The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 34
[introduction]
At the beginning of October, 1874, it was my duty, as Principal of a Theological College, to open a new session with an Address, which was afterwards published under the title, "Religion as affected by Modern Materialism." It raises the question whether the free and scientific methods of study insisted on in the College involved results at variance with its theological design. It states accordingly three assumptions hitherto implied in that design: "That the universe which includes us and folds us round is the life-dwelling of an Eternal Mind; that the world of our abode is the scene of a Moral Government incipient but not yet complete; and that the upper zones of human affection, above the clouds of self and passion, take us into the sphere of a Divine Communion." With regard to these assumptions the thesis is maintained that they are beyond the contradiction, because not within the logical range, of the natural sciences. In support of this thesis the mischiefs are shown, both to science and to theology, of confusing their boundaries, and treating the discovery of Law as the negation of God; and the separating line is drawn, that in their intellectual dealings with phenomena, science inves- page 4 tigates the "how" and theology the "whence." Tempted on by two of its indispensable conceptions, matter and force, science, overstepping this boundary, has of late affected to know not only the order but the origin of things; in the one case starting them from atoms as their source, in the other from mechanical energy. I try to show that neither datum will work out its result except by the aid of logical illusions. You will get out of your atoms by "evolution," exactly so much and no more as you have put into them by hypothesis. And with regard to force, it is contended that observation and induction do not carry us to it at all, but stop with movements; that the so-called kinds of force are only classes of phenomena, with the constant belief of causality behind; that of causality we have no cognition but as Will, from which the idea of "physical force" is simply cut down by artificial abstraction to the needs of phenomenal investigation and grouping; and that, in conceiving of the single power hid in every group, we must revert to the intuitive type, because the only authorized, and to the highest, because alone covering the highest phenomena. The attempt, under shelter of the unity of energy behind all its masks, to make the lowest phase, besides playing its own part, stand for the whole, is described as a logical sleight of hand by which a heedless reasoner may impose upon himself and others.
After this defensive argument to show that the religious positions are not displaced by natural science, they are traced to their real seat in human nature, and treated as postulates involved in the very existence and life of the reason and conscience. In support of their natural claim to our entire trust, it is contended that, for their ethical power, they are absolutely dependent on their objective truth; and further, that our nature, in respect of its higher page 5 affections, compassion, self-forgetfulness, moral obligation, is constructed in harmony with a world Divinely ruled, and in utter conflict with the Pessimist's picture of nature.
The Address thus epitomized has brought upon me the honour and the danger of a critique by Professor Tyndall,* marked by all his literary skill, and rendered persuasive by happy sarcasm and brilliant description. One fault at least he brings home to me with irresistible conviction. He blames my mode of writing as deficient in precision and lucidity. And I cannot deny the justice of the censure when I observe that my main line of argument has left no trace upon his memory, that its estimate of scientific doctrines is misconstrued, that my feeling towards the order of nature is exhibited in reverse, that I am cross-questioned about an hypothesis of which I never dreamt, and am answered by a charming "alternative" exposition of ascending natural processes, which I follow with assent till it changes its voice from physics to metaphysics, and from its premisses of positive phenomena proclaims a negative ontological conclusion. That at every turn I should have put so acute a reader upon a totally false scent, rebukes me more severely than any of his direct and pertinent criticisms; for, smartly as these may hit me, they fall chiefly on incidental and parenthetical remarks which might have been absent, or on mere literary form which might have been different, without affecting the purport of my Address. Whether the force of these minor thrusts is really disabling, or is only a by-play telling mainly on the fancy of the observer, a brief scrutiny will determine.
* Fragments of Science: "Materialism" and its Opponents; and, previously, Fortnightly Review, November 1, 1875.
