Part 5
We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting Evolution as a fact, as all ordinarily educated persons in the present state of scientific knowledge are practically bound to do. Accepting it as a fact, we proceeded to inquire what, if anything, it had to tell us about the moral government of the world; and we found that very different interpretations were put upon the theory of Evolution by different authorities. According to one interpretation the process of Evolution was a continual progress from good to better: good could only give way to higher good. According to another interpretation goodness was a transient, evanescent phase in the process of evolution, of no permanent value: the ethical process was doomed to be defeated by its enemy, the cosmic process. According to a third interpretation the notion of good was a pure illusion, necessary indeed, inasmuch as without it there would be no survival for man in the struggle for existence, but none the less an illusion.
Much as these interpretations differ from one another as to the moral significance of the process of evolution, or indeed as to whether evolution has any moral significance at all, they are agreed upon one point. They are agreed that it is impossible to draw any inference from the facts of evolution as to the moral government of the universe. To affirm its moral government would be to claim knowledge of the Unknowable, which is an obvious absurdity. It would be to attribute power, consciousness, wisdom, and goodness to the Real; and the Real is and must ever be unknown.
This identification of the Real with the Unknowable leads us into the following ridiculous _impasse_: the vast majority of men look, and must always look, for guidance and information to science and theology; and theology is knowledge of the unknowable; science, knowledge of the unreal. Those who are content with this blind alley may remain in it. We propose to try to find our way out of it.
If we analyse our perception of any material object, that is to say, of any object which we perceive by means of the senses, we shall find that our perception of the object consists of the sensations which we have of it. To perceive an orange is to see that it is yellow, to feel that it is round, to smell it, taste it, and so on. These various sensations together constitute our perception of the orange. Now, the subjective idealist says that the perception _is_ the orange, and that the orange is the perception. To the beginner in philosophy that sounds absurd: he knows that his perception is not the orange, and that the orange is something more than his perception of it. But when he is asked, "What more? If the orange is not the perception, what is it?" he does not generally produce any satisfactory reply; and then he is told that his notion, that there is anything in the orange except his own perception or sensations, is obviously not a fact of sensation or a thing directly observed, but merely a belief or inference of his. On the other hand, he generally puts a very natural question to his instructor: "If the orange is merely my perception, what becomes of the orange when I do not perceive it? Granted that it exists whenever I look at it, what becomes of it in the intervals when I am not looking at it? Does it exist then, or does it not?"
To this Bishop Berkeley replies that it does; that it exists then in exactly the same way as it does now, that is to say, it exists in idea (_i.e._ perception or sensation); but as it does not exist in my perception, when I am not looking at it, it must exist in the perception of some other mind, to which all things at all times are present.
With the fact which forms Berkeley's conclusion I have no quarrel. What I should like to show is that it does not follow from these premises.
Berkeley's argument is: All men believe, and rightly believe, that the things they see are permanent. The things they see are ideas (perceptions, sensations) of a mind. Therefore the permanent world is the idea of a permanent mind.[5]
But "the things they see" is an ambiguous expression. If by "the things that I see" is meant "my sensations of sight," then they are not permanent, for they only last as long as I look at the object, and consequently any argument based on their supposed permanence falls to the ground. On the other hand, if "the things that I see" are permanent, then they are not merely my sensations of sight--in which case subjective idealism is wrong, and my perception of a thing is not the whole account of the thing and does not exhaust its reality. The things which I perceive are not my sensations: they are things of which I have sensations. In fine, they are apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, as being both within and without consciousness.
To the question whether a thing exists when I am not looking at it, John Stuart Mill replies, in effect, that as often as I look at it I shall see it; that if I were looking I should see it. This is true enough; but it is no answer to the question. When further pressed, Mill further replies that, if things do not exist when we do not look, we should nevertheless necessarily be deluded by the association of ideas into imagining that they do exist when not looked at. Here, again, it is perfectly true that, if things are not real, it is a delusion to imagine they are. But that is no answer to the question. It is, in fact, a question which the subjective idealist cannot answer. To say "No! Things out of consciousness are non-existent," is to say that effects of which the causes are unobserved are effects produced by non-existent causes. To say "Yes" is to admit that things can exist out of consciousness as well as in, which is what subjective idealism is there to deny.
