Chapter 5   The Reconcilation

§27. Thus do all lines of argument converge to the same conclusion. Those imbecilities of the understanding which disclose themselves when we try to answer the highest questions of objective science, subjective science proves to be necessitated by the laws of that understanding. Finally we discover that this conclusion which, in its unqualified form, seems opposed to the instinctive convictions of mankind, falls into harmony with them when the missing qualification is supplied. Here, then, is that basis of agreement we set out to seek. This conclusion which objective science illustrates and subjective science shows to be unavoidable, -- this conclusion which brings the results of speculation into harmony with those of common sense; is also the conclusion which reconciles Religion with Science. Common Sense asserts the existence of a reality; Objective Science proves that this reality cannot be what we think it; Subjective Science shows why we cannot think of it as it is, and yet are compelled to think of it as existing; and in this assertion of a Reality utterly inscrutable in nature, Religion finds an assertion essentially coinciding with her own. We are obliged to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some Power by which we are acted upon; though omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this Power; while the criticisms of Science teach us that this Power is Incomprehensible. And this consciousness of an Incomprehensible Power, called omnipresent from inability to assign its limits, is just that consciousness on which Religion dwells.

To understand fully how real is the reconciliation thus reached, it will be needful to look at the respective attitudes that Religion and Science have all along maintained towards this conclusion.

§28. In its earliest and crudest forms Religion manifested, however vaguely and inconsistently, an intuition forming the germ of this highest belief in which philosophies finally unite. The consciousness of a mystery is traceable in the rudest ghost-theory. Each higher creed, rejecting those definite and simple interpretations of Nature previously given, has become more religious by doing this. As the concrete and conceivable agencies assigned as the causes of things, have been replaced by agencies less concrete and conceivable, the element of mystery has necessary become more predominant. Through all its phases the disappearance of those dogmas by which the mystery was made unmysterious, has formed the essential change delineated in religious history. And so Religion has been approaching towards that complete recognition of this mystery which is its goal.

For its essentially valid belief Religion has constantly done battle. Gross as were the disguises under which it first espoused this belief, and cherishing this belief, even still, under disfiguring vestments, it has never ceased to maintain and defend it. Though from age to age Science has continually defeated it wherever they have come in collision, and has obliged it to relinquish one or more of its positions, it has held the remaining ones with undiminished tenacity. After criticism has abolished its arguments, there has still remained with it the indestructible consciousness of a truth which, however faulty the mode in which it had been expressed, is yet a truth beyond cavil.

But while from the beginning, Religion has had the all-essential office of preventing men from being wholly absorbed in the relative or immediate, and of awakening them to a consciousness of something beyond it, this office has been but very imperfectly discharged. In its early stages the consciousness of supernature being simply the consciousness of numerous supernatural persons essentially man-like, was not far removed from the ordinary consciousness. As thus constituted, Religion was and has ever been more or less irreligious; and indeed continues to be largely irreligious even now. In the first place (restricting ourselves to Religion in its more developed form), it has all along professed to have some knowledge of that which transcends knowledge, and has so contradicted its own teachings. While with one breath it has asserted that the Cause of all things passes understanding, it has, with the next breath, asserted that the Cause of all things possesses such or such attributes -- can be in so far understood. In the second place, while in great part sincere in its fealty to the great truth it has had to uphold, it has often been insincere, and consequently irreligious, in maintaining the untenable doctrines by which it has obscured this great truth. Each assertion respecting the nature, acts, or motives of that Power which the Universe manifests to us, has been repeatedly called in question, and proved to be inconsistent with itself, or with accompanying assertions. Yet each of them has been age after age insisted on. Just as though unaware that its central position was impregnable, Religion has obstinately held every outpost long after it was obviously indefensible. And this introduces us to the third and most serious form of irreligion which Religion has displayed; namely, an imperfect belief in that which it especially professes to believe. How truly its central position is impregnable, Religion has never adequately realized. In the devoutest faith as we commonly see it, there lies hidden a core of scepticism; and it is this scepticism which causes that dread of inquiry shown by Religion when face to face with Science. Obliged to abandon one by one the superstitions it once tenaciously held, and daily finding other cherished beliefs more and more shaken, Religion secretly fears that all things may some day be explained; and thus itself betrays a lurking doubt whether that Incomprehensible Cause of which it is conscious, is really incomprehensible.

Of Religion then, we must always remember, that amid its many errors and corruptions it has asserted and diffused a supreme verity. From the first, the recognition of this supreme verity, in however imperfect a manner, has been its vital element; and its chief defects, once extreme but gradually diminishing, have been its failures to recognize in full that which it recognized in part. The truly religious element of Religion has always been good; that which has proved untenable in doctrine and vicious in practice, has been its irreligious element; and from this it has been undergoing purification.

§29. And now observe that the agent which has effected the purification has been Science. On both sides this fact is overlooked. Religion ignores its immense debt to Science; and Science is scarcely at all conscious how much Religion owes it. Yet it is demonstrable that every step by which Religion has progressed from its first low conception to the comparatively high one now reached, Science has helped it, or rather forced it, to take; and that even now, Science is urging further steps in the same direction.

When we include under the name Science all definite knowledge of the order existing among phenomena, it becomes manifest that from the outset, the discovery of an established order has modified that conception of disorder or undetermined order, which underlies every superstition. As fast as experience proves that certain familiar changes always present the same sequences, there begins to fade from the mind the conception of special personalities to whose variable wills they were before ascribed. And when, step by step, accumulating observations do the like with the less familiar changes, a similar modification of belief takes place respecting them.

