The Old Riddle And The Newest Answer Part 8

How much is there in the actions of persons much lowlier than Newton which to the most intelligent of animals, dogs, elephants, or monkeys, could they speculate at all, must seem wholly devoid of sense;--as for instance that men should spend such continual labour in digging and ploughing. So again, in his famous lecture on Coal, Professor Huxley depicts what might have been the reflections of a giant reptile of the Carboniferous Epoch, suggested by the seemingly senseless waste of nature's powers in the production of the primeval forests, that have furnished the coal measures, to which so much of our progress and civilization is directly due.

And, after all, given the universal law of death for all living things, it would hardly appear that we can a.s.sure ourselves that any attendant circ.u.mstance const.i.tutes a greater evil--as Mr. Darwin's argument seems to a.s.sume; and yet, it does not appear ever to have been argued that there can be no purpose in Nature since no organic life endures for ever. Most probably, if we knew enough, we should plainly see that nothing could be more cruel than to have omitted the carnivora from creation, leaving herbivorous animals to multiply till they starved one another to death, or at least to perish of senile decay far more painfully than under the fangs of tigers and wolves. Instances might moreover be quoted which serve to remind us how impossible it is rightly to estimate the true character of suffering amongst creatures altogether different from ourselves. Thus when, as eye-witnesses report, young scorpions clinging to their mother devour her alive, scientifically avoiding as long as possible all vital parts and mortal wounds--we are inclined to consider them monsters of wickedness, and their parent as a model of motherly devotion, whose sufferings cannot be less horrible than those of a caterpillar similarly eaten by the ichneumon grub. But we cannot with any reason impute more moral blame to the young scorpions, than to the lambkins which draw sustenance from their dams in another fashion which we find touching and poetical; while as for the mother--who doubtless treated her own parent in just the same fashion--she exhibits no symptom to show that she resents her offsprings' advances, any more than does the ewe, but on the contrary has her sting ever ready for any one who would interfere with them.

(2) It is a still more common objection to the doctrine of purpose everywhere in Nature, that such an idea is negatived by the continuity and uniformity of natural laws, precluding the notion of constant interference by another, supernatural, Agent. But this objection is based upon an entire misconception. No one imagines such intervention, or that purpose guides nature as a pilot guides a ship by repeated orders to the man at the wheel. Undoubtedly the reign of law in nature is uninterrupted, but in that law purpose is interwoven as the controlling element; just as the mind of Homer governs the hand of every printer who sets up type for a new edition of the _Iliad_.

(3) Finally, there is the argument, already alluded to, that inasmuch as the most complex structures are daily transmitted under our eyes by generation, we have evidence that nature can produce them from her own resources, and by the operation of a merely natural law, such as no one doubts generation to be.

Such an argument, it is evident, merely begs the question at issue, offering as it does no explanation, or suggestion, as to how a power so marvellous was acquired. It would be equally philosophical to argue that there is nothing wonderful about the genius of a great poet because we confidently antic.i.p.ate that it will be exhibited in the next piece he produces.

It is likewise clear that, here again, imagination rather than reason furnishes the argument. In the first place, were there nothing else, no explanation whatever would thus be afforded as to how the structures in question were first produced, before they could be transmitted. And, secondly, which is still more important, generation--far from furnishing an explanation of anything--introduces us to mysteries yet more inscrutable than any we have yet encountered, and to problems which seem to admit of no possible solution apart from, not only Purpose, but transcendent Power.

Doubtless the propagation of life is ruled by natural law, but how such law effects its object we understand immeasurably less than we understand the flight of birds or b.u.t.terflies. As a recent writer reminds us,[160] what is transmitted from parents to offspring "is not a new form or structure, but only the _potentiality_ of such a new form: which, in suitable circ.u.mstances, builds _itself_ up out of surrounding inorganic and organic material." As Lord Grimthorpe expresses the same truth:[161]

If we suppose an apple-tree to have once grown somehow, and to have somehow got power to produce seeds, that would not produce any more apple-trees, unless the seeds, and all the adjacent atoms that are wanted, had the power and the will to combine and grow into another apple-tree. The first hen that laid an egg performed a wonderful feat enough, but it would have done no good unless the atoms of the egg also knew and resolved what to do to turn themselves into a chicken. Yet spontaneous evolutionists are in the habit of slurring over generation as a thing too "natural," and therefore too easy and simple to require explanation.

