The Old Riddle And The Newest Answer Part 6

It is likewise obvious that we have here a question as to which every human being has the means of judging equally with the most eminent man of Science, and modern improvement of the methods and instruments of research leaves us just where we always were. The final evidence on the subject every man has within himself, in the most vital facts of his own experience. Into the philosophy of the matter it is neither necessary nor advisable at present to go. In dealing with profound yet elementary questions, regarding which our means of knowledge are thus simple and direct, men are apt to bewilder themselves when they begin to philosophize, and to persuade themselves that they cannot be sure precisely of those things that are most certain. George Borrow is by no means the only one who has tormented himself with doubts as to his own existence.[124] A still larger number have professed to believe themselves mere machines compelled to go like clocks, and to do only what has been predetermined for them. But such beliefs are for the lecture-room or the study only, and in practical life every one behaves as if both he himself and others--especially others--were responsible for their conduct. So common-sense teaches, than which we shall not find a safer guide. "Sir," said the eminently common-sense Dr. Johnson, "we _know_ our will is free; and _there's_ an end on't. All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.... But, Sir, as to the doctrine of necessity, no man believes it. If a man should give me arguments that I cannot answer to prove that I cannot see; because I cannot answer his arguments, do I believe that I have no eyes?"

Thus we find once again that the doctrines which some would force upon us in the name of Science, on whatever they are founded, have no basis of fact, and cannot therefore rightly call themselves scientific.

XI

THE ORDER OF NATURE

That the world which we inhabit is a _Cosmos_, ruled by law and order, no one has ever attempted to deny. Only because laws are everywhere found awaiting discovery, is natural science a possibility. What such laws really are, we have already considered. They are, as Mr. Lewes puts it, the paths along which the forces of nature travel to their results; and it is only because these forces keep invariably each to its proper path, that we are able to follow them with our minds, either to learn anything concerning them, or to turn our knowledge to practical account.

In something of the same manner, it is because we are a.s.sured that our railway trains will run on their appointed lines, that we can learn from Bradshaw how to get to Exeter or to Edinburgh;--but the forces of Nature are never derailed. It is, in fact, as we have heard, the first principle of Science, that "the reign of law is universal, the principle of continuity ubiquitous,"--and upon this the validity of all her methods and conclusions wholly depends. It is taken for granted, with absolute confidence, that what is once found to happen will be exactly repeated in like circ.u.mstances,--that the laws experimentally observed, regarding motion, heat, light, sound, chemical combination, electricity, magnetism, and the rest, will be faithfully obeyed, in every minutest particular, as certainly as suns will rise and set, or moons wax and wane. Were it not so, were the forces of Nature to act spasmodically and at random, and did not their common action so result as to establish or subserve other laws of bewildering complexity,--as in molecular dynamics, the mechanism of the heavens, and the processes of organic life,--we could learn no more from the study of nature than from a page of type which had been set up by an idiot, or an anthropoid ape.

Here is another factor in our problem, and one which has from the first attracted the attention of thinking men. No feature of nature impressed them more than this same reign of law and order, apparent everywhere; and on this account they called the world _Cosmos_, instead of _Chaos_.

And, since it is self-evident that everything must have a reason for its being, that whatever is not self-existent must have a cause other than itself, they felt compelled to enquire what manner of cause would account for law and order. The like enquiry we have still to pursue, and by methods radically the same as ever; for amid all her discoveries Science has found nothing which does anything whatever to furnish an answer. All that has been done is enormously to multiply the aspects under which the problem presents itself.

It is now not merely in the larger and more obvious operations of Nature that we can trace this marvellous ubiquity of law, but in her most hidden processes and inmost const.i.tution. At every point, we are forced to ask why things should be as they actually are, and how they came to be subject to conditions which they cannot be supposed to have created for themselves. Why, for example, should the ultimate elements of matter,--be they atoms, or electrons, or whatever else,--always and everywhere observe the same rules of the great game in which they serve as counters? Why, to take a concrete instance, should atoms of Hydrogen in Sirius, or in a star of the Milky Way, obey just the same laws as do those with which we make coal-gas or spirit of salt? These various atoms, as Lord Grimthorpe reminds us, have never been within billions of miles of one another. What is the mysterious influence which links them together across the depths of s.p.a.ce? That they are so linked is obvious; for if we can ascertain the existence of such a substance in other spheres, it is only because the light it emits, exactly agrees when a.n.a.lyzed in the spectroscope with that of hydrogen flames in our own laboratories. How comes it, again, that the seventy different kinds of atoms, (to speak in round numbers)--are distributed--according to Mendeleeff's periodic law,--among some seven groups or families, the members of each group resembling one another in various particulars, wherein they differ from the rest? Or, to pa.s.s from atoms to molecules, (in which atoms of the same or of different kinds combine, to build up simple or compound substances respectively,)--how is it that molecules of the same kind are always constructed upon exactly the same model, resembling one another far more closely than sovereigns struck from the same die, or different copies of this morning's _Times_? It was in this uniformity of type, character and behaviour, repeated always and everywhere, in instances multiplied "beyond the power of imagination to conceive," that Sir John Herschel[125] saw a feature stamping atoms and molecules as "manufactured articles, and subordinate agents," which, no less than a line of spinning-jennies, or a regiment of soldiers clad in the same uniform, and going through the same evolutions, imply a controlling force directing things according to a definite system.

