RELIGION AND StiU, it did not^escape' popular attention that the old pillar of a mechanistic view of the universe now seemed to be reinforced by another. The theory of the conservation of energy was now supplemented by RISE OF AN ANTI-RELIGIOUS SCIENCE 51 that of the indestructibility of matter (Lavoisier). And to crown aU, the old atomic theory, which Lucre tius had made the foundation of his dogmatic material ism, was now re-estabhshed on an experimental basis. So far as physical science was concerned, the situation seemed menacing to a rehgious view of hfe. Men felt that they inhabited a world of indestructible matter, moved by a certain measure of force, unchangeable and fixed. The prison of determinism and matter was closing around them. CHAPTER VI RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM An Unstemmed Tide. — In spite of those important reactions of thought which we have associated with the name of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Pascal, the mechani cal view had not ceased, as the last chapter has shown us, to extend itself during the eighteenth century, when it became highly fashionable in progressive circles. Common-sense Philosophy. — The strength of this mechanical view lies in the fact that it stands on the shoulders of a natural science which itself has its feet firmly planted on the irrefragible rock of sense- experience. The mechanical view thus rests, in the last resort, upon the behef (which is held everywhere with confidence by plain men) that sense-experience is a sound foundation for knowledge. The importance of this belief had been recognised by the Enghsh phUosopher, Locke (1632-1704), who in his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), lays it down that aU human knowledge is based, ultimately, upon sense-experience. This highly im portant work had an immense influence, and, under Locke's tutelage, many thinkers regarded with sus picion any knowledge which might seem not to be derivable, in one way or another, from that source. As the strength of Samson lay in his unshorn hair, 52 RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM 53 so the strength of the mechanical theory lay, and still hes, in the acceptance of Locke's theory of human knowledge, i.e. that it is aU derived from the senses. And the Dehlah who can shear away Locke's con clusions, leaves Samson helpless ; mechanical material ism becomes a discredited theory. Hence the truth of the saying that the problem of knowledge is the preliminary question for phUosophy. Weakness of Speculative Philosophy. — Spinoza and Leibniz may be said to have dispensed with this foundation. Taking the scientific knowledge of their time for granted, they drew certain conclusions there from ; but their results, however imposing, were felt to be the result rather of speculation than of reason. Such was the more or less unexpressed estimate of their work. It was undervalued, for both Spinoza and Leibniz were thinkers of the first cahbre ; and yet there was some justice in the charge. By the end of the eighteenth century the days of merely speculative philosophy were past. The Critical Philosophy. — The time was ripe for a new metaphysic — for a fresh step forward in philosophic method. That step was taken by the celebrated Immanuel Kant, who is the originator of what is known, in the history of thought, as the Critical PhUosophy. The word critical signifies a particular method of approaching the problem of existence, a method which must be contrasted with that of the speculative phil osophy, of which Spinoza and Leibniz are examples. The critical philosophy, before attempting (as Spinoza had done) to tackle the problem of existence, first attacked the problem of knowledge. Before asking What is the truth? it put the preb'minary question, 54 RELIGION AND SCIENCE What are the means at man's disposal for reaching the truth? It prefaced all philosophical enquiry by an examination into the nature and scope of human thought. Such was the preparatory investigation which was to place metaphysics upon a secure and scientific foundation. For the new philosophy, the gateway to all sound knowledge is the reflection of the human mind upon itself. " Know thyself," is its advice to the inquiring spirit of man. Here, if any where, is to be found the philosopher's stone. Immanuel Kant. — The celebrated Immanuel Kant was born at Konigsberg in 1724, and died in his native town in 1804. Between those dates he hved the industrious and uneventful life of a university professor. The Seven Years' War and the French Revolution left him undisturbed, though not unmoved. He was a man of quiet, regular habits, and his fellow- townsmen would set their clocks by his daily promen ade.1 But the adventurous originahty of his thought serves as a contrast to this peaceful picture. Kant, indeed, laid the foundations of philosophy afresh. With characteristic insight, he went to the very root problem of all, and chaUenged human thought itself. Before we can know anything, we must first of aU demand the credentials of the instru ment by which knowledge is gained. Before asking, What do I know ? the preliminary question should be, How do I know ? Otherwise we cannot say whether we are in a position to give any answer to those ulti mate problems, the answers to which constitute phUosophy. 1 The receipt and perusal of Rousseau's Emile, are said to have interrupted the walk on one occasion, to the great astonishment of the Konigsbergers. RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM 55 It is far from easy to present Kant's criticism of knowledge at once simply and accurately. This philosopher has a not undeserved reputation for ob scurity, and had he written in any other language than German, he would perhaps have found no readers. The Problem of Knowledge. — It had already been reahsed by the predecessors of Kant that what is caUed " sense-experience " is a less simple process than it seems, and that our senses cannot be said to reveal to us any object as it actuaUy is. John Locke himseU was not the first to point out that the so- caUed " secondary- quahties " of any material object (i.e. colour, taste, etc.) are produced just as much by the person who perceives, as by the object which is perceived. Galileo, Descartes, and Hobbes, besides others, had been aware of this fact, which indeed becomes evident to the most superficial analysis of sense-experience. The " primary quahties," i.e. density, extension, etc., continued to be regarded as subsisting in the objects themselves, and independently of any per ceiving consciousness. But even this view did not prove permanent, and it was the episcopal philosopher, George Berkeley (1685-1753) who demonstrated in his New Theory of Vision that not even these qualities could rightly be regarded as subsisting independently. Thus it had already been reahsed, long before Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason (pubhshed, 1781)', that our senses are far from reveahng to us things as they are ; it is only the appearances of things and not the things themselves that the senses present to us. Indeed, as is weU known, the Scotch philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), who was a master in the art of raising problems, extended this line of criticism 56 RELIGION AND SCIENCE until it reached to pure scepticism. He put 'the ques tion, If aU our knowledge is derived from sense- experience, and if sense-experience only supphes us with appearance and not reahty, what degree of trustworthiness can there be in human knowledge ? And he was not afraid to give the logical answer — None. Hume may thus be said to have brought things to an impasse. As a matter of fact, what he had done was to refute Locke's theory of knowledge (i.e. that it is derived entirely from sense-experience) by means of a reductio ad dbsurdum. The Kantian Criticism. — Kant says that it was Hume who " awoke him from his dogmatic slumbers." By this he meant that Hume made him realise that it was no use indulging in philosophic speculation generally, or hstening to the speculations of others, until " the Problem of Knowledge " was satisfactorily solved. To this problem Kant apphed himself. And recognising Locke to be the fons et origo malorum, he subjected his theory of human knowledge to a close analysis, and exposed it as being faUacious. Far from sense-experience being responsible for aU our knowledge, Kant proved that important elements of knowledge are quite independent of sense-experi ence ; especially was this so in the case of certain mathematical propositions. (Hence the question, How is pure mathematics possible ? was put by Kant at the beginning of his philosophy.) But it is neither necessary nor desirable to enter into the arguments by means of which Kant proved his thesis, which was that the human mind contains in itself certain principles of knowledge (e.g. the idea of cause and effect, the ideas of mathematics, and so on) which it does not owe to sense-experience. RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM 57 Kant's Copernican Hypothesis. — Kant caUed these principles of knowledge, forms of thought or categories. The name, perhaps, is irrelevant to our purpose ; aU that we need to understand is that Kant turned the tables upon Locke. Locke said that the mind was a tabula ra,sa which passively received im pressions from outside. Kant said that the mind is nothing of the kind ; it is not passive, but active ; it does not " receive " whatever is offered, it " selects " what it wants ; and it imposes its own "forms of thought " upon the outside world. Photography had not been invented at the time of this controversy, but Kant might have said : The mind is not a photographic plate receiving impressions from without, it rather resembles the lens which im pressions must pass through, and be transformed by, before they can create a picture. Kant had, in fact, by this theory, instituted a revolu tion. His new dogma was : The mind is the mould into which all our knowledge must- be cast ; and the constitu tion of our mind predetermines the shape that our know ledge takes. Thus Kant had discovered that not only sensuous perception, but rational understanding also, has its forms and presuppositions. Just as we become aware of objects only by means of senses which perhaps hide or distort as much as they reveal ; so also our rational knowledge is conditioned by the nature of our under standing, which dictates to reality the " forms " under which it can be understood and known. Mechanism Undermined. — How did this affect the mechanical theory ? The connection is obvious Mechanism is nothing but one of the forms of thought that the mind imposes on phenomena. Just as 58 RELIGION AND SCIENCE Copernicus had discovered that it is due to our position on the earth that the heavenly bodies appear to move round us, so Kant had discovered that it is due' to the nature of our senses and understanding that we perceive things in space and time, and understand them as being mechanically determined. The space and time, and the mechanical determinism are not in the things, but in our minds. The fact is that we can only grasp things under these forms. Space, time, mechanical causation are forms and laws, not of nature, but of the human intellect, which is so constituted as to see things in this way. Thus those axioms of science and of mathematics which lie at the base of all exact knowledge, and which had hitherto been regarded as objective, i.e. as inherent in the nature of things, were shewn by Kant to be, as a matter of fact, subjective, that is (in Kant's own phrase) " they express the conditions under which alone we are able to apprehend or understand the object." Thus all knowledge is conditioned by our nature, by the framework, so to speak, not only of our senses but of our minds. In this way the mechanical view was outflanked ; that view certainly seems to us inevitable and certain, but this is due to the constitution of our minds ; the world seems to us to be determined, just as it seems blue to a person wearing blue spectacles. But there is no sufficient reason for supposing that it is either determined or blue. The law of mechanical causation is an axiom, but it is a subjective axiom. Appearance and Reality. — This may not seem much of an advance on Hume's position. Human knowledge still seems precarious, if we assume the mind to be a kind of dictator which imposes its own RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM 59 laws upon nature. And Kant indeed frankly admitted that neither our senses nor our reason were able to reveal to us things as they are, but only things as they seem ; we grasp appearance, not reality, and (to use Kant's phraseology) phenomena not noumena. Thus Kant cut away the ground from under aU rationahstic dogmatism ; he shewed its presumptuous futihty. The Pathway to Reality. — Kant, however, did not remain satisfied with the negative results of his critical philosophy, valuable as these were. Reahty, it is true, hes out of range of the human reason, but it is not entirely inaccessible to us, and scepticism about the ultimate nature of things is not the necessary corollary of Kant's, as it was of Hume's, philosophy. Kant drew a distinction between the " Theoretical Reason," which his Critique of Pure Reason had dealt with, and the " Practical Reason," which he discusses in his Critique of Practical Reason (1788). The " Practical Reason." — By the " practical reason " Kant meant the moral consciousness, and the law of the " practical reason " is the moral law, the fulfilment of which constitutes duty. This law springs neither from outside authority nor from ex perience ; it is autonomous. And it is upon the existence of this autonomous moral consciousness that Kant plants his foothold in his endeavour to find a refuge from the philosophic agnosticism to which his analysis of the " theoretical reason " had led ; and upon this rock he founded his behef in " God, Freedom, and Immortahty." By means of his " practical reason," man gets into touch with that real world, which his " theoretical reason " is unable to reach. In fact, the " practical reason " itself (or moral consciousness) is an element 60 RELIGION AND SCIENCE in man's nature which belongs to the real, as opposed to the phenomenal world. For man himself is a citizen of both worlds, and has (so to speak) a dual nature, a foot on either shore. He is an inhabitant both of the world of mechanical phenomena, and of the " timeless world of freedom," which lies altogether outside of all mechanical conceptions. Kant and Religion. — " Rehgion we must seek in ourselves, not outside ourselves," is a saying of Kant's that gives the clue to his general attitude. It is only in that world which cannot be interpreted mechanicaUy (i.e. the inner world of freedom of which we never cease to be conscious) that we may seek, or can hope to find the source of rehgion. It is not the spectacle of the mechanicaUy determined world of nature, but the demands of the moral consciousness that create rehgion. For instance, it is the gulf that yawns between the ideal commands of the moral law, and the actual possibihties (so poor and meagre) of fulfilling and satisfying them, that creates, in the view of Kant, the need of God and immortahty. These alone can guarantee the reahsation of the ideal claims of the moral consciousness. Religious Faith. — Thus the " practical reason " leads on to convictions concerning what hes beyond the limits defined by the " theoretical reason." The nature of the demands of the moral consciousness give us an insight into the nature of the super-phenomenal (transcendental, noumenal) world. That world must be of such a kind as to sanction and guarantee our moral ideals ; it must be friendly and not hostile or indifferent to those ideals which man cherishes, but which his " phenomenal " experience seems to RISE OF GERMAN IDEALISM 61 contradict. Thus we see the truth of the saying that " The universe as a moral system is the last word of the Kantian philosophy."1 Kant's Influence. — Kant was one of those thinkers who are responsible for turning the stream of thought into fresh channels. Through his researches into the nature of human knowledge, he discovered the con ditions upon which it rests, and defined the limits beyond which it cannot pass. Thus, once for aU, he put an end to dogmatism. And to Kant also belongs the credit of having estabhshed the reahty and validity of inner experi ence. The rock upon which his philosophy is built is no external fact or event — nothing in time or space — but the moral consciousness itseU. And thus he re stores, as the central interest of philosophy, the human individual, with aU his experiences of need, of hope, and of insight. Personahty is. the principle of his philosophy. In this he is the true successor of the Reformation. 1 Pringle Pattison, Idea of God, p. 26. CHAPTER VII THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT Kant and After. — With Kant the hey-day of ration ahsm terminated. He had put an end to the superficial psychology upon which it rested. For the rationahsts, the hfe of the mind had consisted in intellectual ideas ; but a more careful analysis indicated the presence of deeper-lying elements, which had hitherto been dis regarded ; there existed other important constituents besides the inteUectual. Kant's criticism of " pure reason " did much to discredit the old view ; and by founding his philosophy upon the non-intellectual " moral consciousness," he heightened the prestige of feehng as against reason (in the narrow and hmited sense of that word) . Thus Kant is not undeservedly called the father of a philosophy which succeeded him, and which was based upon the idea of the supremacy of feehng. But, at the same time, that title is more accurate as an estimate of another philosopher of rather different character istics. Rousseau. — Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a man of unique genius whose figure occupies a prominent position not only in the annals of philosophy, but in social, pohtical, and literary history. Even more than Voltaire was he responsible for sowing seeds of thought which bore fruit in the events of the 62 THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 63 Revolution. And indeed, it is as the author of the notorious Contrat Social that he is most widely known. Rousseau's " Sensibility." — Rousseau was one of those philosophers whose character is the formative element which gives shape to their doctrines. His was a profoundly emotional temperament. He left behind him an invaluable document which lays bare all the psychological sources of his philosophy. The Con fessions reveal to us a man highly sensitive and morbidly introspective, the slave of unreasoning impulses and passions. In the eyes of some short sighted persons, these first-hand revelations wiU obscure or cast doubt upon the capacity and genius of the man, for they do httle to prejudice opinion in his favour. He Defies the Zeitgeist. — Rousseau's profound originahty lies in his having dared to dispute a dogma to which the prestige of an axiom then attached. He endeavoured to undermine the popular faith in scientific and philosophic culture. He went right back to Pascal, who, a century before, had raised the question as to the value of scientific knowledge for personal hfe, by proclaiming " The whole of philosophy is not worth an hour's study." Rousseau's first philosophical work was occasioned by the offer of a prize on the part of a provincial academy for a thesis on the problem " Whether the restoration of the sciences and arts has contributed to purify manners ? " " The question pierced Rousseau's soul hke a flash of lightning." He felt (he teUs us) that he saw a new world, and felt a new man ; he saw no longer the world of culture, of science, of philosophy (which he felt to 'be as artificial as it was ineffective and vain), but the real world of personahty, of hving 64 RELIGION AND SCIENCE feeling, of the inner hfe. It flashed upon him that it was the primitive and elementary feehngs, the great and simple relations of hfe, which gave to existence its value. The rest was superficial and irrelevant. Rousseau and Religion. — The inteUectuahst is ever the aristocrat.1 Voltaire and the philosophers of the " enhghtenment " spoke of the unenhghtened multitude as la canaille. Its behefs were superstitions. Rousseau knew that the things which men have in common are more vital than those in which they differ, and the primitive instincts of the race which we aU share, are the most- important part of our nature. Among these primitive instincts, indomitable and irrepressible, is the instinct of rehgion. Thus Rousseau transferred the rehgious problem from the sphere of external observation and explanation of the world (to which the rationalists had promoted or degraded it), back to inner personal feeling. This marked an epoch in the philosophy of rehgion. Moreover, Rousseau was able to write in a convincing fashion of rehgion, because (and here he differed from the inteUectuals of his day) he had personal experience of what it meant. Hence wherever he aUudes to rehgion his language has the ring of sincerity ; it is always spontaneous, and sometimes it is passionate and poetic. His rehgious experience took the form of nature-mysticism, undogmatic (because non-intellec- tuahst), but rich and deep : " I can find no more worthy adoration of God than the silent admiration which the contemplation of His works begets in us, and which cannot be expressed by 1 "Atheism is aristocratic," was the reply of Robespierre to one who mocked at his Etre Supreme. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 65 any prescribed acts. ... In my room I pray seldomer and more coldly ; but the sight of a beautiful land scape moves me, I cannot tell why. I once read of a certain bishop, who, when visiting in his diocese, encountered an old woman whose only prayers con sisted in a sigh ' Oh ! ' The bishop said to her, ' Good mother, always pray hke that ; your prayer is worth more than ours.' My prayer is of that kind." 1 Here we have one form of the rehgious spirit ; for the mystic it is always true that " there is neither speech nor language." The mystic and the dogmatist stand at opposite poles, for dogmatism is always an attempt at definition even when that which is to be defined is indefinable ; and here is to be found the common denominator between Kant and Rousseau. The former, by his analysis of reason, discredited dogmatism : the latter, by his apotheosis of feeling, contributed towards the same result. Romanticism in Germany. — This strong movement of feehng, created on the one hand by Kant's Critique, and by the mysticism of Rousseau, took different forms in the two countries to which these two philosophers belonged. In France the new philosophy became the hot-bed of revolutionary ideas ; whereas in Germany it found vent in a ferment of speculative systems, and in an outcrop of artistic production. It produced the phUosophies of Fichte, Schelhngj and Hegel, and the prose and poetry of Goethe and Schiller. " It was the age of ' beautiful souls ' and of ' noble hearts ' ; men beheved themselves capable of the highest things ; the immediate needs of the heart were set over against reason . . . under many successive forms Romanticism prevailed in hterature, effecting 1 Confessions, Book XII. 66 RELIGION AND SCIENCE the re-birth of human fancy after the long labour of intellect." 2 The Goal of Philosophy. — Philosophic young Germany had set itself an ambitious programme. Kant, indeed, had cleared the ground for them, but his warnings that an eagle cannot soar beyond the atmo sphere which supports it, were disregarded. The philosophy of Kant himself was felt by the successors to be lacking in the idea of totality — in the conception of a whole. His division of existence into Appearance and Reahty seemed to indicate a certain lack of finish in his philosophy ; and they set them selves to explore the root of reahty which to Kant seemed undiscoverable, but in which, the sensuous and super-sensuous worlds are united, and from which they have emerged. This task became and remained the grand problem of philosophy for a whole generation of thinkers. All externality, isolation, and division were to disappear, all existence must be shown to be but degrees and phases of the one infinite reality. Spinoza's Work had to be done again in the light of increased psychological knowledge. Fichte. — Of the thinkers who addressed themselves to this ambitious task, only two need be considered here ; and these are chosen because they attacked the problem from different directions. In the first place, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), who had been the first to lay down the programme of thought with exphcitness, realised and admitted that the task which philosophy had set itself was beyond the powers of any logical train of thought. The " higher unity " of existence, the demonstration of which was the goal of philosophy, could be reached 1 Hoffding, Vol. II, p. 9. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 67 only by a process of inteUectual intuition,1 it must be guessed or divined ; for it presents itseU (and this is a characteristicaUy " Romanticist " idea) to the human mind in the immediacy of feehng, and not by discursive thought. It was of the essence of Fichte's philosophy, as it had been of Spinoza's, that a point may be attained where the mind feels itself to be at one with the truly real, and only when this point is reached — i.e. sub specie aeternitatis, will it arrive at and retain the conviction of the universal order and unity of existence. From this standpoint, and from this alone, does it become possible to grasp " the meaning of those dualities and contrasts which we find around and in us, the differences of self and not-self, of mind and matter, of subject and object, of appearance and reahty, of truth and semblance." Hegel. — It has been said, perhaps with justice, that " philosophy is the finding of bad reasons for what we beheve upon instinct." The remark might seem, at least in the eyes of some, to be particularly apphc able to the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Not because his arguments are bad, but because he attempted to establish by strict logic the conclusions which Fichte sought to reach by means of intuition, and which perhaps are only attainable by that method. Hegel attempted to climb, by a strict process of reasoning, to the position from which the Fichtean landscape might spread itself below as a 1 Fichte's word is Anschauung, for which the EngUsh language possesses no exact equivalent. It " imphes something akin, though perhaps superior to, seeing or perceiving by means of the senses," and it approaches less closely to " inspiration " than does the English word " intuition." The term acquired a meaning some what akin to the amor intellectualis Dei of Spinoza, which we have met before. (See note in Merz, III, p. 445.) 68 RELIGION AND SCIENCE logical whole : he claimed to be a reasoner as weU as a seer. And thereby he may be said to have furnished " the programme of thought for a certain class of inteUects which will never die out." Thus Hegel was something of a hybrid, and may be described as a rationahstic-romanticist. Nor are his arguments the easiest to understand. " The only thing that is certain," writes a commentator who stands at an opposite philosophical pole, " is that whatever you may say of his procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make no claim to under standing it ; I treat it merely impressionisticaUy." 1 And this is all we can do here. Hegel's Method. — Hegel proceeds by means of what he caUs the Dialectical Method. He understand, by " dialectic " (i) a property of aU our thoughts in virtue of which, each particular thought necessarily passes over into another ; and also (2) a property of things, in virtue of which every particular thing necessarily belongs to, or is related to, aU other things. A thing " by itseU " is nothing. Hence a similarity or paraUehsm between the method of thought and the nature of things. Logic is of the nature of things. The way in which thought reaches truth is also the way in which things exist. Hegel expressed this in his weh1 -known saying " the real is the rational, and the rational is the real." Perhaps more poeticaUy or obscurely the same proposition is expressed by declaring : " When we think existence, existence thinks in us," and " The pulse of existence itself beats in our thinking." Hegel's logic may, in fact, be described as an attempt to conceive the movement of thought as being at the 1 WilUam James, A Pluralistic Universe, p. 92. THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 69 same time the law of the universe. Logic (to repeat what we said before) is of the nature of things : reahty is rational, and what is rational is real. Thus logic for Hegel did not mean (as it meant for Kant) the forms or laws of thought : it signified the very core of reahty. For aU that Kant knew, reahty might or might not be rational : aU he asserted was that the human mind rationahsed reahty (or parts of it). For Hegel, logic or reason was the hving and moving spirit of the world. The essence of reality and the essence of thought were one. The absolute reahty was spirit. x Hegelianism. — Hegel's phUosophy may be described as an attempt to reach the standpoint of rehgious mysticism by means of purely rational processes. It is the finding of rational grounds for supra-rational intuitions. The attempt is laudable, and, in the eyes of many, it was successful. And, as we shaU see, Hegehanism had an important future, especiaUy in England ; nor, as a system of thought, is it yet extinct. Its central conception is that which, in one shape or another, wiU never cease to appeal to mankind — that existence is, at bottom, spiritual in character — that spirit is the only ultimate reahty. That Hegelianism provides a rational basis for a spiritual rehgion is obvious enough ; nor is it necessary to indicate the possibihties of hnking up the Christian doctrine of the Logos with a philosophy for which Reason was the very core and ground of existence. Hegel may indeed be said to have laid the foundation of Christian theology afresh ; or rather to have restored 1 Here again a certain ambiguity surrounds the German word. Geist is inadequately translated by either " mind " or " spirit " : it comprises the meaning of both words (cf. Merz, III, p. 466). 70 RELIGION AND SCIENCE what was best in the old theology, and given it the prestige of modernity. Religion and Philosophy. — In fact, for Hegel as for all rationahsts whose attitude is also rehgious, religion and philosophy were two forms of the same thing. Rehgion contains philosophic truths under the form of imagination : philosophy contains rehgious truth under the form of reason. The difference is one of form only, not of content. This had not been the view of Rousseau, nor is it the deepest view ; and it was not the view of a thinker of the Romantic school who did more than any individual among his prede cessors to bring the rehgious problem to the point where it now stands. Schleiermacher. — While the sun of Romanticism was at its zenith, the spirit of Kant's critical philosophy was kept ahve by a thinker of as deep spiritual and inteUectual insight as Hegel himself. Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834) brought the rehgious problem down fom those altitudes to which Romanticist metaphysics had raised it, to what Kant had called " the fertile bathos of experience." He approached rehgion from the side of inner ex perience, the point of view of psychology. The pro found insight of Kant had aheady shown that this was the direction on which future thought would travel, by tracing back the rehgious problem to a personal need more clearly and penetratingly than ever before — a need set up by the incongruity of the real and the ideal. His View of Religious Ideas. — Just as Rousseau, owing to his own rehgious experience, was in a better position to attack the rehgious problem than the philosophers of the " enlightenment," so Schleier- THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 71 macher had the advantage of some Romanticists. As a boy, he had been put to school with the Moravians, and throughout his own life he never ceased to declare that the years spent among them had been of vital importance to the development of his views. In 1801 he writes : " My way of thinking has indeed no other foundation than my own pecuhar character, my inborn mysticism, my education as it has been determined from within." And his own experience of rehgion estabhshed in him the conviction that the innermost hfe of men must be hved in feeling, and that this alone can bring man into immediate relation to the highest. His acceptance of Kant's criticism of reason led him to understand that inteUectual concepts, in the rehgious sphere, (i.e. dogmas) must always be of secondary importance : experience comes first. And his profound originality hes just here, and it is just here that Schleiermacher stands out as the forerunner of the modern view. He it was who first made it evident that rehgious ideas derive their vahdity from that inner experience which they are an attempt to describe. If a dogma is an expression of an experience felt by man in his inner most life, it is a valid dogma, even if philosophic criticism hesitates to sanction it.1 What is Religion ? — The distance of this position from that of the eighteenth century inteUectuahsm which regarded rehgion either as a form of philosophy 1 This does not mean that what is ngt good enough for philosophy is good enough for religion. The idea behind Schleiermacher is that what philosophy cannot sanction, rehgious experience can sanction. And it has to be remembered that, as a follower of Kant, he assigned very definite limits to the powers of philosophy. He was not an Hegelian — Hegel's and Schleiermacher's views of the religious problem are quite incompatible — the one beheved, the other did not beUeve, that reason could solve that problem. 72 RELIGION AND SCIENCE or of superstition, is obvious. Schleiermacher attacks two inteUectuahst prejudices in particular : (i) That according to which rehgion is conceived of primarily as a doctrine (either revealed, or grounded on reason), and (2) That which regards rehgion as merely a means towards morahty. Rehgion, according to Schleiermacher, has an existence independent of (though, no doubt, associated with) philosophy, superstition, or morahty. Its essence consists neither in speculation nor in action, but in a certain type of feehng, of inner experience. Schleiermacher characterised this particular type of feeling as a feeling of dependence : the immediate consciousness that everything finite exists in and through the infinite, everything temporal in and through the eternal. That Schleiermacher should have described the specifically rehgious feeling in this particular way is comparatively irrelevant so far as our present purpose is concerned. The point of importance is that he was the first to recognise the independence of rehgion, to see in it a legitimate and natural form of human activity, which exists, not for the sake of knowledge or of morahty, but for its own sake, and on its own account. Here, though Hegel took a different view, Schleier macher is one in spirit with the Romantic school ; indeed, he may be said to have drawn the logical conclusions of Romanticism. The independence and originahty of rehgion is the necessary consequence of a philosophy which set itself against the unbalanced intellectuahsm of the " enlightenment." The permanent significance of Romanticism hes here : That it discredited once for all the notion that THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 73 there is only one road to reahty — that of logic. It is not only philosophy, but rehgion and art that remove the veU which hides the supra-sensible world from us. And to close our eyes to the facts of rehgious experi ence, or to attempt to discredit them by the apphcation of irrelevant terms such as " superstition," is not only to display ourselves as phihstines, but also to forsake the highest traditions of science — veneration for experience, and the realms of fact. CHAPTER VIII mechanism and life Recapitulatory. — We have already observed the mechanical theory, in the hands of Descartes, expand ing itself to cover organisms and the phenomena of life, and in La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine, reducing even human beings to the status of automata. These theories were, however, known to be insecurely based upon somewhat hasty generahsations, for, in point of fact, the science of biology was as yet in its infancy ; the data for a complete vindication of the mechanical position were as yet wanting. Advance of Biology. — Biological science, however, during the first half of the nineteenth century made considerable advances, and research continually kept bringing to hght facts which seemed to substantiate the brilliant, if premature, hypothesis of Descartes. It wiU not be necessary for us to do more than take hasty note of certain important developments. It was in 1828 that the German chemist Wholer (1800-1882) for the first time in biological history prepared an organic compound (urea) from inorganic materials — an achievement universally recognised to be of the utmost significance. As a distinguished historian of the science of chemistry puts it : " This discovery destroyed the difference which was then considered to exist between organic and 74 MECHANISM AND LIFE 75 inorganic bodies, viz. that the former could only be formed under the influence of vegetable or animal vital forces, whereas the latter could be artificially produced."1 Ten years later another German, Schleider (1804- 1881) propounded the ceUular theory of the structure and growth of plants, a theory which was soon extended to animal organisms by Schwann (1810-1882). The pubhcation of this famous theory was described by a contemporary as " a burst of daylight " ; it indeed iUuminated what had hitherto been buried in mystery and mythology — the structure and method of growth of plants and animals. It seemed to render superfluous any form of the old conception of a " vital force " to explain the phenomena of growth, if it could now be assumed that the ceUs automatically absorbed outside material, increased in number by the division of individuals, and built up the organism by continual repetition of this process. Schwann was also responsible for initiating a number of minute physiological investigations which led to a far more intimate knowledge of the action of nerves and muscles, and interpreted these in mechanical terms. " Investigations which were carried on with all the resources of modem physics regarding the phenomena of animal movements, graduaUy sub stituted for the miracles of the ' vital forces ' a mole cular mechanism, comphcated, indeed, and hkely to baffle our efforts for a long time to come, but inteUigible, nevertheless, as a mechanism."2 Subsequent researches, notably of Helmholtz (1821- 1895) and Meyer, lent strong support to this inter- 1 Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie, Vol. I, p. 442 (quoted by Merz, Vol. I, p. 191). 2 Merz, Vol. I, p. 218. 