While this process seems to those who effect it, and those who undergo it, an anti-religious one, it is really the reverse. Instead of the specific comprehensible agency before assigned, there is substituted a less specific and less comprehensible agency; and though this, standing in opposition to the previous one, cannot at first call forth the same feeling, yet, as being less comprehensible, it must eventually call forth this feeling more fully. Take an instance. Of old the Sun was regarded as the chariot of a god, drawn by horses. How far the idea thus grossly expressed was idealized, we need not inquire. It suffices to remark that this accounting for the apparent motion of the Sun by an agency like certain visible terrestrial agencies, reduced a daily wonder to the level of the commonest intellect. When, many centuries after, Copernicus having enunciated the heliocentric theory of the solar system, Kepler discovered that the orbits of the planets are ellipses, and that the planets describe equal areas in equal times, he concluded that in each of them there must exist a spirit to guide its movements. Here we see that with the progress of Science, there had disappeared the idea of a gross mechanical traction, such as was first assigned in the case of the Sun; but that while for the celestial motions there was substituted a less-easily conceivable force, it was still thought needful to assume personal agents as causes of the regular irregularity of the motions. When, finally it was proved that these planetary revolutions with all their variations and disturbances, conform to one universal law -- when the presiding spirits which Kepler conceived were set aside, and the force of gravitation put in their places; the change was really the abolition of an imaginable agency, and the substitution of an unimaginable one. For though the law of gravitation is within our mental grasp, it is impossible to realize in thought the force of gravitation. Newton himself confessed the force of gravitation to be incomprehensible without the intermediation of an ether; and, as we have already seen, (§18), the assumption of an ether does not help us. Thus it is with Science in general. Its progress in grouping particular relations of phenomena under laws, and these special laws under laws more and more general, is of necessity a progress to causes more and more abstract. And causes more and more abstract, are of necessity causes less and less conceivable; since the formation of an abstract conception involves the dropping of certain concrete elements of thought. Hence the most abstract conception, to which Science is slowly approaching, is one that merges into the inconceivable or unthinkable, by the dropping of all concrete elements of thought. And so is justified the assertion that the beliefs which Science has forced upon Religion, have been intrinsically more religious than those which they supplanted.

Science, however, like Religion, has but very incompletely fulfilled its office. As Religion has fallen short of its function in so far as it has been irreligious; so has Science fallen short of its function in so far as it has been unscientific. Let us note the several parallelisms. In its earlier stages Science, while it began to teach the constant relations of phenomena, and thus discredited the belief in separate personalities as the causes of them, itself substituted the belief in casual agencies which, if not personal, were yet concrete. When certain facts were said to show "Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum," when the properties of gold were explained as due to some entity called "aureity," and when the phenomena of life were attributed to "a vital principle;" there was set up a mode of interpreting the facts which, while antagonistic to the religious mode, because assigning other agencies, was also unscientific, because it assumed a knowledge of that about which nothing was known. Having abandoned these metaphysical agencies -- having seen that they are not independent existences, but merely special combinations of general causes, Science has more recently ascribed extensive groups of phenomena to electricity, chemical affinity, and other like general powers. But in speaking of these as ultimate and independent entities, Science has preserved substantially the same attitude as before. Accounting thus for all phenomena, it has not only maintained its seeming antagonism to Religion, by alleging agencies of a radically unlike kind; but, in so far as it has tacitly implied its comprehension of these agencies, it has continued unscientific. At the present time, however, the most advanced men of science are abandoning these later conceptions, as their predecessors abandoned the earlier ones. Magnetism, heat, light, etc., which were early in the century spoken of as so many distinct imponderables, physicists now regard as different modes of manifestation of some one universal force; and in so regarding them are ceasing to think of this force as comprehensible. In each phase of its progress, Science has thus stopped short with superficial solutions -- has unscientifically neglected to ask what were the natures of the agents it familiarly invoked. Though in each succeeding phase it has gone a little deeper, and merged its supposed agents in more general and abstract ones, it has still, as before, rested content with these aS if they were ascertained realities. And this, which has all along been an unscientific characteristic of Science, has all along been a part-cause of its conflict with Religion.

§30. Thus from the outset the faults of both Religion and Science have been the faults of imperfect development. Originally a mere rudiment, each has been growing more complete; the vice of each has in all times been its incompleteness; the disagreements between them have been consequences of their incompleteness; and as they reach their final forms they come into harmony.

The progress of intelligence has throughout been dual. Though it has not seemed so to those who made it, every step in advance has been a step towards both the natural and the supernatural. The better interpretation of each phenomenon has been, on the one hand, the rejection of a cause that was relatively conceivable in its nature but unknown in the order of its actions, and, on the other hand, the adoption of a cause that was known in the order of its actions but relatively inconceivable in its nature. The first advance involved the conception of agencies less assimilable to the familiar agencies of men and animals, and therefore less understood; while, at the same time, such newly-conceived agencies, in so far as they were distinguished by their uniform effects, were better understood than those they replaced. All subsequent advances display the same result; and thus the progress has been as much towards the establishment of a positively unknown as towards the establishment of a positively known. Though as knowledge advances, unaccountable and seemingly supernatural facts are brought into the category of facts that are accountable or natural; yet, at the same time, all accountable or natural facts are proved to be in their ultimate genesis unaccountable and supernatural. And so there arise two antithetical states of mind, answering to the opposite sides of that existence about which we think. While our consciousness of Nature under the one aspect constitutes Science, our consciousness of it under the other aspect constitutes Religion.

In other words, Religion and Science have been undergoing a slow differentiation, and their conflicts have been due to the imperfect separation of their spheres and functions. Religion has, from the first, struggled to unite more or less science with its nescience; Science has, from the first, kept hold of more or less nescience as though it were a part of science. So long as the process of differentiation is incomplete, more or less of antagonism must continue. Gradually as the limits of possible cognition are established, the causes of conflict will diminish. And a permanent peace will be reached when Science becomes fully convinced that its explanations are proximate and relative, while Religion becomes fully convinced that the mystery it contemplates is ultimate and absolute.

Religion and Science are therefore necessary correlatives. To carry further a metaphor before used,they are the positive and negative poles of thought; of which neither can gain in intensity without increasing the intensity of the other.

§31. Some do indeed allege that though the Ultimate Cause of things cannot really be conceived by us as having specified attributes, it is yet incumbent upon us to assert those attributes. Though the forms of our consciousness are such that the Absolute cannot in any manner or degree be brought within them, we are nevertheless told that we must represent the Absolute to ourselves as having certain characters. As writes Mr. Mansel, in the work from which I have already quoted largely -- "It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that He is infinite."

