The Religious Sentiment Part 2

A thought and its privative alone--that is, a quality and its negative--cannot lead to a more comprehensive thought. It is devoid of relation and barren. In pure logic this is always the case, and must be so. In concrete thought it may be otherwise. There are certain propositions in which the negative is a reciprocal quality, quite as positive as that which it is set over against. The members of such a proposition are what are called "true contraries." To whatever they apply as qualities, they leave no middle ground. If a thing is not one of them, it is the other. There is no third possibility. An object is either red or not red; if not red, it may be one of many colors. But if we say that all laws are either concrete or abstract, then we know that a law not concrete has all the properties of one which is abstract. We must examine, then, this third law of thought in its applied forms in order to understand its correct use.

It will be observed that there is an a.s.sumption of s.p.a.ce or time in many propositions having the form of the excluded middle. They are only true under given conditions. "All gold is fusible or not," means that some is fusible at the time. If all gold be already fused, it does not hold good. This distinction was noted by Kant in his discrimination between _synthetic_ judgments, which a.s.sume other conditions; and _a.n.a.lytic_ judgments, which look only at the members of the proposition.

Only the latter satisfy the formal law, for the proposition must not look outside of itself for its completion. Most a.n.a.lytic propositions cannot extend our knowledge beyond their immediate statement. If A is either B or not B, and it is shown not to be B, it is left uncertain what A may be. The cla.s.s of propositions referred to do more than this, inasmuch as they present alternative conceptions, mutually exhaustive, each the privative of the other. Of these two contraries, the one always evokes the other; neither can be thought except in relation to the other. They do not arise from the dichotomic process of cla.s.sification, but from the polar relations of things. Their relation is not in the mind but in themselves, a real externality. The distinction between such as spring from the former and the latter is the most important question in philosophy.

To ill.u.s.trate by examples, we familiarly speak of heat and cold, and to say a body is not hot is as much as to say it is cold. But every physicist knows that cold is merely a diminution of heat, not a distinct form of force. The absolute zero may be reached by the abstraction of all heat, and then the cold cannot increase. So, life and death are not true contraries, for the latter is not anything real but a mere privative, a quant.i.tative diminution of the former, growing less to an absolute zero where it is wholly lost.

Thus it is easy to see that the Unconditioned exists only as a part of the idea of the Conditioned, the Unknowable as the foil of the Knowable; and the erecting of these mere privatives, these negatives, these shadows, into substances and realities, and then setting them up as impa.s.sable barriers to human thought, is one of the worst pieces of work that metaphysics has been guilty of.

The like does not hold in true contrasts. Each of them has an existence as a positive,and[TN-3] is never lost in a zero of the other. The one is always thought in relation to the other. Examples of these are subject and object, absolute and relative, mind and matter, person and consciousness, time and s.p.a.ce. When any one of these is thought, the other is a.s.sumed. It is vain to attempt their separation. Thus those philosophers who a.s.sert that all knowledge is relative, are forced to maintain this a.s.sertion, to wit, All knowledge is relative, is nevertheless absolute, and thus they falsify their own position. So also, those others who say all mind is a property of matter, a.s.sume in this sentence the reality of an idea apart from matter. Some have argued that s.p.a.ce and time can be conceived independently of each other; but their experiments to show it do not bear repet.i.tion.

All true contraries are universals. A universal concept is one of "maximum extension," as logicians say, that is, it is without limit. The logical limitation of such a universal is not its negation, but its contrary, which is itself also a universal. The synthesis of the two can be in theory only, yet yields a real product. To ill.u.s.trate this by a geometrical example, a straight line produced indefinitely is, logically considered, a universal. Its ant.i.thesis or true contrary is not a crooked line, as might be supposed, but the straight line which runs at right angles to it. Their synthesis is not the line which bisects their angle but that formed by these contraries continually uniting, that is, the arc of a circle, the genesis of which is theoretically the union of two such lines. Again, time can only be measured by s.p.a.ce, s.p.a.ce by time; they are true universals and contraries; their synthesis is _motion_, a conception which requires them both and is completed by them. Or again, the philosophical extremes of downright materialism and idealism are each wholly true, yet but half the truth. The insoluble enigmas that either meets in standing alone are kindred to those which puzzled the old philosophers in the sophisms relating to motion, as, for instance, that as a body cannot move where it is and still less where it is not, therefore it cannot move at all. Motion must recognise both time and s.p.a.ce to be comprehensible. As a true contrary constantly implies the existence of its opposite, we cannot take a step in right reasoning without a full recognition of both.

