will be if he touches this or that spring of the mechanism. Yet the knowledge is necessary for him, if he is to play the game as he ought,i.e.to attain the moral ideals of which he is more or less (less at first) conscious. In acquiring this knowledge he uses his faculty of abstraction, that is his power of concentrating his attention on one aspect of a thing or problem, to the exclusion of the rest, in order to gain a clearer knowledge of it by giving it his undivided and undistracted attention. Thus, in order to understand how the mechanism of Nature or human nature actually does act, he concentrates his attention on the working of that mechanism in the abstract,i.e.wholly apart from the fact that it is at times started, at times interrupted, or redirected for the sake of realising (or thwarting) his ideals. The knowledge thus gained is science, and is, according to the agnostic, the optimist, and the pessimist, the only knowledge that man can have.

But it is clear that man can and does reflect, not only on the way in which the mechanism acts, but also on the use to which he puts it and the relation of that use to his ideals. These reflections may add nothing to his science, to his knowledge that rooks when moved must be moved parallel to the sides of the board, but they do add to his knowledge of the game. In fine, man gains a more important part of that knowledge by or in playing the game than he does by studying the rules. The rules acquaint him with the resources which are at his disposal, the capacities of the various pieces and the powers of the various forces of Nature or human nature. But it would be absurd to pass this off as a complete knowledge of the game. We may, by playing the game, add only to our knowledge of how the game ought to be played, of how the mechanism of Nature and human nature ought to be used, and not add to our knowledge of the fact that if and when the mechanism is set agoing it acts in the way described by science. But the one kind of knowledge, though not science, is just as true as the other, on the same terms, viz. if you accept the assumptions presupposed by it.

Science, then, is from the very terms of its constitution abstract,i.e.essentially incomplete. The very terms on which alone science is possible are that it shall study one aspect only of Nature, the mechanical, and shall ascertain what conclusionsfollow if we confine our attention to the mechanical factors and neglect certain other factors—the freedom of the will, final causes, and the moral and æsthetic ideals—which, though voluntarily neglected for the moment, are yet known to be important factors in the game of life as it is played by us. As often as we act, however, we set those factors, temporarily neglected by science, in action; and there is no reason why, when we have acted, we should not reflect upon our action, disengage the assumptions which are presupposed by our actions, and then reconsider the world and life in the light of the assumptions on which our actions and the actions of all men are based, viz. the freedom of the will and the reality of our ideals. Thus viewed, the world becomes the scene and life the opportunity of using the forces of Nature and our own psychological mechanism for the purpose of achieving the ideal.

But free-will and the moral ideal are not the only factors in the world as it is presented to the common consciousness, or in life as it is carried on by humanity, which are neglected by science, and which have to be restored by subsequent reflection, if we wish to see life true and see it whole. Science declines to entertain the question why things happen, or whether there is any purpose in events; and moral faith only guarantees that there is that which man ought to do, and that he is free to do it. Butscience, in neglecting the action of final causes, omits a factor which not only must be replaced before we can have any adequate understanding of the part which man plays in the world, but which, by the testimony of the common consciousness of mankind, manifests itself in the phenomena of Nature.

The description which science gives of the sequences and co-existences of material and physical phenomena is consistent with itself, and is all that is required by the assumptions of science. It is only when we reflect upon the further assumptions which we make, or rather act upon as moral agents, that we find science inadequate or—if it professes to be the whole account of the world and man—misleading. And it is only by restoring those factors for which our moral consciousness is the evidence that we can remedy the defect or correct the error. The attempt made by the optimist to dispense with the testimony of consciousness to the reality of the moral law, and the attempt of the pessimist to dispense with the freedom of the will, were both failures.

In the same way, both the scientific and the moral interpretation of the world are judged by the religious consciousness to be abstract, and are seen, when viewed in the light of its presuppositions, to be inadequate, if not misleading. The inadequacy of the moral assumptions which are made by the common consciousness of mankind is manifest,when we reflect that while those assumptions serve to decide the question—left open by science—as to the "Why?" of human actions, they do not decide the same question as to the events of Nature, but leave it open as it was left by science, whether final or mechanical causation is the ultimate explanation of Nature.