(2.) In order to give distinctness to that "religion" in relation to which I proposed to treat of "Modern Materialism," I specified "three assumptions" involved in it, of which the first and chief is the existence of the "Living God." I am reproached with making no attempt to verify them, but permitting them to "remain assumptions" "to the end." Be it so, though the statement is not quite exact: still, in every reasoned discourse assumptions have their proper place, as well as proofs; and the right selection of propositions to stand in the one position or the other depends on the speaker's thesis and the hearer's needs. My thesis was, that natural science did not displace these assumptions, because they lie beyond its range; and the proof is complete if it is shown that the logical limit of inductive knowledge stops short of their realm, and is illegitimately overstepped by every physical maxim which contradicts them. To turn aside from this line of argument in order to "verify" the primary matter of the whole discussion, would have been to set out for Exeter and arrive at York. My hearers consisted of the teachers, supporters and alumni of a Theological College; and to treat them as a body of atheists, and offer proofs of the being of a God, would have been as impertinent as for Professor Tyndall to open the session of a Geological Society with a demonstration of the existence of the earth.
(3.) A few reluctant words must suffice in answer to the page 8 charge of "scorning the emotions." I say "reluctant words:" for to this side of our nature it is given to speak without being much spoken of; to live and be, rather than be seen and known; and when dragged from its retreat, it is so hurt as to change its face and become something else. Here, however, little more is needed than to repeat the words which are pronounced to be so "rash" and even "petulant"—"I trust that when 'emotion proves empty, we shall stamp it out and get rid of it." Do I then "scorn" the "emotion" of any mind stirred by natural vicissitudes or moving realities—the cry of Andromache, at the first sight of her hero's dishonoured corpse; the covered face and silent sobs of Phædon, when Socrates had drained the cup; the tears of Peter at the cock-crowing; or any of the fervent forms of mental life—the mysticism of Eckhart, the intellectual enthusiasm of Bruno, the patriotic passion of Vane? Not so; for none of these are "empty," but carry a meaning adequate to their intensity. It is for "emotion" with a vacuum within, and floating in vacuo without, charged with no thought and directed to no object, that I avow distrust; and if there be an "overshadowing awe" from the mere sense of a blank consciousness and an enveloping darkness, I can see in it no more than the negative condition of a religion yet to come. In human psychology, feeling, when it transcends sensation, is not without idea, but is a type of idea; and to suppose "an inward hue and temperature," apart from any "object of thought," is to feign the impossible. Colour must lie upon form; and heat must spring from a focus, and declare itself upon a surface. If by referring religion to the region of emotion" is meant withdrawing it from the region of truth, and letting it pass into an undulation in no medium and with no direction, I must decline the surrender.
page 9In thus refusing support from "empty emotion," I am said to "kick away the only philosophic foundation on which it is possible to build religion." Professor Tyndall is certainly not exacting from his builders about the solidity of his "foundation;" and it can be only a very light and airy architecture, not to say an imaginary one, that can spring from such base; and perhaps it does not matter that it should be unable to face the winds. Nor is the inconsistency involved in this statement less surprising than its levity. Religion, it appears, has a "philosophical foundation." But "philosophy" investigates the ultimate ground of cognition and the organic unity of what the several sciences assume. And a "philosophical foundation" is a legitimated first principle for some one of these; it is a cognitive beginning—a datum of ulterior quæsita—and nothing but a science can have it. Religion then must be an organism of thought. Yet it is precisely in denial of this that my censor invents his new "foundation." Here, he tells us, we know nothing, we can think nothing; the intellectual life is dumb and blank; we do but blindly feel. How can a structure without truth repose on philosophy in its foundation?
But do I not myself carry religious questions, in the last appeal, to the inward consciousness of man, whether intellectual for the interpretation of causality, or moral for the interpretation of duty? Undoubtedly; and Professor Tyndall thinks it "highly instructive" that I "should have lived so long, thought so much, and failed to recognize the entirely subjective character of this creed." If I may omit the word "entirely" (which implies a gratuitous exclusion of "objective truth"), I not only recognize it, but everywhere insist upon it. The fundamental religious conceptions have no deeper validity than belongs. to the very page 10 frame of our faculties and the postulates of our thinking. But as this equally holds of the fundamental scientific conceptions, as matter and force have also to retire to consciousness for their witnesses—nay, as objectivity itself is but an interpretation by the subject of its own experience, is it not "highly instructive" that a critic so compassionate of my "subjective" position should be unaware of the ideality of his own? Or has he, perhaps, found some "objective knowledge" which has not to fall back upon a "subjective" guarantee?
