Part 65

[125] Kepler’s scheme is, that all the regular solids, icosahedron, dodecahedron, octohedron, tetrahedron, and cube should be placed one within the other at such distances that spheres could be described between them so as to touch the corners of each respective interior and the planes of each respective exterior solid. He found, by placing the sun in the centre and allowing the planets to move in great circles on the spheres, (making the circle between the icosahedron and dodecahedron equal to the orbit of the earth,) that then the distances between the planets would, upon the whole, agree with astronomical observations.

This theory is as ingenious, as fascinating, and as original as Mr. Peirce’s propositions. It has only one little fault; it does not agree with facts. And Kepler afterwards abandoned his original theory.

[126] Like Mr. Peirce, Kepler had, in his days, too, thought of the possibility of making the world evolve from chance. When, in 1604, a new and brilliant fixed star suddenly appeared in Ophiuchos, he took up the problem of star-evolution. We will let Kepler tell the story in his own words as it appears in his treatise on the new star:

“Yesterday, while pondering over the problem, I was called to dinner, and my young wife served the salad. ‘Do you think,’ I asked her, ‘if since the origin of creation, pewter platters, salad leaves, oil and vinegar, and also hard-boiled eggs had been flying in a chaotic mixture through space that _Chance_ would have been able to collect them to-day in a salad?’ ‘Certainly not in such a good mixture as this is,’ was the reply of my beautiful wife.”

Kepler rejected the idea that the world could have evolved by chance.

[127] The philosophical articles of the _Century Dictionary_ do not seem to be free of party spirit. An extraordinary amount of praise is given to the mediæval realists which, considering the vagaries of their propositions, they do not deserve. On the other hand, the blame for the discredit into which scholasticism has fallen is heaped upon the nominalists.

[128] I said in _Fundamental Problems_, page 142, “The introduction of the word positivism into philosophy is the merit of M. Auguste Comte. Although we cannot accept much of M. Comte’s conception of positivism we gratefully adopt the name.” There are plenty of other passages in which my usage of the term positivism, as distinguished from the French positivism, is set forth, so that there could be little danger of being misunderstood.

[129] My main objection to the term Absolute is to forestall any hypostatising of a vague abstract notion which can only serve the purpose of mystification. I suffer the term Absolute in a loose sense when it is understood that it is used loosely. I do not say, as Mr. Peirce seems to believe, “absolutely universal” or “absolutely necessary.” The words universal and necessary are sufficiently significant to me without any additional emphasis.

Reality is relative throughout. Absolute existences are, if the term is taken seriously, nonentities; and the expression “The Absolute” for the whole of existence or for those features of existence which are universal and necessary is, to say the least, misleading. These are my reasons for rejecting the Absolute as a philosophical term. There is, of course, no objection to the term in chemistry, physics, mathematics, and other sciences, where it has acquired technical meanings.

[130] Mr. Peirce correctly says that the axioms of geometry are now exploded. This, however, does not overthrow the reliability of formal mathematics; on the contrary, it places it on a safer basis than that of unprovable assumptions, which must be taken for granted.

We look upon the whole system of geometry as a _product of mental operations_. We perform some operations and note what their products are. We do something and mind the consequences of what we do. The problem of modern geometry is to invent a method by which we can construct in the simplest manner possible a straight line and a plane. Euclid still presupposes the existence of the plane and assumes it to be such that parallel lines do not meet. When we are able to construct the plane of Euclidean geometry, we can dispense with the axiom of parallels, for, in that case, the plane will possess the qualities it has by construction. We can very well execute other constructions in which parallel lines possess other qualities, and we shall on the basis of such an altered plan of operation be able to produce entirely different systems of geometry.

We must distinguish between the space of our mathematicians and real space. Experience teaches us that real space has three dimensions which means that from a given point every other point is determinable by three magnitudes. We might doubt (although I think there is little occasion to do so) whether the real space of our experience is truly three-dimensional, but we cannot doubt that the truths developed in the one-dimensional system of numbers, in the two-dimensional system of plane geometry, in the three-dimensional system of solid geometry, and also in _n_-dimensional systems each in their respective domain are perfectly reliable, for they are unequivocally determined, they are _eindeutig bestimmt_. There is no application of the theory of probabilities in a field where the products are not due to chance but result with certainty.

[131] I wonder why the _Century Dictionary_ does not mention the scholastic usage of the word _univocus_ as the root of univocal. Similarly we are not told that the word _incompossibilitas_ is an invention of the schoolmen. Duns Scotus, Mr. Peirce’s favorite philosopher, uses the terms _univoce_ and _incompossibilitas_ freely.

