CHAPTER VRELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

The aphorism sometimes encountered, that "whatever properties appertain to a whole must essentially belong to the parts of which it is composed," is a fallacy. A property can be possessed by an aggregation of atoms which no atom possesses in the slightest degree. Those who think otherwise are unacquainted with mathematical laws other than simple proportion or some continuous or additive functions; they are not aware of discontinuities; they are not experienced in critical values, above which certain conditions obtain, while below them there is suddenly nothing. To refute them an instance must suffice:—

A meteoric stone may seem to differ from a planet only in size, but the difference in size involves also many other differences, notably the fact that the larger body can attract and hold to itself an atmosphere—a circumstance of the utmost importance to the existence of life on its surface. In order, however, that a planet may by gravitative attraction control the roving atoms of gas, and confine their excursions to within a certain range of itself, it must have a very considerable mass.

The earth is big enough to do it; the moon is not. By simply piling atoms or stones together into a mighty mass there comes a critical point at which an atmosphere becomes possible; and directly an atmosphere exists, all manner of phenomena may spring into existence, which without it were quite impossible.

So, also, it may be said that a sun differs from a dark planet only in size; for it is just the fact of great size which enables its gravitative-shrinkage and earthquake-subsidence to generate an immense quantity of heat and to maintain the mass for æons at an excessively high temperature, thereby fitting it to become the centre of light and life to a number of worlds. The blaze of the sun is a property which is the outcome of its great mass. A small permanent sun is an impossibility.

Wherefore, properties can be possessed by an aggregate or assemblage of particles which in the particles themselves did not in the slightest degree exist.

If, however, we reverse the aphorism and say that whatever is in a part must be in the whole, we are on much safer ground. I do not say that it cannot be pressed into illegitimate extremes, but in one and that the simplest sense it is little better than a platitude. The fact that an apple has pips legitimises the assertion that an apple-tree has pips, and that the peculiar property of pips represents a faculty enjoyed by the vegetable kingdom as a whole; but it would be a childish misunderstanding to expect to find actual pips in the trunk of a tree or in all vegetables.

There is a tendency to call the argument or statement that whatever faculty man possesses the Deity must have also; by the name Anthropomorphism; but it seems to me a misnomer, and to convey quite wrong ideas. The argument represented by "He that formed the eye, shall he not see? he that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" need not assume for a moment that God has sense organs akin to those of man, or that He appreciates ethereal and aerial vibrations in the same sort of way. It is not an assertion of similarity between God and man, but merely a realisation that what belongs to a partmustbe contained in the whole. It is not even necessarily pantheistic: it would hold equally well on a Theistic interpretation. Regarded pantheistically it is obvious and requires no stating: regarded Theistically, it is a perception that faculties and powers which have come into existence, and are actually at work in the universe, cannot have arisen without the knowledge and sympathy and full understanding of the Sustainer and Comprehender of it all. Nor can functions be expected in the creature which transcend the power of the Creator.

All our faculties, sensations, and emotions must therefore be understood, and in a sense possessed, in some transcendental and to us unimaginable form, by the Deity.

I know that it is possible to deny His existence, just as it is possible to deny the existence of an external world or to maintain that reality is limited to our sensations. If the Deity has a sense of humour, as undoubtedly He has, He must be amused at the remarkable philosophising faculty recently developed by the creature which on this planet has become most vigorously self-conscious and is in the early stages of progress towards higher things—a philosophising faculty so acute as to lead him to mistrust and throw away information conveyed to him by the very instruments which have enabled him to become what he is; so that having become keenly alive to the truth that all we are directly aware of is the fruit of our own sensations and consciousness, he proceeds to the grotesque supposition that these sensations and consciousness may be all that really exists, and that the information which for ages our senses have conveyed to us concerning external things may be illusory, not only in form and detail and appearance, but in substantial fact.

