According to this argument, then, the living unitsof the animal organism resemble in their action those of the social organism sufficiently to warrant us in arguing from the one to the other, and in concluding that there is purpose in the action of neither. But it is obvious that, if the resemblance is great enough to justify us in arguing from the animal to the social organism, it also opens the way for the argument to travel the return journey, from the social organism to the animal, and to reach the conclusion that there is purpose in both. Let us therefore consider what each of these two opposite conclusions requires us to believe.
On the one hand, before accepting the argument that there is no purpose in the action of the social organism because there is none in that of the animal, we must prove that there is none in that of the animal. But that, as we have already urged, is exactly what has not been proved: the utmost that science claims to prove is that the units of the animal organism do behave in a certain way. That way is exactly the way in which they would behave if they were designed to do so; and science leaves it, so far, a perfectly open question whether they were or were not so designed. The argument, therefore, that there is no purpose in the action of the social organism, because none in the animal, breaks down at the threshold. Yet it is on the unproved and unprovable assertion that the appearance of purpose in the animal organism cannot possibly be due to design,and must therefore be a delusion, that we are expected to deny the evidence of our own experience and consciousness and to believe that we, the units of the social organism, have no purpose in the daily acts by which we extend trade or discharge our social functions.
Thus the surmise that Nature mimics purpose, having none, is a conjecture which, so far as it is applied to the pre-human stages of the evolution process, simply plays upon our ignorance; and which, when applied to that part of the evolution process which is carried on through us, we know to be absurd. On the other hand, if there is such similarity between the laws of the one part of the process and the laws of the other part, it must be as allowable to argue from the part and the laws which we do know to the part and the laws that we do not know, as it is to explain the known by what is confessedly unknown. In other words, if the evolution of the social organism is known to be due to purpose, then it is a reasonable inference that animal evolution, which, we are told, follows the same line and laws, is due also to purpose—and if not to any purpose entertained by the cells of the animal organism, then to that of a Will of which their action is the expression.
It is, however, maintained that the continuous social changes which constitute the evolution of society, so far from being the result of the purposeof any individual or of any government, are frequently the very opposite of what was intended by the authors of the changes, and always are notoriously beyond our power to forecast. But the fact that my plans are modified or diverted by my successors or by my coadjutors does not prove that there was no purpose in my plans, or that there was none in the modifications introduced by my successors. And the total result of our united action and purposes may be something different from what any of us individually intended and yet express a common purpose, which is shown by the result to have been more or less present to all of us. A cathedral begun in the Norman style may have taken generations to build and may end in Gothic; and it will express the ideas common to the several builders, in much the same way that a composite photograph reproduces most distinctly the features in which all the persons photographed coincide, and other features more or less distinctly according to the extent to which they are shared in common by the different subjects. Or, to express the effect of the successive actions of succeeding generations, we may borrow an illustration from the game of chess. It is possible for five players to play, taking it in turns to move, so that every player makes one move out of five, and plays alternately for White and Black. The result, with good players, is a brilliant and well-developed game, which is not the game as purposed or intended byany one of the five players, but as continually modified and improved by each every time that he took it up. When, then, we reflect how many players in the game of life there are even in a small society, we can well understand that, though each has his own way of serving the common purpose, none can forecast the result.
Perhaps it will be said that the chess-players have a common purpose, and the players in life's game have none. The reply is that science assumes they have; science assumes that they play to win in the struggle for existence; and only on the assumption that men have common purposes is it possible to frame any scientific account of their actions. The science of Political Economy assumes that it is a common purpose of men to acquire wealth, and that their actions are determined by that purpose. It then goes on to show that if that is their purpose, then the conditions under which it can be and is effected are of a certain kind,e.g.men must buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. It is not necessary to assume, nor does Political Economy assume, that man can only purpose to acquire wealth, or that he must under all circumstances do so. In the same way it is wholly unscientific in sociology to assume that success in the struggle for existence is either a thing that man must aim at, or the only thing that he can aim at: the soldier dies for his country, the martyrfor his faith. The institutions of a nation—legal, political, social, and religious—express the predominant purposes for which successive generations of the community have laboured; and the evolution of mankind is the history of the various degrees of success with which men have realised the ideals which they have purposed to attain. The successive reforms by which progress has been effected have all been purposed, and have all been purposed by men who believed, rightly or wrongly, that in so doing they were serving God and their fellow-men, and that the ideals of truth, justice, equality, fraternity, love, compassion, and mercy express God's will and the Divine purpose.