These and innumerable other particulars of detail has Science added to the problem: but of anything which can supply an answer, she knows no more than did the first man who ever mooted the question within his own soul.

And if in the inorganic world we find food for such considerations, with immensely greater instance are they forced upon us by a study of the organic. Here we enter a new realm of mystery, for the laws we encounter actively energizing at every point, are altogether different from those with which hitherto we have had to deal. The matter which enters into the const.i.tution of living things,--animals or plants--is precisely the same as that of which the inorganic world is const.i.tuted. No single atom or molecule is found in the one which has not been drawn from the other;--nor when incorporated in a living structure do atoms or molecules suffer any alteration, or change their nature in any respect, for, says Clerk-Maxwell,[126] throughout all changes and catastrophes these remain "unbroken and unworn." Nevertheless, they fall at once under the spell of a force which introduces into their operations an order altogether new, for it somehow strikes across all the laws of dead matter, setting up a new code of its own, which endures just so long as life lasts, and is never met with apart from life. And these organic laws issue in marvellous results. Professor Haeckel himself, after endeavouring to show that from the inorganic world no arguments can be drawn to favour the supposition of design in Nature, thus continues:[127]

But the idea of design has a very great significance and application in the _organic_ world. We do undeniably perceive a purpose in the structure and in the life of an organism. The plant and animal seem to be controlled by a definite design in the combination of their several parts, just as clearly as we see in the machines which man invents and constructs; as long as life continues, the functions of the several organs are directed to definite ends, just as is the operation of the various parts of a machine.

How Haeckel proceeds to argue that such appearance of purposive design is merely fallacious, we need not here stay to enquire; our present concern is to attempt to realize the evidence of law and order which the world everywhere exhibits. As we have just heard, the parts of an organism, like those of a motor-car, or a chronometer, combine their operations for the production of definite ends; the attainment of which depends in all instances upon the nicest correspondence of various details of their work. Thus, that there should be eyes capable of seeing, the laws of optics must be satisfied, reflection, refraction and the rest, just as exactly in the making of an eye as in that of a telescope. _De facto_ they _are_ satisfied. The eye, Mr. Darwin styles[128] "a living optical instrument as superior to one of gla.s.s as the works of the Creator[129] are to those of man." He speaks, moreover, of "all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration."[130] Therefore, however we are to account for them, the laws which govern the production of eyes successfully solve a practical problem and satisfy laws which were in force before an animal with eyes appeared on earth.

In just the same way, the requirements of sound are met by the structure of the ear, which Sir Henry Holland, for example,[131] judged more wonderful than that of the eye itself.

So again as to wings. They are in the first place such marvellous pieces of workmanship that as Mr. Pettigrew writes concerning one of their forms.[132] "There are few things in nature more admirably constructed than the wing of a bird, and perhaps none where design can be more readily traced." But, moreover, wings entirely different in plan, as of birds, bats, and all the varieties of insects, alike satisfy the laws of aerostatics, and successfully solve in practice the problem of flight, a problem which we are unable to solve even theoretically. "It is evident," writes Lord Grimthorpe,[133] "that n.o.body yet thoroughly understands the whole theory of flying, though we are seeing it continually, and have unlimited opportunities of examining all sorts of wings. The explanation that appears plausible for one kind, not only will not do for another but seems refuted by it." Yet in a mult.i.tude of different ways, the forces of Nature succeed in effecting what with all our Science we cannot shew to be possible.

And concerning not merely one portion of a creature's structure, but the whole, Professor Huxley declares:[134]

The horse is in many ways a remarkable animal; not least so in the fact that it presents us with an example of one of the most perfect pieces of machinery in the living world. In truth, among the works of human ingenuity it cannot be said that there is any locomotive so perfectly adapted to its purposes, doing so much work with so small a quant.i.ty of fuel, as this machine of Nature's manufacture--the horse.