He must be pleased, also, with the enterprise of those eager philosophers who are so strenuously impressed with the truth of some ultimate monistic unification, as to be unwilling to concede the multifariousness of existence—who decline to speak of mind and matter, or of body and spirit, or of God and the world, as in any sense separate entities—who stigmatise as dualistic anything which does not manifestly and consciously strain after an ultimate monistic view—and who then, as a climax, on the strength of a few years' superficial experience on a planet, by the aid of the sense organs which they themselves perceive to be illusory whenever the actual reality of things is in contemplation, proceed to develop the theory that the whole has come into being without direct intelligence and apart from spiritual guidance, that it is managed so well (or so ill) that it is really not managed at all, that no Deity exists, and that it is absurd to postulate the existence of a comprehensive and all-inclusive guiding Mind.

To be able to perceive comprehensively and state fully not only what is, but also what is not, is a wonderful achievement. I do not think that such a power has yet been acquired by any of the sons of men; nor will the semi-educated readers of this country be wise if they pin their faith and build their hopes on the utterances of any man, however eminent, who makes this superhuman claim.

Now, in all charity, it must be admitted that in some passages Professor Haeckel puts himself under the ban implied by the above paragraph, inasmuch as he conducts a sort of free and easy attack on religion, especially on what he conceives to be the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But, after all, it can be perceived that his attack, so far as it is really an attack on religion, is evidently inspired by his mistrust and dislike, and to some extent fear, of Ecclesiasticism, especially of the Ultramontane movement in Germany, against which he says Prince Bismarck began a struggle in 1872. It is this kind of semi-political religion that he is really attacking, more than the pure essence of Christianity itself. He regards it as a bigoted system hostile to knowledge—which, if true, would amply justify an attack—and he says on page 118:—

"The great struggle between modern science and orthodox Christianity has become more threatening; it has grown more dangerous for science in proportion as Christianity has found support in an increasing mental and political reaction."

This may seem an exaggerated fear; but the following extract from a Pastoral address by the Bishop of Newport, which accidentally I saw reported inThe Tablet, shows that the danger is not wholly imaginary, if unwise opinions are pressed to their logical practical issue:—

"If the formulas of modern science contradict the science of Catholic dogma, it is the former that must be altered, not the latter."2

Professor Haeckel continues his criticism of Official Christianity in the following vein:—

"The so-called 'Peace between Church and State' is never more than a suspension of hostilities. The modern Papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last 1600 years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured State, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science. True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. Either the Church wins, and then farewell to all 'free science and free teaching'—then are our universities no better than gaols, and our colleges become cloistral schools; or else the modern rational State proves victorious—then, in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the height of the nineteenth century."In order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared—a 'palace of reason,' in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century—the trinity of 'the true, the good, and the beautiful'" (p. 119).

"In order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared—a 'palace of reason,' in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century—the trinity of 'the true, the good, and the beautiful'" (p. 119).

These are the bases of religion, adopted from Goethe, which in Haeckel's view should entirely replace what he calls the Trinity of Kant, viz., God, Freedom, and Immortality—three ideas which he regards as mere superstition or as so enveloped in superstition as to be worthless.

Occasionally, however, he attacks not solely ecclesiastical Christianity—in which enterprise he is entirely within his rights,—but he goes further and abuses some of its more primitive forms, and to some extent its practical fruits also. For instance:—

"Primitive Christianity preached the worthlessness of earthly life, regarding it merely as a preparation for an eternal life beyond. Hence it immediately followed that all we find in the life of a man here below, all that is beautiful in art and science, in public and in private life, is of no real value. The true Christian must avert his eyes from them; he must think only of a worthy preparation for the life beyond. Contempt of nature, aversion from all its inexhaustible charms, rejection of every kind of fine art, are Christian duties; and they are carried out to perfection when a man separates himself from his fellows, chastises his body, and spends all his time in prayers in the cloister or the hermit's cell.... A Christian art is a contradiction in terms" (p. 120).

I think it may without offence be said that if he means by "Primitive Christianity" the teachings of Christ, he is mistaken, and has something to learn as to what those teachings really were. If he means the times of persecution under the Roman empire, he could hardly expect much concentration on artistic pursuits or much enjoyment of terrestrial existence when it was liable to be violently extinguished at any moment: sufficient that the early Church survived its struggle for existence. But if he is referring to mediæval Christianity, of any other than a debased kind,—common knowledge concerning mediæval art and architecture sufficiently rebuts the indictment. So much so, that one may almost wonder if by chance he happened to be thinking of "Mohammedanism" rather than of Christianity.