If, as I suspect, Professor Tyndall uses the word "subjective," not in its strict sense, for what belongs to the human subject at large, but to denote what is special to the feeling of this or that individual, the question will then be whether I mistake an exceptional personal experience for a universal form of thought. This question is not settled by saying that many able men find in themselves no such inner experience. The eye for correct psychological reading is not secured by great intellect or noble character, but, like the organ of any other art, must be trained to quickness and delicacy of insight; and, while false or over-culture exposes it to the danger of seeing what is not there, a failure of culture may prevent its seeing what there is. Eight interrogation and careful comparison alone can sift out the essential from the accidental. Doubtless many a principle once advanced as self-evident and universal survives only in the grotesque museum of philosophers' fancies. But, on the other hand, whatever laws of thought are now admitted as universal were at first propounded, and often long resisted, as the expressions of individual reflection.
(4.) On one point more a personal éclainissement is needed as a condition of any profitable argument. I am said to be "imperfectly informed regarding the position I page 11 assail." If I am sensitive to this remark, it is not that I cannot bear to be reminded of my ignorance, the sense of which is a shadow that never quits my life, but that, as no man has a right to attack doctrines which he has not taken the pains to understand, the statement carries in it a moral imputation, and calls on me either to clear it away or to confess a wrong. What then is the "position" which, under the name of "materialism," I intended to assail, and ought, perhaps, to have fixed by exact definition? Professor Tyndall supposes it to be his position, regarding which undoubtedly I am very imperfectly informed; for the indications of it, though clear enough for assent or criticism when taken one by one, appear to me so shifting and indeterminate in their combination, as to afford no means of testing it. Except in the two or three passages where it is quoted, the Belfast Address was no more in my view than the writings to which it referred and others belonging to the literature of the subject; and did not supply the form of doctrine to which my argument was addressed. The only question therefore is whether that form of doctrine really exists. If it can be shown that I have misconceived the materialists' position, and fastened upon them any thesis which is without eminent representative in their school, I must accept my rebuke. But if no part of my sketch is unsupported by adequate authority, it will remain true, though it should conflict with sentences in the "Fragments of Science."
* Geschichte des Materialismus, 2tes Buch, p. 181.
* Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, ltes Buch, pp. 8, 9.
† In connection with this name there is an historical error in the Belfast Address which I should hardly notice were it not likely to be perpetuated by the just reputation of the author, and did it not apparently fall back for support upon Lange. This writer, noticing that Democritus makes no attempt to explain the appearances of adaptation out of the blind power of natural necessity, adds, "Whether this gap lay in his system itself, or only in the tradition of it, we do not know; but we do know that the source of even this last principle of all materialism—rudely shaped, it is true, yet with perfect precision of idea—is to be found in the philosophic thought of the Hellenic race. What Darwin, with the support of vast stores of positive knowledge, has effected for the present time, Empedocles offered to the thinkers of antiquity—the simple and penetrating thought that if adaptations preponderate in the world, it is because it lies in their very nature to maintain themselves; while that which fails of adaptation has perished long ago." (I. pp. 22, 23.) Misled by the order of this passage, which gives the missing thought after naming the "gap" which it might have filled, Dr. Tyndall has described Empedocles as intentionally making good a defect in Democritus—"Noticing this gap in the doctrine of Democritus, he (Empedocles) struck in with the penetrative thought," &c. This is an inversion of the chronology. Empedocles preceded Democritus by at least a generation, being born about B.C. 490, and dying B.C. 430; whilst Democritus, whom we find at Thurii shortly after the foundation of the colony in B.C. 443, died at a very advanced age, B.C. 357.—Diog. Laert. viii. 52, 56, ix. 41. Comp. Arist. Met. A. 4, p. 965, b. 4.
* Starting from the fundamental assumption, "Principio ergo Universum ex corpore et inani constat, neque enim tertia natura concipi mente præterea potest."—Phil. Epicur. Syntagma, Op. T. iii. 11.
† Geschichte des Materialismus, i. pp. 8, 9.
‡ Büchner: Kraft und Stoff, p. 2 (Aufl. 4).