We submit, then, that the analysis of experience which subjective idealism makes is not an exhaustive analysis; and that, when the man of common sense says that in looking at anything he is aware both of his sensations of sight and of something more, he is stating the actual facts as they are given in experience to all of us.
We apprehend a thing as being both our sensations and something more. When the idealist says that the latter half of this apprehension is a misapprehension, he rejects an observed fact of experience, not because he does not find it in his experience, but because it seems to him impossible that it should be there. He argues that to say we can be conscious of what is not in our consciousness is to say that we can be conscious of something of which we are unconscious--a patent nonsense. He might admit, for the sake of argument, that possibly a thing could exist both in consciousness and out, and even that we might know that it so existed. But he cannot admit that a man is conscious of what he is not conscious of.
He is not required to admit it. He is required to admit that our perceptions are not the only things of which we are conscious; or, to put it in other words, that our states of consciousness are not the only things of which we are conscious. And he is required to admit it simply and solely on the ground that it is a fact of common observation and everyday experience. Thus, for instance, we perform actions, and (usually) we are conscious of performing them. But the action is something more and other than our consciousness of it. Or is someone going to maintain that doing and knowing are the same thing? Is anyone prepared to push the illusion-argument so far as to say that the idea that we do things is a mere delusion? If it is not a delusion, if it is, on the contrary, a fact, then our actions are not states of consciousness, but things of which we are conscious. We apprehend them, in the very act of apprehension, as realities distinct from the consciousness which we have of them. And we have the very same guarantee for their reality as we have for the reality of our perception or sensations of them, viz. the fact that we are conscious of them.
In the same way, when we push a solid object or feel the impact of a moving body, we are as conscious of that body as of our muscular sensations: our sensations make up our perception of the object, but are not the object. They constitute the state of consciousness, but that state is not the only thing we are conscious of. The object is apprehended as being in consciousness and not as merely being our consciousness of it.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, at least, is quite clear that our states of consciousness are not the only things of which we are conscious; he holds even that we are vaguely conscious of that which transcends our consciousness. Thus, our personality is not a state of consciousness, yet we are conscious of it, and "its existence is to each a fact above all others the most certain."[6] And, as for the real, "our firm belief in objective reality, a belief which metaphysical criticism cannot shake," is not merely "a positive though vague consciousness of that which transcends consciousness," but "has the highest validity of any"[7] of our beliefs.
But though Mr. Spencer admits, or rather insists, that we know _that_ the Real is, he denies that we know _what_ it is. In other words, he accepts the validity of one half of every act of experience and denies the validity of the other half. Our analysis of experience has shown us that we apprehend the real, in the very act of apprehension, as being both a state of our consciousness and something more than that state. To say that one half of the apprehension is a misapprehension is to say that both are invalid. If what is present in consciousness is merely appearance and not the real thing, then our states are the only things of which we are conscious, and the existence of anything more is not a fact of experience and observation--still less can it have the highest validity of any of our beliefs.
We may be asked, "Granted that the Real is more than a state of our consciousness, what more is it?" and, if no answer is forthcoming, we may be told that after all then, it seems, we know _that_ the Real is, but not _what_ it is. The reply is: So far as the Real is out of consciousness we may not know what it is; as far as it is in, we do. By "being conscious of a thing" we mean knowing what the thing is--not necessarily complete knowledge, but some.
If it be said that, on our own showing, a thing and the knowledge of it are different, and that consequently however great our knowledge may become there always remains, and must always remain, something which we cannot know, because it is _ex hypothesi_, not knowledge, we must reply that this objection is but a restatement of the inveterate fallacy of idealism--the fallacy that states of consciousness are the only things we can be conscious of; that if we know a thing the thing ceases to be anything but our knowledge of it; that to be conscious of performing an action is proof that no action is really performed, and that the only doing is knowing.
We act, and we know that we act. Reality must be accorded to both or denied to both; it cannot be accorded to one and denied to the other. Indeed, knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But it is also something more, just as an action of which we are conscious is something more than our consciousness of it.
But we are conscious not only of our own actions, but of the reactions of things on us, and of the interactions of things on one another. We apprehend all three--action, reaction, and interaction--as real; we know not only _that_ they are, as being realities, but also _what_ they are as states of consciousness. As states of consciousness they are successive sensations or perceptions; as more than states of consciousness they are power or force.