But he continues, in a more practical and observant vein:—

"Christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals, that sympathy with the nearly-related and friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.) which is urged in the ethical teaching of many of the older religions, especially Buddhism. (Unfortunately, Descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only has a sensitive soul, not the animal.) Whoever has spent much time in the south of Europe must have often witnessed those frightful sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the deepest sympathy and indignation. And when one expostulates with these brutal 'Christians' on their cruelty, the only answer is, with a laugh: 'But the beasts are not Christians'" (p. 126).

This, if true, and I have heard it from other sources, does constitute rather a serious indictment against the form of practical Christianity understood by the ignorant classes among the Latin races.

To return, however, to the concluding paragraph of the extract quoted above (on page 81) from his page 119:—

No one can have any objection to raise against the dignity and worthiness of the three great attributes which excite Professor Haeckel's, as they excited Goethe's, worship and admiration, viz., the three "goddesses," as he calls them: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty; but there is no necessary competition or antagonism between these and the other three great conceptions which aroused the veneration of Kant: God, Freedom, and Immortality; nor does the upholding of the one triad mean the overthrow of the other: they may be all co-eternal together and co-equal. Nor are either of these triplets inconsistent with some reasonable view of what may be meant by the Christian Trinity. The total possibility of existence is so vast that no simple formula, nor indeed any form of words, however complex, is likely to be able to sum it up and express its essence to the exclusion of all other modes of expression. It is a pity, therefore, that Professor Haeckel should think it necessary to decry one set of ideas in order to support another set. There is room for all in this large universe—room for everything, except downright lies and falseness.

Concerning Truth there is no need to speak: it cannot but be the breath of the nostrils of every genuine scientific man; but his ideas of truth should be large enough to take into account possibilities far beyond anything of which he is at present sure, and he should be careful to be undogmatic and docile in regions of which at present he has not the key.

The meaning of Goodness, the whole domain of ethics, and the higher possibilities of sainthood of which the human spirit has shown itself capable, are at present outside his domain; and if a man of science seeks to dogmatise concerning the emotions and the will, and asserts that he can reduce them to atomic forces and motions, because he has learnt to recognise the undoubted truth that atomic forces and motions must accompany them and constitute the machinery of their manifestation here and now,—he is exhibiting the smallness of his conceptions and gibbeting himself as a laughing-stock to future generations.

The atmosphere and full meaning of Beauty also he can only dimly grasp. If he seeks to explain it in terms of sexual selection, or any other small conception which he has recently been able to form in connection with vital procedure on this planet, he is explaining nothing: he is merely showing how the perception of beauty may operate in certain cases; but the inner nature of beauty and the faculty by which it is perceived are utterly beyond him. He cannot but feel that the unconscious and unobtrusive beauty of field and hedgerow must have originated in obedience to some primal instinct or in fulfilment of some immanent desire, some lofty need quite other than anything he recognises as human.

And if a poet witnessing the colours of a sunset, for instance, or the profusion of beauty with which snow mountains seem to fling themselves to the heavens in districts unpeopled and in epochs long before human consciousness awoke upon the earth: if such a seer feels the revelation weigh upon his spirit with an almost sickening pressure, and is constrained to ascribe this wealth and prodigality of beauty to the joy of the Eternal Being in His own existence, to an anticipation as it were of the developments which lie before the universe in which He is at work, and which He is slowly tending towards an unimaginable perfection—it behooves the man of science to put his hand upon his mouth, lest in his efforts to be true, in the absence of knowledge, he find himself uttering, in his ignorance, words of lamentable folly or blasphemy.

