The Approach to Philosophy Part 13

- 118. This last phase of naturalism is an attempt to state a pure and consistent experimentalism, a workable theory of the routine of sensations. But it commonly falls into the error of the vicious circle.

The hypothetical cause of sensations is said to be matter. From this point of view the sensation is a complex, comprising elaborate physical and physiological processes. But these processes themselves, on the other hand, are said to be a.n.a.lyzable into sensations. Now two such methods of a.n.a.lysis cannot be equally ultimate. If all of reality is finally reducible to sensations, then the term sensation must be used in a new sense to connote a self-subsistent being, and can no longer refer merely to a function of certain physiological processes. The issue of this would be some form of idealism or of the experience-philosophy that is now coming so rapidly to the front.[256:20] But while it is true that idealism has sometimes been intended, and that a radically new philosophy of experience has sometimes been closely approached, those, nevertheless, who have developed experimentalism from the naturalistic stand-point have in reality achieved only a thinly disguised materialism. For _the very ground of their agnosticism is materialistic_.[256:21] Knowledge of reality itself is said to be unattainable, because knowledge, in order to come within the order of nature, must be regarded as reducible to sensation; and because sensation itself, when regarded as a part of nature, is only a physiological process, a special phenomenon, in no way qualified to be knowledge that is true of reality.

[Sidenote: Naturalistic Epistemology not Systematic.]

- 119. Perhaps, after all, it would be as fair to the spirit of naturalism to relieve it of responsibility for an epistemology. It has never thoroughly reckoned with this problem. It has deliberately selected from among the elements of experience, and been so highly constructive in its method as to forfeit its claim to pure empiricism; and, on the other hand, has, in this same selection of categories and in its insistence upon the test of experiment, fallen short of a thorough-going rationalism. While, on the one hand, it defines and constructs, it does so, on the other hand, within the field of perception and with constant reference to the test of perception. The explanation and justification of this procedure is to be found in the aim of natural science rather than in that of philosophy. It is this special interest, rather than the general problem of being, that determines the order of its categories. Naturalism as an account of reality is acceptable only so far as its success in satisfying specific demands obtains for it a certain logical immunity. These demands are unquestionably valid and fundamental, but they are not coextensive with the demand for truth. They coincide rather with the immediate practical need of a formulation of the s.p.a.cial and temporal changes that confront the will. Hence naturalism is acceptable to common-sense as an account of what the every-day att.i.tude to the environment treats as its object.

Naturalism is common-sense about the "outer world," revised and brought up to date with the aid of the results of science. Its deepest spring is the organic instinct for the reality of the tangible, the vital recognition of the significance of that which is on the plane of interaction with the body.

[Sidenote: General Ethical Stand-point.]

- 120. Oddly enough, although common-sense is ready to intrust to naturalism the description of the situation of life, it prefers to deal otherwise with its ideals. Indeed, common-sense is not without a certain suspicion that naturalism is the advocate of moral reversion. It is recognized as the prophecy of the brute majority of life, of those considerations of expediency and pleasure that are the warrant for its secular moods rather than for its sustaining ideals. And that strand of life is indeed its special province. For the naturalistic method of reduction must find the key to human action among those practical conditions that are common to man and his inferiors in the scale of being. In short, human life, like all life, must be construed as the adjustment of the organism to its natural environment for the sake of preservation and economic advancement.

[Sidenote: Cynicism and Cyrenaicism.]

- 121. Early in Greek philosophy this general idea of life was picturesquely interpreted in two contrasting ways, those of the Cynic and the Cyrenaic. Both of these wise men postulated the spiritual indifference of the universe at large, and looked only to the _contact_ of life with its immediate environment. But while the one hoped only to hedge himself about, the other sought confidently the gratification of his sensibilities. The figure of the Cynic is the more familiar.

