The Heavenly Father Part 13

et xi.

[156] Sa'nkya--ka'rika', 61 and 64. The text 61 in which occur the words "Nothing exists" is hard to understand, but there appears to be no doubt of the meaning of No. 64. _Non sum, non est meum, nec sum ego._

[157] _Etudes critiques sur la litterature contemporaine_, par Edmond Scherer.--M. Sainte-Beuve, p. 354.

[158] Xavier de Maistre.

[159]

Soyons comme l'oiseau pose pour un instant Sur des rameaux trop freles, Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant, Sachant qu'il a des ailes.--VICTOR HUGO.

LECTURE VI.

_THE CREATOR._

(At Geneva, 4th Dec. 1863.--At Lausanne, 27th Jan. 1864.)

GENTLEMEN,

Man is not a simple product of nature; in vain does he labor to degrade himself by desiring to find the explanation of his spiritual being in matter brought gradually to perfection. Man is not the summit and principle of the universe; in vain does he labor to deify himself. He is great only by reason of the divine rays which inform his heart, his conscience, and his reason. From the moment that he believes himself to be the source of light, he pa.s.ses into night. When thought has risen from nature up to man, it must needs fall again, if its impetus be not strong enough to carry it on to G.o.d. These a.s.sertions do but translate the great facts of man's intellectual history. "There is no nation so barbarous," said Cicero,[160] "there are no men so savage as not to have some tincture of religion. Many there are who form false notions of the G.o.ds; ... but all admit the existence of a divine power and nature.... Now, in any matter whatever, the consent of all nations is to be reckoned a law of nature." No discovery has diminished the value of these words of the Roman orator. In the most degraded portions of human society, there remains always some vestige of the religious sentiment.

The knowledge of the Creator comes to us from the Christian tradition; but the idea, more or less vague, of a divine world is found wherever there are men.

Cicero brings forward this universal consent as a very strong proof of the existence of the G.o.ds. The supporters of atheism dispute the value of this argument. They say: "General opinion proves nothing. How many fabulous legends have been set up by the common belief into historic verities! All mankind believed for a long time that the sun revolved about the earth. Truth makes way in the world only by contradicting opinions generally received. The faith of the greater number is rather a mark of error than a sign of truth." This objection rests upon a confusion of ideas. Humanity has no testimony to render upon scientific questions, the solution of which is reserved for patient study; but humanity bears witness to its own nature. The universality of religion proves that the search after the divine is, as said the Roman orator, a law of nature. When therefore we rise from matter to man, and from man to G.o.d, we are not going in an arbitrary road, but are advancing according to the law of nature ascertained by the testimony of humanity.

It needs a mind at once very daring and very frivolous not to feel the importance of this consideration.

In our days atheism is being revived. In going over in your memory the symptoms of this revival, as we have pointed them out to you, you will perceive that the direct and primitive negation of G.o.d is comparatively rare; but that what is frequently attempted is, if I may venture so to speak, to effect the subtraction of G.o.d. Any religious theory whatever is put aside as inadmissible, and with some such remarks as these: "How is it that real sciences are formed? By observation on the one hand, and by reasoning on the other. By observation, and reasoning applied to observation, we obtain the science of nature and the science of humanity. But do we wish to rise above nature and humanity? We fail of all basis of observation; and reason works in a vacuum. There is therefore no possible way of reaching to G.o.d. Is G.o.d an object of experience? No. Can G.o.d be demonstrated _a priori_ by syllogisms? No.

The idea of G.o.d therefore cannot be established, as answering to a reality, either by the way of experience or by the way of reasoning; it is a mere hypothesis. We do not, however, it is added, in our view of the matter, pretend (Heaven forbid!) to exclude the sentiment of the Divine from the soul, nor the word _G.o.d_ from fine poetry. We accept religious thoughts as dreams full of charm. But is it a question of reality? then G.o.d is an hypothesis, and hypothesis has no admission into the science of realities."