Consider our own position—it is surely worth considering. We are a part of this planet; on one side certainly and distinctly a part of this material world, a part which has become self-conscious. At first we were a part which had become alive; a tremendous step that—introducing a number of powers and privileges which previously had been impossible, but that step introduced no responsibility; we were no longer, indeed, urged by mere pressure from behind, we were guided by our instincts and appetites, but we still obeyed the strongest external motive, almost like electro-magnetic automata. Now, however, we have become conscious, able to look before and after, to learn consciously from the past, to strive strenuously towards the future; we have acquired a knowledge of good and evil, we can choose the one and reject the other, and are thus burdened with a sense of responsibility for our acts. We still obey the strongest motive doubtless, but there is something in ourselves which makes it a motive and regulates its strength. Wecandrift like other animals, and often do; but we can also obey our own volition.

I would not deny the rudiments of self-consciousness, and some of what it implies, to certain domestic animals, notably the dog; but domestication itself is a result of humanity, and undoubtedly the attributes we are discussing are chiefly and almost solely human, they can hardly be detected in wild nature. No other animal can have a full perception of its own individuality and personality as separate from the rest of existence. Such ideas do not occur in the early periods of even human infancy: they are a later growth. Self-consciousness must have become prominent at a certain stage in the evolutionary process.

How it all arose is a legitimate problem for genetic psychology, but to the plain man it is a puzzle; our ancestors invented legends to account for it—legends of apples and serpents and the like; but the fact is there, however it be accounted for. The truth embedded in that old Genesis legend is deep; it is the legend of man's awakening from a merely animal life to consciousness of good and evil, no longer obeying his primal instincts in a state of thoughtlessness and innocency—a state in which deliberate vice was impossible and therefore higher and purposed goodness also impossible,—it was the introduction of a new sense into the world, the sense of conscience, the power of deliberate choice; the power also of conscious guidance, the management of things and people external to himself, for preconceived ends. Man was beginning to cease to be merely a passenger on the planet, controlled by outside forces; it is as if the reins were then for the first time being placed in his hands, as if he was allowed to begin to steer, to govern his own fate and destiny, and to take over some considerable part of the management of the world.

The process of handing over the reins to us is still going on. The education of the human race is a long process, and we are not yet fit to be fully trusted with the steering gear; but the words of the old serpent were true enough: once open our eyes to the perception and discrimination of good and evil, once become conscious of freedom of choice, and sooner or later we must inevitably acquire some of the power and responsibility of gods. A fall it might seem, just as a vicious man sometimes seems degraded below the beasts, but in promise and potency a rise it really was.

The oneness between ourselves and Nature is not a thing to be deplored; it is a thing to rejoice at, when properly conceived. It awakens a kind of religious enthusiasm even in Haeckel, who clearly perceives but a limited aspect of it; yet the perception is vivid enough to cause him, this so-called Atheist, to close hisConfession of Faithwith words such as these:—

"Now, at last, it is given to the mightily advancing human mind to have its eyes opened; it is given to it to show that a true knowledge of nature affords full satisfaction and inexhaustible nourishment not only for its searching understanding, but also for its yearning spirit."Knowledge of the true, training for the good, pursuit of the beautiful: these are the three great departments of our monism; by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow the knee in adoration...."In the hope that free research and free teaching may always continue, I conclude my monisticConfession of Faithwith the words: 'May God, the Spirit of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, be with us.'"

"Knowledge of the true, training for the good, pursuit of the beautiful: these are the three great departments of our monism; by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow the knee in adoration....

"In the hope that free research and free teaching may always continue, I conclude my monisticConfession of Faithwith the words: 'May God, the Spirit of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, be with us.'"

This is clearly the utterance of a man to whose type I unconsciously referred in an article written two years ago (Hibbert Journal, January 1903), from which I now make the following appropriate extract:—

Looking at the loom of nature, the feeling not of despair, but of what has been called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, has arisen: atheism never fully realised, and wrongly so called—recently it has been called severe Theism, indeed; for it is joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, exultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied with the perfection of the mechanism, content to be a part of the self-generated organism, and endeavouring to think that the feelings of duty, of earnest effort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously persist in spite of all discouragement, are on this view intelligible as well as instinctive, and sure that nothing less than unrepining unfaltering unswerving acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man.

