XI The Common Faith of Mankind
It is an article of the common faith of mankind that consciousness is good and trustworthy evidence of the reality of that of which we are conscious. It is also characteristic of that common faith to believe in the trustworthiness of the Power which manifests itself in that of which we are conscious. The man of science shares in the common faith of mankind up to a certain point: he accepts the testimony of consciousness to the reality of material things, and he believes that the Power which manifests itself in them can be trusted to behave when it is (in time or space) beyond the range of his observation in exactly the same way as it does within. But to walk in the common faith further than this point is unscientific. It is rational to trust the evidence of consciousness when it testifies to the reality of material things, but not when it testifies to the reality of our moral ideals, or the freedom of the will or the reality of God. It is scientific to trust the Power which manifests itself in consciousness to behave with the same uniformity in the future as it has done in the past, and rational to formulate our science and stake our material interests on that uniformity. But it is not rational or scientific to trust that Power to will freely the good of all things, or to trust our lives to that will.
The reason of this sharp division between science and faith is the mistaken idea that science involves no faith and is a body of knowledge built up without any assumption. But even if we got the man of science to admit that science would be impossible if things were not real and Nature not uniform, it would still be open to him to say that he considered any other assumptions unnecessary; and there is a way in which he could prove them to be unnecessary. He might show that they were no assumptions at all, but logical consequences from established scientific facts. That was in effect the object aimed at, as far as our moral ideals are concerned, by the optimistic philosophy of evolution.
For the optimistic philosopher, then, who refuses to begin by taking the difference between right and wrong on faith, the problem is, granted the reality of material things and the uniformity of Nature, to show that the moral law is simply one particular case of the uniformity of Nature.
The means by which this demonstration is supposed to be effected is the law of the survival of the fittest. It is shown that the law of organic life is the survival of the fittest, and that survival is the consequence of adaptation to environment. These two laws are of course uniformities of Nature. It follows, then, that there must be a constant tendency on the part of the environment to secure better and better results in the way of organic life, for it only permits the survival of the fittest and the increasingly fittest. Man is an organism, and man’s good therefore consists in his adapting himself to his environment. Thus the laws of morality are shown to be but one special case of a certain uniformity of Nature, viz. the law of adaptation to environment, which applies to all organisms and not merely to man’s.
The argument, however, is in the first place circular: “fittest to survive” simply means “best adapted to the environment.” Doubtless the best adapted to the environment are best adapted to the environment, but it does not in the least follow that they are therefore morally or æsthetically best. There is, therefore, no such constant tendency on the part of the environment to secure moral progress as is required by the Optimistic Evolutionist.
In the next place, on its own showing, the argument ends by proving that morality—what ought to be—is nothing more or less than what is. And though that is exactly what the optimist undertook to show—and exactly what is undertaken by every one who engages to show that faith is unnecessary in morality because the laws of morality can be deduced from the facts of science—still it may be doubted whether the conclusion “whatever is, is right” is exactly either a law of morality or a uniformity of Nature.
The question at issue between science and faith is, as we have said, not whether it is possible to gain trustworthy knowledge of the world without faith, without making assumptions, for science itself is built on faith in the reality of things and the uniformity of Nature, but whether the assumptions of science are the only assumptions that we need make. One way of proving that they need not be assumed would be to show that they can be proved by science. But that way failure lies, as is shown by the optimist’s ill-success. But there is yet another way of cutting down the common faith of mankind to the narrower creed of science, and that is to show that the remaining articles of faith, the assumptions not necessary to science, are inconsistent with science. That is the method adopted by the Pessimistic Evolutionist. He does, indeed, go further with the common faith than the optimist did. Impressed by the failure of the optimist to exhibit the laws of morality as the mere outcome of the laws of Nature, and the reality of our moral ideals as derived from the reality of material things, he accepts the common faith of mankind in the law of morality as being just as rational as his and their faith in the uniformity of Nature. But having taken this one step, having adopted this additional article of faith on faith, he refuses to go any further. He accepts without evidence the assumption that there are certain things which we ought to do, just as he accepts without evidence the assumption that Nature is uniform. But he refuses to accept the assumption that will is free, because that is opposed to the evidence. He admits that we ought to choose certain things, but denies that we can choose them; and his forecast of the future is in accordance with the premises from which it is inferred. It is a pessimistic picture of man being steadily driven to do the things that he ought not, ending with the triumph of what must be over what ought to be, of physical necessity over the morally right.