The continual operation of a law such as this, certainly does not remove mysteries, nor make it more easy to understand how the order and the marvels of the universe can rationally be attributed to Chance rather than to Design, according to "this new philosophy of effects without causes and laws without a lawgiver."[162] For "fortuitous" means, as Professor Case has well observed,[163] not the accidental, as opposed to the regular laws of nature, but the spontaneous necessity of nature, as opposed to the voluntary designs of intelligence. Nor is it only in the organic world that we find the need of such a factor to explain phenomena; for it is throughout more essential than any other force to account for Nature as we find her--in such a manner as to satisfy the logical demands of our mind. We learn as little from observation and experiment as to the fundamental laws of matter,--gravitation, for instance, which Faraday and Herschel termed "the mystery of mysteries,"

or chemical affinities, or the nature of Ether--as concerning anything in organic nature; though in the latter we undoubtedly mount to a higher plane of mysteriousness. And in either case we could learn nothing whatever,--that is to say, Science would be wholly impossible,--did we not find natural phenomena respond to our enquiries with what seems an intelligence akin to our own. And accordingly it appears but reasonable,--that is to say, truly scientific,--to exclaim as did even Diderot--"Quoi! le monde forme prouverait moins une intelligence que le monde explique!"

XIII

MONISM

All systems of philosophy that reject the idea of an intelligent First Cause, which alone is self-existent, and whose being is of a higher order than that of aught else,--base their denial on the a.s.sumption that no such distinction of nature either exists or is possible,--that there is but one reality, namely the substance whereof the sensible world consists,--that this has always existed with the same forces it has now, and that it is the source of all phenomena. This a.s.sumption of the unreality of whatever is beyond the scope of sense, which has ever been at the bottom of materialistic systems, is now elaborately formulated as a creed, declared by Professor Haeckel and his following to be the only creed which science can tolerate. This is termed _Monism_,--from the Greek ?????, "single," and is opposed to _Dualism_, or the doctrine that there are two orders of being, or two distinct substances, material and spiritual.[164]

According to monistic teaching, therefore, there exists but one _Thing_, that which we usually call Matter, but might equally well call Mind,--for all phenomena whatever, whether mental or material, are but various shapes which it a.s.sumes, exhibiting diverse aspects of itself.

Thus all the objects which appear to have a being of their own,--as the globe we inhabit, the furniture of earth and heaven, we ourselves,--are but the forms momentarily a.s.sumed by this protean ent.i.ty in its ceaseless transfigurations, and have no more existence of their own than the ripples on a pool of water or the faces we see in the fire. It follows that when the particular phase of this basic substance is ended which brings us into being, (or rather which we _are_,) we like everything else, sink into blank nothing,--so that the mighty dead whom nations honour, or the loved ones whose memory we cherish, are blotted out of existence as utterly as the days and nights which made up the span of their lives. But amongst its permutations and combinations this solitary reality can produce the phenomena which we call thought, just as much as those which we call motion, and accordingly the _Aeneid_ or _Hamlet_ is its work, a mechanical product of evolution, no less than a seam of coal, or an eclipse of the moon.

Such, in outline, is the philosophical system which commends itself, as Professor Haeckel a.s.sures us,[165] to all men of science, who combine the necessary conditions, of scientific knowledge, mental ac.u.men, moral courage, and intellectual independence. It may be rightly described as materialistic pantheism; for while, according to it, everything is equally divine, in the only sense in which anything can be so, everything is likewise equally material, as falling under the category of what we know as matter, and within the direct cognizance of physical science.