Diogenes of the tub practised self-mortification until his dermal and spiritual callousness were alike impervious. From behind his protective sheath he could without affectation despise both nature and society. He could reckon himself more blessed than Alexander, because, with demand reduced to the minimum, he could be sure of a surplus of supply. Having renounced all goods save the bare necessities of life, he could neglect both promises and threats and be played upon by no one. He was securely intrenched within himself, an unfurnished habitation, but the citadel of a king. The Cyrenaic, on the other hand, did not seek to make impervious the surface of contact with nature and society, but sought to heighten its sensibility, that it might become a medium of pleasurable feeling.

For the inspiration with which it may be pursued this ideal has nowhere been more eloquently set forth than in the pages of Walter Pater, who styles himself "the new Cyrenaic."

"Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pa.s.s most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstacy, is success in life. . . . While all melts under our feet, we may well catch at any exquisite pa.s.sion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colors, and curious odors, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some pa.s.sionate att.i.tude in those about us, and in the brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening."[261:22]

[Sidenote: Development of Utilitarianism. Evolutionary Conception of Social Relations.]

- 122. In the course of modern philosophy the ethics of naturalism has undergone a transformation and development that equip it much more formidably for its compet.i.tion with rival theories. If the Cynic and Cyrenaic philosophies of life seem too egoistic and narrow in outlook, this inadequacy has been largely overcome through the modern conception of the relation of the individual to society. Man is regarded as so dependent upon social relations that it is both natural and rational for him to govern his actions with a concern for the community. There was a time when this relation of dependence was viewed as external, a barter of goods between the individual and society, sanctioned by an implied contract. Thomas Hobbes, whose unblushing materialism and egoism stimulated by opposition the whole development of English ethics, conceived morality to consist in rules of action which condition the stability of the state, and so secure for the individual that "peace"

which self-interest teaches him is essential to his welfare.

"And therefore so long a man is in the condition of mere nature, which is a condition of war, as private appet.i.te is the measure of good and evil: and consequently all men agree on this, that peace is good, and therefore also the ways or means of peace, which, as I have showed before, are 'justice,'

'grat.i.tude,' 'modesty,' 'equity,' 'mercy,' and the rest of the laws of Nature, are good; that is to say, 'moral virtues'; and their contrary 'vices,' evil."[262:23]

Jeremy Bentham, the apostle of utilitarianism in the eighteenth century, defined political and social sanctions through which the individual could purchase security and good repute with action conducive to the common welfare. But the nineteenth century has understood the matter better--and the idea of an evolution under conditions that select and reject, is here again the illuminating thought. No individual, evolutionary naturalism maintains, has survived the perils of life without possessing as an inalienable part of his nature, congenital like his egoism, certain impulses and instinctive desires in the interest of the community as a whole. The latest generation of a race whose perpetuation has been conditioned by a capacity to sustain social relations and make common cause against a more external environment, _is_ moral, and does not adopt morality in the course of a calculating egoism. Conscience is the racial instinct of self-preservation uttering itself in the individual member, who draws his very life-blood from the greater organism.

[Sidenote: Naturalistic Ethics not Systematic.]

- 123. This latest word of naturalistic ethics has not won acceptance as the last word in ethics, and this in spite of its indubitable truth within its scope. For the deeper ethical interest seeks not so much to account for the moral nature as to construe and justify its promptings.

The evolutionary theory reveals the genesis of conscience, and demonstrates its continuity with nature, but this falls as far short of realizing the purpose of ethical study as a history of the natural genesis of thought would fall short of logic. Indeed, naturalism shows here, as in the realm of epistemology, a persistent failure to appreciate the central problem. Its acceptance as a philosophy, we are again reminded, can be accounted for only on the score of its genuinely rudimentary character. As a rudimentary phase of thought it is both indispensable and inadequate. It is the philosophy of instinct, which should in normal development precede a philosophy of reason, in which it is eventually a.s.similated and supplemented.

[Sidenote: Naturalism as Antagonistic to Religion.]

- 124. There is, finally, an inspiration for life which this philosophy of naturalism may convey--atheism, its detractors would call it, but none the less a faith and a spiritual exaltation that spring from its summing up of truth. It is well first to realize that which is dispiriting in it, its failure to provide for the freedom, immortality, and moral providence of the more sanguine faith.