These are but a few out of countless similar examples. "We are constantly discovering," says Lord Grimthorpe, "new complications and processes, and what to all common sense appear contrivances, in the organs of all living things, and indeed we can find no limit to them."

In all these cases an instrument is fashioned precisely adapted to the performance of a certain function, and it is therefore obvious on first principles that there must exist _some_ power capable of producing such instruments.

It will probably be answered that there are forces enough in Nature to account for everything, and that these furnish the needful explanation.

But, as Mr. Croll rightly insists,[135] Force by itself explains nothing. Its mere exercise has no tendency whatever to produce such effects. There must likewise be Determination of Force in the one definite direction required, and it is in the source of this Determination that the true cause must be sought to which the result is due. It is not simply because iron is hammered and filed that a railway-engine is produced; nor is it sufficient that a block of marble be chipped with mallet and chisel in order to obtain a statue of Apollo.

Unless some influence comes in to direct the forces in such cases to their respective results, the results will never by any possibility be secured. And in the processes of Nature such direction or determination must be exercised in particulars inconceivably intricate, to which the works of man furnish no parallel. As Mr. Croll writes:

If a tree is to be formed, the lines of least resistance must all be determined and adjusted in relation to the objective idea of the tree; of the root; of the branches; of the leaves; of the bud; of the fruit; and of every part of the tree. But this is not all: the tree is built up molecule by molecule, each of which requires a special determination, and, beyond all this, we have the structureless protoplasm, which must be differentiated according to the objective idea of the whole. What produces this marvellous adjustment of means to ends?

And as he insists in another pa.s.sage:

The determinations which take place in nature occur not at random, but according to a plan--an objective idea. Thus the question is not simply what causes a body to take some direction, but what causes it to take, among the infinite number of possible directions, the proper direction in relation to the idea. In the formation of, say, the leaf of a tree, no two molecules move in identically the same direction or take identically the same path.

But each molecule must move in relation to the objective idea of the leaf, or no leaf would be formed. The grand question, therefore, is, What is it that selects from among the infinite number of possible directions the proper one in relation to this idea?

And this sort of thing is going on in every blossom and leaf and blade of gra.s.s, in every hair and every feather over the surface of the earth.

Truly does our author find here "The Grand Question," for in it we touch the very heart of our whole problem, and are forced to consider more closely than we have hitherto done of what character must be the ultimate Cause which alone can explain the world.

It is, as we have seen, a first principle of Science, that in enquiries such as this, we must proceed from experience to inference, from the known to the unknown. Arguing thus, we may legitimately gather from observed phenomena, that something exists, which even though it be not directly within the range of our senses, must certainly be capable of producing such phenomena: just as the perturbations of one planet have revealed the existence of another; and the lines in their spectra have taught us the chemical const.i.tution of the sun and stars.

This principle being borrowed by Science from common-sense, has instinctively been ever adopted by those who set themselves to enquire of what kind must be that unseen Power at the back of Nature to which the fact of law and order may be ascribed. And as there is but one force or power within the range of our experience capable of producing such an effect, it is but natural that this should have been constantly a.s.sumed to represent, at least by a.n.a.logy, the nature of the power required. That there is but one cause known to us experimentally, which can determine the operation of force towards the attainment of a preconditioned result, none will deny--namely the purposive action of an intelligent will, as known to us in ourselves and in our fellow-men;--and to Will accordingly, immensely more intelligent than ours, has been ascribed the establishment of those laws which the highest intellects of our race are able partially and dimly to apprehend.

It is thus that we are led to the fundamental doctrine of Theism, to belief in an intelligent First Cause, according to whose design the universe has been fashioned; a cause which must have all that is found in the universe or any part of it, including man, and more--for it has of itself what all else derives from it--whose purposes necessarily transcend our mental grasp--but whose modes of thought are reflected in our own, by which they can in some measure be followed through a study of their results.

If such a belief, so grounded, be unscientific, as is constantly a.s.sumed, there must be good arguments to the contrary. It should be demonstrable, either that Science has shown such a line of reasoning to be unsound, or that she has discovered within her own domain something which, at least conceivably, can do the work thus attributed to Intelligence--in which case the much-quoted dictum of Lord Kelvin will be in point,--that if a probable solution of any problem can be found which is consistent with the ordinary course of Nature, we must not go beyond Nature in search of one.

If, on the other hand, the above line of reasoning cannot be invalidated, and if scientific methods can discover nothing competent to effect what has undoubtedly been effected, it is not easy to see how it can be unscientific to proceed by inference to what is confessedly beyond the scope of observation and experiment.