The object of science is to discover what we ought to believe, to substitute reasoned knowledge for ignorant conjecture; and the fundamental faith of science is that we ought not to believe anything that is contrary to the uniformity of Nature. Nothing ought to shake our faith in that article of our creed: no amount of evidence will convince a really scientific man, a true believer in the faith, that any alleged violation of the uniformity of Nature can be real. No amount of evidence would be sufficient, for instance, to warrant the belief in miracles. Either the alleged violation is only apparent, and will, with further knowledge, turn out to be a fresh instance of the truth that Nature is uniform; or else the evidence will prove on examination to be untrustworthy. To admit that any evidence could suffice for such a purpose would be to admit that the uniformity of Nature is not the fundamental reality in the world of science, or the ultimate base of our knowledge of what does actually take place in Nature.
A little reflection is enough to show that this is an entirely self-consistent line to take up. No amount of evidence can shake what is itself built on no evidence. If the belief in the uniformity of Nature depended on evidence in its favour, then evidence against it might overthrow it. But, as it rests on faith, it is superior to evidence.
Now, what is true and self-consistent in the case of science in its own sphere is equally so in the case of morality. It is the common belief of mankind that we can, and are able to, choose what is right; and just as no amount of evidence will convince a really scientific mind that a violation of the uniformity of Nature is possible, so there is no evidence which will convince a really moral man that he could not have done right when he did do what was wrong. “We ought, therefore we can,” does not exactly express the facts. Rather, it is the other way: we can love, be merciful, tender, compassionate, therefore we ought. Liberty itself is a law to the free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of Him “whose service is perfect freedom.”
The pessimist, then, who thinks, by producing evidence, to show that what ought to be cannot be, is adopting in morality a form of argument which in science, when it is a question of miracles, he condemns as inherently vicious and illogical. Further, the evidence which he does produce is not altogether above suspicion. It takes the form of the statement that the uniformity of Nature is a uniformity of necessity and not of a will freely purposing a good end by means of a voluntary uniformity.
If that statement could be proved to be a logical consequence from the facts of science, then it would indeed be proved that one article in the common creed of mankind was inconsistent with the rest. But, as we have argued already, it is not implied either in the admitted uniformity of Nature or in any of the facts deducible from it. To revert to the simile of the chess-board, it is as though one should say that because Black could not have moved his knight unless White had moved his pawn, therefore White was bound to move the pawn.
We cannot, therefore, consider that the pessimist has succeeded in showing that the articles of the common faith which he accepts require in their logical consequences the rejection of the rest. In saying that man ought to choose the right, but has no choice between right and wrong, he is not formulating a consequence of the facts of science, he is simply assuming without evidence the existence of a universal necessity of which the changes in Nature and the actions of man are but the varying though inevitable expression—an assumption which invalidates morality without adding to the truth of science.
There are those whose belief in demonology furnishes them with a reason and an excuse for the misdeeds of man. The belief in necessity exhibits demonology as a doctrine of science: man would fain do right, but the uniformity, which is the necessity, of Nature allows him no choice. It is Nature, the environment, which is the abode and headquarters of necessity, the enemy of the ethical process, the arch-demon of scientific demonology. And the proof that he exists is that he must. What must be, must be, because it must.
The attempt to render morality scientific ends in a result fatal to morality; and the reason seems clear. It is that science is not morality, nor are the principles of science those of morality. Science is knowledge, morality is action. Knowledge, to be knowledge, has to presuppose that Nature is uniform and that the things it deals with are real. So, too, action, to be moral, requires the belief that our moral ideals are real and that we are free to choose between good and evil. The optimist who would have us believe that science includes all the remaining articles of the common faith, and the pessimist who argues that it excludes them, alike fall into the error of imagining that science, the knowledge of what is, is the whole of knowledge, and that the assumptions which are required in order to describe what is will enable us to do and to know what ought to be. Science, which is a true description of part of our experience, becomes a misleading half-truth when it is offered as an exhaustive account of the whole. If, knowing the rules of chess and having a record of the moves in a solitary (and unfinished) game, we refused to inquire why the pieces moved, on the ground that if we succeeded in the inquiry we should have made no addition to our knowledge of the way in which the pieces do move, we should never understand the game. But we should be nearer the truth than if we assumed that a piece caused its own movements or those of the other pieces; and that will or purpose was quite incompatible with the uniformity of their movements.