The problem what we are to do and to think in life and of life is one which for its solution requires that the whole of our experience should be taken into account: if it is to account for the sum total of the facts of which we are conscious, it must take for its basis the totality of those facts and nothing less extensive. It is true that the very vastness of the field to be surveyed—the whole of the common consciousness of mankind—makes a division of labour necessary, and compels us to concentrate ourselves at different times on different aspects of it, and to treat each of the phases of our experience—religious, moral, and scientific experience—for the moment as though it alone existed. But it is equally true that this isolation of first one phase and then the other is merely a temporary device, designed and adopted for a purpose; and that that purpose is to enable us ultimately to bring the whole of our experience to bear on the problem of what to do and to think.

Legitimate as it is, when we are working at the details of the problem, to distinguish the moralconsciousness from the scientific, and the religious consciousness from the moral, it is necessary to bear in mind that these distinctions are merely abstractions. In thought we may and do so distinguish, but in fact and experience consciousness is a unity. The same man who is conscious of sense-phenomena is also conscious of moral obligation: the "I" which is conscious of moral experience is the same "I" that is conscious of spiritual experience.

Further, the evidence which we have for the three kinds of experience—scientific, moral, and spiritual—is the same: it is the evidence of consciousness—the only evidence that we can have of anything. That witness, if discredited at all, is discredited for all in all. If discredited, it must be by its own testimony, for we have no other witness which can give evidence against it. But we hope that it is true: the man of science is so certain of its truth, in the department in which he is most familiar with it and has the best right to speak of it, that he lays it down as a rule that there simply can be no evidence of an exception to the uniformity of Nature. The moralist is equally certain that no exception to the law of moral obligation is possible; the religious mind that there can be none to the universality of the Divine love. To the unity of consciousness corresponds the unity of our faith in its trustworthiness. Scientific and moral faith are not different from religious faith; they are but phases of thesame. The common faith of mankind is not a synthesis formed artificially by adding the three together; on the contrary, the three are artificially distinguished by thought—they do not correspond to fact, but are abstractions from the facts, and are formed by the suppression of facts.

The religious consciousness is itself abstract; and as an abstraction,i.e.if taken to be the whole of what we know and feel and do, is capable of leading to false conclusions: no religious belief can stand permanently which runs counter to the facts of science or the moral faith of mankind. No amount of spiritual experience will add to our knowledge of chemistry or physics, or be valid evidence against any truth of science. It may serve to prevent the premature acceptance of something too hastily put forward as a scientific fact, in the same way that science may overthrow a belief erroneously supposed to be religious.

But though the religious consciousness is an abstraction, in the same sense that the scientific and moral consciousness are abstractions, each is valid in its own sphere; and the whole evidence of consciousness in all its three phases must be taken together, if we are to elicit any universal principles of thought and action, any unity in our experience, any purpose in evolution. From this point of view we shall expect to find a unity of experience corresponding to the unity of consciousness, and todiscover that there is a fundamental identity underlying the apparent diversity in that reality of which in consciousness we are aware. What gives this unity to experience is the permanence which we attribute to the real, in whatever way the real is apprehended: the real, whether apprehended in sense-experience or in moral conviction or in spiritual experience, is characterised by permanence, as distinguished from the passing feelings with which we view it and from the transient experience we have of it. The reality of the things of which we are aware through our senses is conceived as something permanent, and is implied to be so conceived by all theories of evolution which wish to be taken seriously. The permanence of moral obligation is not conceived by those who are genuinely convinced of its reality to vary or to come and go with the flickering gleams of our moral resolutions. Nor when spiritual light is withdrawn from our hearts is it supposed, by those who believe it to be the light of God's countenance, to be quenched for the time.

The fundamental identity of the real throughout its diversity is what is postulated by science when it explains the process of evolution by means of the law of continuity. It is equally postulated by the moral philosopher who claims objective validity for the moral law on the ground that it is the same for all rational minds. It is the faith of the religious mind which not only feels the Divine love in its ownheart, and finds it every time it obeys the conscience, but also divines it in the uniformity of Nature and throughout the process of evolution.

The identity of the real does not lie in the mere fact that we are conscious of it. The real things of which we are conscious have, indeed, as one feature common to them all, the fact that we are conscious of them. But the identity of the real is not created by nor a mere expression of the unity of our consciousness. It is not the understanding which makes Nature—save in the purely psychological way in which apperception does; on the contrary, the things of which we are conscious in sense-perception are given as independent of us, though sense-phenomena are obviously not. In the same way, the reality of the moral law is conceived, in the very act by which we recognise it as binding on us, to be something independent of us; nor is God's love towards us dependent on our merits, or existent only when we recognise it.