This relation of contraries to the higher conception which logically must include them is one of the well-worn problems of the higher metaphysics.

The proper explanation would seem to be, as suggested above, that the synthesis of contraries is capable of formal expression only, but not of interpretation. In pursuing the search for their union we pa.s.s into a realm of thought not unlike that of the mathematician when he deals with hypothetical quant.i.ties, those which can only be expressed in symbols--, v1 for example,--but uses them to good purpose in reaching real results. The law does not fail, but its operations can no longer be expressed under material images. They are symbolic and for speculative thought alone, though pregnant with practical applications.

As I have hinted, in all real contraries it is theoretically possible to accept either the one or the other. As in mathematics, all motion can be expressed either under formulas of initial motion (mechanics), or of continuous motion (kinematics), or as all force can be expressed as either static or as dynamic force; in either case the other form a.s.suming a merely hypothetical or negative position; so the logic of quality is competent to represent all existence as ideal or as material, all truth as absolute or all as relative, or even to express the universe in formulae of being or of not-being. This perhaps was what Herac.l.i.tus meant when he propounded his dark saying: "All things are _and_ are not." He added that "All is not," is truer than "All is."

Previous to his day, Buddha Sakyamuni had said: "He who has risen to the perception of the not-Being, to the Unconditioned, the Universal, his path is difficult to understand, like the flight of birds in the air."[37-1] Perhaps even he learned his lore from some older song of the Veda, one of which ends, "Thus have the sages, meditating in their souls, explained away the fetters of being by the not-being."[37-2] The not-being, as alone free from s.p.a.ce and time, impressed these sages as the more real of the two, the only absolute.

The error of a.s.signing to the one universal a preponderance over the other arose from the easy confusion of pure with applied thought. The synthesis of contraries exists in the formal law alone, and this is difficult to keep before the mind. In concrete displays they are forever incommensurate. One seems to exclude the other. To see them correctly we must there treat them as alternates. We may be competent, for instance, to explain all phenomena of mind by organic processes; and equally competent to explain all organism as effects of mind; but we must never suppose an immediate ident.i.ty of the two; this is only to be found in the formal law common to both; still less should we deny the reality of either. Each exhausts the universe; but at every step each presupposes the other; their synthesis is life, a concept hopelessly puzzling unless regarded in all its possible displays as made up of both.

This indicates also the limits of explanation. By no means every man's reason knows when it has had enough. The less it is developed, the further is it from such knowledge. This is plainly seen in children, who often do not rest satisfied with a really satisfactory explanation. It is of first importance to be able to recognize what is a good reason.

I may first say what it is _not_. It is not a _cause_. This is nothing more than a prior arrangement of the effect; the reason for an occurrence is never a.s.signed by showing its cause. Nor is it a _caprice_, that is, motiveless volition, or will as a motor. In this sense, the "will of G.o.d" is no good reason for an occurrence. Nor is it _fate_, or physical necessity. This is denying there is any explanation to give.

The reason can only be satisfied with an aliment consubstantial with itself. Nothing material like cause, nor anything incomprehensible like caprice, meets its demands. Reason is allied to order, system and purpose above all things. That which most completely answers to these will alone satisfy its requirements. They are for an ideal of order.

Their complete satisfaction is obtained in universal types and measures, pure abstractions, which are not and cannot be real. The _formal law_ is the limit of explanation of phenomena, beyond which a sound intellect will ask nothing. It fulfils all the requirements of reason, and leaves nothing to be desired.

Those philosophers, such as Herbert Spencer, who teach that there is some incogitable "nature" of something which is the immanent "cause" of phenomena, delude themselves with words. The history and the laws of a phenomenon _are_ its nature, and there is no chimerical something beyond them. They are exhaustive. They fully answer the question _why_, as well as the question _how_.[39-1]

For it is important to note that the word "law" is not here used in the sense which Blackstone gives to it, a "rule of conduct;" nor yet in that which science a.s.signs to it, a "physical necessity." Law in its highest sense is the type or form, perceived by reason as that toward which phenomena tend, but which they always fail to reach. It was shown by Kant that all physical laws depend for their validity on logical laws.

These are not authoritative, like the former, but purposive only. But their purpose is clear, to wit, the attainment of proportion, consistency or truth. As this purpose is reached only in the abstract form, this alone gives us the absolutely true in which reason can rest.