76 RELIGION AND SCIENCE pretation. The conception of the conservation of energy (an important axiom of the mechanical theory) was successfuUy apphed by them to the economy of organisms. The organism was found not to create energy, but only to contain remarkably efficient means of deriving it from materials absorbed as food. Thus animal warmth and the power of motion are originaUy " sunlight transformed in the organism of the plant," and afterwards appropriated by the animal. The power with which we move our limbs is as much the product of combustion as is the power of a steam engine, the only difference being that the organism is, of the two, the more efficient converter of energy. The Mechanical Theory Substantiated. — Thus, whether biologists were considering the structure or the behaviour of organisms, they were arriving at the same conclusions. The structure was revealed as physical and chemical structure, and the behaviour as the resultant of familiar physical and chemical processes. Hence biology came to be regarded as a compartment of physics and chemistry, for hfe itself was nothing but a complex physical or chemical phenomenon. Life could thus be satisfactorily expressed in terms of matter and energy. The speculations of Descartes seemed to be estabhshed by experimental science. The Final Obstacle. — The situation, aheady satis factory to those whose hope it was to see the mechanical theory impregnably estabhshed, was marred, however, by one untoward circumstance. The phenomena of organic structure, growth, and behaviour having been reduced to order, and expressed in terms of physics and chemistry, certain important facts stiU resisted MECHANISM AND LIFE 77 explanation, and stood out as a last stronghold of the older view. The Origin of Species. — The existence of definite forms of animal and vegetable hfe, whose infinite variety and complexity was continuaUy being in creased by research1 — stiU remained a mystery. How did these innumerable species naturaUy and automatic- aUy come into being ? was the question that must be satisfactorily answered before the mechanical view could be held to cover aU the facts. The direction in which to look for a reply had been' indicated by a number of thinkers. The French naturalist Buffon, the philosopher Kant, and the poet Goethe — besides other thinkers — had aheady in the eighteenth century familiarised the idea that species are not immutable, but that, by some means or other, new forms of hfe are derived from pre-existing ones. The conception had gained a firm foothold in England, where it was hospitably entertained by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and where it formed the staple of a book which caused a good deal of controversy in its day, and which is not yet forgotten.2 Lamarck. — The evolutionary idea, however, though attractive to philosophers, and even to men of science, was insufficient as an explanation of the origin of species so long as the processes of transformation remained obscure. Naturahsts could not accept an hypothesis for which there seemed to be such imperfect evidence. An ingenious French scientist, J. Baptiste 1 According to one authority ( Judd, in his Coming of Evolution) the number of known species of plants and animals must be placed at 600,000 (p. 10). 2 Vestiges of Creation, pubUshed anonymously in 1844, passed through nine large editions by 1853. The author was Robert Chambers (1802-71), a geologist. 78 RELIGION AND SCIENCE de Lamarck (1744-1829) had indeed, in 1809, pro pounded the theory — ever since known by his name — that the use or disuse of particular organs might, after a long series of generations, result in the forma tion of new species. (The ideas denoted by the words " environment," " adaptation," " acquired habits " — now so famihar — may be said to have been introduced by him). But the scientific prejudices of the time were against Lamarck's theories, and he had to lament their inhospitable reception. Indeed Lamarck's critics did not hesitate to exercise their powers of ridicule, or to make fun of the giraffe who derived his long neck from the attempts of his ancestors to browse on high trees. Darwin himself talks of " Lamarck's nonsense," and of his " veritable rubbish " — language, however, which he was subsequently able to retract. The New Geology. — Perhaps the most stubborn obstacle which Lamarckian theories had to meet was the current prejudice as to the age (or youth) of the earth. Contemporary geologists were by no means prepared to grant Lamarck the iUimitable periods of time which his transformation processes seemed to require. Consequently it is not surprising that the new theories, perhaps for the first time, received a measure of justice at the hands of one who himself became responsible for a revolution in the science of geology. " I devoured Lamarck en voyage," writes Charles LyeU, describing a journey from Oxford in 1827. " His theories dehghted me more than any novel I ever read, and much in the same way, for they address themselves to the imagination. . . . That the earth is quite as old as he supposes, has long been my creed."1 1 Life and Letters, Vol. I, p. 168 (vide Judd, Coming of Evolution, p. 89). MECHANISM AND LIFE 79 In spite of the fascination of these theories, however, LyeU was not carried away by them, and it was not for some years that he estimated them at their true value. Meanwhile the new geology made its appear ance with the publication of the three volumes of his own Principles of Geology, between 1829 and 1833. The significance of the book for biological speculation — for theories of the origin of species — lay in its thesis that the present condition of the earth is the product of geological processes incalculably long. Hitherto the " catastrophic theory " had been dominant — the notion that a series of immense catastrophic events (hke the Deluge) had been responsible for the present condition of the earth's surface. For this LyeU sub stituted his " Evolutionary Theory," according to which the almost invisibly slow geological processes which we may now see operating around us, are typical of the behaviour of the crust of this planet for incalculable periods of time ; for even the slowest changes, if sufficient time is ahowed them, are capable of producing the most stupendous results. LyeU may be said to have extended the age of the earth ad infinitum. Just as Gahleo removed aU barriers of space, LyeU removed those of time. Their joint achievement was to present to humanity a universe infinite both in space and time — a staggering con ception. Results of Lyell's Theory. — Though LyeU's boldness disturbed a good many of his contemporaries, those biologists who were engaged upon seeking the origin of species were thankful to one who had removed the chief obstacle to the solution of their difficulties. They were now reheved of one embarrassment : LyeU gave them the power to draw on the Bank 80 RELIGION AND SCIENCE of Time to any extent ; bankruptcy was no longer possible. 1 Indeed, LyeU seems himself to have been convinced of the evolutionary origin of species (though the mode of its operation stiU remained a mystery for him no less than for the biologists themselves). In fact, it became quite evident that the idea of " continuity " which the Principles of Geology had estabhshed in the inorganic world, must be equaUy apphcable to the organic world. Darwin. — The theory of a common descent of species had occurred, as early as 1837, to an enthusiastic student of LyeU's writings, who was also a personal friend. Charies Darwin had collected much geological, botanical, and zoological matter on his voyage with the Beagle round the world, and continued for twenty years to accumulate an immense volume of data to substantiate a theory which had first suddenly sug gested itself to him in 1838 as the result of reading for amusement Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population. This celebrated book, first pubhshed in 1798, had attempted to describe the forces which ensure the multiphcation, or check the increase of population. The proposition laid down by Malthus was that population tends to vary with the means of subsist ence. He had studied his problem from a social or pohtical point of view, but the same principle was seen by Darwin to apply to aU living creatures. Two forces are seen everywhere in conflict : (a) the luxuriant powers of reproduction possessed by and exercised 1 As a matter of fact, biologists soon demanded more than even LyeU's geology could give them. Recent discoveries about the nature of matter have, however, further extended the possible age of our planet. MECHANISM AND LIFE , 81 by each species ; (b) the difficulties and obstacles by which the species tend to be eliminated. The contest between the powers of reproduction and those of ehmination — this " over-production " and " crowding- out " — is what was afterwards termed the " struggle for existence." "Natural Selection." — Darwin's momentous theory was that this struggle, proceeding for untold ages, had resulted in the continual formation of new species. Granted that the numerous offspring of any individual member of a species tend to vary, those variations survive which happen to be best fitted to cope with the environment. These in their turn leave offspring, the variations and the selections are repeated, and so on ad infinitum ; and the result is that entirely new species are formed by a long process of insignificant changes. This, briefly put, is the celebrated theory of " Natural Selection." The habit of scientific caution was characteristic of Darwin, who at first would not write down " even the briefest sketch " of his hypothesis, but devoted nearly twenty years to the accumulation of evidential data. His friends continuaUy warned him that he would be forestaUed, and this actuaUy occurred, as is weU known, in 1858, when the book which was to give the new theory to the world was aheady half written. The naturahst, Alfred RusseU WaUace, on a coUecting expedition in the East Indies, " in a flash of insight " whUe sick with fever, found the same solution of the mystery that had puzzled biologists so long. WaUace's letter to Darwin, containing the abstract of his theory, came " like a bolt from the blue." The behaviour of the two men was worthy of the highest , traditions of scientific research. The matter 82 RELIGION AND SCIENCE was put into the hands of Lyell, and WaUace's paper, together with certain extracts from Darwin's unpub lished notes, were read before the Linnean Society, and the preparation of Darwin's book was hurried on. In November, 1859, The Origin of Species was pubhshed. Results of Darwin's Theory. — The importance (for the general trend of thought) of this joint achieve ment of Darwin and Wallace was considerable, and could not but be regarded as an extension of the mechanical theory. The origin of species might stiU to some extent remain mysterious (for " natural selection " was soon reahsed to be only one of many factors at work in evolution), yet the area of mystery was patently reduced, and the " inexphcable " driven further back. A formula had been provided, which seemed to be as vahd, and hkely to prove as permanent and fruitful in biological research as Newton's law of gravity had been in the realm of physics. In point of fact, Darwin had only substituted new problems of " variation " and " heredity " for the old one of the diversity of species ; but an impression was created by the new discoveries that a purely mechanical explanation of the origin of life and even, of mind was within reach. The Descent of Man. — With regard to " mind," the impression was re-inforced by Darwin's next book — the Descent of Man, where the gap between man and the animals was finaUy bridged. The work was merely an extension of the principles previously apphed by him, and as a theory it had been present to Dar win's mind as far back as 1837. As soon as he had become " convinced that species were mutable pro ductions," he could not " avoid the behef that man MECHANISM AND LIFE 83 must come under the same law."1 Indeed the Descent was nothing more than a coroUary to the Origin of Species. The earher work contains the whole of Darwinism. The Position Reached. — And with the full pubh cation of Darwin's theories a point was reached when a more or less consistently materiahstic position seemed possible. The foundations of such a position had been strengthened by the scientific atomism of Dalton, and the results of German research in the field of organic chemistry seemed to open up possi bihties of expressing even hfe in terms of matter. And, finaUy, the evolutionary hypothesis had reduced some of the most obscure biological problems to man ageable proportions. The prospects for a purely naturalistic philosophy were phenomenaUy bright. 1 Darwin, Life, Vol. I, p. 93. CHAPTER IX MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM From Science to Philosophy. — The record of cer tain important scientific discoveries has occupied us in two recent chapters, and it is now time to examine the philosophic results that were drawn from them. It is true that the generahsations drawn from the results of scientific research were sometimes hasty, and not always sanctioned by the gifted minds to whom these results were due ; yet they were assured a popular reception, and exercised an immense influence. It is not always the most accurate thinkers whose ideas gain the widest currency. Discredit of Romanticism. — The Ideahstic move ment in philosophy which we have seen flourishing in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had begun, after the "lapse of a generation, to decline.1 The causes of dechne, as often happens, were in part, at least, other than inteUectual. Hegelianism had become associated with pohtical reaction, and " a philosophy has lost its charm when it enters the service of absolutism." And a rising spirit of enterprise in commerce and industry also contributed to a change of attitude, for as material interests 1 " If we wish to fix a definite point to describe as the end of the ideahstic period in Germany, no such distinctive event offers itself as the French Revolution of July, 1830 " (Lange, History of Material ism, E.T., Vol. II, p. 245). 84 MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM ' 85 develop, men have less leisure for speculation, and often lose their taste for ideals. Probably there should also be taken into account the sentimentality that had attached itself to Romanticism and with which men were sated. This revolt has its most pointed expression in the prose writings of the poet Heine, who attacks with satiric bitterness " the new trouba dours, so morbid and somnambulistic, so high-flown and aristocratic, and altogether so unnatural." Metaphysics Rejected. — The reaction against the phUosophy of Romanticism took the form of a com plete revolt against speculative philosophy. But instead of going back to Kant, and taking up a vigor ously critical attitude, it took refuge in the prejudices of " common sense." The new movement must be associated in the first place with a French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who made the attempt to substitute scientific and positive knowledge for the vague speculations which had hitherto passed for philosophy. He was, in fact, the founder of that system of ideas known as Positivism, which (as we shall see) gained great vogue later, especiaUy in England., Comte's doctrine was that, aU spheres of Nature now being brought under the sway of positive science, the time had arrived for men, when constructing their conceptions of hfe and the world, to reject aU but such ideas as positive science can accept. The age of theology and speculation was past ; the new age of positive science, where both imagination and argu mentation should be subordinate to observation, was at hand. Comte, as is weU known, became the founder pf what he hoped might develop into a new Cathohc ism — the " Rehgion of Humanity," and an atmosphere of moral ideahsm permeates his thought. t. 86 RELIGION AND SCIENCE German Extremists. — In Germany, the home of Romanticism, the revolt took a radical shape in the hands of writers hke Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) and Biichner. " I unconditionally repudiate absolute, self-sufficing speculation — speculation which draws its material from within," says the former, in the Introduction to his Essence of Christianity1 (1841) and asserts that he " places philosophy in the negation of philosophy." Biichner, a far less acute thinker than Feuerbach, adopts a similar attitude, protests against pedantry, and appeals (the appeal is always dangerous) to common sense : " Expositions which are not intelligible to an educated man are scarcely worth the ink they are printed with. Whatever is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed." It is not surprising that the book Force and Matter (1855) — in the preface to which these sentiments are expressed — went through sixteen editions in thirty years and was translated into most European languages. It is an extreme expression of the most thorough going materiahsm, and the circumstance that its con clusions were acceptable neither to cautious scientists nor to critical philosophers, did not compromise its authority with the general public. As was only natural, for materiahsm is a creed for which the evi dence is all on the surface, and to which the objections, being less obvious, escape notice. And Buchner's pleas for intelligibility and clearness, though in some sense justified by the inconceivable pedantry of much German metaphysics, was, in point of fact, only a form 1 A famous book which, though negative in its conclusions, places its author alongside Schleiermacher as one of the founders of the modern science of Religious Psychology. MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM 87 of cant ; for " there are difficulties lying in the subject- matter itself which cannot be banished from the sphere of philosophy." Appeals to popular prejudices are not a more legitimate form of philosophic, than of scientific controversy ; serious thinkers do not thus stoop to the expedients of the politician. Effects of Darwin's Theory. — It would be a serious mistake, then, to imagine that materiahstic naturalism had to wait for the publication of the Origin of Species (1859) before it could become a for midable theory. And yet the appearance of Darwin's book had important effects, and among these is to be reckoned a certain weakening of the old " Argu ment from Design," according to which the complexity and dehcacy evident everywhere iri| the world of nature, could not be attributed to chance, but pointed to the existence and activity of a divine Designer. Paley, during the eighteenth century, had elaborated the argument with a wealth of detailed instances of " contrivance " : " The pivot upon which the head turns, the liga ment within the socket of the hip-joint, the puUey or trochlear muscles of the eye ; the epiglottis, the band ages which tie down the tendons of the wrist and instep," and so on. And it was not so much the doubt cast by it upon the separate creation of particular species that was the disturbing element in Darwin's hypothesis (few men now regarded the book of Genesis as a manual of natural science, or faith in it, as such, as a matter of rehgious obhgation) ; it was rather that the new doctrine of " natural selection " seemed to invalidate the " argument from design." Design or chance had been the alternatives offered by Paley, and chance only 88 RELIGION AND SCIENCE had to be mentioned to be rejected ; but Darwin made it possible to escape from the