These ideas place those who accept them in a position which is not without its advantages. When a man of practical mind says with a smile, "Do you happen to believe in G.o.d?" one may reply to him, smiling in turn, "Have I said that G.o.d is a real Being?" And if a religious man asks, "Are you falling then into atheism?" one may a.s.sume an indignant tone, and say: "We have never denied G.o.d: whoever says we have is a slanderer!" So G.o.d remains, for the necessities of poetry and art. But as we cannot know either what He is, or whether He is, real life goes on in complete and entire independence of Him. The taking up of this position with regard to religion may, in certain cases, be a literary artifice. In other cases it is seriously done. There are certain natures of extreme delicacy, which, touched by the breath of modern scepticism, have lost all positive faith; but their better aspirations, and an instinctive love of purity, guard and direct them, in the absence of all belief, and they do not deny that which they believe no longer. Such a mind is in an exceptional position. Is it yours? and would you preserve it? Keep a solitary path, and do not seek to communicate your ideas to others. Contact with the public, and such an unfolding even of your own thoughts as would be required in carrying on a work of proselytism, would place you under the empire of those laws which govern the human mind in these matters. Now what are these laws? A poet has already answered for us this question:

En presence du Ciel, il faut croire ou nier.[161]

A famous writer expands the same thought as follows: "Doubt about things which it highly concerns us to know," says Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "is a condition which does too great violence to the human mind; nor does it long bear up against it, but in spite of itself comes to a decision one way or another, and likes better to be mistaken than to believe nothing."[162] Such is the law. We have met with the pretension to maintain the mind independent of G.o.d, without either denying or a.s.serting His existence, and we have seen how completely this pretension fails in the presence of facts. The sceptic makes vain efforts to continue in a state of doubt, but the ground fails him, and he slips into negation: he affirms that humanity has been mistaken, and that G.o.d is not. But neither does this negation succeed any the more in keeping its ground; it strikes too violently against all the instincts of our nature. The human mind is under an imperious necessity to worship something; if G.o.d fails it, it sets itself to adore nature or humanity; atheism is transformed into idolatry. Recollect the destinies of the critical school and of the positive philosophy! Let us now examine, with serious attention, that attempt to _eliminate_ G.o.d which is the starting-point in this course along which the mind is hurried so fatally.

G.o.d is not, I grant, an object of experience. I grant it at least in this sense, that G.o.d is not an object of sensible experience. The experience of G.o.d (if I may be allowed the expression), the feeling of His action upon the soul, is not a phenomenon open to the observation of all, and apart from determined spiritual conditions. In order to be sensible of the action of G.o.d, we must draw near to Him. In order to draw near to Him, we must, if not believe with firm faith in His existence, at least not deny Him. The captives of Plato's cavern can have no experience of light, so long as they heap their raillery on those who speak to them of the sun. I grant again that G.o.d cannot possibly be the object of a demonstration such as the science of geometry requires; I grant it fully, I have already said so. Every man who reasons, affirms G.o.d in one sense; and the foundation of all reasoning cannot be the conclusion of a demonstration. G.o.d therefore, in the view of science formed according to our ordinary methods, is, I grant, an hypothesis. And here, Gentlemen, allow me a pa.s.sing word of explanation.

When I say that G.o.d is an hypothesis, I run the risk of exciting, in many of you, feelings of astonishment not unmixed with pain. But I must beg you to remember the nature of these lectures. We are here far from the calm retirement of the sanctuary, and from such words of solemn exhortation as flow from the lips of the religious teacher. I have introduced you to the ardent conflicts of contemporary thought, and into the midst of the clamors of the schools. The soul which is seeking to hold communion with G.o.d, and so from their fountain-head to be filled with strength and joy, has something better to do than to be listening to such discourses as these. Solitude, prayer, a calm activity pursued under the guidance of the conscience,--these are the best paths for such a soul, and the discussions in which we are now engaged are not perhaps altogether free from danger for one who has remained hitherto undisturbed in the first simplicity of his faith. But we are not masters of our own ways, and the circ.u.mstances of the present times impose upon us special duties. The barriers which separate the school and the world are everywhere thrown down. Everywhere shreds of philosophy, and very often of bad philosophy,--scattered fragments of theological science, and very often of a deplorable theological science,--are insinuating themselves into the current literature. There is not a literary review, there is scarcely a political journal, which does not speak on occasion, or without occasion, of the problems relating to our eternal interests.