[132] We accept in this argument Mr. Peirce’s solutions, which, however, are his own. A simpler example would have been more appropriate.

[133] The belief in a duality of truth appears quite rational from the dualistic standpoint of the middle ages, and the arguments of Scotus are cleverly devised, being based upon the supposition that the fall of man had changed the entire order of the world, so that the laws of nature prior to the Fall were different to those which obtain now.

[134] Duns Scotus was a very zealous advocate of ecclesiastical supremacy, even advising, for instance, the prosecution of the Jews in order to convert them. It is a strange irony of fate that the author of the _Fons vitæ_, upon whose authority Scotus so largely depends and from whom he derived some of his most important ideas was an Israelite. Scotus did not know that Avicebron was a pseudonym of the Spanish Jew Salomon ben Gebirol.

[135] I omit here a discussion as to whether or not the conservation of energy is true or not. I need not mention that the views of our physicists, such men as Helmholtz, Mach, Maxwell, Tait, and others differ widely from Mr. Peirce’s presentation of the subject. Mr. Peirce rejects the law of the conservation of energy, but retains the conservation, or (as he prefers to say) perduration of matter. I waive the question, whether this is consistent, and call attention only to another, most flagrant contradiction. Mr. Peirce states that, “not only the total amount [of matter] remains constant, but all the different parts preserve their identity”; and yet he says that “matter is effete mind.” Thus when mind becomes effete, the amount of matter increases; however, when the habits of matter are broken up, mind originates, and the amount of matter decreases. This, it seems, would make any perduration of matter and of the identity of its different parts impossible.

[136] That my view of the _a priori_, as Mr. Peirce claims, is “Schleiermacherian” is new to me.

[137] It is a matter of course that frequently several events coöperate to bring about an effect. In that case we have our choice, either to speak of several causes, or to treat the coöperation of all of them as _the_ cause, or to select one of them to be called the cause, while the others may be counted among the conditions.

The limitation of a system of causation depends entirely upon the purpose of our inquiry, and we must here, as in many other things, use discretion.

Mr. Peirce concludes, that according to my view of causation we can, in a relatively uniform motion, such as the flight of a cannon ball, regard the motion of every moment as the cause for the motion of the next moment. I say “relatively,” for absolutely uniform motion does not exist. I grant this, but I do not grant what Mr. Peirce regards as a contradiction of mine, that in that case the cause would be equal to the effect. A man who knows the artifices of the hair-splitting Eleates and the other conundrums of logic, should know that every second of time is different from every other second; 12 o’clock is different from 1 second past 12. He who denies this, has only to miss a train in order to be converted. And how much more different than the moments of time are the various moments of real motion, for in every moment the moving body is in another place, with changed relations; and if that does not constitute a difference, we should have to deny the existence of motion.

[138] See my article on “The Continuity of Evolution” in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No 1; and also “Monism and Meliorism,” p. 73, where “the struggle for the ideal” is contrasted with “the struggle for life.”

[139] For details see, in _The Monist_, Vol. II, No. 4, page 518, et seqq., and 527, et seqq., my articles, “Mr. Spencer on the Ethics of Kant,” heading iv, and “What Does Anschauung Mean?”

I now forgive Mr. Spencer; for if a Kant scholar like Mr. Peirce can fall into this unpardonable mistake, why should not Mr. Spencer, whose knowledge of Kant’s writings is, as he confesses himself, extremely limited, have the same privilege?

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THEISM.

I. THE REALISM OF THEISM.

It is commonly alleged that there is deeply seated in the human mind a belief in the existence of a supreme being, and that the prevalence of such belief is evidence that it has a basis in supernatural revelation. It is urged in reply to this assertion, that this belief is not universal, and that in any case its presence cannot be regarded as satisfactory evidence that is well founded. It is known that the disposition to worship is aroused by grand and beautiful objects; and as Darwin well remarks in one of his letters, the natural sentiments of the sublime and the beautiful easily assume a personal direction. Scientific explanations, moreover, push a personal source of things ever further from us, and it is becoming apparently more easy to doubt or deny any such source whatever.

