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Religion and Science from Galileo to Bergson

CHAPTER IX MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM   From Science to Philosophy.—The record of certain 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 generalisations 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 Idealistic movement 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.[39] The causes of decline, as often happens, were in part, at least, other than intellectual. Hegelianism had become associated with political 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[Pg 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 troubadours, so morbid and somnambulistic, so high-flown and aristocratic, and altogether so unnatural." Metaphysics Rejected.—The reaction against the philosophy of Romanticism took the form of a complete revolt against speculative philosophy. But instead of going back to Kant, and taking up a vigorously 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, especially in England. Comte's doctrine was that, all spheres of Nature now being brought under the sway of positive science, the time had arrived for men, when constructing their conceptions of life and the world, to reject all 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 argumentation should be subordinate to observation, was at hand. Comte, as is well known, became the founder of what he hoped might develop into a new Catholicism—the "Religion of Humanity," and an atmosphere of moral idealism permeates his thought. [Pg 86]German Extremists.—In Germany, the home of Romanticism, the revolt took a radical shape in the hands of writers like Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) and Büchner. "I unconditionally repudiate absolute, self-sufficing speculation—speculation which draws its material from within," says the former, in the Introduction to his Essence of Christianity[40] (1841) and asserts that he "places philosophy in the negation of philosophy." Büchner, 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 materialism, and the circumstance that its conclusions were acceptable neither to cautious scientists nor to critical philosophers, did not compromise its authority with the general public. As was only natural, for materialism is a creed for which the evidence is all on the surface, and to which the objections, being less obvious, escape notice. And Büchner'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[Pg 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 materialistic naturalism had to wait for the publication of the Origin of Species (1859) before it could become a formidable 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 "Argument from Design," according to which the complexity and delicacy evident everywhere in 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 ligament within the socket of the hip-joint, the pulley or trochlear muscles of the eye; the epiglottis, the bandages 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 religious obligation); 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[Pg 88] 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 environment 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 limits and on certain suppositions, provided an explanation. He showed how the most complicated and purposeful organs, if only they were useful to the species, might gradually arise out of random variations, continuously weeded by an unthinking process of elimination."[41] Darwinism Exploited.—In fact, it became evident that popular materialism had been strongly reinforced by the new biology; and though Darwin himself was cautious in adding philosophic or religious corollaries 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 conservative, 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[Pg 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 wanting 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 calibre—Mr. Herbert Spencer. He indeed may be described as the Aristotle of a new world-view. He attempted to co-ordinate and unify all human knowledge, and to present the world with a final philosophy based upon the data supplied by natural science. To this ambitious task he devoted a lifetime of patient work, broken by intervals of ill-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 complete. Spencer was inspired neither by hostility 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 foundations of the old religion were no longer secure, and that the old sanctions of morality were already gravely compromised; and he wished to supply a new creed and a new discipline 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 moralists before they were philosophers,[Pg 90] which accounts for their overlooking and underestimating 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 practically amounts to this, that there is a perpetual process going on which reduces disorder to order, undifferentiated sameness to specialised variety.[42] The First Principles was published before the Origin of Species, and the confirmation which Darwin's work supplied 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 idealistic, as well 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 idealism of the following 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[Pg 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 forthcoming, to leave some vital gaps in his scheme,[43] he had made an imposing attempt to systematise and unify all human experience. And his attempt to base an idealistic morality 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 intellect. 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[Pg 92] germane than any other speculation of his to our present subject, as this terra incognita was allotted by him to religion as its peculiar province. He hoped that the undisputed possession and occupation by religion of this territory might put an end to its perpetual conflict with science, and substitute for this a reasonable, if not cordial, understanding. Science might contentedly appropriate the sphere of the knowable, and leave to religion 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 belief or disbelief which was pertinently named Agnosticism by the most celebrated of its exponents—Huxley. This combination of Positivism in science with Agnosticism in religion and philosophy, became highly popular in a wide circle in England during the last third of the nineteenth century, especially among the scientifically educated. Leslie Stephen, with the pride of a disciple and the pardonable zeal of a propagandist, claimed for it the distinction of being "the religion of all sensible men." This austere faith owed much to the qualities of those who preached it. Their wide culture, their power of literary expression,[44] their intellectual vigour, and above all their moral earnestness and social enthusiasm recommended what had otherwise seemed a barren and unpromising creed. The generous humanitarian sympathies of Comte supplied the[Pg 93] idealistic elements without which no faith can become popular, and the apparent stability 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 life were, on the whole, of a quite healthy character. Occasional lapses into intolerance, 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 conducted 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 controversialists. Nor were the Agnostics (it must be confessed) any more alive to the real issues. Hence, to the modern student, an oppressive atmosphere of deadness and sterility seems to brood over these vigorous but superannuated polemics; and hence the complete oblivion into which this literature has fallen. The saying is profoundly true that "nothing so quickly waxes old as apologetics." Even the contributions to the subject by so accomplished 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 oblivion. These projectiles have, in fact, done their work, and if they have proved less fatal than was hoped by those[Pg 94] 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 disputable science and still more disputable philosophy. The latter half of this task was, as we shall 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 incompetence 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 1860, which are never very desirable, and always discreditable to the discomfited party.[45] Illogicality of Naturalistic Idealism.—In point of fact, "the religion of all 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 presuppositions 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[Pg 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 all 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, still less in running away from it, but in combating it." "The theory of evolution encourages no millennial expectations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, sometime, the summit will be reached, and the downward route will be commenced. 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."[46] Pessimism.—Coming, as it did, at the end of a generation of dogmatic optimism, this pronouncement 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[Pg 96] one day reach its summit, and the fall 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.[47] Nietzsche.—As might have been expected, it was in Germany that the logical conclusions of a naturalistic outlook were drawn. Here, philosophic pessimism had already 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 humility. Christian morality was a disease; Christianity itself was the appropriate product of the degenerate epoch, and of the loathsome environment that gave it birth. This radical thinker, free from English "compromise," could be satisfied with no morality which was parasitic upon Christianity. He had clearness of vision to see whither the naturalistic road would carry its pious wayfarers. To him the moral idealism of Spencer was moonshine or stupidity—"the milk 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,[Pg 97] and to put questions which more conventional philosophers had preferred should remain in the background. It is well for a moralist to arise, once in a generation, who will clear his own mind of cant and, without undue respect for the conventions, approach the really 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 little finesse, the nakedness of Naturalism, and tore off that mantle of idealism 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. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> [Pg 98] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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