If, then, the outcome of the pre-human period of evolution has been, as a matter of fact, and amongst other things, such as to prepare the earth for man's habitation and to provide him with a mechanism, physiological and psychological, such that he can use it, if he will, to promote what he considers to be progress and advance, it is not unreasonable for him to regard past phases of evolution as so many steps leading to the realisation of the ideals which he cherishes, in his best moments, as his highest purposes. The continuity of evolution and the unity of its process authorise or even compel him to use that part of the process which is carried on through him as a means to interpret the rest. As, in the game of chess played by five players, eachplayer inherits from his predecessor the game as it stands, and carries on, with improvements or modifications, the scheme which he inherits, so in life each player in turn becomes conscious of the ideals which he too may, or may not, as he wills, carry one step nearer to their goal. It is in the continuity with which these ideals are transmitted through one consciousness after another that the continuity of human evolution consists. We are, or may be if we choose, particles in the medium by which a purpose not our own (save inasmuch as we choose to make it so) is carried onwards to its destination. The medium through which progress has travelled in the past is Nature; the medium through which it is now travelling is human nature. By us the ideal, as it is transmitted through our consciousness, is recognised as implying the presence in us of a purpose higher than our own. Whether in the medium of Nature there is any dim consciousness of the progress towards which the changes in Nature conspire, we know not. But the uniformity of Nature and human nature requires us to see in those natural changes the operation of the same power travelling in the same direction as it does through us. In its passage through us it is made known to us as the object of our highest aspirations; the ideal of purity, of holiness, and love; the God for whom the human heart, mistakenly or not, has always sought, and never sought in vain.
The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution has taught us the lesson that, if we start without belief in the Divine government of the world, study of the process of evolution will not lead us to discern any Divine purpose in the process. Belief in religion cannot begin without faith in God to start with, just as belief in science or in morality is based not on evidence, but on faith. The question remains whether with faith we can believe that the process of evolution is a revelation of Divine love, and whether man's environment has been evolved in such a way as to promote in him that love of his fellow-man and God which is the religious ideal.
If we look at the structure of society, we see it is based on the fact that man has certain needs—of food, shelter, and clothing, etc.—which can be satisfied more effectually by co-operation and division of labour than by isolated, individual action. The man who earns his own living does so by rendering services for which he is paid: he cannot benefit himself without benefiting others to some extent. Thatis the law under which he lives, a law not of his own making, nor always to his own liking, but a law inherent in the nature of things, and part of the purpose, if purpose there be, in the scheme of things. As a free agent, man may co-operate with his fellows and take his share of the divided labour, or not, as he wills; but those peoples which have carried the principles of co-operation and organisation furthest have fared best. They have availed themselves of the opportunity offered them, and have survived. The failure of the rest to do likewise has not impeded the fulfilment of the Divine purpose that men should help one another. On the contrary, those who decline to help one another voluntarily place themselves at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, and are slowly, but surely, crowded out by those who fulfil the Divine purpose less unsatisfactorily, and in consequence tend to inherit the earth.
We have already seen that when a man reaches years of discretion he finds that the physiological and psychological mechanism of which he is now in possession, and for the management of which he is henceforth responsible, has a tendency to run in certain grooves: he has, as a child, been taught and has inherited an aptitude to think and act in certain ways. The same remark applies to the social organism. Before or when the individual awakes to the fact that he is a member of a society, he hasalready been or is the child of parents to whom he renders obedience, and between whom and himself there exist relations of affection. The evolution of man as a purely animal organism has been such that he begins life with a prolonged period of helpless infancy. Unlike the lower animals, which very soon after birth are capable of providing for themselves, he is for years dependent on others. His prolonged infancy is a prolonged period of plasticity, during which he is moulded into a member, first of a family and then and thereby into a member of society. All the higher animals give their offspring some education, an education as good as they received themselves: in the human race alone do parents give their children a better education than they got themselves. It is, however, not the rising generation alone who benefit by the long period of dependence and plasticity which characterises childhood. It is, of course, true that labour expended on the perfecting of tools and machinery is peculiarly productive, inasmuch as the increased efficiency of the instrument more than repays the greater outlay. But as the workman who produces the tool becomes in consequence of his labour a more skilled mechanic, so the education given by the parent to the child is an education not only of the child, but of the parent, and makes both better fitted to be members of society. It not only secures that subordination of the younger men to the elder, which is necessary forthe stability of society and the permanence of the tribe, but it also tempers power with responsibility, responsibility not to some external authority, but to the higher principle within the man.