If, then, we are to gather up the permanence, the identity, and the independence of the real into the unity of a single principle, if we are to interpret the law of continuity in the light of the whole of our experience, we must look to the Divine will. In it we shall find the reality which is progressively revealed in the law of continuity; in it we shall find the permanence and the independence without which reality has no meaning; in it the changeless andeternal identity of Him whose property it is ever to have mercy and always to be the same. Then, perhaps, we may extend the principle of scientific method so as to include the whole of our experience and to make the whole of our knowledge truly scientific; for to the uniformity of Nature and of human nature we shall add the uniformity of the Divine nature, or, rather, we shall see in the former the expression of the latter. But it is not the agnostic who will thus enlarge the bounds of science, or open a page of knowledge rich with the spoils of faith.

The artificial nature of the abstraction which distinguishes the scientific from the moral and the religious consciousness, as well as the impossibility of simultaneously exercising faith and repressing it, is plainly exhibited in the optimistic interpretation of evolution. The premises from which it starts are faith in the uniformity of Nature and belief in the reality of material things. The conclusions which it reaches constitute anon sequiturif they are supposed to follow from the avowed premises, and only command assent when we tacitly assume certain moral and religious presuppositions which, if not avowed in the optimist's argument, are instinctively supplied by the moral and religious consciousness of the optimist's disciples. That the process of evolution on the whole has been and will be a process of progress follows logically enough from the optimist's avowed premises, if by progress we mean the survival of those best fitted to survive—that is, if we empty the notion of progress of all moral meaning. But as the conclusion that evolutionis progress is the conclusion which is necessary for the justification of the common faith of mankind, the illogical nature of the optimist's process of inference is apt to be overlooked in consideration of the satisfactory termination of his argument.

It is, however, necessary, in the interests of clearness of thought as well as of the moral and religious consciousness, that the conception of progress thus thoughtlessly emptied of meaning by the optimist should have its context restored. This service—a service essential as a preliminary to every theory of evolution—was rendered by one in whom the moral consciousness spoke with force—Professor Huxley. To him is due the demonstration that adaptation to environment, so far from being the cause of progress, counteracts it; so far from being man's ideal, it is that which resists the realisation of his ideals. Progress is effected, according to Professor Huxley, not by adaptation to but adaptation of the environment, and consists in approximating to the ideals of art and morality—which ideals are not accounted for, as ideals, by the fact that they are the outcome of evolution, because evil has been evolved as well as good. Why approximation to the ideal of religion—love of God as well as of one's neighbour—should not contribute to progress does not appear. If, however, we add it, and also add the ideal of science, viz. truth, then progress will be the continuous approximation to the idealsof truth, beauty, goodness, and holiness; and human evolution, so far as evolution is progress, will be the progressive revelation of the ideal in and to man.

Two things are implied in this conception of evolution: the first is that evolution may or may not in any given case be progress; the next that we have a means of judging, a canon whereby to determine, whether evolution is progress. Both points are illustrated by the argument of Professor Huxley, who uses the moral ideals as a test whereby to judge the process of evolution, and decides that evolution has been progressive in the past and will be regressive in the future. Strange to say, the reason why Professor Huxley maintains that evolution will be regressive is exactly the same reason that leads Mr. Herbert Spencer to maintain that it will be progressive. It is that the law of evolution is Necessity, that evolution is the outcome of mechanical causes. But in effect both arguments lead logically to the same conclusion, for the progress which is the outcome of Mr. Spencer's argument is not progress in the moral or any other sense of the word. In fine, progress is eventually impossible if evolution is due to mechanical causes; progress is conceivable only if we interpret the process of evolution teleologically and as expressing the operation of a final cause. Science, as such, declines to inquire whether there is any purposein evolution, and leaves it an open question. The moral consciousness affirms only that the process of evolution ought to make for good. The religious consciousness alone is in a position to say that its spiritual experience requires us to affirm that evolution, in accordance with the uniformity of the Divine nature, will be, in years to come as in ages past, a continuous movement towards the realisation of all that in its best moments the human heart holds most dear.

The argument that evolutionmustbe progress commits logical suicide, for in the very act of proving its conclusion it proves that progress is not progress. We are therefore left to face the fact that progress is only a possibility; and that amounts to saying that regress also is possible. What is implied therein will become clear if we return to the question of the nature of progress.