The most sacred beliefs are attacked every day in the organs of public opinion. At such a juncture, can men who preserve faith in their own soul remain like dumb dogs, or keep themselves shut up in the narrow limits of the schools? a.s.suredly not. We must descend to the common ground, and fight with equal weapons the great battles of thought. For this purpose it is necessary to make use of terms which may alarm some consciences, and to state questions which run the risk of startling sincerely religious persons. But there is no help for it, if we are to combat the adversaries on their own ground; and because it is thus only that, while we startle a few, we can prove to all that the torrent of negations is but a pa.s.sing rush of waters, which, fret as they may in their channel, shall be found to have left not so much as a trace of their pa.s.sage upon the Rock of Ages.

I now therefore resume my course of argument. G.o.d is neither an object of experience, nor yet of demonstration properly so called. In the view of science, as it is commonly understood, of science which follows out the chain of its deductions, without giving attention to the very foundations of all the work of the reason,--G.o.d, that chief of all realities for a believing heart, that experience of every hour, that evidence superior to all proof, G.o.d is an hypothesis. I grant it. Hence it is inferred that G.o.d has no place in science, for that hypothesis has no place in a science worthy of the name. But this I deny; and in support of this denial I proceed to show that the hypothesis which it is pretended to get quit of, is the generating principle of all human knowledge.

Whence does science proceed? Does it result from mere experience? No.

What does experience teach us when quite alone? Nothing. Experience, separated from all element of reason, only reveals to us our own sensations. This, a Scotch philosopher, Hume, has proved to demonstration,--a demonstration which const.i.tutes his glory. It is easy, without having even a smattering of philosophy, to understand quite well that science is formed by thought. Now, if we did not possess the faculty of thinking, it would not be given to us by experience. Thought does not enter by the eye or the ear. Imagine a living body not possessed of reason: its eye will reflect objects like a mirror, its tympanum will vibrate to the undulations of the air; but it will have no thoughts, and will know nothing.

Is science formed by pure reason? No. No one can say what pure reason is, for the exercise of our thought is connected indissolubly with experience. But, without pausing at this consideration, let us ask what pure reason can do, if deprived of all objects of experience? One thing only, namely, take cognizance of itself. Now the reason, in taking cognizance of itself, only creates logic, that is to say, the theory of the laws of knowledge. Some philosophers, to be sure, have undertaken to prove that reason, by dint of self-contemplation, might arrive at the knowledge of all things. They have maintained that all the secrets of the universe are contained in our thought, and that by just reasoning one may form the science of astronomy without looking at the stars, and write the history of the human race without taking the trouble to search laboriously into the annals of the past. But these attempts to _construct_ facts, instead of observing them, have succeeded too ill to merit very serious attention.

Science does not proceed therefore either from pure experience or from pure reason; whence does it really come? From the encounter of experience and of reason. Man observes, and he ascertains that facts are governed according to intelligent design. He creates mathematics, and discovers that the phenomena of the heavens and the earth are ruled according to the laws of the calculus. His thought meets in the facts with traces of a thought similar to his own. If any one of you doubts this, I once more appeal to the almanac. Science, then, has birth only from a meeting of experience with reason; how is this meeting effected?

The whole question of the origin of science is here. This encounter is not necessary; it does not result simply from perseverance in observation. The encounter of mind and of facts const.i.tutes a discovery.