Thus even in the earliest stage of society the anti-social forces of selfishness and the passions do not operatein vacuoand with nothing to impede them. Society at the very beginning is notabula rasa: the field is already largely occupied, and the direction of social evolution already largely determined, by that affection between parents and children without which neither society as a whole nor the individual as a unit could come into being or continue to exist. It is an unwarrantable libel, even on savage society, to say that in it the ape and tiger predominate in man: the lowest forms of society survive only so far as there exists more humanity than brutality in the dealings of their members with one another. It is a false philosophy of evolution, not a true acquaintance with the facts of anthropology, which rashly assumes that the morally lowest must have been the only primitive elements in the evolution of humanity. The evil and the good in man have existed side by side from the beginning; unselfish affection, as well as selfish desires, has always been part of the equipment of human nature, though the evolution of the former may be a longer and more difficult process, both in the individual and the race, than the evolution of the latter.
In the race moral progress may be expected with much more confidence than it can in the case of the individual. The mere existence of a society, however simple in structure, is of itself proof that the anti-social forces of selfishness and passion are in it less strong than the instincts of neighbourliness and mutual help. Of competing societies those eventually triumph which are least weakened by internal dissension—that is to say, those societies tend to thrive and extend most of which the members are most ready to subordinate their private ends to the public good. Ultimately it is only by the development of this type of individual character that a society can achieve success; and it is this type of character that the competition between nations develops. But essential as it is to the survival of a society, it is by no means so essential to the survival of the individual in his struggle for existence against other individuals. If, then, society were simply a collection of warring atoms, or if the individual's whole activity were expended in struggling with his neighbour and trying to elbow him out, the type of character essential to the survival of society could never be developed, and society itself could neither come into being nor continue to be. The fact is that men not only compete, but co-operate: society is, and from the beginning has been, an organisation requiring from each of its parts some subordination to the interests of the whole.
As the organisation of society grows more complex, the individual becomes less and less capable of existing independently of society, society becomes more and more independent of the services of any individual member, and both these facts tend to foster the social and weaken the anti-social forces in man. Increasing division and subdivision of labour specialises the function of each member of the community more and more, and so deprives him of the general aptitude for doing all kinds of work which is essential to every man who is, as for instance in a new colony, thrown largely on his own resources. Thus the solitary existence which might be just possible for the outcast from a savage tribe becomes a practical impossibility for the average member of any community that has risen above that stage of social evolution. At the same time the point is reached when no one man is indispensable to the community. Society is made up of units so similar to one another that any one can be replaced by some other, and, as a matter of fact, the place of everyone is at death filled by some successor.
The theory of a social contract, as a historical or prehistorical event in the development of any community, has long been rightly discredited: at no time did a number of men, living solitary lives, have a public meeting and formally contract to live together on certain conditions and for certain ends. Man has been a gregarious, if not social, animal from thebeginning. Nevertheless, man has certain needs, desires, and ends which can only be satisfied by means of social organisation, and which are quite as potent in holding society together as if, instead of being tacitly at work, they had been proclaimed aloud in a formal social contract. If through any disease the social organism obstructs, or fails to assist in realising, those ends, the dissatisfaction of the individual and the danger to the state are just as great as if a formal contract had been violated: the disappointment of the normal and reasonable expectations of the members of the community is substantially injustice, and is not altogether erroneously stated to be a violation of the common and tacit understanding on which society is in fact if not formally established. Co-operation in labour does imply some sort of engagement, expressed or understood, that the joint product shall be divided more or less fairly between the joint producers. Unfairness in the distribution of social benefits may be of slow growth, but must eventually result in undisguised resentment—appeal is made openly and consciously to justice, which henceforth becomes the ideal of a section at least of the community, and is recognised as a condition without which a healthy social existence is impossible.