At a first glance, nothing looks more hopeful to the enthusiast for simplification than the reduction of "matter" to "force." Two or three easy equations will carry him through the problem. Matter is known to us only by its "properties," and, relatively to us, is tantamount to them. Its properties, again, are only its ways of affecting ourselves, either directly or through operations on other portions of matter. That is, it is represented to us wholly by the effects which it has power to produce, and resolves itself into an aggregate of forces. Make its essence what you will,—extension with Descartes; or palpableness with Fechner,—it is still as acting on the eye or the touch or the muscles that this essence reaches our apprehension; it is the cause of sensations to us, and anything that should cause such sensations would be identical with it. Is it not plain therefore that matter is simply power locally lodged? and that when pursued to its smallest conceivable elements, it merges into dynamic points, unextended centres of attraction and repulsion? Such a course of thought has again and again led to theories of dynamic idealism, like Bosco- page 16 vich's, Ampère's, and Cauchy's, in which the dimensions of the atoms whence molecular action proceeds not simply are small relatively to the distances which separate them, but absolutely vanish. Such theories, by isolating the elements needed for calculation, offer advantages for mathematical physics. But there will always be found an irresolvable residue which declines to melt away into force. When you have construed the atom's solidity into repulsion, and reduced its extension to nothing, there remains its position, and this "whereabouts" of a power is other than the power itself; and secures to it a Da-seyn or objective existence in space. Nor is the conception of motion adequately provided for in these schemes of abstraction. As geometrical points themselves cannot be moved, the phenomenon becomes a translation of a cluster of attractions and repulsions to new centres. But attraction with nothing to be attracted, repulsion with nothing to be repelled, motion with nothing to be moved, are presentable in language only, not in thought. The running of one eddy round another or into another is intelligible so long as there is a medium be it of ether, however rare; but in vacuo, not so. A material nidus is indispensable as the seat of every motory change. The reason of this lies in the very structure of the human understanding, which supplies us with the category of Attribute or Property only in combination with that of Substance or Thing as its abiding base. The relation between the attribute which speaks to you phenomenally, and the substance which is given intellectually, is indissoluble: and analyze the phenomena as you may, so as to turn them from one type of predicate to another, you cannot cut them off from their persistent and unyielding seat, so as to have left on your hands a set of predicates without any subject. Thus the idea of "matter" vindicates page 17 itself against every attempt to get rid of it by transformation.
* "Materialism and its Opponents," Fortnightly Review, p. 595.
"See," says Lange, "whether here you are not in danger of a logical circle. A 'thing' is known to us through its properties, a subject is determined by its predicates. But the 'thing' is in fact only the resting-point demanded by our thought. We know nothing but the properties and their concurrence in an unknown object, the assumption of which is a figment of our mind (Gemüth), a necessary one it seems, rendered imperative by our organization."*
Another answer may be given thus:—'You may make anything a predicate of matter which you can observe in it, i. e. all its movements; but not what you cannot observe, therefore not the power which issues the movements; for this is not seen in the phenomenon; it is supplied by a necessity of thought, not as an element in it, but as a condition of it.'
Inasmuch then as both "matter" and "force" are intellectual data (noümena), involved respectively in the principle of Objectivity and in that of Causality, neither can be substituted for the other. For ages each has been trying to end the divided sway; but the rival, though often driven from the front, has always found at last an impregnable retreat, whence its rights return to recognition when the usurping rage is past. The present tendency in natural science is so strongly in favour of force as the better known term, that, according to Lange, "the untrue element in materialism, viz., the erecting of matter into the principle of all that exists, is completely, and it would seem definitively, set aside."†
* Geschichte des Materialismus, ii. p. 214.
† Ibid. p. 215.
"There is scarcely a more naïve expression of the materialism of the day," says Lange, "than escapes from Büchner, when he calls the atoms of modern times 'discoveries of natural science,' while those of the ancients are said to have been 'arbitrary page 21 speculative representations.' In point of fact, the atomic doctrine to-day is still what it was in the time of Democritus. It has still not lost its metaphysical character; and already in ancient times it served also as a scientific hypothesis for the explanation of natural processes."*
And respecting the law of Conservation of energy, Lange observes that, taken in its "strictest and most consequent meaning, it is anything but proved: it is only an 'Ideal of the Reason,' perhaps however indispensable as a goal for all empirical research."† It is from no want of deference for science proper that I pass again under review the competency of these two doctrines to work out, ab initio, a blind cosmogony.
* Geschichte des Materialismus, ii. 181.
† Ibid. p. 213.