Now if there be any meaning in the foregoing arguments, duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personality. Our duty is to submit ourselves to the established limits of our intelligence, and not perversely to rebel against them. Let those who can, believe that there is eternal war set between our intellectual faculties and our moral obligations. I, for one, admit no such radical vice in the constitution of things.

This which to most will seem an essentially irreligious position, is an essentially religious one -- nay is the religious one, to which, as already shown, all others are but approximations. In the estimate it implies of the Ultimate Cause, it does not fall short of the alternative position, but exceeds it. Those who espouse this alternative position, assume that the choice is between personality and something lower than personality; whereas the choice is rather between personality and something that may be higher. Is it not possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will, as these transcend mechanical motion? Doubtless we are totally unable to imagine any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse. Have we not seen how utterly unable our minds are to form even an approach to a conception of that which underlies all phenomena? Is it not proved that we fail because of the incompetency of the Conditioned to grasp the Unconditioned ? Does it not follow that the Ultimate Cause cannot in any respect be conceived because it is in every respect greater than can be conceived? And may we not therefore rightly refrain from assigning to it any attributes whatever, on the ground that such attributes, derived as they must be from our own natures, are not elevations but degradations? Indeed it seems strange that men should Suppose the highest worship to lie in assimilating the object of their worship to themselves. Not in asserting a transcendent difference, but in asserting a certain likeness, consists the element of their creed which they think essential. It is true that from the time when the rudest savages imagined the causes of things to be persons like themselves but invisible, down to our own time, the degree of assumed likeness has been diminishing. But though a bodily form and substance similar to that of man, has long since ceased, among cultivated races, to be a literally-conceived attribute of the Ultimate Cause -- though the grosser human desires have been also rejected as unfit elements of the conception -- though there is some hesitation in ascribing even the higher human feelings, save in idealized shapes; yet it is still thought not only proper, but imperative, to ascribe the most abstract qualities of our nature. To think of the Creative Power as in all respects anthropomorphous, is now considered impious by men who yet hold themselves bound to think of the Creative. Power as in some respects anthropomorphous; and who do not see that the one proceeding is but an evanescent form of the other. And then, most marvellous of all, this course is persisted in even by those who contend that we are wholly unable to frame any conception whatever of the Creative Power. After it has been shown that every supposition respecting the genesis of the Universe commits us to alternative impossibilities of thought -- after it has been shown why by the very constitution of our minds, we are debarred from thinking of the Absolute; it is still asserted that we ought to think of the Absolute thus and thus. In all ways we find thrust on us the truth, that we are not permitted to know -- nay are not even permitted to conceive that Reality which is behind the veil of Appearance; and yet it is said to be our duty to believe (and in so far to conceive) that this Reality exists in a certain defined manner. Shall we call this reverence? or shall we call it the reverse?

Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious. Through the printed and spoken thoughts of religious teachers, may everywhere be traced a professed familiarity with the ultimate mystery of things, which, to say the least of it, is anything but congruous with the accompanying expressions of humility. The attitude thus assumed can be fitly represented only by further developing a simile long current in theological controversies -- the simile of the watch. If for a moment we made the grotesque supposition that the tickings and other movements of a watch constituted a kind of consciousness; and that a watch possessed of such a consciousness, insisted on regarding the watchmaker's actions as determined like its own by springs and escapements; we should simply complete a parallel of which religious teachers think much. And were we to suppose that a watch not only formulated the cause of its existence in these mechanical terms, but held that watches were bound out of reverence so to formulate this cause, and even vituperated, as atheistic watches, any that did not venture so to formulate it; we should merely illustrate the presumption of theologians by carrying their own argument a step further. A few extracts will bring home to the reader the justice of this comparison. We are told, for example, by one of high repute among religious thinkers that the Universe is "the manifestation and abode of a Free Mind, like our own; embodying His personal thought in its adjustments, realizing His own ideal in its phenomena, just as we express our inner faculty and character through the natural language of an external life. In this view, we interpret Nature by Humanity; we find the key to her aspects in such purposes and affections as our own consciousness enables us to conceive; we look everywhere for physical signals of an ever-living Will; and decipher the universe as the autobiography of an Infinite Spirit, repeating itself in miniature within our Finite Spirit." The same writer goes still further. He not only thus parallels the assimilation of the watchmaker to the watch, -- he not only thinks the created can "decipher" "the autobiography" of the Creating; but he asserts that the necessary limits to the one are necessary limits to the other. The primary qualities of bodies, he says, "belong eternally to the material datum objective to God" and control his acts; while the secondary ones are "products of pure Inventive Reason and Determining Will" -- constitute "the realm of Divine originality." * * * "While on this Secondary field His Mind and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again upon the Primary; for the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one track possible to all intelligences; no merum arbitrium can interchange the false and true, or make more than one geometry, one scheme of pure Physics, for all worlds; and the Omnipotent Architect Himself, in realizing the Kosmical conception, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and determining seasons out of eternity, could but follow the laws of curvature, measure and proportion." That is to say the Ultimate Cause is like a human mechanic, not only as "shaping" the "material datum objective to" Him, but also as being obliged to conform to the necessary properties of that datum. Nor is this all. There follows some account of "the Divine psychology," to the extent of saying that "we learn" "the character of God -- the order of affections in Him" from "the distribution of authority in the hierarchy of our impulses." In other words, it is alleged that the Ultimate Cause has desires that are to be classed as higher and lower like our own.* <fn* These extracts are from an article entitled " Nature and God," published in the National Review for October, 1860, by Dr. Martineau.> Every one has heard of the king who wished he had been present at the creation of the world, that he might have given good advice. He was humble, however, compared with those who profess to understand not only the relation of the Creating to the created, but also how the Creating is constituted. And yet this transcendent audacity, which thinks to penetrate the secrets of the Power manifested through all existence -- nay, even to stand behind that Power and note the conditions to its action -- this it is which passes current as piety! May we not affirm that a sincere recognition of the truth that our own and all other existence is a mystery absolutely beyond our comprehension, contains more of true religion than all the dogmatic theology ever written?