It is thus a monstrous perversion of the plain facts to represent the struggle for existence as having been the sole or the main factor in socialevolution: every member of a community is born into an atmosphere of co-operation and maintains his existence by the co-operation of others. If he must labour to live, he cannot labour for himself without at the same time rendering service to others; the very same conditions which make him desire justice for himself constrain him to maintain justice for the community at large. The social environment is, and has always been, such as to lead man in the paths of justice and to train him for the service of his fellow-man. The units which constitute the social environment are men, beings whose physical, mental, and moral structure is the result of a long process of evolution stretching back to beyond the beginnings of life upon this earth, a process which, assuming it to have had purpose, was designed to include in its effects a creature capable of justice and of love.
The full development of the sentiment of justice has been the work of many centuries. At first, when the community is small and nomad, the idea that a stranger has a right to justice is incomprehensible. Even when with the growth of civilisation provision is made for according foreign merchants and others some protection from the law, the idea that the stranger has the same right to justice as the citizen is neither admitted by law nor entertained as a speculation. Indeed, the law, modest though it be, may be in advance of public opinion and ofthe practice of officials—witness the extortions practised by Roman governors on the Roman provinces. Eventually, however, public opinion outstrips the law and pronounces that even the colour of a man's skin cannot bar his claims to justice, and that the inhabitants of a country, though they be aborigines, have some rights in it. Finally comes philosophy and pronounces justice, absolute and stern, the one thing needful, the one and only duty which it is within the sphere and function of government to maintain.
Unfortunately for the philosophy which maintains this view, it happens that, just when the authority of justice is admitted by the conscience of civilisation to be paramount, justice as an ideal is recognised to be neither capable of realisation nor absolutely desirable. It is obvious that in the best-regulated even of free communities the amount of justice which can be secured by the action of the law and the intervention of the State falls very far short of the ideal; and the multiplication of laws and State inquisitors, which would be necessary if every form of injustice and wrong-doing were to be punished by the State, would be a remedy, if indeed it were a remedy, worse than the disease. It is impossible to pretend to believe that wealth is distributed according to merit in any existing community, or that any governmental system, even if designed solely with that end inview, could ever determine what a man's merits were, or what his reward should be. Nor is the ill distribution of wealth the only factor of injustice, though it is the only factor with which the State could make pretence to deal: sickness and sorrow, grief and pain—nay, the very capacity for suffering and for joy—are dealt to different men in very different measure. It is plain matter of fact that earthly goods and pleasures are not distributed according to merit; and it is just when man's conquest of Nature has become most complete, when society is no longer struggling for a bare subsistence, when the demand for justice is most fully and unreservedly admitted, that the impossibility of meeting the demand and the danger of failing to meet it become most manifest. The poverty which accompanies progress may in one generation be less than it was in the previous generation, but the extremes of poverty and wealth grow daily wider apart, and the number of those who are poor increases in a growing population much more rapidly than the number of the rich. The danger which this rent in the social fabric threatens to the whole structure of society may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. The mere justice of individualism which has hitherto sufficed to hold society together, suffices now no longer. The justice which limits itself to the fulfilment of those actions to the non-performance of which alegal penalty is attached, is not the one and only thing needful, nor does its force remedy the numerous cases of undeserved misfortune and suffering which the working of our social and industrial system entails. What heals the suffering and saves it from becoming a festering sore that might prove fatal to society, is that love of man for his fellow-man, which is manifested to the poor by the rich to some extent, but chiefly by the poor. The State can only prescribe and enforce external acts of justice; and the external acts which it prescribes are not the bond which holds or can hold society together. The State, in its attempts to modify society through the individual, is as clumsy as the breeder or the gardener in dealing with animals and plants, and must fain be content if it can modify some of the more prominent external characteristics. Nature is much more searching, and, if slower, much more thorough: the real nature of her work, the true character of the force on which she has made the cohesion of society to depend, becomes obvious at the time when the insufficiency of mere justice for the purpose becomes apparent. Imperfect though man's obedience has been to the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," it is to his obedience that society owes its maintenance.