That "Teleology," or the doctrine of Final Causality,[136] is unworthy of serious consideration, is without doubt a common a.s.sumption, and some writers seem to think that an argument is sufficiently discredited if it be styled "teleological." Yet this rather formidable term represents no more than the belief that the infinite adaptations of means to results observed in Nature are the effect of purpose, not of chance. And if we eliminate purpose, what is there left to furnish an explanation, beyond the indubitable fact that such adaptations have always been found in organic nature, and that we have learnt confidently to antic.i.p.ate that they will appear generation after generation according to the "law of heredity"? But this obviously only tells us that they have been produced and are likewise transmitted, and throws no light whatever on the cause of the marvellous processes to which their production and their transmission are due. If we have any rational grounds for expecting that such processes will continue to occur, it cannot be merely that they have occurred before, but we instinctively infer that the cause to which they are ultimately due continues to operate. We are thus as far as ever from an answer to the question, What is that cause?

It may be urged [says Newman][137] if a thing happens once it must happen always; for what is to hinder it? Nay, on the contrary, why, because one particle of matter has a certain property, should all particles have the same? Why, because particles have instanced the property a thousand times, should the thousand and first instance it also? It is _prima facie_ unaccountable that an accident should happen twice, not to speak of it happening always. If we expect a thing to happen twice, it is because we think it is not an accident, but has a cause. What has brought about a thing once, may bring it about twice. _What_ is to hinder its happening? rather what is to make it happen? Here we are thrown back from the question of Order to that of Causation. A law is not a cause, but a fact; but when we come to the question of cause, then we have no experience of any cause but Will.

Here is the crucial point: "We have no experience of any cause but Will;" and it follows that if, as Science bids us, we base inference on experience alone, there can be no doubt about the conclusion to which we shall be led.

No different is the verdict of Sir John Herschel:

The presence of _Mind_ [he writes][138] is what solves the whole difficulty: so far, at least, as it brings it within the sphere of our consciousness, and into conformity with our own experience of what action is.

That the introduction of intelligent purpose, as a factor, sufficiently meets the requirements of our reason cannot be denied. As Bishop Butler insists, it is even impossible for any man in his senses to say that the problem can be more easily solved without it. And witnesses not merely unfriendly, but positively and even bitterly hostile, are compelled to admit that on whatever other grounds they may reject Theism, it is not because this doctrine is inadequate as an explanation of the world we know.

It seems to me [says Professor Huxley][139] that "creation," in the ordinary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in imagining that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance ... in consequence of the volition of some pre-existent Being. The so-called _a priori_ arguments against Theism, and given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appear to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation.

Similarly, that uncompromising foe of religious belief in any shape, Professor W. K. Clifford, replying to Dr. Martineau who based his argument on the existence of the moral law, as well as the evidence of design in Nature, wrote thus:[140]

I fully admit that the theistic hypothesis, so grounded, and considered apart from objections elsewhere arising, is a reasonable hypothesis and an explanation of the facts. The idea of an external conscious being is unavoidably suggested, as it seems to me, by the categorical imperative of the moral sense; and moreover in a way quite independent, by the aspect of nature, which seems to answer to our questionings with an intelligence akin to our own.

On the other hand, where is an alternative hypothesis to be found of which as much can be said,--which will justify itself to reason, by accounting for the facts? That no purely materialistic or mechanical theory will suffice is not only obvious to common-sense, but is acknowledged by those who would gladly find such a theory sufficient.

It would be a great delusion [writes Weismann][141] if any one were to believe that he had arrived at a comprehension of the universe by tracing the phenomena of Nature to mechanical principles. He would thereby forget that the a.s.sumption of eternal matter with its eternal laws by no means satisfies our intellectual need for causality.

Similarly, Professor Huxley admits that even his primeval cosmic nebula with the world potential in its womb, leaves something to desire.

The more purely a mechanist the speculator is [he writes][142] the more firmly does he a.s.sume a primordial molecular arrangement of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences, and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not[143] intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe.

Accordingly, although he was clearly persuaded that Theism is a doctrine which we can never have sufficient grounds for accepting, Professor Huxley repudiated the notion that scientific discovery has done anything to disprove it. Thus he tells us,[144] that, in order to be a teleologist, and yet accept Evolution, it is only necessary

to suppose that the original plan was sketched out ... that the purpose was foreshadowed in the molecular arrangements out of which the animals have come.

And again,[145] he thus expressed himself regarding two objections commonly brought against Darwinism, namely that it introduces "chance"

as a factor in nature, and that it is atheistic:

Both a.s.sertions are utter bosh. None but parsons believe in "chance"; and the philosophical difficulties of Theism now are neither greater nor less than they have been ever since Theism was invented.