Meanwhile let us recognize whatever of permanent good there is in these persistent attempts to frame conceptions of that which cannot be conceived. From the beginning it has been only through the successive failures of such conceptions to satisfy the mind, that higher and higher ones have been gradually reached; and doubtless, the conceptions now current are indispensable as transitional modes of thought. Even more than this may be willingly conceded. It is possible, nay probable, that under their most abstract forms, ideas of this order will always continue to occupy the background of our consciousness. Very likely there will ever remain a need to give a shape to that indefinite sense of an Ultimate Existence, which forms the basis of our intelligence. We shall always be under the necessity of contemplating it as some mode of being; that is -- of representing it to ourselves in some form of thought, however vague. And we shall not err in doing this so long as we treat every notion we thus frame as merely a symbol. Perhaps the constant formation of such symbols and constant rejection of them as inadequate, may be hereafter, as it has hitherto been, a means of discipline. Perpetually to construct ideas requiring the utmost stretch of our faculties, and perpetually to find that such ideas must be abandoned as futile imaginations, may realize to us more fully than any other course, the greatness of that which we vainly strive to grasp. By continually seeking to know and being continually thrown back with a deepened conviction of the impossibility of knowing, we may keep alive the consciousness that it is alike our highest wisdom and our highest duty to regard that through which all things exist as The Unknowable.

§32. An immense majority will refuse, with more or less of indignation, a belief seeming to them so shadowy and indefinite. "You offer us," they will say, "an unthinkable abstraction in place of a Being towards whom we may entertain definite feelings. Though we are told that the Absolute is the only reality, yet since we are not allowed to conceive it, it might as well be a pure negation. Instead of a Power which we can regard as having some sympathy with us, you would have us contemplate a Power to which no emotion whatever can be ascribed. And so we are to be deprived of the very substance of our faith." This kind of protest of necessity accompanies every change from a lower creed to a higher. The belief in a community of nature between himself and the object of his worship, has always been to Man a satisfactory one; and he has always accepted with reluctance those successively less concrete conceptions which have been forced upon him. Doubtless, in all times and places, it has consoled the barbarian to think of his deities as like himself in nature, that they might be bribed by offerings of food; and the assurance that deities could not be so propitiated must have been repugnant, because it deprived him of an easy method of gaining supernatural protection. To the Greeks it was manifestly a source of comfort that on occasions of difficulty they could obtain, through oracles, the advice of their gods, -- nay might even get the personal aid of their gods in battle; and it was probably a very genuine anger which they visited upon philosophers who called in question these gross ideas of their mythology. A religion which teaches the Hindoo that is is impossible to purchase eternal happiness by placing himself under the wheel of Juggernaut, can scarcely fail to seem a cruel one to him; since it deprives him of the pleasurable consciousness that he can at will exchange miseries for joys. Nor is it less clear that to our Catholic ancestors, the beliefs that crimes could be compounded for by the building of churches, that their own punishments and those of their relatives could be abridged by the saying of masses, and that divine aid or forgiveness might be gained through the intercession of saints, were highly solacing ones; and that Protestantism, in substituting the conception of a God so comparatively unlike themselves as not to be influenced by such methods, must have appeared hard and cold. Naturally therefore, we must expect a further step in the same direction to meet with a similar resistance from outraged sentiments. No mental revolution can be accomplished without more or less laceration. Be it a change of habit or a change of conviction, it must, if the habit or conviction be strong, do violence to some of the feelings; and these must of course oppose it. For long-experienced, and therefore definite, sources of satisfaction, have to be substituted sources of satisfaction that have not been experienced, and are therefore indefinite. That which is relatively well known and real, has to be given up for that which is relatively unknown and ideal. And of course such an exchange cannot be made without a conflict involving pain. Especially, then, must there arise a strong antagonism to any alteration in so deep and vital a conception as that with which we are here dealing. Underlying, as this conception does, all ideas conceding the established order of things, a modification of it threatens to reduce the superstructure to ruins. Or to change the metaphor -- being the root with which are connected our ideas of goodness, rectitude, or duty, it appears impossible that it should be transformed without causing these to wither away and die. The whole higher part of the nature takes up arms against a change which seems to eradicate morality.