The thought which has governed nature may remain long veiled from our mind. All at once perhaps the veil is lifted, and the thought of man meets and recognizes itself in the phenomena which it is contemplating.

We encounter in this case the exercise of a special faculty, which is neither the faculty of observing nor the faculty of reasoning, but the faculty of discovering. When a man possesses it to a certain degree, we call him a man of genius. Genius, or the faculty of discovering, is the generating principle of science. Still, strange to say, this principle is scarcely pointed out by a great number of logicians. They develop at length the rules of observation and the rules of reasoning; and it seems that, in their idea, the conjunction of reason and experience is effected all alone and of necessity. I taught logic myself in this way for twenty years, until one day, thinking better upon the subject, I was obliged to say to myself (forgive me this rather trivial quotation):

Tu n'avais...o...b..ie qu'un point: C'etait d'eclairer ta lanterne.[163]

The meeting together of the understanding and of facts is a discovery; and discovery depends upon a faculty sung by poets, admired by mankind, and too little noticed by logicians--genius. Genius has for its characteristic a sudden illumination of the mind, a gratuitous gift and one which cannot be purchased. But let us hasten to supply a necessary explanation. Genius is a primitive fact, a gift; but the work of genius has conditions, or rather a condition--labor. Labor does not replace genius, but genius does not dispense with labor; nature only delivers up her secrets to those who observe her with long patience. Newton was asked one day how he had found out the system of the universe. He replied with a sublime _navete_: "By thinking continually about it." He so pointed out the condition of every great discovery; but he forgot the cause--the peculiar nature of his own intellect. It was necessary to be always pondering the motions of the stars; but it was necessary moreover to be Isaac Newton. So many had thought on the subject, as long perhaps as he, and had not made the discovery.

Labor, the condition of discoveries, should have as its effect to recognize the methods really appropriate to the nature of the inquiries, and to keep the mind well informed in existing science. In fact, every scientific discovery supposes a series of previous discoveries which have brought the mind to the point at which it is possible to see something new. For this reason it is that a discovery often presents itself to two or three minds at once, when there are found, at the same epoch, two or three minds endowed with the same power. They see all together because the onward progress of science has brought them to the same summit: this is the condition; and because they have the same power of vision: this is the cause. There is therefore a method for putting ourselves on the road to discovery, but no method for making the discovery itself. The man of genius sees where others do not see; and when he has seen, everybody sees after him. If, furnished with Gyges'

ring, you could gain access to the studies of savants at the moment when a great discovery has just been made, you would see more than one of them striking his forehead and exclaiming: "Fool that I was! how could I help seeing it? it was so simple." Truth appears simple when it has been discovered.

Discovery therefore, which has labor for its condition, is the principle of the progress of science. Under what form does a discovery present itself to the mind of its author? As a supposition, or, which is the same thing, as an hypothesis. Hypothesis is the sole process by which progress in science is effected. If we supposed nothing, we should know nothing. In vain should we look at the sky and the earth to all eternity, our eye would never read the laws of astronomy in the stars of heaven, nor the laws of life upon the bark of trees or in the entrails of animals. This is true even of mathematics. The contemplation, prolonged indefinitely, of the series of numbers, or of the forms of s.p.a.ce, would produce neither arithmetic nor geometry, if the human mind did not suppose relations between the numbers and the lines, which it can only demonstrate after it has supposed them. The conditions are very clearly seen which have prepared and made possible a fruitful supposition, but the hypothesis does not itself follow of any necessity.

It appears like a flash of light pa.s.sing suddenly through the mind.

The carpenter's saw opens a plank from end to end on the sole conditions of labor and time; but the discovery of truth preserves always a sudden and unforeseen character. Archimedes leaps from a bath and rushes through the streets of Syracuse, crying out, "I have found it!" Why? The flash of genius has visited him unexpectedly. Pythagoras discovers a geometrical theorem; and he offers, it is said, a sacrifice to the G.o.ds, in testimony of his grat.i.tude. He thought therefore, according to the fine remark of Malebranche, that labor and attention are a silent prayer which we address to the Master of truth: the labor is a prayer, and the discovery is an answer granted to it.