Prevalent human instincts and intuitions are, however, the result of experience imperfectly or perfectly digested, as the case may be. In most instances they yield to analysis something of value. A more plausible explanation of the theistic instinct is the anthropomorphic one. Man knows that he originates many movements, both of his own body and of other material things, and he knows of no other real source of such movements. He therefore, in his primitive state, before scientific explanations are attained, naturally refers motions in nature to an original personal source. This, it may be supposed, is the natural habit of the unsophisticated mind, and is at the bottom of theistic belief, whether as unexplained in consciousness, and therefore an instinct, or as a distinctly formulated belief. The phenomena of nature must have originated somehow, and there is no other conceivable source of motion than a personal one.

Facts developed by scientific research tend to weaken this anthropomorphism. The indestructibility of matter means that it has never been created. The conservation of energy states that matter has always been in motion. The law of organic evolution is supposed to do away with the necessity for creative intervention in the origination of plants and animals. Finally, the observed facts of the evolution of mind show that this, the light of the world, grew like the organic beings which it inhabits. Nothing higher than man has been found, and there seems to be no ground for suspecting the existence of any higher mind. And man himself dies and undergoes dissolution, like other organic bodies. The result of this use of the facts of science is agnosticism, at least. We know of nothing beyond what they teach, and some agnostics go so far as to say, “ignorabimus,” we shall never know. Agnostics, however, have their faces set in different directions. Some rest in it as a relief from mental toil, as persons more theologically inclined join a church. Others, believers in the progressive evolution of knowledge as of other phenomena, set themselves to explore the unknown country, believing that our opportunities in this direction are practically unlimited.

Let us look again at this anthropomorphism which is so deeply seated and so widely spread. Its essence is the fact that we control our own bodies in a great degree and that our material organs obey the behests of our mind. We do things for, to us, satisfactory reasons, and for satisfactory reasons we leave many things undone, which we could readily do. What has science done towards explaining this most ordinary phenomenon? We may truthfully say, absolutely nothing. It remains a fact that a majority, if not all animals, move their bodies in their entirety or in part, because they have sensations. In the lower animals these sensations are merely either sense-impressions from without, or they are from within, being produced by their physical condition. We rise but little in the scale, when effects of memory are evident, for we find that many actions are due to experience of the result of former actions. With still higher development, mental organisation becomes more apparent, and the reasoning and emotional states have more and more distinct outcome in intelligent acts. But the mechanism by which the act is called forth by the mental state, has never been explained.

The difficulty lies here. A sensation, or a state of mind, weighs nothing. A material body, let it be a cell or a mass of cells, as a muscle, weighs something. How then can the former move the latter? From a mechanical point of view, it cannot be done. For that which has no weight to set in motion anything which has weight, is to violate the law of the conservation and correlation of energy. And this law is not only an _a priori_ necessity, but it has been demonstrated _a posteriori_ in so many cases that exceptions cannot be thought of. So a school of physiologists say that _it is not done_. No animal eats because it is hungry, or drinks because it is thirsty. The man does not direct the muscle of his arm when he writes, nor those of his tongue when he speaks. But it is easy to see why such a school of physiologists includes but an infinitesimal part of mankind.

There is a school of evolutionists who account for the whole matter in harmony with the views of the physiologists above mentioned. I refer to the Post-Darwinians, who account for evolution by natural selection exclusively. That is, animals originally moved aimlessly in all directions. Those whose movements were beneficial to them, survived, while those whose movements were not beneficial, or which were injurious, perished. As frequent motions in a given direction lead to habits, so were inaugurated movements which were habitually beneficial to the actors, which have therefore persisted and multiplied. Thus were established the multifarious habits of animals and men. Consciousness had nothing to do with the process. It merely acted the part of the onlooker, being simply aware of what went on. “Like the locomotive whistle,” says Huxley, “it made considerable noise, but did none of the work.”

To a person familiar with the facts of the evolution of the structures of animals, this seems like a most inadequate theory. It is a commonplace that no kind of selection, either artificial or natural, ever originated anything. Selection simply selects between existing alternatives. The fundamental question of evolution is, What is the origin of things? What is the fate of things originated? is a secondary question. To this first question the Post-Darwinian reply must be, that everything possible has originated no one knows yet how, so that what has survived was necessarily to be found in this _embarras de richesse_. This is an enormous assumption, and one to which the history of the life of past and present ages lends no support. No such multifarious and promiscuous variation is known to have occurred in living or in extinct organic beings. But if the variations have not been infinite, then the chance of the existing one having been hit upon becomes greatly reduced, and the chance of its having occurred at the same time in individuals of opposite sex is still smaller. Finally, the chance of its not being immediately bred out by the overwhelming numbers of individuals not possessing it, is indeed infinitesimal. In fact, it is evident that variations of structure must have appeared in numbers of individuals of a species at the same time, in order to secure survival. This indicates a common cause of general application. That such causes have existed and been effective at all periods of past and present time is amply proved by the facts of geology and paleontology. The most influential in effecting change of form and structure has been the motion of the body and of its parts necessary to secure its food, to defend or protect itself from dangers, and to reproduce its kind. The direct mechanical effects of these motions on all the materials of the body may be traced in the successive stages of the forms of past ages to those of the present time.