This is by no means all that has to be said for such protests. There is a deeper meaning in them. They do not simply express the natural repugnance to a revolution of belief, here made specially intense by the vital importance of the belief to be revolutionized; but they also express an instinctive adhesion to a belief that is in one sense the best -- the best for those who thus cling to it, though not abstractedly the best. For here it is to be remarked that what were above spoken of as the imperfections of Religion, at first great but gradually diminishing, have been imperfections as measured by an absolute standard, and not as measured by a relative one. Speaking generally, the religion current in each age and among each people, has been as near an approximation to the truth as it was then and there possible for men to receive. The concrete forms in which it has embodied the truth, have been the means of making thinkable what would otherwise have been unthinkable; and so have for the time being served to increase its impressiveness. If we consider the conditions of the case, we shall find this to be an unavoidable conclusion. During each stage of progress men must think in such terms of thought as they possess. While all the conspicuous changes of which they can observe the origins, have men and animals as antecedents, they are unable to think of antecedents in general under any other shapes; and hence creative agencies are almost of necessity conceived by them in these shapes. If, during this phase, these concrete conceptions were taken from them, and the attempt made to give them comparatively abstract conceptions, the result would be to leave their minds with none at all; since the substituted ones could not be mentally represented. Similarly with every successive stage of religious belief, down to the last. Though, as accumulating experiences slowly modify the earliest ideas of causal personalities, there grow up more general and vague ideas of them; yet these cannot be at once replaced by others still more general and vague. Further experiences must supply the needful further abstractions, before the mental void left by the destruction of such inferior ideas can be filled by ideas of a superior order. And at the present time, the refusal to abandon a relatively concrete consciousness for a relatively abstract one, implies the inability to frame the relatively abstract one; and so implies that the change would be premature and injurious. Still more clearly shall we see the injuriousness of any such premature change, on observing that the effects of a belief upon conduct must be diminished in proportion as the vividness with which it is realized becomes less. Evils and benefits akin to those which the savage has personally felt, or learned from those who have felt them, are the only evils and benefits he can understand; and these must be looked for as coming in ways like those of which he has had experience. His deities must be imagined to have like motives and passions and methods with the beings around him; for motives and passions and methods of a higher character being unknown to him, and in great measure unthinkable by him, cannot be so represented in thought as to influence his deeds. During every phase of civilization, the actions of the Unseen Reality, as well as the resulting rewards and punishments, being conceivable only in such forms as experience furnishes, to supplant them by higher ones be fore wider experiences have made higher ones conceivable, is to set up vague and uninfluential motives for definite and influential ones. Even now for the great mass of men, unable to trace out with clearness those good and bad consequences which conduct brings round through the established order of things, it is well that there should be depicted future punishments and future joys -- pains and pleasures of definite kinds, produced in ways direct and simple enough to be clearly imagined. Nay still more must be conceded. Few are as yet wholly fitted to dispense with such conceptions as are current. The highest abstractions take so great a mental power to realize with any vividness, and are so inoperative on conduct unless they are vividly realized, that their regulative effects must for a long period to come be appreciable on but a small minority. To see clearly how a right or wrong act generates consequences, internal and external, that go on branching out more widely as years progress, requires a rare power of analysis. And to estimate these consequences in their totality requires a grasp of thought possessed by none. Were it not that throughout the progress of the race, men's experiences of the effects of conduct have been slowly generalized into principles -- were it not that these principles have been from generation to generation insisted on by parents, upheld by public opinion, sanctified by religion, and enforced by threats of eternal damnation for disobedience -- were it not that under these potent influences habits have been modified, and the feelings proper to them made innate; disastrous results would follow the removal of those strong and distinct motives which the current belief supplies. Even as it is, those who relinquish the faith in which they have been brought up, for this most abstract faith in which Science and Religion unite, may not uncommonly fail to act up to their convictions. Left to their organic morality, enforced only by general reasonings difficult to keep before the mind, their defects of nature will often come out more strongly than they would have done under their previous creed. The substituted creed can become adequately operative only when it becomes, like the present one, an element in early education, and has the support of a strong social sanction. Nor will men be quite ready for it until, through the continuance of a discipline which has partially moulded them to the conditions of social existence, they are completely moulded to those conditions.

We must therefore recognize the resistance of a change of theological opinion, as in great measure salutary. Forms of religion, like forms of government, must be fit for those who live under them; and in the one case as in the other, the form which is fittest is that for which there is an instinctive preference. As a barbarous race needs a harsh terrestrial rule, and shows attachment to a despotism capable of the necessary rigour; so does such a race need a belief in a celestial rule that is similarly harsh, and shows attachment to such a belief. And as the sudden substitution of free institutions for despotic ones, is sure to be followed by a reaction; so, if a creed full of dreadful ideal penalties is all at once replaced by one presenting ideal penalties that are comparatively gentle, there will inevitably be a return to some modification of the old belief. The parallelism holds yet further. During those early stages in which there is extreme incongruity between the relatively best and the absolutely best, both political and religious changes, when at rare intervals they occur, are violent; and they entail violent retrogressions. But as the incongruity between that which is and that which should be, diminishes, the changes become more moderate, and are succeeded by more moderate counter-movements; until, as these movements and counter-movements decrease in amount and increase in frequency, they merge into an almost continuous growth. This holds true of religious creeds and forms, as of civil ones. And so we learn that theological conservatism, like political conservatism, has an important function.

§33. That spirit of toleration which is so marked a trait of modern times, has thus a deeper meaning than is supposed. What we commonly regard simply as a due respect for the right of private judgment, is really a necessary condition to the balancing of the progressive and conservative tendencies -- is a means of maintaining the adaptation between men's beliefs and their natures. It is therefore a spirit to be fostered; and especially by the catholic thinker, who perceives the functions of these conflicting creeds. Doubtless whoever feels the greatness of the error his fellows cling to and the greatness of the truth they reject, will find it hard to show a due patience. It is hard to listen calmly to the futile arguments used in support of irrational doctrines, and to the misrepresentations of antagonist doctrines. It is hard to bear the display of that pride of ignorance which so far exceeds the pride of science. Naturally such a one will be indignant when charged with irreligion because he declines to accept the carpenter-theory of creation as the most worthy one. He may think it needless, as it is difficult, to conceal his repugnance to a creed which tacitly ascribes to The Unknowable a love of adulation such as would be despised in a human being. Convinced as he is that pain, as we see it in the order of nature, is an aid to the average welfare, there will perhaps escape from him an angry condemnation of the belief that punishment is a divine vengeance, and that divine vengeance is eternal. He may be tempted to show his contempt when he is told that actions instigated by an unselfish sympathy or by a pure love of rectitude, are intrinsically sinful; and that conduct is truly good only when it is due to a faith whose openly-professed motive is other-worldliness. But he must restrain such feelings. Though he may be unable to do this during the excitement of controversy, he must yet qualify his antagonism in calmer moments; so that his mature judgment and resulting conduct may be without bias.

To this end let him bear in mind three cardinal facts -- two of them already dwelt on, and one still to be pointed out. The first is that with which we commenced; namely, the existence of a fundamental verity under all forms of religion, however degraded. In each of them there is a soul of truth. The second, set forth at length in the foregoing section, is that while those concrete elements in which each creed embodies this soul of truth, are bad as measured by an absolute standard, they are good as measured by a relative standard. The remaining one is that these various beliefs are parts of the constituted order of things, and, if not in their special forms yet in their general forms, necessary parts. Seeing how one or other of them is everywhere present, is of perennial growth, and when cut down redevelops in a form but slightly modified, we cannot avoid the inference that they are needful accompaniments of human life, severally fitted to the societies in which they are indigenous. We must recognize them as elements in that great evolution of which the beginning and end are beyond our knowledge or conception -- as modes of manifestation of The Unknowable, and as having this for their warrant.