When this wholly spontaneous character of discovery is not recognized, and when it is thought that the observation of facts naturally produces their explanation, it must needs be granted that a discovery is confirmed by the very fact that it is made. But this is by no means the case. Hypothesis does not carry on its brow, at the moment of its birth, the certain sign of its truth. A flash of light crosses the mind of the savant; but he must enter on a course, often a long course, of study, in order to know whether it is a true light, or a momentary glare. Every supposition suggested by observation must be confirmed by its agreement with the data of experience. Let us listen to a great discoverer-- Kepler. He is giving an account of the discovery of one of the laws which have immortalized his name.

"After I had found the real dimensions of the orbits, thanks to the observations of Brahe and the sustained effort of a long course of labor, I at length discovered the proportion of the periodic times to the extent of these orbits. And if you would like to know the precise date of the discovery,--it was on the eighth day of March in this year 1618 that,--first of all conceived in my mind, then awkwardly essayed by calculations, rejected in consequence as false, then reproduced on the fifteenth of May with fresh energy,--it rose at last above the darkness of my understanding, so fully confirmed by my labor of seventeen years upon Brahe's observations, and by my own meditations perfectly agreeing with them, that I thought at first I was dreaming, and making some _pet.i.tio principii_; but there is no more doubt about it: it is a very certain and very exact proposition."[164]

All the logic of discoveries is laid down in these lines; and these lines are a testimony rendered by one of the most competent of witnesses. You see in them the conditions of a good hypothesis: Kepler has long studied the phenomena of which he wishes to find the law; he has studied them by himself, and by means of the discoveries of his predecessor Brahe. The law has presented itself to his mind at a given moment, on the eighth of March, 1618. But he does not yet know whether it is a true light, or a deceptive gleam. He seeks the confirmation of his hypothesis; he does not find it, because he makes a mistake, and he rejects his idea as useless. The idea returns; a new course of labor confirms it; and so the hypothesis becomes a law, a certain proposition.

Such is the regular march of thought. An hypothesis has no right to be brought forward until it has pa.s.sed into the condition of a law, by being duly confirmed. There are minds, however, endowed with a sort of divination, which feel as by instinct the truth of a discovery, even before it has been confirmed. It is told of Copernicus, that having discovered, or re-discovered, the true system of planetary motion, he encountered an opponent who said to him: "If your system were true, Venus would have phases like the moon; now she has none, and therefore your system is false. What have you to reply?"--"I have no reply to make," said Copernicus, (the objection was a serious one in fact); "but G.o.d will grant that the answer shall be found."[165] Galileo appeared, and by means of the telescope it was ascertained that Venus has phases like the moon;--the confidence of Copernicus was justified. The scientific career of M. Ampere, the ill.u.s.trious natural philosopher, supplies an a.n.a.logous fact. Trusting, like Copernicus, to a kind of intuition of truth, he read one day to the Academy of sciences the complete description of an experiment which he had never made. He made it subsequently, and the result answered completely to his antic.i.p.ations. Genius is here raised to the second power, since it possesses at once the gift of discovery and the just presentiment of its confirmation; but these are exceptional cases, and in general we must say, with Mithridates, that--

.... To be approved as true Such projects must be proved, and carried through.[166]

We would encourage no one to attempt adventures so perilous, but would call to mind in a great example what is the regular march of science.

Newton, after he had discovered the law which regulates the motions of the heavens, sought the confirmation of it in an immense series of calculations. A true ascetic of science, he imposed on himself a regimen as severe as that of a Trappist monk, in order that his life might be wholly concentrated upon the operations of the understanding; and it was not until after fifteen months of persistent labor that he exclaimed: "I have discovered it! My calculations have really encountered the march of the stars. Glory to G.o.d! who has permitted us to catch a glimpse of the skirts of His ways!" And astronomy, placed upon a wider and firmer basis, went forward with new energy.