In the concrete, matter shows the law in its efforts toward form, mind in its struggle for the true. The former is guided by physical force, and the extinction of the aberrant. The latter, in its highest exhibition in a conscious intelligence, can alone guide itself by the representation of law, by the sense of Duty. Such an intelligence has both the faculty to see and the power to choose and appropriate to its own behoof, and thus to build itself up out of those truths which are "from everlasting unto everlasting."

A purely formal truth of this kind as something wholly apart from phenomena, not in any way connected with the knowledge derived through the senses, does not admit of doubt and can never be changed by future conquests of the reasoning powers. We may rest upon it as something more permanent than matter, greater than Nature.

Such was the vision that inspired the n.o.ble lines of Wordsworth:--

"What are things eternal?--Powers depart, Possessions vanish, and opinions change, And pa.s.sions hold a fluctuating seat; But, by the storms of circ.u.mstance unshaken, And subject neither to eclipse nor wane, Duty exists; immutably survive For our support, the measures and the forms Which an abstract intelligence supplies; Whose kingdom is where time and s.p.a.ce are not."

There is no danger that we shall not know what is thus true when we see it. The sane reason cannot reject it. "The true," says Novalis, "is that which we cannot help believing." It is the _perceptio per solam essentiam_ of Spinoza. It asks not faith nor yet testimony; it stands in need of neither.

Mathematical truth is of this nature. We cannot, if we try, believe that twice two is five. Hence the unceasing effort of all science is to give its results mathematical expression. Such truth so informs itself with will that once received, it is never thereafter alienated; obedience to it does not impair freedom. Necessity and servitude do not arise from correct reasoning, but through the limitation of fallacies.

They have nothing to do with

"Those transcendent truths Of the pure intellect, that stand as laws Even to Thy Being's infinite majesty."

It is not derogatory, but on the contrary essential to the conception of the Supreme Reason, the Divine Logos, to contemplate its will as in accord and one with the forms of abstract truth. "The 'will of G.o.d'"

says Spinoza, "is the refuge of ignorance; the true Will is the spirit of right reasoning."

This identification of the forms of thought with the Absolute is almost as old as philosophy itself. The objections to it have been that no independent existence attaches to these forms; that they prescribe the conditions of thought but are not thought itself, still less being; that they hold good to thought as known to man's reason, but perchance not to thought in other intelligences; and, therefore, that even if through the dialectical development of thought a consistent idea of the universe were framed, that is, one wherein every fact was referred to its appropriate law, still would remain the inquiry, Is this the last and absolute truth?

The princ.i.p.al points in these objections are that abstract thought does not postulate being; and that possibly all intelligence is not one in kind. To the former objection the most satisfactory, reply has been offered by Professor J. F. Ferrier. He has shown that the conception of object, even ideal object, implies the conception of self in the subject; and upon this proposition which has been fully recognized even by those who differ from him widely, he grounds the existence of Supreme Thought as a logical unity. Those who would pursue this branch of the subject further, I would refer to his singularly able work.[43-1]

The latter consideration will come up in a later chapter. If it be shown that all possible intelligence proceeds on the same laws as that of man, and that the essence of this is activity, permanence, or truth--synonymous terms--then the limitation of time ceases, and existence not in time but without regard to time, is a necessary consequence. Knowledge through intellection can alone reach a truth independent of time; that through sensation is always relative, true for the time only. The former cannot be expressed without the implication of the conceptions of the universal and the eternal as "dominant among the subjects of thought with which Logic is concerned;"[44-1] and hence the relation which the intellect bears to the absolute is a real and positive one.

FOOTNOTES:

[6-1] In his essay ent.i.tled, _Ueber den Geschlechtsunterschied und dessen Einfluss auf die organische Natur_, first published in 1795.

[6-2] "Der alte Dualismus von Geist und Korper, der Jahrhunderte hindurch nach Versohnung gerungen, findet diese heute nicht zwar in der Einheit der Substanz, wohl aber in der Einheit des Gesetzes." Dr. Heinrich Boehmer, _Geschichte der Entwickelung der Naturwissenschaftlichen Weltanschauung in Deutschland_, s. 201 (Gotha, 1872).

[7-1] _Elements of Physio-Philosophy_, --3589. Eng. trans., London, 1847.