Progress is not the survival of the fittest to survive, but of the æsthetically or ethically fittest; not adaptation to the environment, but approximation to the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Those ideals are manifested in man, but not equally in all men; and the words and works of those men on whom they are most clearly impressed and by whom they are most faithfully expressed become the canon whereby we judge whether any tendency in art or morality is progressive or retrogressive. We cannot all make beautiful things or do heroic deeds, but wecan all appreciate them when made or done. To appreciate them, however, is to judge that they do come nearer to the ideal than anything else of the kind which we have yet known. Thus the ultimate court of appeal for each one of us is not the ideal as manifested by man, but the ideal as revealed to each of us. True it is that, until we saw that particular work of art or that particular instance of love, we had no idea what beauty or love could be. But that makes no difference to the fact that we feel for ourselves how much nearer it comes to the ideal than anything we had any idea of before. It may henceforth be the standard by which we shall measure other things, but in adopting it we measure it ourselves, and measure it not by itself, but in relation to the ideal. And what shall we say of the artist himself? By what does he measure the work of his predecessors and judge that it is not the best that can yet be done, if he does not measure it by the ideal which is revealed more perfectly to him than to them?

But the perfect work of art or love, when done, becomes not merely the canon by which to test progress; it becomes itself the cause of progress, both because of its more perfect revelation of the ideal and because of the emulation which it arouses in others to go and do likewise. They likewise strive after the ideal and labour for its sake: it is the final cause of their endeavours, the purpose oftheir attempts; and were there no such final cause there would be no progress. The ideal is a principle both of thought and action, the test of knowledge and the source of progress. Truth is the ideal of science: approximation to truth is that for which the man of science labours and that in which he conceives that scientific progress lies. The gravitation formula not only expresses a wide-reaching truth, but has acted as an incentive to many attempts to extend it to the domain of chemistry, and serves as an ideal yet to be rivalled in other branches of science. But science and progress in science are alike impossible, if consciousness and experience be discredited, or if the ideal of science be not real,i.e.if the laws of science have not the permanence, the independence, and the self-identity which are the attributes of the real, but are as transient as the minds that discovered them, exist only when thought of by man, and are not really the same at different times. But if these ideals, whether of truth, beauty, or goodness, are thus real, then they are "our" ideals only in the sense that we are aware of them and adopt them, not in the sense that we make them; they are ours because they are present in the common consciousness of mankind, but not in the sense that they are created by that consciousness. They are revealed to man before they are manifested by man.

Professor Huxley's definition of progress cuts at theroot of two misconceptions as to its nature, which, though mutually inconsistent, are both widely spread. One is that the latest products of time, simply because they are the latest, are superior to all that has preceded. The other is that to know the origins of a thing will best enable us to assign its value. The tendency of the one is to result in the idea that because a thing has been evolved it must be superior; of the other to lead to the conclusion that because a thing has been evolved out of certain elements it cannot be superior to them. The truth is that the mere fact that a thing has been evolved—be it an institution, a mode of life, or a disease—does not in itself prove either that the thing is or is not an advance on that out of which it was evolved. Regressive metamorphosis, degeneration, pathological developments—physiological, mental, moral, and religious—are all processes of evolution, but are not progress. A society in its decay, or an art in its decline, is evolved out of a previous healthier state or more flourishing period, but is not because later therefore better. Nor, on the other hand, does it follow, because the earliest manifestations of a tendency are the lowest, and can be shown by the theory of evolution to be so, that no progress has been made in the process of evolution. The artistic impulse in its earliest manifestations, in children and in savages, is rude enough; but it would be absurd to say, therefore, that art in its perfection has no more value than inits origins, that the Hermes of Praxiteles is on a level with a misshapen idol from the South Sea islands.