Accurately to sketch a doctrine such as this is a task of no slight difficulty. It undoubtedly contradicts the instinctive teaching of our consciousness, so that, as Professor Haeckel admits[166] in the primitive stages of both religion and philosophy Monism is unknown.

Moreover, even those who most loudly profess it, have by no means as yet succeeded in realizing their own system, and after having from time to time formally enunciated its articles, proceed forthwith to ignore them, and in the staple of their discourse speak like other men in terms which have no meaning if the tenets of their creed have any. As a natural result their exposition of monistic doctrine is not very easy of apprehension, but it seems to be not unfairly reflected in the above summary.

Professor Haeckel himself thus expounds "that unifying conception of nature as a whole which we designate in a single word as Monism."[167]

By this we unambiguously express our conviction that there lives "one spirit in all things," and that the whole cognizable world is const.i.tuted, and has been developed, in accordance with one common fundamental law. We emphasize by it, in particular, the essential unity of inorganic and organic nature, the latter having been evolved from the former only at a comparatively late period. We cannot draw a sharp line of distinction between these two great divisions of nature, any more than we can recognize an absolute distinction between the animal and the vegetable kingdom, or between the lower animals and man. Similarly, we regard the whole of human knowledge as a structural unity; in this sphere we refuse to accept the distinction usually drawn between the natural and the spiritual. The latter is only a part of the former (or _vice versa_); both are one. Our monistic view of the world belongs, therefore, to that group of philosophical systems which from other points of view have been designated also as mechanical or as pantheistic.

More concisely and clearly, Professor Romanes tells us:[168]

Mental phenomena and physical phenomena, although apparently diverse, are really identical.

And in a work recently issued for the express purpose of expounding and diffusing the new gospel, we read:[169]

Just as the same particles of matter may at one time form parts of a rose, and at another time parts of a mushroom, so the same force may at one time strike a church as lightning, and at another time may be the mother-love that rocks the cradle.

If such conceptions are not easy to grasp, there can be no doubt as to the practical conclusions to which they lead. We have already heard from Professor Haeckel that human freedom is an utter delusion. We have likewise seen that the only term in prospect is utter annihilation, which Professor Haeckel endeavours to persuade us is the consummation we ought to wish.

"The best we can desire," he says,[170] "after a courageous life, spent in doing good according to our light, is the eternal peace of the grave.

'Lord give them an eternal rest.'"

It is evident however that in order to secure such a reward it is not necessary to show any courage, or attempt any sort of good-work, for according to him it equally awaits the most selfish and abandoned voluptuary.

Finally,[171]

At our death there disappears only the individual form in which the nerve-substance was fashioned, and the personal "soul" which represented the work performed by this. The complicated chemical combinations of that nervous ma.s.s pa.s.s over into other combinations--by decomposition, and the kinetic energy produced by them is transformed into other forms of nature.

Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away, etc.--

which lines others besides Haeckel are fond of quoting on this subject as if they had any possible connexion with it. It would be more to the point, and far more interesting, were some indication afforded of the chemical equivalent of the qualities which made Caesar imperial, or those which distinguished the author of the above lines from the bards of our Music Halls. That, when a man is no more, his material part may serve various material purposes, is no more than was known to the first savage who made a drum with his enemy's skin, or used his skull for a drinking-cup.

As has been said, the Monistic philosophy claims to be above all things scientific, and upon this ground are we bidden to accept it. But what is the meaning of this claim? The one argument, apart from mere a.s.sertion, brought to show that spirit is not distinct from matter, is drawn from the part undoubtedly played by the brain in the process of thought, though we see far less in this, as in other connexions, than the a.s.sertions made by unscientific writers might lead us to imagine. But when all this is most fully acknowledged can it be said that the state of the question is changed from what it was? To listen to Monists, it might be supposed that the intimate connexion between soul and body is a new discovery, undreamt of in former ages,--and that we have now arrived at a demonstration that it is our material part that actually does our thinking. But, as a matter of fact, like other fundamental questions, this is exactly as it has ever been, and so far as Science is concerned, we are just as much in the dark respecting it as men ever were. Though the philosophers of former days were unaware of all the departmental details of brain activity, they understood as well as we do the essential point, that in our composite nature soul and body form _one_ being, whose every operation is of mixed character like itself.