dilemma. He showed how, if certain conditions were granted, the whole process of the manufacture of species would naturally and inevitably follow. Neither design nor chance was the explanation : there was another alternative, the influence of environment. Thus Paley's instances of elaborate " contrivance " were explained by Darwin as instances of adaptation. The environ ment under which these organs had developed had made them what they were ; they could not, under the given circumstances, have been different. As a very lucid writer puts it : " Before Darwin's great discovery, those who denied the existence of a Contriver were hard put to it to explain the appearance of contrivance. Darwin, within certain hmits and on certain suppositions, provided an explanation. He showed how the most comphcated and purposeful organs, if only they were useful to the species, might graduaUy arise out of random variations, continuously weeded by an un thinking process of elimination."1 Darwinism Exploited. — In fact, it became evident that popular materiahsm had been strongly reinforced by the new biology ; and though Darwin himself was cautious in adding philosophic or rehgious corol laries to his own propositions, some of his more eager disciples did not hesitate to fill in his blanks, and to draw conclusions which the master was too conserva tive, too blind, or perhaps too scientific to sanction. . The distinguished zoologist Haeckel (1834-1919) may be reckoned the most notable amongst these. He was one of the first German scientists to give his ' 1 Balfour, Theism and Humanism, p. 36. MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM 89 adherence to Darwin, who seems to have considered him too zealous a disciple. " Your boldness sometimes makes me tremble," he wrote (November 19, 1868). It is not every scientist who can perceive the limits of an hypothesis, or who insists so conscientiously as Darwin did, upon the necessity for its verification. Herbert Spencer. — Though there were not want ing in England writers to exploit Darwinian theories in the interests of a narrow secularism, their work was not of first-rate importance, and need not detain us. A new evolutionary philosophy was, however, worked out by a conscientious thinker of a different cahbre — Mr. Herbert Spencer. He indeed may be described as the Aristotle of a new world-view. He attempted to co-ordinate and unify aU human know ledge, and to present the world with a final philosophy based upon the data supphed by natural science. To this ambitious task he devoted a lifetime of patient work, broken by intervals of iU-health. In 1850 the System of Synthetic Philosophy was projected ; its First Principles were published in 1862, but it was not until 1896 that the gigantic enterprise was com plete. Spencer was inspired neither by hostihty to religion in general, nor to Christianity in particular. The motive of his work was a more honourable one. He felt, with many of his contemporaries, that the founda tions of the old rehgion were no longer secure, and that the old sanctions of morahty were already gravely compromised ; and he wished to supply a new creed and a new disciphne in the place of these. His principal objects were social and ethical. And in this important respect he may be associated with Comte. Both were sociologists and morahsts before they were philosophers, 90 RELIGION AND SCIENCE which accounts for theh overlooking and underesti mating various important philosophic difficulties. A few remarks about Spencer's system are here not out of place. He attempted to reduce experience to a unity by seeking evidence for the existence of a single and universal law. This unifying principle he found in a general law of evolution. He formulated this law in language which is perhaps less obscure than it seems, and which practicaUy amounts to this, that there is a perpetual process going on which reduces disorder to order, undifferentiated sameness to special ised variety.1 The First Principles was pubhshed before the Origin of Species, and the confirmation which Darwin's work supphed to Spencer's theory must have recommended the latter to the minds of scientifically trained thinkers. Moreover, Spencer sanctioned a hopeful outlook ; evolutionary optimism was an attractive and an idealis tic, as weU as a reasonable philosophy. It demanded the subordination of the individual to society, it urged the necessity of self-discipline and of industry, and pointed (if these conditions were fulfilled) to a brighter future, and to a new humanity. The generous ideal ism of the foUowing passage is characteristic of Spencer's outlook, and of those who thought — and hoped — with him ; it occurs at the end of his Principles of Ethics : " The highest ambition of the beneficent will be to have a share — even though an utterly inappreciable and unknown share — in ' the making of Man.' . . . As time goes on, there will be more and more of those 1 " Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent hetero geneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.' ' MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM 91 whose unselfish end will be the further evolution of Humanity. While contemplating from the heights of thought that far-off life of the race never to be enjoyed by them, but only by a remote posterity, they will feel a calm pleasure in the consciousness of having aided the advance towards it." Spencer, then, evidently deserves the important place that he occupies in the history of thought. For though he was forced, for lack of those final scientific results which he vainly hoped might soon be forth coming, to leave some vital gaps in his scheme,1 he had made an imposing attempt to systematise and unify aU human experience. And his attempt to base an ideahstic morahty upon sure grounds of natural science was valuable and important. Spencer's Philosophy of Religion. — At the same time, Spencer could not remain satisfied with a mere description of natural phenomena, however complete and comprehensive such description might seem ; he desired to offer, besides this, an explanation of these phenomena — how did they come to be, and how do they continue to exist ? To provide this explanation, Spencer postulated the existence of an Unknown Power which is at once the origin and the sustaining ground of everything. This power he regarded as lying quite out of range not only of the human senses, but of the human inteUect. It was not only unknown but unknowable. This celebrated doctrine of the Unknowable is not the least interesting or important part of Spencer's system, and it is perhaps more 1 Spencer confessed that of the Synthetic Philosophy "two volumes are missing," the two important volumes on Inorganic Evolution, leading to the evolution of the living and of the non- hving (cf. criticisms by Professor James Ward in his Naturalism and Agnosticism, Lecture IX). 92 RELIGION AND SCIENCE germane than any other speculation of his to our present subject, as this terrafyncognita was aUotted by him to rehgion as its peculiar province. He hoped that the undisputed possession and occupation by rehgion of this territory might put an end to its perpetual con flict with science, and substitute for this a reasonable, if not cordial, understanding. Science might content edly appropriate the sphere of the knowable, and leave to rehgion the undefined and perhaps infinite area of the unknowable ; and he hoped this division of labour would be both fruitful and permanent. The Victorian Agnostics. — Through this doctrine of the Unknowable, Herbert Spencer was the father of that form of behef or disbehef which was pertinently named Agnosticism by the most celebrated of its exponents — Huxley. This combination of Positivism in science with Agnosticism in rehgion and philosophy, became highly popular in a wide circle in England during the last third of the nineteenth century, especi aUy among the scientificaUy educated. Leshe Stephen, with the pride of a disciple and the pardonable zeal of a propagandist, claimed for it the distinction of being " the rehgion of ah sensible men." This austere faith owed much to the quahties of those who preached it. Their wide culture, then power of hterary expression,1 their inteUectual vigour, and above aU their moral earnestness and social enthusiasm recommended what had otherwise seemed a barren and unpromising creed. The generous humanitarian sympathies of Comte supphed the 1 For an instance of the masterly work turned out by this school and of the attractiveness of their propaganda, read Huxley's lecture, " On a Piece of Chalk," deUvered to the working men of Norwich during the meeting of the British Association in 1868. MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM 93 ideahstic elements without which no faith can become popular, and the apparent stabihty of its scientific basis seemed to those impatient of speculative doubt, a great rock in a desert of shifting sand. This new scientific Humanism had an immense vogue, and its effects upon national hfe were, on the whole, of a quite healthy character. Occasional lapses into in tolerance, no doubt, occurred ; but much may be excused in the self-confidence of a new faith, not yet tested by the experiences and the criticisms of years. Theological Polemics. — The attacks of orthodox apologists upon this new orientation, though carried through with the best intentions, were too often con ducted on mistaken lines and certainly on too narrow a front. A particular theory of scriptural inspiration (now widely abandoned), and of the miraculous, seemed to obsess the controversiahsts. Nor were the Agnostics (it must be confessed) any more ahve to the real issues. Hence, to the modem student, an oppressive atmosphere of deadness and sterihty seems to brood over these vigorous but superannuated polemics ; and hence the complete obhvion into which this' hterature has faUen. The saying is profoundly true that " nothing so quickly waxes old as apologetics." Even the contributions to the subject by so accom plished a journalist as Huxley — his Essays on Science and Christian Tradition — can only be read by those whom an almost Teutonic industry characterises. Once so eagerly perused and earnestly pondered, the controversial literature of this interesting epoch (which now seems so remote) reposes on the higher shelves of libraries, accumulating the peaceful dust of obhvion. These projectiles have, in fact, done their work, and if they have proved less fatal than was hoped by those 94 RELIGION AND SCIENCE who launched them, they were dispatched with good intentions, and their explosion cleared the air. The most effective method of attack would have been to suggest that what was good in the new system was as old as Christianity, and that the rest was dis putable science and still more disputable philosophy, The latter half of this task was, as we shaU subsequently find, creditably performed by an important school of critical thinkers. But its former half, i.e. the task of proving that what was valuable in the new Humanism, was Christian — might, one would suppose, have been more successfully performed by the official champions of orthodoxy. These might have left science to the scientists, to have left off advertising their own in competence in that sphere by passages of arms such as took place between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in i860, which are never very desirable, and always dis creditable to the discomfited party.1 Illogicality of Naturalistic Idealism. — In point of fact, " the rehgion of aU sensible men " (in spite of its philosophic weakness) was equivalent to Christian stoicism ; its social enthusiasm, its humanitarianism, its conscientious truthfulness, were the fruit of a stock grown on Christian soil. Its ethical presupposi tions were entirely Christian, nor were they sanctioned (in spite of Herbert Spencer's elaborate apologetic) by the new biology. Nietzsche was a far more legitimate child of Darwinism than was Huxley. Indeed, towards the close of his life, some doubts invaded the mind of the latter, and he was constrained by an intellectual sincerity which does him and his school the highest 1 For this famous encounter, see Life of Huxley, Vol. I, pp. 179- 89, and Life of f. R. Green, pp. 44, 45. MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM 95 credit, to utter a word of warning. We refer to his famous Romanes Lecture of 1894. The thesis of this important utterance was that the field of human interests is a narrow heritage carved out from a hostile environment into which it is destined one day to relapse. It is a cultivated garden with the wilderness aU around ; created only at the cost of infinite sacrifice and perpetual toil, and preserved only with difficulty. The implacable jungle seeks everywhere to encroach on the borders of the clearing, whose ultimate engulfment can only be postponed, not prevented. Two quotations may suffice : " Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, stUl less in running away from it, but in combating it." " The theory of evolution encourages no miUennial expectations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, sometime, the summit wih be reached, and the downward route wiU be com menced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great year."1 Pessimism. — Coming, as it did, at the end of a generation of dogmatic optimism, this pronounce ment is symptomatic of a certain disillusionment which had already begun to mar the fair picture of Positivist prophecy. The human race seemed destined to an ambiguous future ; the parabola of progress would 1 As we shaU subsequently find, this cosmic pessimism is less well grounded than Huxley beheved. Still, Spencer's own scientific presuppositions were the same as Huxley's, so that the passage remains a pertinent criticism of the Evolutionary Philosophy as elaborated by him. 96 RELIGION AND SCIENCE one day reach its summit, and the faU begin. At last upon our planet the episode of Life would pass, and be neither forgotten nor remembered ; the world would sink into the eternal silence, from which for one transitory and insignificant moment, it had awakened. "¦ Nietzsche. — As might have been expected, it was in Germany that the logical conclusions of a natural istic outlook were drawn. Here, philosophic pessimism had aheady been introduced by Schopenhauer (1788- 1860), and his disciple Nietzsche was not afraid to formulate a scheme of ethics based on the conception of "the survival of the fittest," and equivalent to an apotheosis of barbarism. The virtues of self-assertion, ruthlessness, and pride were to eradicate the vices of abnegation, pity, and humihty. Christian morahty was a disease ; Christianity itseU was the appropriate product of the degenerate epoch, and of the loathsome environment that gave it birth. This radical thinker, free from Enghsh " compromise," could be satisfied with no morahty which was parasitic upon Chris tianity. He had clearness of vision to see whither the naturahstic road would carry its pious wayfarers. To him the moral ideahsm of Spencer was moonshine or stupidity — " the mUk of pious sentiment." Significance of Nietzsche. — Nietzsche has come in for a fair share of abuse, but it is only just to say that philosophy stands heavily endebted to this thinker. He was not afraid to draw logical conclusions, 1 It is instructive to observe that a similar note of latent pessi mism is struck by the last notable survivor of the School we have endeavoured to describe. Viscount Morley at the end of his Recol lections (1917), questioned as to the outcome of those generous hopes entertained with such confidence by his contemporaries, is com pelled to ejaculate with philosophic brevity, circumspice, as he contemplates a spectacle of unparalleled horror. MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM 97 and to put questions which more conventional philo sophers had preferred should remain in the back ground. It is weU for a moralist to arise, once in a genera tion, who wiU clear his own mind of cant and, without undue respect for the conventions, approach the reaUy fundamental questions in a spirit of sincerity. The extravagant impieties of Nietzsche may have shocked his hearers, but they have cleared the air. He exposed, perhaps with too httle finesse, the nakedness of Natural ism, and tore off that mantle of ideahsm under which it had been masquerading. And he may be said, by so doing, to have-written finis at the foot of a chapter in the history of philosophy. CHAPTER X REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY Vicissitudes of Idealism. — At the beginning of the last chapter we noticed the early coUapse of ideahsm in Germany. But the prophets of Romanticism, when they were no longer honoured at home, found an hospitable reception elsewhere, and especiaUy in England. Indeed, even before the prestige of ideahsm had begun to dechne in Germany, Englishmen had been introduced to it by the writings and translations of S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) and Thomas Carlyle (1795- 1881). These two popularisers of German ideas were litterateurs rather than professional philosophers, but for that very reason their vogue and influence were the wider. Coleridge. — Coleridge was in spirit a genuine Romanticist ; being, as were some of the most notable of the German school — e.g., Goethe and Schiller — a poet as well as a philosopher. In his Biographia Literaria he has left behind the story of his intellectual and spiritual development. He acknowledges his debt to Kant, to the Romanticists, and in particular to Schelhng, whose " intuitionism " was naturally con genial to him. Coleridge was never able to embody his philosophical creed in any single work ; he does not seem to have possessed the necessary power of appli cation. He was unfortunate in being a man of weak 98 REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 99 character, and his ineffectiveness struck his contem poraries. But in spite of these disadvantages — his sentimentahty, the lack of clearness of his thought, his weakness for opium — he certainly exercised an import ant influence, especiaUy in the realm of theology. His ideas, though vague, were calculated to awaken the speculative habit, and, introduced as they were, to a wide circle, were fruitful and stimulating. Enghsh theology had been, in the eighteenth century, of an arid kind, and the Enghsh philosophical tradition lacked, for the most part, appreciation of those deeper aspects of reality which had appealed to German thinkers. Coleridge, by introducing German specula tion to his countrymen, was able " to free theology of some of its narrowness, and to deepen and enlarge the spiritual outlook of his age."1 Thomas Carlyle. — Carlyle was a man of a very different temper, whose attitude towards Coleridge was " half contemptuous, half compassionate." A typicaUy Carlylean characterisation of him may be found in the Life of Sterling : " He was thought to hold — he alone in England — the key of German and other Transcendentahsms. . . . A sublime man, who alone in those dark days escaped from black materialisms and revolutionary deluges with God, Freedom, Immortahty, still his. The practical inteUects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer ; but to the rising spirits of the young genera tion he sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma. ..." " The good man . . . gave you the idea "of a hfe 1 Storr, Development of English Theology in the Nineteenth Century, p. 329. See which book for a valuable chapter upon Coleridge. ioo RELIGION AND SCIENCE that had been full of sufferings . . . the deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as