The fact is that we have to play the game—we are not merely spectators—and as a matter of fact, also, men do assume that they can freely choose what moves they will make and that there are certain moves which they ought to make. The assumptions which they make, not exactly for the sake of playing the game, but in the act of playing it, are neither included in the assumptions of science nor excluded by them. To play the game at all, it is necessary to have some knowledge (or to act as though we had some knowledge) of how the pieces move, to know that bishops move diagonally, that bodies tend to gravitate at a certain rate. Man cannot indeed act or make the slightest movement without deflecting or starting some of the processes of Nature and of his own psychological mechanism: it is through them that he operates, and by means of them that he plays the game. In the beginning he has but little knowledge of what the consequences will be if he touches this or that spring of the mechanism. Yet the knowledge is necessary for him, if he is to play the game as he ought, i.e. to attain the moral ideals of which he is more or less (less at first) conscious. In acquiring this knowledge he uses his faculty of abstraction, that is his power of concentrating his attention on one aspect of a thing or problem, to the exclusion of the rest, in order to gain a clearer knowledge of it by giving it his undivided and undistracted attention. Thus, in order to understand how the mechanism of Nature or human nature actually does act, he concentrates his attention on the working of that mechanism in the abstract, i.e. wholly apart from the fact that it is at times started, at times interrupted, or redirected for the sake of realising (or thwarting) his ideals. The knowledge thus gained is science, and is, according to the agnostic, the optimist, and the pessimist, the only knowledge that man can have.
But it is clear that man can and does reflect, not only on the way in which the mechanism acts, but also on the use to which he puts it and the relation of that use to his ideals. These reflections may add nothing to his science, to his knowledge that rooks when moved must be moved parallel to the sides of the board, but they do add to his knowledge of the game. In fine, man gains a more important part of that knowledge by or in playing the game than he does by studying the rules. The rules acquaint him with the resources which are at his disposal, the capacities of the various pieces and the powers of the various forces of Nature or human nature. But it would be absurd to pass this off as a complete knowledge of the game. We may, by playing the game, add only to our knowledge of how the game ought to be played, of how the mechanism of Nature and human nature ought to be used, and not add to our knowledge of the fact that if and when the mechanism is set agoing it acts in the way described by science. But the one kind of knowledge, though not science, is just as true as the other, on the same terms, viz. if you accept the assumptions presupposed by it.
Science, then, is from the very terms of its constitution abstract, i.e. essentially incomplete. The very terms on which alone science is possible are that it shall study one aspect only of Nature, the mechanical, and shall ascertain what conclusions follow if we confine our attention to the mechanical factors and neglect certain other factors—the freedom of the will, final causes, and the moral and æsthetic ideals—which, though voluntarily neglected for the moment, are yet known to be important factors in the game of life as it is played by us. As often as we act, however, we set those factors, temporarily neglected by science, in action; and there is no reason why, when we have acted, we should not reflect upon our action, disengage the assumptions which are presupposed by our actions, and then reconsider the world and life in the light of the assumptions on which our actions and the actions of all men are based, viz. the freedom of the will and the reality of our ideals. Thus viewed, the world becomes the scene and life the opportunity of using the forces of Nature and our own psychological mechanism for the purpose of achieving the ideal.
But free-will and the moral ideal are not the only factors in the world as it is presented to the common consciousness, or in life as it is carried on by humanity, which are neglected by science, and which have to be restored by subsequent reflection, if we wish to see life true and see it whole. Science declines to entertain the question why things happen, or whether there is any purpose in events; and moral faith only guarantees that there is that which man ought to do, and that he is free to do it. But science, in neglecting the action of final causes, omits a factor which not only must be replaced before we can have any adequate understanding of the part which man plays in the world, but which, by the testimony of the common consciousness of mankind, manifests itself in the phenomena of Nature.
The description which science gives of the sequences and co-existences of material and physical phenomena is consistent with itself, and is all that is required by the assumptions of science. It is only when we reflect upon the further assumptions which we make, or rather act upon as moral agents, that we find science inadequate or—if it professes to be the whole account of the world and man—misleading. And it is only by restoring those factors for which our moral consciousness is the evidence that we can remedy the defect or correct the error. The attempt made by the optimist to dispense with the testimony of consciousness to the reality of the moral law, and the attempt of the pessimist to dispense with the freedom of the will, were both failures.
In the same way, both the scientific and the moral interpretation of the world are judged by the religious consciousness to be abstract, and are seen, when viewed in the light of its presuppositions, to be inadequate, if not misleading. The inadequacy of the moral assumptions which are made by the common consciousness of mankind is manifest, when we reflect that while those assumptions serve to decide the question—left open by science—as to the “Why?” of human actions, they do not decide the same question as to the events of Nature, but leave it open as it was left by science, whether final or mechanical causation is the ultimate explanation of Nature.
The problem what we are to do and to think in life and of life is one which for its solution requires that the whole of our experience should be taken into account: if it is to account for the sum total of the facts of which we are conscious, it must take for its basis the totality of those facts and nothing less extensive. It is true that the very vastness of the field to be surveyed—the whole of the common consciousness of mankind—makes a division of labour necessary, and compels us to concentrate ourselves at different times on different aspects of it, and to treat each of the phases of our experience—religious, moral, and scientific experience—for the moment as though it alone existed. But it is equally true that this isolation of first one phase and then the other is merely a temporary device, designed and adopted for a purpose; and that that purpose is to enable us ultimately to bring the whole of our experience to bear on the problem of what to do and to think.