If the continuity of evolution does not warrant us in assigning the same value, æsthetic or moral, to all the links, highest and lowest, in the chain, still less does it authorise or require us to deny all value to the lowest. On the contrary, we should rather see in the lowest what it has of the highest, than look in the highest for the lowest we can find. We should beware lest in reducing everything to its lowest terms we prove to have been seeking simply to bring it to our own level, when at the cost of a little more generosity we might have raised ourselves somewhat nearer to the ideal prefigured even in the lowest stage of the evolution of love, of beauty, of piety or of goodness. Indeed, as a mere matter of logic, it is impossible to state the nature of a cause accurately, quite apart from any question of estimating its value, until or unless we know the effect which it produces. It is not only that we may underrate or entirely overlook the importance of a thing, so long as we are ignorant that it is a factor largely influencing some result in which we are interested; but, until we know what effects it is capable of producing, we do not know what the thing is. We could not be said to have knowledge of a drug if we did not know what its effects were. Nor is that knowledge to be acquired by analysingthe causes which produce the drug. It is not from the mechanical causes which give rise to a thing that we can learn what a thing is: no amount of knowledge of the properties of hydrogen and oxygen would enable us to predicta priorithe nature of the compound which is formed when electricity is passed through two molecules of the former and one of the latter; nor is the least light thrown upon the properties of water by our knowledge of its constituent elements: on the other hand, our knowledge of them is materially and serviceably increased when we learn what they are capable of producing in combination. We learn most truly what a thing is from observing what it becomes, what use it subserves, what end it answers, what purpose it fulfils—in a word, when we know not its mechanical but its final cause. In biology, knowledge of an organ means knowledge of its function—that is, of its purpose; and evolutional biology also teaches that function is the cause of the organ.

It is by observing what a thing becomes that we learn the part it may hereafter play in the general scheme of things, and come to know its real nature, and estimate it at its real value. Thus our estimate of the value of such an institution as "taboo" goes up, and our knowledge of it is increased, when we recognise in it one of the early manifestations of the sense of moral obligation on its negative side. Again, in tracing the evolution of religion it isimpossible to know which of the various rites and ceremonies, practised by a savage tribe in its dealings with the supernatural, are religious and which non-religious, without taking into consideration the question, What do such customs tend to develop into? Until we know that, and until we can say whether what is evolved out of them is religious or non-religious—a question which we cannot answer unless we know what religion is—we cannot be said to understand the nature of the savage rites that we are studying. But it is not from the origins of art, religion, or morality that we shall gain the answer to the question what art, morality, or religion is; for the question must be answered before we can recognise the origins when we see them, and can only be answered by reference to the ideal, which is the test and final cause not only of progress, but of the real.

The ideal is a principle both of thought and of action. As a principle of thought it is the test by which we determine whether any given movement is progressive or regressive, and whether any given thing is what it appears or is alleged to be. As a principle of action it is that for which we strive, the purpose with which we act, the cause of any progress that we make. If we are not prepared to maintain that everything which takes place is an advance upon what preceded, we require some test whereby to distinguish what is progress from whatis not, and we admit that progress is a possibility which may or may not be realised, and it becomes of interest to inquire on what conditions its realisation depends.

If, as Professor Huxley maintains, the test of progress is approximation to the ideal, then one condition of progress is that man shall be conscious, to whatever extent is necessary for the purpose, of the ideal, shall feel that the ideal of love, tenderness, compassion, justice, truth, beauty, etc., is a thing for him to strive for, an end for him to attain. To the chosen few—the great artists, the moral or religious reformer—a sense of the ideal is dealt in a larger measure than to the rest of men. By the chosen few it is manifested to the many. But it does not become the cause of progress, unless it leavens the mass, unless they too are inspired by it to do better and be better. In a word, when, or if, ever the ideal has been manifested in its fulness, it is not a fresh revelation which is necessary for progress, but fresh conviction in us and renewed determination. Indeed, so long as we do not act up to the light that we have, even an imperfect revelation of the ideal may serve for imperfect beings.

So far, then, as the genius in art or science, or the reformer in religion or morals, is the cause of the progress that is made by his school, his disciples, and them that follow after, it is clear that he is thecause and not the product of evolution. It is his works or words which inspire his followers with a fresh sense of the reality of the ideal and a fresh resolve to devote their lives to the pursuit of art or the service of science. But it is only because his perfect work is felt by them, judging for themselves, to realise the ideal that it has this effect on them; and they could not judge it to approach the ideal more closely than anything known to them before, unless they had some surmise, however vague, of the ideal, with which to compare this work, perfect as it seems to them. It is not necessary to suppose that this vague surmise existed, or if it existed that it was attended to, previously: it may have been first called into existence or into notice by the contemplation of the master's work, but its presence, however evoked, is attested by the judgment that his work does come nearest to the ideal. The manifestation of the masterpiece may be the occasion of this fresh revelation of the ideal, but the revelation must be made if the work is to be judged highest and is to inspire the disciple.

Back to Index Next