fuU of sorrow as inspiration ; confused pain looked" mUdly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be caUed flabby and irresolute ; expressive of weakness under possibihty of strength ... He spoke as if preaching — preaching earnestly and hopelessly the weightiest things." Carlyle himseU had aU the character and industry that Coleridge lacked, and it was another side of German ideahsm that had appealed to him. The Scotchman was of the same fibre and stock as that other half-Scotchman, Kant. Here was the source from which he had drawn his inspiration. We see in Carlyle the same moral earnestness, the same " tough ness " of thought, the same absence of " sentimental moonshine." From Kant, too, he derives a vigorous independence of thought, a religious respect for individuahty, a horror of shams and affectation. Kant was a true child of the Reformation, and Carlyle is a genuine disciple. In a single important respect, however, he differed from (and improved upon) his master. Kant lacked, or at least did not display, the saving grace of humour ; in Carlyle this quahty looks out from every page — keen, satirical, sometimes bitter, sometimes grotesque ; he ridiculed his own generation, its vices, its prejudices, its superstitions. Sartor Resartus. — For our purpose, Sartor Resartus — that profound and humorous book — is Carlyle's masterpiece : here aU the characteristic Kantian doctrines may be found. The " philosophy of clothes " — which is the quaint title behind which Kantian ideahsm is made to REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 101 masquerade — starts from the thought that just as an acquaintance with his clothes will not reveal to us the man, so an acquaintance with phenomena (which ¦ is aU that science can claim to give us) cannot reveal to us the real ground of existence, which remains an inscrutable mystery. We must " look on clothes till they become transparent," if we could understand reahty. " To the eye of vulgar' Logic what is man ? An omnivorous biped that wears breeches. To the eye of pure Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition." And so with Nature ; to science it is a mechanism, to the understanding heart it is " the hving garment of God." " It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away hke a Vesture ; which indeed they are : the Time- Vesture of the Eternal. . . . The whole Ex ternal Universe and what it holds is but Clothing. ..." The visible world is but a symbol of a profound and awful reahty ; and aU Nature's products, in their degree, symbols as well : but of these, man is the highest. " The true Shekinah is Man : where else is the God's Presence manifested, not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our feUow-man ? " This leads up to the essential doctrine of the Kantian system : that man is a creature of two worlds, who has a foot in either ; hence in the phenomenal world he can never find satisfaction. " Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness ; it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with aU his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modem Europe 102 RELIGION AND SCIENCE undertake, in jointstock company, to make one Shoe black Happy ? They cannot accomphsh it, above an hour or two, for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach. . . ." " There is in man a Higher than Love of happiness : he can do without happiness and instead thereof find Blessedness ! has it not been to preach forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs . . . have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony to the God like that is in man ? " Carlyle's Influence. — In spite of Carlyle's strange hterary mannerisms and his grotesquely Germanic phrases, his writings had great attractiveness for those of his contemporaries who felt themselves smothered by the materiahsm and utilitarianism of early Victorian England. He was able to re-vitahse ideahsm amongst them. Moreover he appealed strongly to those to whom the Coleridgean speculations were uncongenial. The strongly developed moral element, both in his writings and in his own somewhat stem and austere personahty — what Taine caUed his " puritanism " — appealed strongly to a certain side of Enghsh feehng. His countrymen felt that his was a native genius that they could understand. In fact we may say that the influence of Carlyle, especiaUy among the young and generous minded, has been incalculable in extent and invaluable in quahty. Spiritual life in England stands tinder a deep obhgation to him. Romanticism at Oxford. — Enghshmen were thus not entire strangers to German ideahsm, which had possessed its interpreters in the earher half of the nineteenth century. Not, however, until it had ex perienced a decline in Germany (a reaction which occupied our attention in the last chapter), did REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 103 Romanticism become naturalised in England by being adopted in academic circles. Among the most notable of English ideahsts was T. H. Green — feUow and tutor of BaUiol College, Oxford. In this thinker we have a widely different type of mind from that of either Coleridge or Carlyle. He was a thinker rather than a poet or a prophet, and he belonged to what we have noticed as the intellec- tuahst — i.e. Hegehan — wing of Romanticism, Green's chief work was his Prolegomena to Ethics (pubhshed posthumously in 1883), where arguments, which were familiar to those acquainted with Hegel, presented themselves. Green begins with an analysis of experience, and leads to the conclusion that Nature — if by it we mean " the connected order of experi ence " — implies " something other than itseU, as the condition of its being what it is." And " of that * something ' we are entitled to say, positively, that it is a self-distinguishing consciousness " (section 52). If these conclusions be vahd, the bottom falls out of Naturahsm, for if nature " imphes something other than itself," it does not stand alone ; and that nature does stand alone is the beginning and end of aU natural ist theory. And, furthermore, this " something other than itself," which Nature involves, ig " a self-distin guishing consciousness " ; i.e. something to which we can attribute personahty. Green and Spencer contrasted. — This theory has only to be compared with that of Herbert Spencer for a fundamental difference to declare itself. The two systems do indeed adopt as axiomatic the conception of the uniformity and unity of nature, which works in accordance with a single law. But Spencer saw in that law the expression of a blind force, an unknowable 104 RELIGION AND SCIENCE power, of which it would be no more and no less true to say that it was " spiritual " than that it was " material." But for Green the law was the expression of a spiritual principal analogous to our own inteUi gence — a manifestation (to use theological language) of God. F. H. Bradley. — Undoubtedly the most notable of Enghsh Hegelians is F. H. Bradley, whose meta physical essay, Appearance and Reality, was a work of genuine originality. The book is not of a type to make much appeal outside academic circles, though it is written in an easy and attractive style : its results may seem, to the unsophisticated reader, somewhat too ambiguous. " Ultimate Doubts " is the title of the last chapter, and " It costs us httle to find that in the end Reahty is inscrutable," is a remark not uncharacter istic of the author. Yet this really profound thinker and acute reasoner played an important part in helping to discredit that negative dogmatism which was so much in vogue during his own lifetime. He pointed out the limits beyond which natural science could not transgress without lapsing into " dogmatic super stition." " Too often the science of mere Nature, forgetting its own hmits and false to its true aims, attempts to speak about first principles. It becomes transcendent, and offers us a dogmatic and uncritical metaphysics " (p. 284). Though the fault has not always been on the side of the scientists : " Metaphysics itself, by its interference with physical science, has induced that to act, as it thinks, in self-defence, and has led it, in so doing, to become metaphysical. And this interference of metaphysics I would admit and deplore, as the result REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 105 and the parent of most injurious misunderstanding. ... So long as natural science keeps merely to the sphere of phenomena and the laws of their occurrence, metaphysics has no right to a single word of criticism " (p. 285). This critical handling of the problem of the relations of science and philosophy did much to draw attention to the confusion of thought lying at the base of much popular materiahsm. It began to be reahsed that the principles of physical science are only fruitful of good results in the sphere properly belonging to them ; and that the uncritical use of these principles results in a hybrid philosophy, which is neither sound science nor rational metaphysics. A. J. Balfour.' — Before Bradley's essay was pub hshed, a somewhat similar line of criticism had been developed by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879). Its title sounds un promising, but the book voiced a demand for a rational philosophy of science which was practicaUy non existent at that time ; and consequently, in the absence of any adequate examination of the principles of science, uncritical dogmatism flourished quite un challenged. Balfour, elsewhere, indicates the objects with which he wrote the book — to ehcit from the dis ciples of natural science a rationale of their method : " A full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions on which aU science finaUy rests, has, it seems to me, stiU to be made. After the critical examination which I desiderate has been thoroughly carried out, it may appear that at the very root of our scientific system of belief he problems of which no satisfactory solution has yet been devised."1 1 Foundations of Belief, p. 98. 106 RELIGION AND SCIENCE Thus Balfour drew attention to the fact that the com mon-sense philosophy of naturahsm rested upon a tacit agreement to overlook certain important problems which are the indispensable preliminaries to any thinking which can be called critical, or lay claim to be regarded as philosophy in the strict sense. That some of these problems seem artificial, and the questions raised by them gratuitous, to the eye of " common sense " is an irrelevant consideration, for " nothing stands more in need of demonstration than the obvious." Naturalism Checked. — Thus Bradley and Balfour between them, merely by adopting a critical attitude, created an embarrassing situation for naturalism. Between them these writers administered a serious check to that naively uncritical dogmatism which, backed by the prestige of natural science, had sought to impose itself on the world as a new orthodoxy less liberal, in some ways, than the old. Nor did they stop short at negative criticism, but substituted (according to the ideahstic tradition) a spiritual view of reahty for the mechanistic mater ialism that had become so* popular. Appearance and Reality is a book of which the trend might seem too obscure, but it ends with a note that is definite enough : " Outside of spirit there is not, and there cannot be, any reahty ; and, the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably real," are Bradley's closing words. As for Balfour, he leads his readers up to a point which he describes as " the threshold of Christian Theology." And having propounded the perplexities in which the "common sense" philosophy (on which naturalism depends) is involved, he says : REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY • 107 " I do not beheve that any escape from them (the perplexities) is possible, unless we are prepared to bring to the study of the world the presupposition that it was the work of a rational Being, who made it inteUigible, and at the same time made us, in however feeble a fashion, able to understand it." 1 Revival of Idealism in Germany. Lotze. — We have perhaps dwelt at too great length upon the backwash of the idealistic wave in England, for ideahsm is not a native philosophy amongst us ; possibly, because we are not metaphysicaUy-minded in the same sense as are the purer Teutonic breed. And it is time to pass on to pay a brief tribute to the work of a German phUosopher who accepted the mechanical theory in its totality, without sacrificing what we may caU the spiritual values of existence. Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) was inclined to feel that the weakness of Romanticism lay in a tendency to despise or overlook what Kant had caUed "the fertile bathos of experience." The Romanticists had too often neglected natural science, which, in the shape of naturalistic materiahsm, had its revenge by destroying them. Biichner was the Nemesis of an ideahsm which was at once vague and sentimental. Lotze's "Microcosmos." — Lotze's attitude and method are conspicuous in his weU-known work, which took him eight years to complete (1856-1864) — the Microcosmos. After guiding his readers " through the realms of natural phenomena and historical evolution," thus constructing a sufficiently stable basis out of facts — he leads them on to an ideal world composed of what he caUs " values." His position may thus be summarised : The world 1 Foundations of Belief, p. 309. 108 RELIGION AND SCIENCE presents itself to the observer in three aspects — (i) The world of individual " things," which are bewildering and intricate ; (2) the laws (i.e., " laws of nature ") which the human intellect has discovered among them, thus finding regularity and order ; (3) the " values " which the human soul apphes to things, and which it is the human task to cultivate. This world of ideals or values (3) is that for the sake of which the worlds of phenomena and law (1 and 2) exist. These (1 and 2) constitute respectively the material in which, and the forms through which, the world of " values " is to be reahsed.1 Thus phenomena and law are the raw material out of which " values " are created ; and these " values " themselves constitute (in the eyes of Lotze) a higher reahty. Thus the central doctrine of his system is that the truly Real is what has supreme worth : it is worth that creates reahty. The paradoxicahty of this may make it difficult to accept ; but Lotze is only expressing in his own way the fundamental thesis of aU forms of ideahsm, that " the ideal is the real " ; that the world of phenomena is secondary to and de pendent upon a " world of spirit," or an " ideal world." Lotze himseU in the introduction to the Micro- cosmos, expresses what is at once the foundation and the kernel of his system : he says it is his purpose to show " how absolutely universal is the extent, and at the same time how completely subordinate the significance, of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world." (E. T., p: xvi.) Mechanism is universal, because it is the raw material, so to speak, out of which reality is to be made. That 1 For this summary of Lotze's doctrine, see Merz, Vol. Ill, p. 615 and ff. REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY 109 reahty can be expressed in terms of mechanism is true, just as a poem can be described as a scrap of paper scratched upon with a pen ; but this reduction of reahty to its lowest terms, ends by emptying reahty of content. Mechanism is a universal feature, but it is a subordinate feature, of reahty. Nature requires, if we are to arrive at the truth about it, not only to be described and analysed, but also interpreted in the hght of the idea of value or worth. Lotze and Theology. — Lotze's theories exercised an important influence upon the development in Germany and elsewhere of a type of theology known as Ritschlianism. Albrecht Ritschl, a disciple of Lotze, at tempted to dissociate rehgion from metaphysics, and to base it upon " judgments of value." Christian dogma, for instance, is an attempt to express, in philosophical terms, the unique value to humanity of the moral and religious consciousness of Christ. So far as a dogma is faithful to that central idea, and makes a genuine attempt to express it, so far — and so far only — is it true. This type of theology, uniting itself with certain philosophical tendencies which wiU engage our atten tion later, became the basis of what was known as the Modernist movement in the Roman Cathohc Church. Conclusions. — Thus in the nineteenth century, in England (and indeed on the continent also) the ideahstic attitude, though it sometimes might seem compromised, was never submerged ; in spite of the materiahstic outlook of an age only too preoccupied with scientific discovery and commercial expansion. CHAPTER XI some recent tendencies in philosophy The Philosophy of Science. — In the last chapter we heard A. J. Balfour complaining of the absence of " a full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions on which aU science finaUy rests." And Mr. F. H. Bradley also drew attention to the absence of any critical phUosophy of science in England. The need was for scientific standpoints to be investigated de novo ; and the pro cess had, as a matter of fact, already been begun on the Continent. Mach. — Ernst Mach, Professor of Physics at Prague, and subsequently Professor of Physics at Vienna (thus combining the roles of scientist and metaphysician — always a highly instructive and fruitful combination) had as early as 1863 laid it down as the task of science to give " an economic presentation of the facts." By which phrase he meant that science takes account only of the sahent features of phenomena, selecting only those which seem strictly serviceable to its own purpose. Science " Abstract " or " Selective." — Mathe matical science (which is the " pure " science par excellence) deals not — as is generally supposed — with " things," but with certain selected aspects of things. For example, for purposes of arithmetic, every leaf RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY in on a tree is an " unit " (i.e. aU are " identical ") ; but, in point of fact, there exist no two leaves that are ahke, as Leibniz, long ago, pointed out. Again, for geometrical purposes two fields may be regarded as of hke area ; but no two fields are, or ever have been, so. Thus mathematics — where scientific method is seen at its purest — proceeds by dehberately disregarding individuahty ; it regards the differences between in dividuals as non-essential, and irrelevant to its pur pose. Economy of Thought. — And mathematical science is justified in acting in this way. This method, highly abstract as it is — in fact, just because, it is highly abstract — leads to invaluable results. It's justifica tion is that it is economical of thought ; disregarding all irrelevant considerations, it is able, by using a short-cut, to reach its goal. Did the mathematician have to take into consideration all the manifold and complex aspects of each concrete " thing " (whether it be leaf, or field, or lever, or what not) with which he deals, he would never be able to cut his way through the jungle. His method of abstraction carries him at once to his goal. Mach on the " Mechanical View."; — Mach's criticism of the mechanical view of nature proceeded upon similar hnes. He termed that view " analogical," by which he meant that mechanical " laws of nature " serve us as formal patterns to which the processes of nature may (for convenience sake) be represented as conforming. A clear account, though not a complete account, of all physical processes may be given in terms of mechanical " law." And