The study which science makes of the interactions of things on one another reveals those interactions as conformable to law and happening in such a way that their occurrence can be logically deduced, and even foretold, from their laws. In a word, they happen in a way that can be reasoned out, and they constitute together a logical process. The reality, the power, the activity which is exhibited in this process is exhibited therefore as a rational activity, as reason active; and both the reason and the action are apprehended by us as real, and not as mere states of our consciousness.
If the scientific account of the universe and the theory of evolution, so far as they are true, are not mere exercises of the imagination, but represent events and changes which actually have taken place and are taking place beyond the range of actual observation, it must be because they are logical inferences from real events and real changes which are matters of direct observation. If the observed events have no reality, we have no ground for believing the unobserved or inferred facts to have any. Unless the real events follow a logical sequence, our inferences must be fallacious in proportion as they are logical. We believe the inferred facts to be real because we believe the observed facts to be real; and the observed facts are presented to us and apprehended by us to be not merely our sensations but also realities. On no other ground can we or do we trust science to guide us in life.
Nor do we trust morality on any other ground. So far as we trust the impulse to do right, or base any calculations upon it or draw any inferences from it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness and something more. As in the impact of a moving body we apprehend not merely our sensations, but also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse to good we apprehend not only our consciousness thereof, but the presence of a real power, with regard to which we know not only that it is, but to some extent what it is--a power which would have us do good and be good.
If material things are but ideas of ours, so the Right and Good may be. If the latter are mere aspirations and nothing more, the former are mere sensations and nothing more. But if in things we are conscious of a power not ourselves, so are we in our consciousness of the Right and Good: our aspirations are inspirations. We apprehend their reality in exactly the same way as we apprehend the reality of material things--by direct observation. And we have exactly the same evidence--the evidence of immediate consciousness.
"Let no man spoil you with philosophy." The statements that "knowledge is the only reality," "the only Real is the Unknowable," are contradictory not only of each other, but of those facts in the common experience of mankind which afford the only safe foundation for philosophy as well as for science. Both statements logically imply that our only knowledge is of the unreal; and from knowledge of the unreal to the unreality of knowledge is a necessary step. But existence is not merely knowledge: existence is also action. A thing is that which it does, and not merely that which it is known to do. Or rather a thing never does anything: only a person can act. The "action" or "behaviour" of a thing is only a metaphor.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] See Appendix on Bishop Berkeley's Idealism.
[6] _First Principles_, ch. iii. § 20.
[7] _Ibid._, § 26.
VI.
EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION
Assuming the process of evolution to be a fact, we have inquired what is the value of that fact, what significance it has for man as a moral being, anxious to direct his life in accordance with the best lights he can obtain. In our attempts to draw any inference from the facts of evolution as to the moral government of the universe, we have always found ourselves ultimately confronted by the notice--The Real is Unknowable. Obviously, if "the ultimate of ultimates," the Real Power or Force, of which all things and beings are manifestations, is unknowable, we cannot know whether it cares or does not care for what is true or good. But if the Real is Unknowable, then the knowledge which we do possess is not knowledge of the real, and consequently all our science is unreal knowledge; the theory of evolution is a system of delusive inferences from unreal facts. That, however, is a thing which we could not believe. Doubtless our knowledge is small compared with our ignorance. Doubtless there is much which the human mind could not understand without becoming more than human. Doubtless, also, every addition to our knowledge involves a readjustment and correction of our previous inferences; and a considerable addition, such as the theory of evolution was, causes a considerable change in our conception of the universe and its laws. But all these admissions cannot compel us to admit that science is wholly unreal knowledge, or that evolution is an entirely unreal process. We sought, accordingly, to show that we have some, if only partial, knowledge of the real, that that knowledge is not wholly inferential, but that so far as it is inferred it is inferred from real facts, the reality of which is directly apprehended in the common experience of mankind.