The above 'Confession of Faith,' then, is very well; for the man himself very well indeed, but it is not enough for the race. Other parts of Haeckel's writings show that it is not enough, and that his conception of what he means by Godhead is narrow and limited to an extent at which instinct, reason, and experience alike rebel. No one can be satisfied with conceptions below the highest which to him are possible: I doubt if it is given to man to think out a clear and consistent system higher and nobler than the real truth. Our highest thoughts are likely to be nearest to reality: they must be stages in the direction of truth, else they could not have come to us and been recognised as highest. So, also, with our longings and aspirations towards ultimate perfection, those desires which we recognise as our noblest and best: surely they must have some correspondence with the facts of existence, else had they been unattainable by us. Reality is not to be surpassed, except locally and temporarily, by the ideals of knowledge and goodness invented by a fraction of itself; and if we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to

"shatter it to bits and thenRemould it nearer to the heart's desire,"

"shatter it to bits and then

Remould it nearer to the heart's desire,"

we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings. The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless, they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character in so far as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that isipso factoin a sense already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality.

Explanatory Note on Constructive Thought and Optimism.

(Partly reprinted from "Mind.")

It may be worth while to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. For instance, it can be shown that in an electric field, however complicated, any distribution of potential which satisfies boundary conditions, and one or two other essential criteria, must be the actual distribution; for it has been rigorously proved that there cannot be two or more distributions which satisfy those conditions, hence if one is arrived at theoretically, or intuitively, or by any means, it must be the correct one; and no further proof is required.

So, also, in connection with analogies and working models: although they must necessarily be imperfect, so long as they are only analogies, yet the making or imagining of models (not necessarily or usually a material model, but a conceptual model) is a recognised way of arriving at an understanding of recondite and ultra-sensual processes, occurring say in the ether or elsewhere. As an addition to evidence derived from such experiments as have been found possible, and as a supplement to the experience out of which, as out of a nucleus, every conception must grow, the mind is set to design and invent a self-coherent scheme which shall imitate as far as possible the results exhibited by nature. By then using this as a working hypothesis, and pressing it into extremes, it can be gradually amended until it shows no sign of discordance or failure anywhere, and even serves as a guide to new and previously unsuspected phenomena. When that stage is reached, it is provisionally accepted and tentatively held as a step in the direction of the truth; though the mind is always kept ready to improve and modify and enlarge it, in accordance with the needs of more thorough investigation and fresh discovery. It was so, for instance, with Maxwell's electromagnetic theory of light; and there are a multitude of other instances.

In the transcendental or ultra-mundane or supersensual region there is the further difficulty to be encountered, that we are not acquainted with anything like all the 'boundary conditions,' so to speak; we only know our little bit of the boundary, and we may err egregiously in inferring or attempting to infer the remainder. We may even make a mistake as to the form of function adapted to the case. Nevertheless there is no better clue, and the human mind is impelled to do the best it can with the confessedly imperfect data which it finds at its disposal. The result, therefore, in this region, is no system of definite and certain truth, as in Physics, but is either suspense of judgment altogether, or else a tentative scheme or working hypothesis, to be held undogmatically, in an attitude of constant receptiveness for further light, and in full readiness for modification in the direction of the truth.

So far concerning the ascertainment of truth alone, in intangible regions of inquiry. The further hypothesis that such truth when found will be most satisfactory, or in other words higher and better than any alternative plan,—the conviction that faith in the exceeding grandeur of reality shall not be confounded,—requires further justification; and its grounds are not so easy to formulate. Perhaps the feeling is merely human and instinctive; but it is existent and customary I believe among physicists, possibly among men of Science in general, though I cannot speak for all; and it must be based upon familiarity with a mass of experience in which, after long groping and guess-work, the truth has ultimately been discovered, and been recognised as 'very good.' It is illustrated, for instance, by the words in which Tyndall closes the first edition of his book on Sound, wherein, after explaining Helmholtz's brilliant theory of Corti's organ and the musical mechanism of the ear,—a theory which, amid the difficulties of actual observation, was necessarily at first saturated with hypothesis, and is not even yet fully verified,—he says:—

"Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain.... I do not ask you to consider these views as established, but only as probable. They present the phenomena in a connected and intelligible form; and should they be doomed to displacement by a more correct or comprehensive theory, it will assuredly be found that the wonder is not diminished by the substitution of the truth."

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