in" fact it remains a question, Mach observed, 112 RELIGION AND SCIENCE " whether the mechanical view of things, instead of being the profoundest, is not in point of fact, the shaUowest of aU."1 Science not Invalid but Incomplete. — This hne of criticism of scientific method — i.e. that it deals with abstractions and analogies rather than with things, for the sake of economy and convenience of thought — does not deprive science of vahdity, but only invahdates that superficial dogmatism which had crept into so many investigations. A critical estimate of scientific methods makes it evident how much and how httle we have the right to expect from them. They wiU enable us to give a simple descrip tion of phenomena as they are seen when reduced to their simplest terms of matter and motion ; but of ultimate and final causes they wiU teU us nothing. " The system of conceptions by which the exact sciences try to describe the phenomena of nature . . . is symbolic, a kind of shorthand, unconsciously in vented and perfected for the sake of convenience and for practical use . . . the leading principle is that of Economy of Thought " (Merz, Vol. Ill, p. 579). Boutroux. — This criticism of the mechanical method of deahng with reahty was seconded by Boutroux's criticism of the principle of Natural Law. Emile Boutroux (1845-1918) — Professor at the Sorbonne — in two important treatises, examines with great minuteness this aspect of the scientific method. In the earher of these works, The Contingency of the Laws of Nature (1879) he suggests that these laws only give, so to speak, the habits which things display. They 1 Quoted by Ward in Pluralism and Theism, p. 103. For a brief yet adequate treatment of Mach's criticisms see Hoffding' s Modern Philosophers, pp. 11 5-21. RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY 113 constitute, as it were, " the bed in which the stream of occurrence flows, which the stream itseU had hol lowed out, although its course has come to be deter mined by this bed " (Hoffding, Modern Philosophers, p. 101). In his Natural Law in Science and Philosophy (1895), Boutroux lays it down that the laws of nature, as science describes them, may indeed represent, but are by no means identical with, the laws of nature as they really are. The laws of science are true, not absolutely but relatively, i.e. are not elements in, but symbols of, reahty. The notion that everything is " deter mined " (i.e. the opposite of " contingent "), though absolutely indispensable to the mechanical theory, is nevertheless a way of looking at things rather than a faithful picture of reahty — a way in which we see things rather than the way things exist in themselves. As Boutroux himself puts it in his final chapter : " That which we call the ' laws of nature ' is the sum total of the methods we have discovered for adapting things to the mind, and subjecting them to be moulded by the wiU." Results. — Here we have Boutroux approaching very closely to the standpoint of Mach ; indeed the theories of the two men are complementary to one another. For Mach, the mechanical view is a way of looking at things, distinctly useful for understanding and using them — an " economy of thought." For Boutroux, the determinist view is also a way of looking at things that is useful for the same purposes. Thus'the interpretation of reahty in terms of mathe matics and " unalterable law," is artificial ; an abstract way of thinking which deals not with reahty itself but with certain deliberately selected aspects of it. 114 RELIGION AND SCIENCE - Rise of a New Philosophy. — This examination of the principles of natural science was the beginning of what afterwards proved to be a revolution in thought. What had been more or less negative criticism in Mach and Boutroux, became the basis of a new philosophy in the hands of William James and Bergson. The names, and even the ideas, of these two original thinkers are famihar far outside strictly phil osophical circles, and it will almost be possible to pre sume upon a certain acquaintance with them on the part of our readers. William James. — James himself, hke Mach, was led to philosophy by the road of scientific investiga tion. He was a psychologist, and it is as the author ' of his Principles of Psychology that his name will be remembered. This work is notable as containing the first complete application of the Darwinian theory to the evolution of mind. Mental action is there repre sented as a capacity developed by the organism to enable it to deal with its environment. As an exponent of James puts it : " The mind, like an antenna, feels its way for the organism. It gropes about, advances and recoUs, making many random efforts and many failures ; always urged into taking the initiative and doomed to success or failure in some hour of trial."1 The corollary which attaches to propositions of this kind is that knowledge in aU its varieties and develop ments arises from practical needs. And the mind (here is an echo of Mach) selects those aspects of reahty which concern it, and out of that selected material makes up a new (mental) world of its own. Which world is far from being a " picture " of reahty, but which is 1 R. B. Perry, Present Philosophical Tendencies, p. 3^1. RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY 115 " symbohc " of it (here is another memory of Mach).1 This view obviously cuts the ground from under dogmatic materiahsm. The world which that phil osophy regards as reality, is, to the critical eye, a coUection of abstractions, a mental creation arising out of the practical needs of hfe. Henri Bergson. — This hne of criticism, that of the evolutionary psychologist, opened up by James, has been carried to extreme lengths by the French philosopher Bergson. " Dig to the very roots of nature and of mind " is his advice. He begins by asking, How, as a matter of history, has human inteUect developed ? He then, and then only, proceeds to put the question (which uncritical thinkers always put first), What can the intellect do for us ? His theory of the origin of inteUect is the same as that of William James. Life (through the evolutionary process) has produced it. But the conclusion that he draws from this hypothesis is that the intellect, being itself a product of life, or a form of life, cannot under stand the whole of life. This thesis is elaborated with a wealth of Ulustration and erudition, both scientific and philosophic, and with a hterary grace and charm possible only for a Frenchman, in the famous work Evolution Creatrice (1907). Bergson's Advance on Mach and James. — Those thinkers who had made a serious attempt at a 1 It is impossible to go deeper into James' " theory of know ledge " without using technical language. A few of his own phrases, however, may help to elucidate things. " Abstract concepts .<. . are sahent aspects of our concrete experiences which we find it useful to single out " (Meaning of Truth, p. 246). Elsewhere he speaks of them as things we have learned to " cut out " from experience, as " flowers gathered," and as " moments dipped out from the stream of time " (A Pluralistic Universe, p. 235). I 'owe these quotations to Perry, op. cit. 116 RELIGION AND SCIENCE philosophy of science, had demonstrated that the " mechanical view " of nature was a mental abstraction, and not a complete representation of reahty. Such is the debt of philosophy to the researches of Mach, Boutroux, James, and others who worked along their lines. But it remained for Bergson to demonstrate that the mechanical view was the inevitable product of the mental processes which we describe by the word " intel lect." The path which led Bergson to this goal wiU have to be briefly indicated by us. Characteristics of the Intellect. — What is the " inteUect," to which we look in vain for any complete explanation of existence ? This is the preliminary question. Our inteUect is, as James had taught, a faculty developed by the evolutionary process in our species to enable it to deal with its material environment. And Bergson was the first to point out that as a consequence of its having been developed for this particular purpose (i.e., dealing with a material environment), inteUect is " never quite at its ease, never entirely at home, except when it is working upon inert matter." If it has to deal with " hving " matter, it " treats it as inert, without troubling about the hfe that animated it." Such is the first characteristic of the inteUect : it feels at home in dealing with dead matter, and hving matter it prefers to treat " as inert." Another characteristic of inteUect is that, just as it treats the hving as if it were non-living, so it prefers to treat the mobile as though it' were motionless. Motion is a thing which the inteUect simply cannot grasp ; it has to treat it artificiaUy, and represent a RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY 117 process which in reahty is continuous and indivisible, as discontinuous and divisible — a succession of points, out of which no magic can conjure motion. Philosophy became aware of this as soon as it opened its eyes. Hence the paradox of Zeno, that AchiUes will never overtake the tortoise, if the latter once gets a start. For if space and time are infinitely divisible (as intel lect holds them to be), by the time AchiUes has reached the tortoise's starting point, the tortoise has aheady got ahead of that starting point, and so on ad infinitum ; the interval between them being endlessly diminished, but never disappearing. Zeno's paradox arises because of an innate fault in the " inteUectual " method of deahng with motion ; a method which Bergson calls " cinematographical," because it regards a single movement as a succession of infinitely smaU motions. That method is hopeless ; and if we expect to understand motion by its means, " You wih always experience the disappointment of the child, who tries, by clapping its hands together to crush the smoke. The movement shps through the interval, because every attempt to reconstitute change out of states imphes the absurd proposition that movement is made up of immobihties." 1 So that the inteUect is best fitted to deal, not with hving and moving, but with dead and motionless matter. Of the latter it can form a clear idea ; but in dealing with the former, it finds itself at a loss ; it has to abstract the hfe and the motion from what hves or moves, and what it cannot grasp, it must treat as non-existent. Bergson's Anti-Intellectualism. — A penetrating remark of James' wiU help us, at this point, to under- 1 Creative Evolution, p. 325. 118 RELIGION AND SCIENCE stand the significance for philosophy of these new theories. " In spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of Protagoras, Hume, and James MiU, rationahsm has never been seriously questioned, for its sharpest critics have always had a tender place for it in their hearts, and have obeyed some of its mandates. They have not been consistent, they have played fast and loose with the enemy, and Bergson alone has been radical." 1 Bergson's philosophy is, in fact, a reaction against inteUectuahsm or rationahsm ; by which is meant the theory that pure reason is competent by its nature to give a complete and exhaustive account of reahty. But according to Bergson, inteUect, which is a faculty developed to enable men to subdue and turn to advantage their material environment, and which is, as it were, " fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter," wih not reveal the true meaning and nature of existence; it gives us "a translation of hfe in terms of inertia," and can do no more. This criticism of the inteUect (if it be sound), though it does not invahdate the work of that faculty in its own proper sphere, necessarily involves its discredit as a key to the unlocking of the final mysteries of hfe and of being. These things he outside its province. " Whether it wants to treat of the hfe of the body, or the hfe of the mind, it proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness, and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use."2 Intellect and Instinct. — Since inteUect, by its methods, has induced men to turn their backs on 1 A Pluralistic Universe, p. 237. 2 Creative Evolution, p. 174. RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY 119 reahty, and to look on abstractions instead, the only hope of reaching reahty is through an entire change of method and direction.. There is, according to Bergson, a non-inteUectual variety of knowledge, which (from his point of view) it was a kind of original sin ever to depart from ; an original sin which has vitiated aU our phUosophic thinking from the days of Plato. This variety of 1 knowledge is more original and fundamental than any which the processes of the intellect, vitiated as these are by certain inherent perversions, can give us. Intellect cannot correct itself ; we must call in the aid of some other faculty if we would understand reahty. Bergson finds this faculty in what he caUs " instinct." According to him, consciousness has developed in two divergent directions — instinct and inteUect ; and the difference between these is not one of intensity or degree, but of kind.1 They are two divergent developments of the same original consciousness, of which common prigin they both retain traces, for they are not entirely dissimilar, nor is either of them ever found in a pure state. InteUect is characteristic of man. Instinct is most highly developed among certain insects, notably the hymenopterae"(i.e., bees and ants).2 Blindness of Intellect. — And the difficulty of the philosophical problem for man arises from the 1 i.e. Intellect is not (as it is generally represented to be) a developed form of instinct, nor instinct an embryonic form of intellect. 2 The extraordinary and miraculous phenomena of instinct — especially as celebrated by the distinguished French scientist Fabre — cannot be rightly understood by trying to interpret them in terms of intellect. This is to misread them completely. 120 RELIGION AND SCIENCE anomahes of his own constitution (as interpreted by Bergson in the hght of his theory of instinct and intellect). As he puts it : " There are things that Intelligence (or inteUect) alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find ; but it will never seek them." (Creative Evolution, p. 159) . " If the consciousness which slumbers in instinct were to wake up ... if we knew how to question it, and if it knew how to reply, it would dehver to our keeping the rnqst intimate secrets of hfe." Thus Bergson regards it as impossible that inteUect should ever supply us with the complete truth about reahty; there are things, e.g. life itself — which altogether elude its grasp. Intuition. — The situation, however, is not entirely hopeless. Man possesses some measure of instinct, which, "when it has " become disinterested, self- conscious, and capable of reflecting upon its object," Bergson caUs intuition. By means of this faculty, man is able, darkly perhaps but not ineffectuaUy, to grope his way towards an understanding of reahty. Characteristics of the New Philosophy. — Just as the criticisms of Cusanus and others freed thought from an incubus which seemed likely to prevent its further development, so the movement initiated by Mach and culminating (for the present) in Bergson, has done much to discredit " a certain new scholas ticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle."1 Mechanical determinism was characteristic of much 1 Bergson's characterisation of Spencerian Evolutionism (Crea tive Evolution, p. 391). RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY 121 nineteenth-century thought in Europe, not only amongst materialists, but also, in certain cases, amongst ideahsts as well. Against this aspect of contemporary philosophy, the work of James and Bergson has been a revolt. " Indeterminism," i.e. a behef in the reahty of freedom and spontaneity, is an essential part of their system. Theh indeter minism is indeed the necessary and logical accompani ment of their anti-inteUectuahsm. For determinism is " a fabrication of the intellect," a device which makes reahty more manageable, more amenable to logic, more easily systematised. Freedom, hke hfe and motion, eludes the categories -of the inteUect. The Mechanical View Assailed. — Such are the hnes upon which the new criticism of the mechanical view (the most radical criticism it has had to meet since Kant) proceeds. That view, and the idea of pre determined human action which it involves, is an inevitable product of an inteUect naturaUy incapable of understanding freedom and spontaneity. These, as they destroy its scheme of thought, it casts out as an iUusion. "Incorrigibly presumptuous," it insists on interpreting freedom by means of those notions which suit inert matter alone, and therefore always perceives it as necessity. So that aU hfe, far from being subjected to mechanical necessity, as had seemed the inevitable conclusion of naturahstic philosophy, was spontaneity (so to speak) materiahsed and embodied : " All the hving hold together, and aU yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity ... is one immense army gaUoping beside and before and behind each of us in an over whelming charge, able to beat down every resistance 122 RELIGION AND SCIENCE and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death." 1 We have indeed traveUed a long way from the austere abstractions of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The new evolutionism is very different from the old. It substitutes for " mechanism " another conception — that of " dynamism," according to which the process of evolution is something undetermined and unpre dictable — " creative," in fact. The world of organic life is embodied " creative activity," and what this " creative activity " is, we ourselves experience every time we act freely. Pluralism. — The philosophy of Bergson is a re action against the mechanical evolutionism (i.e. naturahsm) of the nineteenth century. Closely allied with it is another movement of thought, known as pluralism. This, too, is a reaction, not so much against naturahsm, as against certain forms of ideahsm. Ideahsm, it wiU be remembered, seeks to interpret reahty in terms of mind or spirit. And it does this in certain cases — notably in the case of F. H. Bradley — by regarding aU phenomena as forms or aspects of the one absolute mind or spirit. This has seemed to many thinkers a phUosophy too abstract and too remote from the world of experience. Hence the question arose whether it might not be possible to interpret nature in terms of mind without being compeUed to take refuge in the abstractions of " absolutism." And pluralism is an attempt to solve the problem. Leibniz Revived. — Leibniz' system of " monads," the nature of which wiU hardly have been forgotten, has been the model to which philosophers have looked 1 Creative Evolution, p. 286. RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY 123 in constructing theh new system. And the " Mon- adology " may be taken as the type to which aU modern attempts to construct a " plurahstic " phil osophy more or less conform. The essence of " plurahsm " — whether Leibnizian or other — hes in the proposition that there exists an indefinite variety of beings, some higher, some lower than ourselves. The pluralist agrees with the ideahst in declaring that the -essence of reahty is spirit, but differs from him in declining to aUow independent spirits to be absorbed by an " all-devouring Absolute." Pluralism and Theism. — WUham James himself, in a work A Pluralistic Universe (1909) outhned a phUosophy of spirit radicaUy opposed to " Absolute Ideahsm," which he subjects to a good deal of criticism. Another important work, written from a similar point of view, is Professor James Ward's Pluralism and Theism (1911).1 With regard to modern plurahsm, the notable features are two. In the first place, it is a philosophy of personality, which it regards as the most fundamental form of reahty ; and also, that it is theistic in a sense pecuhar to itself. It beheves in a God who may be termed the supreme monad, i.e. the head of a system of monads ; but whose power may be said, in certain respects, to be hmited. And indeed some such position seems to be the logical conclusion that foUows from the premises with which plurahsts start, and also (we may add) from the facts of experience. 