Our toleration therefore should be the widest possible. In dealing with alien beliefs our endeavour must be, not simply to refrain from injustice of word or deed, but also to do justice by an open recognition of positive worth. We must qualify our disagreement with as much as may be of sympathy.

§34. These admissions will perhaps be held to imply that the current theology should be passively accepted, or, at any rate, should not be actively opposed. "Why," it may be asked, "if creeds are severally fit for their times and places, should we not rest content with that to which we are born? If the established belief contains an essential truth -- if the forms under which it presents this truth, though intrinsically bad, are extrinsically good -- if the abolition of these forms would be at present detrimental to the great majority -- nay, if there are scarcely any to whom the ultimate and most abstract belief can furnish an adequate rule of life; surely it is wrong, for the present at least, to propagate this ultimate and most abstract belief."

The reply is that though existing religious ideas and institutions have an average adaptation to the characters of the people who live under them, yet, as these characters are ever changing, the adaptation is ever becoming imperfect. and the ideas and institutions need remodelling with a frequency proportionate to the rapidity of the change. Hence, while it is requisite that free play should be given to conservative thought and action, progressive thought and action must also have free play. Without the agency of both there cannot be those continual re-adaptations which orderly progress demands.

Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him remember that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself, and that his option rightly forms part of this agency -- is a unit of force constituting with other such units, the general power which works out social changes; and he will perceive that he may properly give utterance to his innermost conviction: leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident but a product of the time. While he is a descendant of the past he is a parent of the future; and his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. Like every other man he may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief. For, to render in their highest sense the words of the poet --

<poem>
Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.
</poem>

Not as adventitious therefore will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter: knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world -- knowing that if he can effect the change he aims at -- well; if not -- well also; though not so well.

Postscript to Part I

OF multitudinous criticisms made on the preceding five chapters since the publication of First Principles in 1862, it is practicable to notice only those of chief importance. Even to do this would be impracticable were it not that most of them are essentially the same and may be met by the same answers.

Several opponents have contended that it is illegitimate to assert of the Ultimate Reality lying behind Appearance, that it is unknown and unknowable. The statement that it is unknowable is said to assume knowledge greater than we can have: alike as putting an arbitrary limit to possible human faculty and as asserting something concerning that of which we are said to know nothing: a contradiction.

To the first of these objections, that an arbitrary limit is put to possible human faculty an answer has already been given in §24, where it has been shown that knowledge involves the three elements, Relation, Difference, Likeness; and that unconditioned existence, of which no one of these can be affirmed without contradiction, consequently does not present a subject-matter for knowledge. Further, in the next section it was pointed out that in the process of knowing there is the same implication. Thinking being relationing, no thought can express more than relations. From which truth it is inferable that human faculty must become fundamentally unlike what it is, and knowledge must become something other than what we call knowledge, before anything can be known about the Unconditioned.

The second objection is not thus easily met. It is doubtless true that saying what a thing is not, is, in some measure, saying what it is; since if, of all possible assertions respecting it, one is cancelled, the cancelling, by diminishing the number of possible assertions, implies an incipient definition. A series of statements of what it is not, excluding one possibility after another, becomes eventually a line of exclusions drawn round it -- a definition of it. The game of Twenty Questions illustrates this. Hence it cannot be denied that to affirm of the Ultimate Reality that it is unknowable is, in a remote way, to assert some knowledge of it, and therefore involves a contradiction.

This extreme case, however, does but serve to bring out the truth that, limited as our intelligence is to the relative, and obliged as we are to use words which have been moulded to it, we cannot say anything concerning the non-relative without carrying into our propositions meanings connoted by those words -- meanings foreign to a subject-matter which transcends relations. Intellect being framed simply by and for converse with phenomena, involves us in nonsense when we try to use it for anything beyond phenomena. This inability of the thinking faculty in presence of the Unconditioned, is shown not only by the self-contradictory nature of its product, but also by the arrest of its process before completion. In attempting to pass the limit it breaks down before it has finished its first step. For since every thought expresses a relation -- since thinking is relationing -- thinking ceases when one of the two terms of a relation remains blank. As the relation is incomplete there is no thought properly so called: thought fails. So that we cannot rightly conceive even a connexion between noumenon and phenomenon. We are unable in any consistent way to assert a Reality standing in some relation to the Apparent. Such a relation is not truly imaginable.

And yet by the very nature of our intelligence we are compelled continually to ascribe the effects we know to some cause we do not know -- to regard the manifestations we are conscious of as implying something manifested. We find it impossible to think of the world as constituted of appearances, and to exclude all thought of a reality of which they are appearances. The inconsistencies in the views set forth are in fact organic. Intellectual action being a perpetual forming of relations between the states from moment to moment passing, and being incapable of arresting itself, tends irresistibly to form them when it reaches the limit of intelligence. The inevitable effect of our mental constitution is that on reaching the limit thought rushes out to form a new relation and cannot form it. A conflict hence arises between an effort to pass into the Unknowable and an inability to pass -- a conflict which involves the inconsistency of feeling obliged to think something and being unable to think it.

And here we come as before to the conclusion that while it is impossible for us to have a conception, there yet ever remains a consciousness -- a consciousness of which no logical account can be given, but which is the necessary result of our mental action; since the perpetually-foiled endeavour to think the relation between Appearance and Reality, ever leaves behind a feeling that though a second term cannot be framed in thought yet there is a second term. This distinction, here emphasized as it was emphasized in §26, my critics have ignored. Their arguments are directed against one or other elements in a conception which they ascribe to me: forgetting that, equally with them, I deny the possibility of any conception, and affirm only that after all our futile attempts to conceive, there remains the undefinable substance of a conception -- a consciousness which cannot be put into any shape.

But now let it be understood that the reader is not called on to judge respecting any of the arguments or conclusions contained in the foregoing five chapters and in the above paragraphs. The subjects on which we are about to enter are independent of the subjects thus far discussed; and he may reject any or all of that which has gone before, while leaving himself free to accept any or all of that which is now to come.