As a matter of fact, those writers who proclaim the unknowability of the Real, when they are writing as philosophers, abandon it when they are engaged in science. When they are working out the theory of evolution, they take it for granted that the process of evolution is a reality, that the common experience of mankind is trustworthy to some extent, and that to that extent the Real is knowable and known. They assure us that, though the knowledge we have is not knowledge of the Real, it is just the same for us as if it were--if the Real could enter into our consciousness, we really should not know the difference. "Thus then we may resume, with entire confidence, those realistic conceptions which philosophy at first sight seems to dissipate."[8]
On examination, however, it turns out that the entire confidence which is thus restored to the reality of material things is not extended to the reality of those ideals of the good, the beautiful, and the holy which play their part in the lives of men and in the evolution of mankind--or not to all of those ideals.
Now, it is scarcely to be hoped that a theory which begins by ignoring certain facts in the common experience of mankind, or by denying their reality, can end in a satisfactory explanation of them. Either it will be consistent and proclaim them to be illusions, or it will be inconsistent and quietly include them from time to time as it goes on--in which case the explanation it gives of them will be no explanation. Thus, for instance, as we have already argued, the Optimistic interpretation of evolution, professing to exhibit the Ideal of morality as one of the ultimate consequences of the redistribution of matter and motion, ends by denying any difference between what is and what ought to be, and thus reduces the moral ideal to a mere illusion. The Pessimist, on the other hand, insisting on the reality, and to some extent the supremacy of the moral ideal, confesses his inability to explain its validity as being due to evolution: the fact that it has been evolved does not account for its validity, because the tendency to evil has been also evolved, but is not, therefore, to be yielded to.
The object of this chapter is to examine the hypothesis that the process of evolution is nothing but a perpetual redistribution of matter and motion, and to show that the hypothesis cannot explain, and as a matter of fact does not explain, all the facts which it is framed to account for.
The theory of evolution is an attempt--one of many attempts that men have made--to explain the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it is. It differs from most other attempts in that it endeavours to give a scientific explanation of the process, and that consequently it does not profess to go back to the beginning or to discover the origin of the process.
The nature of scientific "explanation" is well understood by men of science (in England, at least), and has been made familiar to the non-scientific world by John Stuart Mill. An event is scientifically "explained" when it is shown to be a case of a general law; a law is "explained" when it is shown to come under some more general law. In other words, the business of science is to show that the thing under examination always happens (or tends to happen) under certain circumstances which science can formulate with more or less exactness. But _how_ or _why_ the thing should happen thus, science does not undertake to explain: "what is called explaining one law of nature by another, is but substituting one mystery for another; and does nothing to render the general course of nature other than mysterious: we can no more assign a _why_ for the more extensive laws than for the partial ones."[9] It is only "minds not habituated to accurate thinking" which imagine that the laws are the _causes_ of the events which happen in accordance with them, "that the law of general gravitation, for example, causes the fall of bodies to the earth."[10] It may be a law of science, a perfectly true statement, that the phenomenon B always follows the phenomenon A; but that statement, true as it is, is not the cause of B. _That_ A is always followed by B is demonstrated by science. _Why_ it should be followed by B is as mysterious as magic--as mysterious as that the waving of the magician's wand should be immediately followed by the rising of a palace from the ground. How the one thing _can_ follow the other, is no part of science's business to explain.
Science, therefore, is essentially descriptive: with ever-increasing accuracy it describes things and the order in which they happen. Evolution, then, as a scientific theory, is also purely descriptive: it describes the way in which things have come to be what we see them to be, the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it is. But when the purely scientific and descriptive part of the work is done, when science has formulated the order of the events which have led up to the existing state of the universe, when the process of evolution has been described, there still remain the questions which science refused even to try to answer, and there also remain other questions more vital to science. There arises the question, In what sense is evolution a real process? do the laws of science exist only in the minds of men of science? is the process of evolution merely the description which is given of it (as according to some thinkers a thing is only the sensations which we have of it), or is it something more?
Obviously the question whether evolution is a real process, whether there is any reality in science, is one which cannot be answered, either in the affirmative or in the negative, without some idea of what "reality" means, of what the "real" is. "What is the meaning of the word _real_? This is the question which underlies every metaphysical inquiry; and the neglect of it is the remaining cause of the chronic antagonisms of metaphysicians."[11] Before we are logically entitled to say that evolution is a real process, we must answer the question, "What is the essence, the ultimate reality of things? who or what is the Being that is manifested in 'all thinking things, all objects of all thought'?"[12]