As a matter of fact, then, strict justice is not and cannot be realised in this world. Even the forcesof the social environment which are, to a large extent, under man's own control are not and cannot be so directed by him as to secure rewards and punishments in exact proportion to merit and demerit; while the action of those natural forces which distribute fortune and misfortune, pain and the susceptibility to pain, pleasure and the capacity of enjoyment, is still less under his control and, as far as we can see, is still less proportionate to desert. The fields of the unjust benefit as much as those of the just by the rain from heaven; the labourers who enter the vineyard of civilisation at a late hour receive as great a reward as their predecessors who bore the heat and burden of the day, or even greater; when a tower in our social fabric falls, it is not the guilty who are alone or even specially involved in its ruin. From the time of Theognis, at least, men have inquired with despair how the gods could expect worship when they suffered these things to be; and as long as we look upon life as though we were detached spectators, with no care for it save a disinterested desire to see justice done, it is easy for us to declaim upon the absolute indifference of the cosmic process to man and his deserts. But this detached attitude is purely artificial, and we could not make even the semblance of long maintaining it, did we not unconsciously glide into the more natural, but less warrantable, position of tacitly assuming that our own personal lot would be improvedif strict justice were done. But is not our resentment against the injustice of the world partly premature and somewhat shallow and short-sighted? Are we sure we want strict justice? Are we so anxious to have our merits weighed? are they so imposing? Can we pray that we may be rewarded after our iniquities? If society could by some supernatural power deal strict justice to all its members, whowould, whocouldlive in it? As a matter of fact—to say it once more—it is not by law alone that society lives, but by love, by the long-patient love of father or mother, of wife or husband, of friend or neighbour, which every one of us has accepted and none has fully requited. Our very hospitals are open to all who need them, to those whose suffering is due to their own negligence, or even crime, and not merely to those whose pain is undeserved. A palpable injustice, worthy of the cosmic process itself! And what excuse, if justice, absolute and relentless, be our highest and worthiest aspiration, can there be for appropriating the reward of honest toil to the often fruitless task of offering to those, who have by their own vice sunk into the depths, one last chance of life and of redemption? The mercy which falleth, like the gentle rain from heaven, alike upon the unjust and the just, must be judged by the same standard that we apply to the cosmic process. We may, like the elder brother of the prodigal son, refuse to see anything in manor Nature but a world given up to gross injustice—persons so superior as to stand in no need of forgiveness and no fear of judgment are able doubtless to judge the world and their fellow-man. But the prodigal himself may, perchance, better understand some of the workings of his father's heart, and trust he sees in the apparent injustice of Nature more instances of that mercy which would not have showed itself to him had justice measured love.
It seems, then, that the "ethical process" and the "cosmic process" are not so absolutely opposed to one another as Professor Huxley endeavoured to make out. Both at times act with a calm disregard of justice. In the one case we know that it is a higher principle which takes the place of justice; and it is a reasonable conjecture that the ethical process, which is one outcome or manifestation of the cosmic process, does but reproduce, in this case as in others, the action of the cosmic force which operates through the heart of man as well as through the rest of the universe. It is at any rate inconsistent to condemn the cosmos for exhibiting that quality of mercy which we rank highest amongst the attributes of man: if we take credit to our fellow-men for that quality, in fairness let us give the cosmos the same credit when it displays the same quality. If, as we assume in this chapter, there is purpose in evolution, let us admit that there is some presumption that it is a purpose of love and of mercy.
As it is by faith in science that men of science succeed in solving problems which, for a time, seem beyond the powers of science to deal with, so it is on faith in religion that the religious explanation of the universe depends for its slow but sure extension. With that faith we may succeed in seeing, to some slight extent, that the unequal distribution of pain, as well as of earthly prosperity, is not incompatible with a Divine purpose in evolution. For that faith we must believe that the suffering and sorrow from which none of us is exempt are not evil, unless we choose to make them so, but opportunities for good. Indeed, without that faith we seem forced upon the same conclusion: the man who devotes himself, his soul, his life to the relief of the needy and the suffering cannot make earthly prosperity his chief good, though, as Professor Huxley has said, he may attain something much better. But if we hold that there is something better than earthly prosperity, can we consistently declaim against sickness and sorrow as the worst of evils, or indict a universe because they are not unknown in it? The Stoicism which lent Professor Huxley the strength to teach that man must to the end declare defiance and resistance to the cosmos—resistance unavailing and defiance doomed to certain failure in the end—might also have taught him that the evil which he calls on us to war against is not in the cosmos; that the enemy of the ethical processhas his headquarters not in Nature, but in the heart of man. Pain and sorrow are evil to the sufferer who allows them to make him selfish, and to the spectator who chooses to be callous to his suffering. If our volitions do count for something in the course of things, if we are so far free that we can, in response to Professor Huxley's call, doggedly and repeatedly resist the cosmic process, then it is of our own free will, also, that we do evil when the opportunity of good is offered us. Yet we charge the evil upon the cosmos.