When drawing up the programme of the Synthetic Philosophy, it appeared to me that, in the absence of any statement of theologico-metaphysical beliefs, the general doctrine set forth might be misconstrued; and Part I, "The Unknowable," was written for the purpose of excluding the possible misconstructions. Unfortunately I did not foresee that Part I would be regarded as a basis for Part II; with the result that the acceptance or rejection of the conclusions in Part I, would be supposed to determine acceptance or rejection of those in Part II. Very many have in consequence been prevented from reading beyond this point.

But an account of the Transformation of Things, given in the pages which follow, is simply an orderly presentation of facts; and the interpretation of the facts is nothing more than a statement of the ultimate uniformities they present -- the laws to which they conform. Is the reader an atheist? the exposition of these facts and these laws will neither yield support to his belief nor destroy it. Is he a pantheist? The phenomena and the inferences as now to be set forth will not force on him any incongruous implication. Does he think that God is immanent throughout all things, from concentrating nebulae to the thoughts of poets? Then the theory to be put before him contains no disproof of that view. Does he believe in a Deity who has given unchanging laws to the Universe? Then he will find nothing at variance with his belief in an exposition of those laws and an account of the results.

March, 1899.

Part II   The Knowable

Chapter 1   Philosophy Defined

§35. After concluding that we cannot know the ultimate nature of that which is manifested to us, there arise the questions -- What is it that we know? In what sense do we know it? And in what consists our highest knowledge of it? Having repudiated as impossible the Philosophy which professes to formulate Being as distinguished from Appearance, it becomes needful to say what Philosophy truly is -- not simply to specify its limits, but to specify its character within those limits. Given the sphere to which human intelligence is restricted, and there remains to define that product of human intelligence which may still be called Philosophy.

Here, we may fitly avail ourselves of the method followed at the outset -- that of separating from conceptions which are partial1y or mainly erroneous, the element of truth they contain. As in the chapter on "Religion and Science," it was inferred that religious beliefs, wrong as they may severally be, nevertheless probably each contain an essential verity, and that this is most likely common to them all; so in this place it is to be inferred that past and present beliefs respecting the nature of Philosophy, are none of them wholly false, and that that in which they are true is that in which they agree. We have here, then, to do what was done there -- to compare all opinions of the same genus; to set aside as more or less discrediting one another those elements in which such opinions differ; to observe what remains after the discordant components have been cancelled; and to find for this remaining component that expression which holds true throughout its divergent forms.

§36. Earlier speculations being passed over we see that among the Greeks, before there had arisen any notion of Philosophy in general, those particular forms of it from which the general notion was to arise, were hypotheses respecting some universal principle which was the essence of all kinds of being. To the question -- "What is that invariable existence of which these are variable states?" there were sundry answers -- Water, Air, Fire. A class of suppositions of this all-embracing character having been propounded, it became Possible for Pythagoras to conceive of Philosophy in the abstract, as knowledge the most remote from practical ends; and to define it as "knowledge of immaterial and eternal things;" "the cause of the material existence of things" being, in his view, Number. Thereafter, was continued a pursuit of Philosophy as some deepest explanation of the Universe, assumed to be possible, whether actually reached in any case or not. And in the course of this pursuit, various such interpretations were given as that "One is the beginning of all things;" that "the One is God;" that "the One is Finite;" that "the One is Infinite;" that "Intelligence is the governing principle of things;" and so on. From all which it is plain that the knowledge supposed to constitute Philosophy, differed from other knowledge in its exhaustive character. After the Sceptics had shaken men's faith in their powers of reaching such transcendent knowledge, there grew up a much-restricted conception of Philosophy. Under Socrates, and still more under the Stoics, Philosophy became little else than the doctrine of right living. Not indeed that the proper ruling of conduct, as conceived by sundry of the later Greek thinkers to constitute the subject-matter of Philosophy, answered to what was popularly understood by the proper ruling of conduct. The injunctions of Zeno were not of the same class as those which guided men in their daily observances, sacrifices, customs, all having more or less of religious sanction; but they were principles of action enunciated without reference to times, or persons, or special cases. What, then, was the constant element in these unlike ideas of Philosophy held by the ancients? Clearly this last idea agrees with the first, in implying that Philosophy seeks for wide and deep truths, as distinguished from the multitudinous detailed truths which the surfaces of things and actions present. By comparing the conceptions of Philosophy that have been current in modern times, we get a like result.

The disciples of Schelling and Fichte join the Hegelian in ridiculing the so-called Philosophy which has been current in England. Not without reason, they laugh on reading of "Philosophical instruments;" and would deny that any one of the papers in the Philosophical Transactions has the least claim to come under such a title. Retaliating on their critics, the English may, and most of them do, reject as absurd the imagined Philosophy of the German schools. They hold that whether consciousness does or does not vouch for the existence of something beyond itself, it at any rate cannot comprehend that something; and that hence, in so far as any Philosophy professes to be an Ontology, it is false. These two views cancel one another over large parts of their areas. The English criticism on the Germans, cuts off from Philosophy all that is regarded as absolute knowledge. The German criticism on the English tacitly implies that if Philosophy is limited to the relative, it is at any rate not concerned with those aspects of the relative which are embodied in mathematical formulae, in accounts of physical researches, in chemical analyses, or in descriptions of species and reports of physiological experiments. Now what has the too-wide German conception in common with the conception current among English men of science; which, narrow and crude as it is, is not so narrow and crude as their misuse of the word philosophical indicates? The two have this in common, that neither Germans nor English apply the word to unsystematized knowledge -- to knowledge quite un-co-ordinated with other knowledge. Even the most limited specialist would not describe as philosophical, an essay which, dealing wholly with details, manifested no perception of the bearings of those details on wider truths.

The vague idea of Philosophy thus raised may be rendered more definite by comparing what has been known in England as Natural Philosophy with that development of it called Positive Philosophy. Though, as M. Comte admits, the two consist of knowledge essentially the same in kind; yet, by having put this kind of knowledge into a more coherent form, he has given it more of that character to which the term philosophical is applied. Without saying anything about the character of his co-ordination, it must be conceded that, by the fact of its co-ordination, the body of knowledge organized by him has a better claim to the title Philosophy, than has the comparatively-unorganized body of knowledge named Natural Philosophy.