[8-1] Von Feuchtersleben, _The Principles of Medical Psychology_, p. 130 (Eng. trans., London, 1847).

[9-1] "The fundamental property of organic structure is to seek what is beneficial, and to shun what is hurtful to it." Dr. Henry Maudsley, _Body and Mind_, p. 22.

"The most essential nature of a sentient being is to move _to_ pleasure and _from_ pain." A. Bain, _On the Study of Character_, p. 292 (London, 1861).

"States of Pleasure are connected with an increase, states of Pain with an abatement of some or all of the vital functions." A. Bain, _Mind and Body_, p. 59.

"Affectus est confusa idea, qua Mens majorem, vel minorem sui corporis, vel alicujus ejus partis, existendi vim affirmat." Spinoza, _Ethices_, Lib. III. _ad finem_.

[11-1] The extension of the mechanical laws of motion to organic motion was, I believe, first carried out by Comte. His biological form of the first law is as follows: "Tout etat, statique ou dynamique, tend a persister spontanement, sans aucune alteration, en resistant aux perturbations exterieures." _Systeme de Politique Positive_, Tome iv. p.

178. The metaphysical ground of this law has, I think, been very well shown by Schopenhauer to be in the Kantian principle that time is not a force, nor a quality of matter, but a condition of perception, and hence it can exert no physical influence. See Schopenhauer, _Parerga und Paralipomena_, Bd. II, s. 37.

[13-1] "Aller Genuss, seiner Natur nach, ist negativ, d. h., in Befreiung von einer Noth oder Pein besteht." _Parerga und Paralipomena._ Bd. II, s. 482.

[14-1] "No impression whatever is pleasant beyond the instant of its realization; since, at that very instant, commences the change of susceptibility, which suggests the desire for a change of impression or for a renewal of that impression which is fading away." Dr. J. P.

Catlow, _The Principles of Aesthetic Medicine_, p. 155 (London, 1867).

"Dum re, quem appetamus fruimur, corpus ex ea fruitione novam acquirat const.i.tutionem, a qua aliter determinatur, et aliae rerum imagines in eo excitantur," etc. Spinoza, _Ethices_, Pars III, Prop. lix.

[18-1] "Feeling and thought are much more real than anything else; they are the only things which we directly know to be real."--John Stuart Mill.--_Theism_, p. 202. How very remote external objects are from what we take them to be, is constantly shown in physiological studies. As Helmholtz remarks: "No kind and no degree of similarity exists between the quality of a sensation, and the quality of the agent inducing it and portrayed by it."--_Lectures on Scientific Subjects_, p. 390.

[20-1] _The Philosophy of Consciousness_, p. 72.

[21-1] The Gospel of John (ch. xviii.) leaves the impression that Pilate either did not wait for an answer but asked the question in contempt, as Bacon understood, or else that waiting he received no answer. The Gospel of Nicodemus, however, written according to Tischendorf in the second century, probably from tradition, gives the rest of the conversation as follows: "Pilate says to him: What is truth? Jesus says: Truth is from heaven. Pilate says: Is not there truth upon earth? Jesus says to Pilate: See how one who speaks truth is judged by those who have power upon earth!" [ch. iii.]

[22-1] The most acute recent discussion of this subject is by Helmholtz, in his essay ent.i.tled, "_Recent Progress in the Theory of Vision_."

[24-1] George Boole, Professor of Mathematics in Queen's College, Cork, was born Nov. 2, 1815, died Dec. 8, 1864. He was the author of several contributions to the higher mathematics, but his princ.i.p.al production is ent.i.tled: _An Investigation into the Laws of Thought, on which are founded the mathematical Theories of Logic and Probabilities_ [London, 1854.] Though the reputation he gained was so limited that one may seek his name in vain in the _New American Cyclopedia_ [1875], or the _Dictionnaire des Contemporains_ [1859], the few who can appreciate his treatise place the very highest estimate upon it. Professor Todhunter, in the preface to his _History of the Theory of Probabilities_, calls it "a marvellous work," and in similar language Professor W. Stanley Jevons speaks of it as "one of the most marvellous and admirable pieces of reasoning ever put together" (_Pure Logic_, p. 75). Professor Bain, who gives a synopsis of it in his _Deductive Logic_, wholly misapprehends the author's purpose, and is unable to appraise justly his conclusions.

[28-1] _The Inst.i.tutes of Metaphysic_, p. 459, (2nd edition.)