The objections above made to the theory of multifarious variation of organic forms, apply with equal force to the theory of multifarious movements of organic beings as furnishing the source of intelligent habits. An additional and especial objection to the latter hypothesis is the fact that it does not recognise the well-known adaptability of animals to new situations and circumstances. If the events of life were a routine moving with mathematical precision, the theory of origin from multifarious variations would have a better foundation; but this is not the case. Food, friends, and enemies do not appear in stated periods, quantities, or qualities. Emergencies are common, and variation of circumstance is the rule. Without sensation, uniform habits would but lead to destruction. Everything which should not be presented in the habitual form and at the habitual time would be neglected. Food and drink would be refused, or not obtained; defense and reproduction would not be attempted under the proper conditions. In fact, the conduct of living beings would be no more intelligent than that of inorganic matter in motion, were sensation to have no share in the process. But as soon as we believe that the habits of animals are due to hunger, thirst, and the perception of temperature, resistance, etc., their acts become intelligible, and the formation of habits becomes a necessary consequence of memory or the faculty of subsequent recognition of sensations experienced at a previous time.

It is, in this connection, of great interest to recall the diverse effects on our mental history of sense-impressions, as compared with the effect of thought. Sense-impressions are not remembered in the proper sense of the term. The repetition in memory is always vastly more indistinct than the original state of consciousness; so much so as to be a very different thing. Thought, on the contrary, when remembered at all, is an exact repetition in quality of its first presence. The presentative consciousness has one quality; the representative and re-representative have another quality. This shows us that the structural arrangement of brain substance concerned in the latter forms of consciousness have a far more permanent quality than that due to the former. They thus constitute more permanent acquisitions, and this being the case, must have a most important bearing on evolution.[140] This is because it is a representative state which determines action. The process of determination may become so rapid as to be almost instantaneous; but it had to be learned and the representation was what gave the act its character and which organised the machinery of the automatic or reflex act.

I here refer to the low degrees of consciousness sometimes called subconsciousness, and the expression, “the subliminal consciousness,” introduced by F. Meyer. All shades of consciousness intervene between the most distinct forms and the unconsciousness of the reflex state. Intelligent subconsciousness is a low stage in this evanescent series. Stages on the passage to and from sleep, and other forms of unconsciousness due to physical causes, are properly termed subconscious. There are reflexes which are due to mechanisms which we inherit from our animal and human ancestors, which are sometimes accompanied by consciousness. The amount of intelligence displayed will depend on the function involved. Experiments on vertebrate animals show that intelligent adaptation of the movements of the body have been transferred forwards in the brain during the course of evolution. Thus, a fish which retains the medulla only, will guide itself through the water so as to avoid danger. If the cerebellum and thalami are left to a reptile, it will avoid destructive acts. But if a mammal is deprived of its hemispheres, its actions are without design, and it is incapable of self-preservation.

It may be that in the temporary absence of the higher consciousness, the lower forms which once existed in our ancestors may be revived, as in some of the elements of our dreams, and in some forms of cerebral disease, when much of the blood is withdrawn from the cortex or parts of it. The amount of consciousness necessary to the performance of intelligent acts depends on the novelty of the situation. Many of the theories on this subject, however, take it for granted that intelligent acts arise in primarily unconscious states. This is only credible on the supposition that such acts have arisen by natural selection only, a view which I have combated on a previous page. Some authors use expressions which can only imply unconscious consciousness. This is of course absurd and self-contradictory. No source but sensation can be found for intelligent acts.

It is true that there are some movements of organic bodies which have an intelligent appearance, to which we cannot ascribe consciousness. Such are those of the spermatozoöids and of the leucocytes. Some of the lowest animals and plants cannot be yet proved to be conscious. We cannot now explain the nature of the movements which these forms exhibit, but they will probably yield to research. Enough it is for our present purpose to know that the majority of animals are conscious for a large part of their lives. And we have abundant evidence to show that movements inaugurated in conscious states may be performed, so soon as learned, in unconsciousness, and become part of the mental furniture of the animal.