If subdivisions of Philosophy be contrasted with one another or with the whole, the same implication comes out. Moral Philosophy and Political Philosophy, agree with Philosophy at large in the comprehensiveness of their reasonings and conclusions. Though under the head Moral Philosophy, we treat of human actions as right or wrong, we do not include special directions for behaviour in school, at table, or on the Exchange; and though Political Philosophy has for its topic the conduct of men in their public relations, it does not concert itself with modes of voting or details of administration. Both of these sections of Philosophy contemplate particular instances only as illustrating truths of wide application.

§37. Thus every one of these conceptions implies belief in a possible way of knowing things more completely than they are known through simple experiences, mechanically accumulated in memory or heaped up in cyclopaedias. Though in the extent of the sphere which they have supposed Philosophy to fill, men have differed and still differ very widely; yet there is a real if unavowed agreement among them in signifying by this title a knowledge which transcends ordinary knowledge. That which remains as the common element in these conceptions of Philosophy, after the elimination of their discordant elements, is -- knowledge of the highest degree of generality. We see this tacitly asserted by the simultaneous inclusion of God, Nature, and Man, within its scope; or still more distinctly by the division of Philosophy as a whole into Theological, Physical, Ethical, etc. For that which characterizes the genus of which these are species, must be something more general than that which distinguishes any one species.

What must be the shape here given to this conception? Though persistently conscious of a Power manifested to us, we have abandoned as futile the attempt to learn anything respecting that Power, and so have shut out Philosophy from much of the domain supposed to belong to it. The domain left is that occupied by Science. Science concerts itself with the co-existences and sequences among phenomena; grouping these at first into generalizations of a simple or low order, and rising gradually to higher and more extended generalizations. But if so, where remains any subject-matter for Philosophy?

The reply is -- Philosophy may still properly be the title retained for knowledge of the highest generality. Science means merely the family of the Sciences -- stands for nothing more than the sum of knowledge formed of their contributions; and ignores the knowledge constituted by the fusion of these contributions into a whole. As usage has defined it, Science consists of truths existing more or less separated, and does not recognize these truths as entirely integrated. An illustration will make the difference clear.

If we ascribe the flow of a river to the same force which causes the fall of a stone, we make a statement that belongs to a certain division of Science. If, to explain how gravitation produces this movement in a direction almost horizontal, we cite the law that fluids subject to mechanical forces exert re-active forces which are equal in all directions, we formulate a wider truth, containing the scientific interpretations of many other phenomena; as those presented by the fountain, the hydraulic press, the steam-engine, the air-pump. And when this proposition, extending only to the dynamics of fluids, is merged in a proposition of general dynamics, comprehending the laws of movement of solids as well as of fluids, there is reached a yet higher truth; but still a truth that comes wholly within the realm of Science. Again, looking around at Birds and Mammals, suppose we say that air-breathing animals are hot-blooded; and that then, remembering how Reptiles, which also breathe air, are not much warmer than their media, we say, more truly, that animals (bulks being equal) have temperatures proportionate to the quantities of air they breathe; and that then, calling to mind certain large fish, as the tunny, which maintain a heat considerably above that of the water they swim in, we further correct the generalization by saying that the temperature varies as the rate of oxygenation of the blood; and that then, modifying the statement to meet other criticisms, we finally assert the relation to be between the amount of heat and the amount of molecular change -- supposing we do all this, we state scientific truths that are successively wider and more complete, but truths which, to the last, remain purely scientific. Once more if, guided by mercantile experiences, we reach the conclusions that prices rise when the demand exceeds the supply; that commodities flow from places where they are abundant to places where they are scarce; that the industries of different localities are determined in their kinds mainly by the facilities which the localities afford for them; and if, studying these generalizations of political economy, we trace them all to the truth that each man seeks satisfaction for his desires in ways costing the smallest efforts -- such social phenomena being resultants of individual actions so guided; we are still dealing with the propositions of Science only.

How, then, is Philosophy constituted? It is constituted by carrying a stage further the process indicated. So long as these truths are known only apart and regarded as independent, even the most general of them cannot without laxity of speech be called philosophical. But when, having been severally reduced to a mechanical axiom, a principle of molecular physics, and a law of social action, they are contemplated together as corollaries of some ultimate truth, then we rise to the kind of knowledge which constitutes Philosophy proper.

The truths of Philosophy thus bear the same relation to the highest scientific truths, that each of these bears to lower scientific truths. As each widest generalization of Science comprehends and consolidates the narrower generalizations of its own division; so the generalizations of Philosophy comprehend and consolidate the widest generalizations of Science. It is therefore a knowledge the extreme opposite in kind to that which experience first accumulates. It is the final product of that process which begins with a mere colligation of crude observations, goes on establishing propositions that are broader and more separated from particular cases, and ends in universal propositions. Or to bring the definition to its simplest and clearest form: -- Knowledge of the lowest kind is un-unified knowledge; Science is partially-unified knowledge; Philosophy is completely-unified knowledge.

§38. Such, at least, is the meaning we must here give to the word Philosophy, if we employ it at all. In so defining it, we accept that which is common to the various conceptions of it current among both ancients and moderns -- rejecting those elements in which these conceptions disagree. In short, we are simply giving precision to that application of the word which has been gradually establishing itself.

Two forms of Philosophy as thus understood, may be distinguished and dealt with separately. On the one hand, the things contemplated may be the universal truths: all particular truths referred to being used simply for proof or elucidation of these universal truths. On the other hand, setting out with the universal truths, the things contemplated may be the particular truths as interpreted by them. In both cases we deal with the universal truths; but in the one case they are passive and in the other case active -- in the one case they form the products of exploration and in the other case the instruments of exploration. These divisions we may appropriately call General Philosophy and Special Philosophy respectively.

The remainder of this volume will he devoted to General Philosophy. Special Philosophy, divided into parts determined by the natures of the phenomena treated, will be the subject-matter of subsequent volumes.