It is thus that the human mind acquires knowledge. How then does hypothesis come to be made light of? How can it be seriously said that we have excluded hypothesis from the sphere of science, whereas the moment the faculty of supposing should cease to be in exercise, the march of science would be arrested; since, except a small number of principles the evidence of which is immediate, all the truths we possess are only suppositions confirmed by experiment? The reason is here: Our mind forms a thousand different suppositions at its own will and fancy; and it shrinks from that studious toil which alone puts it in a position to make fruitful suppositions. We are for ever tempted to be guessing, instead of setting ourselves, by patient observations, on the road to real discoveries. It is therefore with good reason that theories hastily built up have been condemned, and Lord Chancellor Bacon was right in thinking that the human mind requires lead to be attached to it, and not wings. Hence the inference has been drawn that the simplest plan would be to cut the wings of thought, without reflecting that thenceforward it would continue motionless. Because some had abused hypothesis, others must conclude that we could do without it altogether.

Trivial and premature suppositions have therefore discredited hypothesis, by enc.u.mbering science with a crowd of vain imaginations; but this enc.u.mbrance would have been of small importance but for the obstinacy with which false theories have too often been maintained against the evidence of facts. If Ampere had found his experiment fail, and had still continued to maintain his statements, he would not have given proof of a happy audacity, but of a ridiculous obstinacy. Genius itself makes mistakes, and experience alone distinguishes real laws from mere freaks of our thought. We have maintained the rights of reason in the spontaneous exercise of the faculty of discovery; but let us beware how we ignore the rights of experience. It alone prepares discoveries; it alone can confirm them. A system, however well put together, is convicted of error by the least fact which really contradicts it. A Greek philosopher was demonstrating by specious arguments that motion is impossible. Diogenes was one of his auditory, and he got up and began to walk: the answer was conclusive. You remember, if you have read Walter Scott, the learned demonstration of the antiquary who is settling the date of a Roman or Celtic ruin, I forget which; and the intervention of the beggar, who has no archaeological system, but who has seen the edifice in question both built and fall to decay. Reason as much as you like; if your reasonings do not accord with facts, you will have woven spider's webs, of admirable fineness perhaps, but wanting in solidity.

It is time to sum up these lengthened considerations. Science does not originate solely from experiment, nor does it proceed solely from reason; it results from the meeting together of experience and reason.

Experience prepares the discovery, genius makes it, experience confirms it. What distinguishes the sciences is not the process of invention, which is everywhere the same; but the process of control over supposed truths. A mathematical discovery is confirmed by pure reasoning. A physical discovery is confirmed by sensible observation joined with calculation. A discovery in the order of morals is confirmed by observation of the facts of consciousness. Therefore it is that between the physical and moral sciences there exists a broad line of demarcation. Moral facts have not less certainty than physical phenomena; but moral facts falling under the influence of liberty, all men cannot perceive them equally under all conditions. An optical experiment presents itself to the eyes, and all the spectators see it alike, if at least they have one and the same visual organization; but a case of moral experience has a personal character, and is only communicated to another person on condition that he puts faith in the testimony of his fellow. In this order of things a man can observe directly only what he concurs in producing. With this reservation, we may say that the control of moral truths is made by experience like that of physical truths. In all departments of knowledge, a thought may be held as true when it accounts for facts.

And so, Gentlemen, we conclude that every scientific truth is, in its origin, a supposition of the mind, the result of which is to produce the meeting together of experience and reason, and so to permit the rational reconstruction of the facts.

Every system is shown to be at fault by facts, if facts contradict it.

When a system explains the facts, we hold it as proved just to the extent to which it explains them. This accordance of our thought with the nature of things is the mark of what we call truth.