The soul alone is the intelligent principle, yet all objects of knowledge must come to it through sense, and in the senses it can be reached only by the mechanical media of light, or sound, or touch. So firm was their grip of this principle that the Schoolmen styled the soul the "substantial form" of the body, and in their mouth this term expressed a union more essential and intimate than modern philosophers can perhaps imagine.

And, on the other hand, have all the results of modern research brought anything to light which tends to show that matter can by any possibility _think_? We are a.s.sured on the contrary, upon unimpeachable authority, that however we may succeed in tracing the mechanical processes of sensation to their furthest limit, it remains absolutely inconceivable to us how the gulf is crossed that lies between this and rational perception. So Professor Tyndall tells us:[172]

The pa.s.sage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiments of an organ, which would enable us to pa.s.s by a process of reasoning from one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain, were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings and electrical discharges, if such there be, and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem--"How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two cla.s.ses remains still intellectually impa.s.sable.

With these views Professor Huxley[173] expresses his agreement, and although he contrives to confuse the issue very considerably, as is not unusual when he undertakes to philosophize, he lays down in the clearest possible terms that nothing whatever is _known_ as to the connexion of mechanical processes with thought, whence it follows that on this point Science has nothing to tell us.

"I really know nothing whatever [he writes] and never hope to know anything, of the steps by which the pa.s.sage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is effected."

It should be needless to repeat that if nothing is known regarding all this, it is mere charlatanism to pretend that Science tells us anything about it, and those who make such a.s.sertions use words to which no meaning can attach. Unfortunately such a practice is far from uncommon in connexion with these questions. What sense can there be conceivable in the well-known materialistic doctrine that the brain secretes thought, just as the proper organs secrete bile or saliva? Bile and saliva are material substances, with a definite chemical const.i.tution, each adapted to one definite function. But, Thought! It would be as intelligible to talk of secreting the British Const.i.tution, the Steam Engine, and the Differential Calculus.

So much for the sole basis of Monistic argument. When we turn to some other considerations it certainly becomes no easier to understand the claim of Monism to be scientific. In the first place, as we have seen, in order to furnish the system with any semblance of truth, it has been found necessary to attribute to the ultimate elements of matter qualities which all our experience denies them; for Professor Haeckel has told us that "the two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead, and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed with sensation and will." Of such attributes, and that of self-mobility, it is unnecessary to add anything to what has been said already. a.s.suredly nothing can look less like the great ultimate reality, of whose ceaseless metamorphoses, we are but a flitting phase, than the material substances with which we can do what we like, investigating their laws, exploring their const.i.tution, and setting them tasks which we know exactly how they will accomplish.

Another point in the same connexion is no less important. What is this one _Thing_, this Ultimate and Solitary Self-existent Reality, from which Monism takes its t.i.tle? Professor Haeckel has told us of two fundamental forms of substance,--ponderable matter and ether. These he evidently supposes, as his creed requires, to be radically the same: but what right has he to take such a supposition for a fact? and unless this unity be a fact, what becomes of Monism? What has Science ever discovered that can justify any one in speaking of Ether and Matter as one and the same? How, then, can a theory that a.s.sumes their ident.i.ty be termed "scientific?"

Or, leaving Ether alone, "that half-discovered ent.i.ty," as Lord Salisbury styled it on a famous occasion, and restricting our attention to ponderable matter, concerning which we know a little more,--how can even this be spoken of as "One"? As we have seen already it is only by a figure of speech that the term "Matter" can be used at all. It stands not for a single thing, but for countless millions and billions of atoms, dispersed through s.p.a.ce, some of one kind some of another, no one of which can be imagined to owe its existence or its properties to any other. To say that matter is self-existent is to say that every several atom is self-existent. If this be so, and if this be the ultimate Reality,--then there are as many first principles, or first causes, as there are atoms. Yet none of these could do anything to the purpose towards the evolution of anything, without the concurrence of a mult.i.tude of others, nor would such concurrence be possible but for the reign of law, which none of them can have inst.i.tuted, but to which all alike are subject. Were matter the great reality, even matter composed of "animated atoms," the term _Monism_ would be sadly out of keeping, and should yield its place to _Myriadism_. If, on the other hand, there _is_ a unifying principle amid such diversity, this it must be which can control and direct all to one end.