Legitimate as it is, when we are working at the details of the problem, to distinguish the moral consciousness from the scientific, and the religious consciousness from the moral, it is necessary to bear in mind that these distinctions are merely abstractions. In thought we may and do so distinguish, but in fact and experience consciousness is a unity. The same man who is conscious of sense-phenomena is also conscious of moral obligation: the “I” which is conscious of moral experience is the same “I” that is conscious of spiritual experience.
Further, the evidence which we have for the three kinds of experience—scientific, moral, and spiritual—is the same: it is the evidence of consciousness—the only evidence that we can have of anything. That witness, if discredited at all, is discredited for all in all. If discredited, it must be by its own testimony, for we have no other witness which can give evidence against it. But we hope that it is true: the man of science is so certain of its truth, in the department in which he is most familiar with it and has the best right to speak of it, that he lays it down as a rule that there simply can be no evidence of an exception to the uniformity of Nature. The moralist is equally certain that no exception to the law of moral obligation is possible; the religious mind that there can be none to the universality of the Divine love. To the unity of consciousness corresponds the unity of our faith in its trustworthiness. Scientific and moral faith are not different from religious faith; they are but phases of the same. The common faith of mankind is not a synthesis formed artificially by adding the three together; on the contrary, the three are artificially distinguished by thought—they do not correspond to fact, but are abstractions from the facts, and are formed by the suppression of facts.
The religious consciousness is itself abstract; and as an abstraction, i.e. if taken to be the whole of what we know and feel and do, is capable of leading to false conclusions: no religious belief can stand permanently which runs counter to the facts of science or the moral faith of mankind. No amount of spiritual experience will add to our knowledge of chemistry or physics, or be valid evidence against any truth of science. It may serve to prevent the premature acceptance of something too hastily put forward as a scientific fact, in the same way that science may overthrow a belief erroneously supposed to be religious.
But though the religious consciousness is an abstraction, in the same sense that the scientific and moral consciousness are abstractions, each is valid in its own sphere; and the whole evidence of consciousness in all its three phases must be taken together, if we are to elicit any universal principles of thought and action, any unity in our experience, any purpose in evolution. From this point of view we shall expect to find a unity of experience corresponding to the unity of consciousness, and to discover that there is a fundamental identity underlying the apparent diversity in that reality of which in consciousness we are aware. What gives this unity to experience is the permanence which we attribute to the real, in whatever way the real is apprehended: the real, whether apprehended in sense-experience or in moral conviction or in spiritual experience, is characterised by permanence, as distinguished from the passing feelings with which we view it and from the transient experience we have of it. The reality of the things of which we are aware through our senses is conceived as something permanent, and is implied to be so conceived by all theories of evolution which wish to be taken seriously. The permanence of moral obligation is not conceived by those who are genuinely convinced of its reality to vary or to come and go with the flickering gleams of our moral resolutions. Nor when spiritual light is withdrawn from our hearts is it supposed, by those who believe it to be the light of God’s countenance, to be quenched for the time.
The fundamental identity of the real throughout its diversity is what is postulated by science when it explains the process of evolution by means of the law of continuity. It is equally postulated by the moral philosopher who claims objective validity for the moral law on the ground that it is the same for all rational minds. It is the faith of the religious mind which not only feels the Divine love in its own heart, and finds it every time it obeys the conscience, but also divines it in the uniformity of Nature and throughout the process of evolution.
The identity of the real does not lie in the mere fact that we are conscious of it. The real things of which we are conscious have, indeed, as one feature common to them all, the fact that we are conscious of them. But the identity of the real is not created by nor a mere expression of the unity of our consciousness. It is not the understanding which makes Nature—save in the purely psychological way in which apperception does; on the contrary, the things of which we are conscious in sense-perception are given as independent of us, though sense-phenomena are obviously not. In the same way, the reality of the moral law is conceived, in the very act by which we recognise it as binding on us, to be something independent of us; nor is God’s love towards us dependent on our merits, or existent only when we recognise it.
If, then, we are to gather up the permanence, the identity, and the independence of the real into the unity of a single principle, if we are to interpret the law of continuity in the light of the whole of our experience, we must look to the Divine will. In it we shall find the reality which is progressively revealed in the law of continuity; in it we shall find the permanence and the independence without which reality has no meaning; in it the changeless and eternal identity of Him whose property it is ever to have mercy and always to be the same. Then, perhaps, we may extend the principle of scientific method so as to include the whole of our experience and to make the whole of our knowledge truly scientific; for to the uniformity of Nature and of human nature we shall add the uniformity of the Divine nature, or, rather, we shall see in the former the expression of the latter. But it is not the agnostic who will thus enlarge the bounds of science, or open a page of knowledge rich with the spoils of faith.