ὦ πόποι, οἷον δή νυ θεοὺς Î’Ïοτοὶ αἰτιόωνταιἕξ ἡμÎων Î³Î¬Ï Ï†Î±ÏƒÎ¹ κάκ' ἔμμεναι· οἱ δὴ καὶ αá½Ï„οὶσφῇσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὑπÎÏμοÏον ἄλγε' ἔχουσιν.
When one asserts that a writer is wrong in one of the arguments which he uses, it is well to begin by making sure that he really does use the argument in question. For this purpose it is useful to quote the passages in which the writer uses the argument, and such passages, for my own satisfaction, I will speedily cite from Bishop Berkeley. But first, in order that the reader may know that the interpretation which I put on these extracts is not one peculiar to myself, but is in harmony with the general tenor of Berkeley's metaphysical writings, I will quote from Professor Fraser, who, in his preface to theDialogues between Hylas and Philonous, states Berkeley's argument to be as follows: "As the common reason of men, tested by their actions, demands thepermanenceof sensible things, even though they are not permanently present to the senses of any one embodied mind, it follows that the very existence of the things of sense (apart from any 'marks of design' in their collocations) implies the permanent existence of Supreme Mind, by whom all real objects are perpetually conceived, and in whom their orderly appearances, disappearances, and reappearances in finite minds may be said to exist potentially."
And now for Berkeley's own words, (1) In theSecond Dialogue between Hylas and Philonous(p. 304 of ProfessorFraser's edition), he says, "To me it is evident that sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in a mind or spirit. Whence I conclude, not that they have no real existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my thought, and have an existence distinct from being perceived by me,there must be some other mind wherein they exist. As sure, therefore, as the sensible world really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent Spirit, who contains and supports it."
(2) In theThird Dialogue(p. 325 of Professor Fraser's edition) we have: "Hyl.Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?—Phil.I can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny sensible things an existence out of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now, it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind; since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them: as likewise they did before my birth, and would do after my supposed annihilation. And, as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows there is anomnipresent Eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view."
(3) The independent, real existence of things is affirmed with emphasis in theSecond Dialogue(ibid., p. 307): "It is evident that the things I perceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist unless it be in a mind. Nor is it less plain that these ideas or things by me perceived, either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind; since I know myself not to be their author, it being out of my power to determine at pleasure whatparticular ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or ears. They must therefore exist in some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited to me. The things, I say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them which you will. But how can any idea or sensation exist in, or be produced by, anything but a mind or spirit?"
(4) Finally, inThe Principles of Human Knowledge, § 90, in explaining the two senses of "external": "The things perceived by sense may be termedexternal, with regard to their origin—in that they are not generated from within by the mind itself, but imprinted by a Spirit distinct from that which perceives them. Sensible objects may likewise be said to be 'without the mind' in another sense, namely when they exist in some other mind; thus when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind."
Berkeley's argument in brief, therefore, is that we believe things to be permanent, and must therefore believe in a permanent, Divine mind in which they may exist. The question which I wish to raise is as to this permanence of things; for, if things are not permanent, they cannot testify to the permanence of the Divine mind. I will begin my questionings with the concluding words of the last-quoted passage: "when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind." The expression "the things I saw" would seem to be ambiguous. Are the things I saw the sensations of sight which I had, or are they something different? If they are my sensations, they certainly do not exist when my eyes are closed—things are not permanent. If the things I see are something different from my sensations of sight, then the common-sense Realist would seem to be right, andBerkeley's Idealism must be given up. Let us examine each alternative.
It looks, at first, as though Berkeley himself would say that the things I saw are identical with my sensations of sight: in the third passage quoted above he says, "the things I perceive are my own ideas ... the things, I say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them which you will." Let us, therefore, see the consequences of adhering strictly to this interpretation of the ambiguous phrase. It will follow in the first place that, unless I can see with my eyes shut, the things I see are not permanent, but do cease to exist when I close my eyes. Next, my sensations cannot exist in somebody else's mind—the fact that you can see the object when your eyes are open does not enable me to see it with my eyes closed. On the other hand, of course, it does not follow that because my eyes are closed nobody else can see anything—only, this does not make my sensations permanent, or prove that they can exist in someone else's mind. In fine, if "the things I saw" are the sensations of sight that I had, then Berkeley's argument from the permanent existence of "things" to their existence in a permanent mind breaks down doubly; for, first, my sensations plainly are not permanent; and, second, my sensations cannot exist in another mind, permanent or otherwise.