"For what is man looked at from this point of view? . . . Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven-descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such beginnings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nurses of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. . . . We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief s.p.a.ce broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. 'Imperishable monuments' and 'immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been.

Nor will anything that _is_ be better or be worse for all that the labor, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect."[265:24]

[Sidenote: Naturalism as the Basis for a Religion of Service, Wonder, and Renunciation.]

- 125. But though our philosopher must accept the truth of this terrible picture, he is not left without spiritual resources. The abstract religion provided for the agnostic faithful by Herbert Spencer does not, it is true, afford any nourishment to the religious nature. He would have men look for a deep spring of life in the negative idea of mystery, the apotheosis of ignorance, while religious faith to live at all must lay hold upon reality. But there does spring from naturalism a positive religion, whose fundamental motives are those of service, wonder, and renunciation: service of humanity in the present, wonder at the natural truth, and renunciation of a universe keyed to vibrate with human ideals.

"Have you," writes Charles Ferguson, "had dreams of Nirvana and sickly visions and raptures? Have you imagined that the end of your life is to be absorbed back into the life of G.o.d, and to flee the earth and forget all? Or do you want to walk on air, or fly on wings, or build a heavenly city in the clouds? Come, let us take our kit on our shoulders, and go out and build the city _here_."[265:25]

For Haeckel "natural religion" is such as

"the astonishment with which we gaze upon the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we trace the marvellous working of energy in the motion of matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of the law of substance throughout the universe."[266:26]

There is a deeper and a sincerer note in the stout, forlorn humanism of Huxley:

"That which lies before the human race is a constant struggle to maintain and improve, in opposition to the State of Nature, the State of Art of an organized polity; in which, and by which, man may develop a worthy civilization, capable of maintaining and constantly improving itself, until the evolution of our globe shall have entered so far upon its downward course that the cosmic process resumes its sway; and, once more, the State of Nature prevails over the surface of our planet."[266:27]

FOOTNOTES:

[223:1] PRELIMINARY NOTE.--By _naturalism_ is meant that system of philosophy which defines the universe in the terms of _natural science_.

In its dogmatic phase, wherein it maintains that _being is corporeal_, it is called _materialism_. In its critical phase, wherein it makes the general a.s.sertion that the natural sciences const.i.tute the only _possible knowledge_, whatever be the nature of reality itself, it is called _positivism_, _agnosticism_, or simply _naturalism_.

[226:2] Lucretius: _De Rerum Natura_, Bk. II, lines 569-580. Translation by Munro.

[229:3] The reader will find an interesting account of these opposing views in Locke's chapter on _s.p.a.ce_, in his _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.

[230:4] Descartes distinguished his theory from that of Democritus in the _Principles of Philosophy_, Part IV, - ccii.

[231:5] Pearson: _Grammar of Science_, pp. 259-260. Cf. _ibid._, Chap.

VII, entire.

[232:6] Quoted in Ueberweg: _History of Philosophy_, II, p. 124.

[233:7] Quoted from the _Opticks_ of Newton by James Ward, in his _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, I, p. 43.

[236:8] Haeckel: _Riddle of the Universe_. Translation by McCabe, p.

254.

The best systematic presentation of "energetics" is to be found in Ostwald's _Vorlesungen uber Natur-Philosophie_. Herbert Spencer, in his well-known _First Principles_, makes philosophical use of both "force"

and "energy."

[238:9] Cf. Chap. IX.

[240:10] Lucretius: _Op. cit._, Bk. I, lines 1021-1237.

[241:11] Quoted from La Place's essay on _Probability_ by Ward: _Op.

cit._, I, p. 41.

[243:12] An interesting account and criticism of such a theory (Clifford's) is to be found in Royce's _Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, Lecture X.

[244:13] This method replaced the old theory of "catastrophes" through the efforts of the English geologists, Hutton (1726-1797) and Lyell (1767-1849).

[245:14] Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, published in 1628, was regarded as a step in this direction.

[250:15] From the account of La Mettrie in Lange: _History of Materialism_. Translation by Thomas, II, pp. 67-68.