It is undoubtedly hard to understand how the First Principle of all things can be supposed to consist of Atoms, but this is one of the perplexities in which monistic doctrines abound. That atoms _are_, so far as we know, the ultimate const.i.tuents of the Fundamental Reality, Professor Haeckel admits. It is true, he adds, that our knowledge of these ultimate elements is still far from satisfying, and he likewise antic.i.p.ates that atoms will someday be discovered not really to be ultimate, but forms of something, more primal still.

Although [he says][174] Monism is on the one hand for us an indispensable and fundamental conception in science, and although, on the other hand, it strives to carry back all phenomena, without exception, to the mechanism of the atom, we must nevertheless still admit that as yet we are by no means in a position to form any satisfactory conception of the exact nature of these atoms, and their relation to the general s.p.a.ce-filling, universal ether.

Chemistry long ago succeeded in reducing all the various natural substances to combinations of a relatively small number of elements; and the most recent advances of that science have made it in the highest degree probable that these elements ... are themselves in turn only different combinations of a varying number of atoms of one single original element. But in all this we have not as yet obtained any further light as to the real nature of these original atoms or their primal energies.

From which it is clear, that, while the considerations above presented lose none of their force, the Monistic system, by the avowal of its chief apostle, is based on complete ignorance concerning all which could furnish it with a foundation.

But by far the most serious consideration yet remains. If, according to Monistic teaching men are but bubbles on the surface of reality, and are inevitably carried as it wills,--there is an end of all distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, merit and guilt. One man, or one line of conduct, is as good, or as bad, as another, being all equally the products of Evolution, and aspects of the great Monistic principle;--"Jack the Ripper," and Socrates, Messalina and Queen Victoria, Chief Justice Scroggs and Sir Thomas More, are none of them in any possible sense one whit better or worse than the others,--inasmuch as they all did but act as puppets actuated by one and the same original, playing its own part in them all.

And in like manner as regards Truth. It must follow that a man's beliefs, like his actions, are as much beyond his own control as his stature or the colour of his hair. If Professor Haeckel calls Monism supreme wisdom, and I call it nonsense, we are equally right, for each is the mouthpiece of the same one all-embracing first-principle. What each believes is the only thing possible for him to believe, and, so far as he is concerned, is the only truth.

But here comes in a perplexity. If such be the case, if there be no Free-will, and no possibility whatever of doing or believing anything but what is predetermined for us as a necessary part of our being,--where is the sense of all the strenuous efforts that are being made to convert the people to a belief which, according to its own principles, nothing in the world can make them accept, unless nothing in the world can prevent them from accepting it? What again is the meaning of organizations, such as we hear of, for giving ethical instruction to the young on a Monistic and determinist basis? What can be the possible sense of giving ethical lectures to young people, if it is really believed that the course of each is marked out for him more rigorously than the path of a city omnibus? "If" said Professor Paul Darnley in Mr.

Mallock's clever satire,--"If we would be solemn, and high, and happy, and heroic, and saintly, we have but to strive and struggle to do what we cannot for an instant avoid doing,"--namely, conform to the laws of matter. If Monists were to limit their aspirations to this, their teaching would at least be intelligible. It ceases to be so, when they feel compelled to graft on their Monistic stock the Dualistic notions of Right and Wrong, Truth and Error. But, as Dr. Johnson said respecting Free-will, no one ever believes the arguments on the other side, however loudly he may profess to do so. And in the same way it is quite clear that no Monist can get himself really to accept Monism.[175]