At this point it is necessary to note that "existence" has been used in this connection in a double sense: actual existence has been distinguished from potential. It is on this distinction that Mill bases his definition of matter as "the permanent possibility of sensation"; but the distinction is derived from Berkeley, who has, as usual, given the most lucid explanation. In hisMS. Common Place Book(quoted in Fraser, i. 325, n. 9), Berkeley says,"Bodies, taken for powers, do exist when not perceived; but this existence is not actual. When I say apowerexists, no more is meant than thatif, in the light, I open my eyes, and look that way, I shall see the body." Thus far Mill will go with Berkeley; and thus far both are open to the reproach of not giving a plain answer to a plain question. The plain question of common sense to the Idealist is: Do things exist when unperceived? Does the furniture of my room exist when nobody is in the room to perceive it? To which the Idealist replies that if I go into the room I shall see the furniture—which is perfectly true, but is no answer to the question. There is, indeed, no particular reason why Mill should not plainly answer "No," if it were not for fear of giving a shock to the man of common sense who cannot readily comprehend how it is that the coal in his grate has come to be consumed if the process of combustion has been suspended in his absence. But with Berkeley the case is different: for him the permanence of things and the common-sense belief in that permanence have a value as furnishing an additional argument in favour of a Supreme Mind. But he too evades rather than meets the plain question of the plain man: "Do things exist when no one is conscious of them?" His reply is, "Yes, for the Divine Mind is conscious of them"—which again is true, but is not an answer to the question.
However, the point of immediate interest for our present purpose is to ascertain whether the conception of "potential" existence can lend to things that permanence which according to Berkeley necessitates the assumption of a permanent mind. Now, by the potential existence of a body or thing no more is meant than thatifI open my eyes and look in the right direction, I shall see the thing;and the things I see are my sensations, ideas, call them what you will. But that I can see with my eyes shut is beyond possibility of proof—it certainly is not proved by the fact that I can see with my eyes open; and neither is it proved by the fact that other people see things when my eyes are closed. In fine, if the things I see are my sensations, then things cannot have a permanent existence; and no inference as to the permanence of the Divine Mind can be drawn.
We are driven, therefore, to suppose that the things I see are different, partially or wholly, from my sensations. And this supposition seems to be implied by various passages in Berkeley. For instance, he says (i. p. 307), "the things I perceive are my own ideas ... the things, I say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them which you will," where he seems to distinguish what isimmediatelyperceived (i.e.sensations) from something else. And a few lines before he seems to be inclined to admit the existence of something else than my sensations, for he says "ideas or things by me perceived, either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind."
The permanence of things is undoubtedly an inference. We find by experience that effects which are produced by causes acting before our very eyes are at other times produced by their causes in our absence: the fire burns in my absence as well as in my presence. Obviously, therefore, the thing which produces its effects when I have no sensations of it must be different from those sensations; and it must be an existing thing, otherwise its effects will be effects produced by a non-existent cause. To say that the unobserved cause in these cases is a possibility of sensation does not mend matters. A possible sensationis a sensation which, as a matter of fact, does not exist and never did. It is a piece of pure imagination; and consequently on this theory the whole past history of the universe is imaginary. Neither are matters mended by denying that there are such things as "causes," and affirming that we only know "invariable and unconditional antecedents." How can a possible sensation, that is, an event which did not take place, precede one which does take place? How can an imagination of my mind have preceded the existence of my mind?
Perhaps it may be said that if Mill's Psychological Theory of Mind and Matter is not satisfactory, neither is the theory of the direct apprehension of reality wholly consistent with itself. It affirms the direct apprehension of reality, yet on examination the direct apprehension turns out to be an inference. Thus: things must have an existence different from our sensations because they produce their effects, and therefore exist, in our absence.
The reply is simple. Unless we believed the effects, which we do perceive, to be real things, we should not infer the causes, which we do not perceive, to be real either. Common sense believes that thingscontinueto exist when we turn our eyes away: their existence beyond the range of observation is an inference from their existence in our observation. Their inferred permanence is deduced from their observed independence.
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