2 Plurahsts unite in affirming that their God is (what 1 Other notable plurahsts in England are F. C. S. Schiller and Dr. MacTaggart. 2 The logical conclusion, we say, though this may not be the ultimate truth about the matter. The most attractive theories are often the most superficial. ' 124 RELIGION AND SCIENCE they deny the ideahstic Absolute to be) the God of the rehgious consciousness. James elaborates this thesis with his usual resourcefulness and skiU: The con troversy, however, is one into which it does not seem necessary for us to enter. Plurahsm and ideahsm are or may be both definitely spiritual philosophies, and perhaps they appeal to different types of mind. We, at any rate, shall not undertake to judge between them. Both ahke are preferable to dogmatic natural ism. CHAPTER XII SOME RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE Scientific Method. — In the last chapter, attention was drawn to some important attempts to supply science with a sound philosophy of method, i.e. to give a critical account of those processes, logical and otherwise, which issue in what is caUed " scientific knowledge." The general results of these attempts was to re- enforce the vahdity of sound scientific method within its own sphere. But, at the same time, it was felt hkely to prove an unrehable guide elsewhere. The New Physics.- — Meanwhile, while the logic of science was being scrutinised by philosophers, scientific research was itself going steadily forward, and fresh discoveries of a highly important nature were coming to hght. In the sphere of physical science, more especiaUy, revolutions of Copernican proportions quietly took place. The whole subject of physics is of a highly technical nature, quite unsuitable for discussion here, and, indeed, entirely beyond the range of the present writer. To indicate the nature of the discoveries which were made, however, involves few technicahties: though the method by which these were demonstrated and estabhshed must remain obscure to aU but mathe matical speciahsts. 125 126 RELIGION AND SCIENCE Collapse of the Atomic Theory. — Dalton's theory of atoms was described in a previous chapter. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance attached by materialists, ever since Lucretius, to the conception of indivisible and indestructible atoms. It was regarded as integral to materiahsm, and never was the prestige of this theory higher than during the nineteenth century, which " will go down in scientific history as the' era of the atomic theory of matter." Towards the close of the century, the theory col lapsed. Atoms were found to be neither indivisible nor indestructible ; and the process of the breaking up of the atom has actuaUy been observed. As is very generaUy known, it is in the case of a particular element, radium, that this phenomenon occurs. That substancs, wherever it ' occurs, is under going a continual process of disintegration ; radium atoms are continuaUy breaking up into more elemen tary bodies] Were it not for the fact that radium itself is the product of the disintegration of another element, it would be impossible to account for its survival. It continuaUy evaporates (the hfe of radium is only 2500 years) but it is as continuaUy renewed by the infinitely slower disintegration of uranium. Electrons. — The particles into which the radium atom disintegrates are known as electrons. And according to the new theory of matter, not only radium atoms, but the atoms of all the other elements (hitherto regarded as irreducible) are composed of electrons, differently grouped. The radium atom is infinitely more unstable than the atoms of the other elements ; but it is possible to conceive of the disintegration of these also. They are aU alike composed of the same RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE 127 elementary particles — different compounds of the same primitive substance. Matter a form of Electricity. — And the most remarkable part of the new theory is that these primitive particles of which material atoms are conv posed, are themselves the units which constitute what we caU " electricity." Thus matter and electricity are now expressed in common terms — they are regarded as different manifestations of the same substance. And of the two conceptions — matter and electricity — it is the latter that is the more simple and fundamental. As a high authority puts it : " Whereas through the greater part of the nineteenth century, ' matter ' was the concept which was looked upon as fundamental in physical science, and of which there was a curious accidental property called elec tricity, it now appears that electricity must be more fundamental than matter, in the sense that our more elementary matter must now be conceived as a mani festation of extremely complex electrical phenomena."1 As to whether the electrons themselves, in their turn, are irreducible units, there may be room for doubt. According to Professor J. Larmor the electron is " a nucleus of intrinsic strain in the ether."2 If this view be sound, matter may be regarded as a manifestation of the ether ; "a persistent strain-form flitting through an universal sea of ether." As to the nature of the ether, that is a subject of speculation among physicists. It is variously described as an " elastic fluid," and as " a fairly close packed con- 1 Professor Cunningham in Pearson's Grammar of Science, Part I, p. 356. 2 Quoted by W. C. D. Whetham in his Recent Development of Physical Science, p. 280. No reference is given by him. 128 RELIGION AND SCIENCE glomerate of minute grains in continual oscillation." 1 It may indeed be said that modern physical theories have succeeded in reducing matter, which seems comparatively knowable, to a substance of which httle is known and, therefore, of which much can be postu lated ; it can be caUed sub-natural, or super-natural, according to taste. We may, perhaps, satisfy ourselves with the words of Professor Tait : " We do not know, and are probably incapable of discovering, what matter is " ; and " The discovery of the ultimate nature of matter is probably beyond the range of human inteUigence." 2 And yet we can agree with Mr. Arthur Balfour when he says 3 " we know too much about matter to be materialists." That, in itseU, a generation ago would have been regarded as a large admission from the standpoint of physical science. Results of the New Physics. — The reduction of knowable and tangible matter to intangible electricity or unknowable ether may not seem to be much of an advance from the point of view of those who are interested in estabhshing a spiritual theory of the universe. But electricity is a species of energy which can be expressed in terms of wiU — which is the only kind of energy that we are acquainted with at first hand. " What is objectively energy is subjectly will ; or, in other words, manifested energy is the visibility of wiU." * And so far as the " unknowable " ether is concerned, it gives less scope to those powers 1 One theory attributes the existence of matter to occasional misfits among these grains. 2 Quoted by Bishop Mercer. Problem of Creation, Appendix B. 3 In Theism and Humanism. " Mercer, op. cit., p. 106. RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE 129 of dogmatism, the exercise of which characterised scientists of the old materiahstic school ; and it is the habit of oracular pronouncements which does the harm, by rendering any inteUectual or spiritual pro gress impossible. In any case, whatever be the sub stitute which is to replace the old theory, we may congratulate ourselves, with Professor J. S. Haldane, that " we have parted once for all with the notion of a real and self-existent Material universe ; and we must remember where we now are." 1 The New Biology. — But if the results of the new physics have been disturbing to those who had hoped that materiahsm was a finaUy established theory, the results of recent biological research have been equally embarrassing to them. The anti-mechanistic trend of recent biological theory is only too evident. The organism is regarded no longer by the majority of biologists as fuUy exphcable in terms of mechanics and chemistry. To quote Professor Haldane again, " The main outstanding fact is that the mechanistic account of the universe breaks down completely in connection with the phenomena of life ... In the case of hfe, the facts are inconsistent with the physical and chemi cal account of phenomena." 2 The organism can no longer be regarded as even an extremely complex kind of machine ; that word will not cover the facts, and biologists are compelled to look elsewhere for a less misleading terminology. To describe the organism as a machine, is to give to that word a very comprehensive connotation. For the organism is a machine different in kind from any that has been constructed by man ; it is " a self -stoking, 1 Mechanism, Life, and Personality (1913), p. 81". 2 Op. cit. pp. 64, 66. 130 RELIGION AND SCIENCE self-repairing, self-preservative, self-adjusting, self- increasing, self-producing engine." x The Researches of Driesch. — Just as modern physics is concerned with the infinitely small — the ultra-microscopic, in fact — so modern biologists are concentrating attention upon microscopic organisms, where hfe is seen at its lowest terms, and where (if anywhere) they may expect to discover what are the differentia of hfe, i.e. what are the quahties that distinguish hving organic from inorganic matter. Perhaps the most notable of the researches conducted in this sphere, of recent years, have been those of Professor Driesch, who expounded his results in the Gifford Lectures for 1907-1908 (The Science and Philosophy of the Organism). The phenomena upon which Driesch lays consider able stress are those which occur upon a division of certain hving embryos. An embryo, when cut in half, displays remarkable powers of self-adjustment and continued development. Each half can, as it were, regulate itself, and make a fresh start ; a process which results in two self-contained organisms, though of smaUer size than would have resulted from a single undivided organism. The ceUs which compose the organism seem able to adapt themselves to whatever demands are made upon them. Like workmen building a bridge, aU of them can do every single act — if need arise — and the result of their labours is a perfect bridge, even if some of the workmen faU sick or are killed or injured in an accident. Driesch sums up the results of his researches by saying : 1 Professor J. Arthur Thomson, in an article entitled, " Is there one Science of Nature ? " (Hibbert fournal, Oct., 191 1). RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE 131 " There is something in the organism's behaviour — in the widest sense of the word — which is opposed to an inorganic resolution of the same (i.e. to its complete expression in terms of chemistry and physics), and which shows that the hving organism is more than a sum or aggregate of its parts ; that it is insufficient to call the organism ' a typicaUy combined body ' (i.e., a machine), without further explanation." x The Problem of Life. — The problem is : What is it in an organism which causes it to behave in a fashion so impossible for any machine ? To answer .this question satisfactorily would be to have solved the mystery of hfe. Biologists do not answer the question ; they do not say what this pecuhar potency is, but they give it a name. Driesch calls it entelechy, i.e. " pur- posiveness," and he also speaks of psychoids, i.e. " primitive minds." Names do not carry us very far ; but the mere fact that biologists have gone to the trouble of providing a name, is important. It consti tutes an admission on their part that there is something mysterious about the organism ; for it has been a principle of modern science since the days of Gahleo never to appeal to' mysterious causes if known ones, can be found. The deus ex machina method seems to them fundamentaUy unsound, and so it is. If every difficulty were considered solved merely by the word " mystery," knowledge would never advance. LabeUed ignorance is stiU ignorance. It is not names, but things that are important. But in this particular instance the application of the name eHtelechy indicates that, in the opinion of such an authority as Driesch, at any rate, something exists which no merely physical or chemical term can completely describe. And 1 The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, Vol. II, p. 338. 132 RELIGION AND SCIENCE Driesch is typical of the trend of much modem biology. It is only the very extreme optimists who now look for a final explanation of the hving organism in terms of physics and chemistry. Results of the New Biology. — But if hfe resists aU attempts to reduce it to matter and motion, we are confronted with the breakdown of the mechanical theory of the universe, which has been slowly but progressively elaborated since the days of Leonardo da Vinci, and apphed impartiaUy to the organic and the inorganic spheres. But this ultra-dogmatic theory now seems too cramped to contain the facts ; even scientists resent the claims of materialist-mechanical orthodoxy. Some indeed adopt not merely a critical, but a provocative attitude, and seek to discredit the prestige of mechanics. Professor J. S. Haldane not only vindicates the freedom, but prophesies the speedy advance of biology to a position of pre-eminence. Not only are biological phenomena irreducible to terms of mechanics, but it is mechanics that wiU have to be re-interpreted in terms of biology. " It is at least evident that the extension of biological conceptions to the whole of nature may be much nearer than seemed conceivable even a few years ago. When the day of that extension comes, the physical and chemical world as we now conceive it — the world of atoms and energy — wiU be recognised as nothing but an appearance ... it wiU stand confessed as a world of abstractions hke that of the pure mathematicians." 1 The New Psychology. — Not only physical and biological, but psychological science wiU contribute very largely to the reconstruction of view which is now taking place. Particular attention is due to those 1 Op. cit. p. 101. RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE 133 branches of psychology which deal experimentally with the subconscious, with instincts, with the phe nomena of thought transference, psychotherapy, and of so-caUed " spiritualism." In none of these spheres can research yet be said to have proceeded far enough to justify the luxury of dogmatising over results. Considerable confusion of opinion may stiU exist, but it is now generaUy recognised that there is a wide sphere of research in psychical regions which is practi- caUy a terra incognita. And those most competent to judge of results seem to be most cautious in their statements. We are in the position of not knowing what a day may bring forth ; and an expectant agnosticism with regard to many problems is perhaps the right attitude to adopt. The somewhat arrogant negations of the last generation are now out of place ; they were never, in the strict sense, scientific, and they are now demodes. It is extremely difficult to imagine a return to the view which dismisses " mind " from the universe as being an obscure by-product of matter, or a comparatively insignificant " epiphenomenon " accompanying certain obscure chemical or mechanical processes. The old theories, gratifying in their sim plicity, wih no longer cover the facts. Psychical Research. — One particular branch of experimental psychology, which has attracted a large measure of public attention, caUs for a few remarks. The attempt has been, made to give experimental proof of the existence of " disembodied spirits," human or otherwise. The whole subject, exceptionally exposed as it is to the influence of prejudices of various kinds, requires to be treated with great caution, and it is inadvisable, in the present condition of the problem, to make dogmatic statements in any direction. 134 RELIGION AND SCIENCE What appears to be certain is that the occurrence is weU estabUshed of various phenomena which it is extremely difficult to explain in accordance with our present knowledge of matter, of space, or of mental action. The occurrence of such phenomena is no longer disputed ; but it is over the explanation of them that controversy is active. And it seems quite certain that the very least in the way of concessions that these new facts wiU force from conservative scientists is a radical revision of current notions of the range of human mental action. The mind is evidently capable of pro ducing certain effects — even upon matter — which would have seemed incredible a short while ago. So much is the least that may be expected. But in the view of many competent and highly scientific observers, some far more radical revision of our notions may be necessary. Some scientists of good repute (e.g. Sir Oliver Lodge, in England, and Flammarion and others on the Continent) are convinced that the facts can only adequately be explained by reference to another world — interlocked, as it were, with this.1 And it has to be admitted that this, what may be caUed more " advanced " explanation, is more in accordance than the other with a rather universal tradition or assumption of mankind in aU ages. It will be easUy seen that the whole subject is one of the most extreme difficulty. There is a general hesitancy in accepting what is caUed the " spirit hypothesis," so long as any other can be found ; a 1 Other names of distinguished scientists holding this view are : Sir W. Crookes the Physicist and Sir W. F. Barrett, f.e.s., in Eng land, Dr. Hodgson and Prof. James Hyslop in America, Lombroso in Italy, Richet in France. RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE 135 hesitancy justified in view of the extreme complexity of the world we hve in (where so much is even yet unknown), and in view of the great difficulty which there seems to be in adducing exact proofs of the " spirit theory." A Reasonable Attitude— We shaU, no doubt, be wise at present to refuse to cry " Proven," and whilst admitting that aU things are possible — perhaps even probable — to await with patience the results of further investigation. It has to be admitted that, while many people are superstitious and easUy attracted by picturesque theories, there are others who are as prejudiced, in their way, against new ideas, as were those astronomers who, being committed to Ptojemaic views, refused to look through Gahleo's telescope. It is not only the ologians who have, in the history of thought, been guilty of obscurantism. In the early days of hypnotic experiments the scientific world in general "pooh- poohed " the idea of hypnotism ; and it took a con siderable time before it would allow itself to be con vinced that such a thing was possible. Facts, in the end, were too strong even for prejudice. It is facts, eventually, that decide matters ; and, no doubt, before a very long period has elapsed, sufficient facts wiU have accumulated to aUow the scientific world to form more definite and better-grounded opinions than are possible to-day. Meanwhile, the ordinary man wiU do well to remem ber that the universe is reaUy a very wonderful place, and that the knowledge of the wisest of us about it can only be described as infinitesimal. The traditions of nineteenth-century materiahsm are stiU strong amongst us, even with those who are least conscious of them. 136 RELIGION AND SCIENCE But there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in that philosophy. Results. — These new conceptions of matter, of hfe, and of mind, which are the products of the new physics, the new biology, and the new psychology respectively, may be confidently left to themselves to work out their own salvation. They have the strength of youth. What is evident is that we have crossed the threshold of a new era in the history of science. The outlook of the future wiU be as different from that of the recent past as was the new science of Gahleo, Descartes, and Newton from the dogmatic but fanciful notions which the Scholastic theologians had borrowed from Aristotle, and sought to impose as a permanent revelation. The current of thought is never stayed. The future is obscure, but one thing is certain, that the coming generations wih see catastrophic changes in the out look of science ; and the materiahstic and mechanistic Weltanschauung, which lately seemed so formidable, may soon become as superannuated as astrology. The theory which overshadowed the rehgious hfe of a century, and which had become more and more menacing as scientific knowledge increased in extent and popularity, has fallen into discredit. Its prestige wiU not revive. CHAPTER XIII some final considerations Value of the History of Philosophy. — It may perhaps be felt that our protracted excursion has not advanced us far beyond the position at which we stood in the opening chapter. Indeed, the history of phil osophy may seem not to establish any very definite conclusions ; and those who study the subject in the hope that it wih supply them with material for dogma tising are likely to be disappointed. We have to reconcUe ourselves to the fact that the riddle of the universe has as yet received no final solution at the hands of the metaphysicians. It is only too evident that, as the poet says : "Our Uttle systems have their day, They have their day, and cease to be." And yet it would be an error to suppose that this lack of finality about philosophical opinion, or the want of unanimity among philosophers, indicates that no progress has been made. There are certain land marks in the history of phUosophy — such as Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — which mark a point behind which we shaU not again regress (assuming that our culture and civihsation is preserved). Even if we have not grasped the whole truth about things yet, we are stiU justified in assuming that we are graduaUy, if painfuUy, getting nearer to the goal. 137 138 RELIGION AND SCIENCE But surely we are entitled to beheve that it is not the crude appetite for metaphysical dogma that attracts men to the history of philosophy. Its fascina tion rather resembles that of the history of rehgion : both are, as it were, Odyssies of the human spirit ; nor is there any activity of man that has not its appeal to the human heart : for cor ad cor loquitur. And, again, we should reflect that those who ask for final conclusions, forget that the search for truth may be, in and for itself, of the highest spiritual value. The best starting-point for the history of philosophy is a famous passage from Lessing. " Not the truth which is at the disposal of every man, but the honest pains he has taken to come at the truth make the worth of a man. For not through the possession, but through the pursuit of truth do his powers increase, and in this alone consists his ever- increasing perfection. Possession makes us quiet, indolent, proud. ... If God with aU truth in His right hand, and in His left the single, unceasing striving after truth, even though coupled with the condition that I should ever and always err, came to me and said, ' Choose ! ' I would in aU humility clasp this left hand and say, ' Father, give me this ! Is not pure truth for Thee alone ? ' "x But there is another respect in which some know ledge of the history of thought may be an important advantage. It may not bestow upon us the hberty of dogmatising ourselves, but it does bestow upon us a certain imperturbability in the face of the dogmatisms of others. Airs of systematic omniscience, " the pride of a pretended knowledge," will leave us unimpressed 1 From his Duplih. Quoted by Hoffding, History of Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 21. SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 139 and undismayed. The latest pretentious product of popular philosophy wih, in the majority of cases, be recognised as an old heresy in a new garb ; " new " thought will not impress (at least, by its novelty) those who know that it is old. But it is against the crudities of materiahstic naturahsm that even a shght acquaintance with the history of ideas wiU form an antidote. The various exposures of it, from Hume and Kant to Bergson, wiU be to some extent familiar ; and it wiU be a recognised fact that its chief popular attraction is at the same time its chief philosophic weakness ; and this is that it is nothing more or less than a systematisation of the prejudices of common sense. " As a theory of first principles, the best that can be said of its pretensions is that they are ridiculous." 1 Some Deductions from History. — But, it may be asked, what definite conclusions have the foregoing chapters to offer ? Some, if we are not mistaken, of a genuinely positive character. It will be necessary to recaU certain facts and reflections to the minds of our readers. In the early chapters we noted the rise of an inde pendent science, and the coUapse of the medieval world view with which popular rehgious notions were asso ciated so closely, that many conservative thinkers expected to see both involved in a common ruin. Science seemed to threaten the existence of a rehgion bound up with conceptions of space and of force which were being brought into discredit. These misgivings turned out, however, to be iU- founded. Certain advantages, no doubt, of simphcity 1 F. H. Bradley on " Phenomenalism " (Appearance and Reality, p. 126). 140 RELIGION AND SCIENCE and definiteness, which had belonged to the old notions, had been irrecoverably lost ; but thinkers like Giordano Bmno showed that the conception of an infinite universe was by no means hostile to rehgion ; but that, on the contrary, it might be a conception of the highest spiritual value. Such are the sentiments expressed in some sonnets which precede Bruno's dialogue " On the Infinite Universe." " It seemed to Bruno as if he had never breathed freely until the limits of the universe had been extended to infinity, and the fixed spheres had disappeared. No longer now was there a limit to the flight of the spirit, no ' so far and no further ' ; the narrow prison in which the old behefs had confined men's spirits had now to open its gates and let in the pure air of a new hfe."1 The scientific did not seem to him incompatible with a fundamentaUy rehgious conception of the world, at least for those who were not afraid " to take ship upon the seas of the infinite." Dangers of the " Mechanical View." — Thus it was not science that was hostile to rehgion. This was not the case until science began to be associated with a certain fairly definite philosophy of a mechanistic, and later of a materialist, description. Rehgion could not have survived the final estabhshment of such a philosophy as this, for the indispensable element in a rehgious attitude of hfe is the idea that somehow there lies behind things a power or essence that has something in common with our own natures — something that can, without an abuse of language, be caUed personal. Any phUosophy that rules out this idea creates an atmosphere in which rehgion cannot breathe. 1 Hoffding, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 129. SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 141 And it was just this atmosphere that the mechan istic view, unless amplified by considerations of another kind (as it was e.g. in the case of Spinoza) tended to create. . The " Mechanical View " Never Unchallenged. — And with regard to this mechanistic philosophy, we have to observe that it never seems to have commended itself, as a final and complete solution, to the best minds. In the seventeenth century, it will be remem bered, the mechanical conception was transcended (though in entirely, different ways) by Spinoza and by Leibniz, and the rehgious consciousness of the age, in the person of Pascal, protested against it. And although, during the eighteenth century, this phUosophy persisted, and was considerably reinforced (with the help of further discoveries in the realm of physics) by the school of Holbach and Diderot, yet it had still to face the radical criticism of Kant. This criticism, as we shaU remember, indicated that the mechanical view is a way in which the human mind — owing to its constitution — regards phenomena. If it is to understand them, the human mind cannot help viewing them in that fashion ; it must subject things to the mould in which aU its thought is cast. Mechan ism is the medium through which the mind understands phenomena. It belongs not to the things in themselves, but to our way of understanding them. And attached to this radical criticism of mechanical notions, was an ideahstic philosophy of the most genuinely rehgious and spiritual character. Kantian ideahsm is one of those contributions to human thought behind which we shaU not again regress. It is a phenomenon of incalculable value and importance. The immediate results of Kant's critical ideahsm 142 RELIGION AND SCIENCE was a luxuriant growth of a spiritual type of philosophy upon the ground he had cleared and prepared. Roman ticism may be regarded as a revolt of those sides of human nature upon which the tyranny of mechanism pressed hardest — rehgion, speculation, poetry, music, art. " You may expel nature with a pitchfork, but she persists in returning." The Horatian remark is true also of the human mind ; you may try to weed out rehgion and poetry, but your success wiU only be temporary ; for nature herself is more persistent than the most earnest of materiahsts and (what is more) she outhves him. And with regard to the materiahst or mechanistic view, it is highly interesting to note that its greatest attraction has .consisted in something which, strictly speaking, is not its own property. In the eighteenth century in France, and in the nineteenth century in Germany and England, the popularity of this view was derived from its altogether iUegitimate association with a high moral and social ideahsm, which (it is only too evident) had been borrowed — without suffi cient acknowledgment — from the Christian tradition. The rather self-conscious atheism (for instance) of SheUey or Byron — which they had presumably derived from Diderot and his contemporaries — was less a denial of God than an affirmation of the rights of humanity. This generous philosophy of revolt from contemporary tyranny and pharisaism is atheistic only in name. The caUous and cynical powers, both pohtical and ecclesiastical, that were the object of their bitter attacks were the embodiments of atheism, for " He alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being, e.g. love, wisdom, justice, are nothing."1 1 Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity, p. 21. SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 143 The Present Situation. — During the nineteenth century the mechanical view received some accession of strength owing to the reduction of biology to what seemed like subjection. But, at the same time, an ideahstic philosophy had taken a strong hold in England, and towards the end of the century critical students of scientific method cast doubt upon the finality of the mechanical view. They regarded it as artificial, abstract, and symbolic only of reahty. This critical movement may be associated with the names of Mach, Boutroux, and (perhaps above all) of Bergson. Moreover, towards the end of the century, a number of new facts in physics, biology, and psychology came to light and tended to discredit the mechanical view as a final explanation of reahty. The indestructibihty of matter, even the conservation of energy and of mass (corner stones of the mechanico-materialist view) began openly to be questioned, not by metaphysicians, but by men of science themselves. The foes of material ism were those of its own household.1 Thus assaUed from without by the philosophers, and from within by the scientists themselves, the mechanical view, after a reign of three centuries (disturbed though these may have been by successive rebellions) seems destined to disappear. It may indeed subsist as an approximate and convenient way of regarding reahty, of which it wiU no longer pretend to give an absolute and complete account. It will continue to reign as a constitutional monarch, but the days of its tyranny are at an end. And it is not unlikely that future 1 We now learn that conceptions of space of a highly unorthodox character are entertained by physicists and mathematicians, as the result of recent researches in the sphere of the gravitation of light. 144 RELIGION AND SCIENCE generations wiU look with surprise upon our respect for a theory which to them wiU wear something of the same aspect as medieval astrology now presents to ourselves. Some Deductions — If the history of thought showed no other results than the impaired prestige of naturahsm, it would be worth attention and study. The facts undoubtedly compromise that prestige, for history indicates that at no period has naturahsm been able to impose itseU permanently. If there has been a movement in that direction, it has ehcited a corre sponding reaction. The human mind] seems unable to remain satisfied with the negations which systematised common sense seeks to impose upon it. There is an instinctive appetite in humanity for a spiritual view of things, and Sabatier was undoubtedly right in observing that mankind is " incurably rehgious." Neither Hobbes, nor Holbach, nor Biichner, with the best wiU in the world, can exorcise from the human heart that instinct which seeks for itself personal relations with the universe — which sees a mind behind phenomena. This is one of those instincts of which it is tme that the more you repress them the more insurgent they become — they wiU have their way in the end. Thus naturahsm, bhnd to the mutUation of our nature of which it is guilty, is psychologicaUy unsound. And yet, our nature is not so easily mutilated after aU. Naturahstic dogmatism has it in its power to create an atmosphere which is unhealthy for rehgion, but that growth has its roots too deep for it to be easily des troyed. Springing as it does from the depths of our nature, it wiU prove as permanent as humanity itself. This is not to deny that this type of dogmatism may SOME FINAL CONSIDERATIONS 145 do, as it actuaUy has done, a great deal of harm. A plant may be strong and vigorous, but under unceasing bitter weather, it wiU tend to become discouraged. Otherwise it would not be worth while to write criti cisms of naturahsm. Freedom. — Perhaps the best service we can do is to protest against indulging an appetite for negative dog matism. Such an attitude is a negation of the freedom of thought. And it is in an atmosphere of freedom that both rehgion and science flourish best. A hard and fast naturahstic outlook may prove, and actuaUy has proved, an incubus from which even scientists them selves may pray to be dehvered. Nor has rehgion always enjoyed that fuU measure of freedom which is indispensable to its vigorous hfe. The curious and sad fact is that the human mind seems to dehght in creating prisons for itseU. The scientific spirit created a mechanico-materialistic scheme which has ended by becoming the enemy of scientific research, and which (besides this) asks, as a sacrifice, the ' mutilation of our spiritual instincts. And so with rehgion. The rehgious instinct (hke the scientific) tends "to create its prisons. The pride of a pretended knowledge reduces to a mechanical scheme the mysteries of hfe and death ; it provides superficial standardised solutions for the problems of existence. Of course, it is clear enough, that in rehgion as in science, we cannot, even if we would, start each of us from the beginning. We have to accept and to revere the riches of knowledge and experience accumulated by those who have gone before. And yet, in rehgion as in science, hfe consists in movement ; we must go forward. The past may be ah inspiration, but it must not be the limit of our thought, or it becomes an incubus. The 146 RELIGION AND SCIENCE glance must be forward not backward ; the stream flows, and we are borne on its bosom. Humanity, hke an explorer, has its face set towards the unknown. Both science and religion are children of freedom, without which the creative spirit in man is crushed. And here, with this note of warning (though perhaps rather of encouragement) we may close. INDEX Agnosticism, 92 Anti-clericalism, 43 Aquinas, 9 f., 30 n. Aristotle, 8, 136 Atomic theory, the, 49 collapse of, 126 Bacon, Lord, 16 f. Balfour, A. J., 105 f., no, 128 Bergson, 115-121, 143 ¦ Berkeley, 55 Boutroux, 112 f., 143 Bradley, F. H., 104 f., no, 122, 139 Bruno, 12, 25, 29 f., 140 Biichner, 86, 144 Buffon, 77 Carlyle, Thomas, 38, 99-102 Coleridge, S. T., 98 f. Comte, 85, 89, 92 Copernicus, 11, 22, 25, 58 Cunningham, Prof., 127 Cusanus, 10 Dalton, 49, 83, 126 Darwin, 80-83, 87 f. Descartes, 19-22, 26, 37, 43, 55, 74. 136 Design, Argument from, 87 f. Diderot, 45 f., 48, 141, 144 Driesch, 130 f. Eckhart, 30 n. Encyclopaedia, The, 45 Electrons, 126 Feuerbach, 85, 95 Fichte, 65-67 Gahleo, 12-15, 22> 55, 79, 136 Goethe, 30, 65 Green, T. H., 103 f. Haeckel, 88 Haldane, Prof. J. S., 129, 132 Harvey, WilUam, 19, 22 Hegel, 67-70 Heine, 85 Helmholtz, 75 Hobbes, 22, 26, 43, 55, 144 Holbach, 46-48, 141, 144 Hume, 55 f.,.58 Huxley, 92 i., 95 Inge, 38 n. James, WilUam, 114/., 123 Jansenists, the, 43 n. Jesuits, the, 22 n., 26, 37, 43 n. Johnson, Dr., 47 Kant, 53-61, 66, 70, 77, 85, 137, 141 and Hegel compared, 69 and Locke compared, 57 and Rousseau compared, 65 Kepler, 15 Lamarck, 77 La Mettrie, 45, 48, 74 Lange, 47, 84 Laplace, 48 f . Larmor, Prof. J., 127 Lavoisier, 49 f . Leibniz, 33-36, 41, 52 f., 122, 141 Leonardo da Vinci, 14, 16, 132 Lessing, 138 147 148 RELIGION AND SCIENCE Locke, 52 f., 55 f. Lodge, Sir O., 134 lLotze, 107-109 Lyell, 78-80 Mach, 110-114, 143 Malthus' Essay on Population, 80 Meyer, 75 McTaggart, 123 n. Modernism, 109 Monads, 35 f., 122 " Natural Selection," 81, 87 Newton, 23-26, 43, 44 »., 48, 82, 136 Nietzsche, 94, 96 t . Paley, 87 Pascal, 22, 36-41 Pearson, Prof. Karl, 1 Pessimism, 95 Positivism, 85, 95 Ritschl, 109 Rousseau, 54«., 62-65, 80 Sartor Resartus, 100 Schelling, 65 Schiller, 65 » Schiller, F. C. S., 123 n. Schleider, 75 Schleiermacher, 70-72 Spencer, Herbert, 35, 77, 89-92, 122 Spinoza, 28-33, 41. 52 *•> 67. 141 " SpirituaUsm," 133-136 Stephen, LesUe, 92 Tait, Prof., 128 Thomson, Prof. J. A., 130 n. Voltaire, 44 f . Wallace, Alfred Russell, 81 f. Ward, Prof. James, 265?., 91 n., 123 Wholer, 74 Zeno's paradox, 117 Printed in Great Britain at Tke Mayflower Press, Plymouth. William Brendon & Son, Ltd. YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 9002 08867 9932 ¦