Riddles of the Sphinx, by Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller

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Riddles of the Sphinx: A Study in the Philosophy of Evolution
by A TROGLODYTE [Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller]
1891

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TO F.S.N. HIS FELLOW-PRISONER IN THE CAVE, THE AUTHOR INSCRIBES THIS BOOK, IN THE HOPE THAT FROM HIS MIND ALSO IT MAY EXPEL SOME OF THE SHADOWS AND PHANTOMS THAT BESET THE LIFE OF ONE NOT YET PERMITTED TO BEHOLD THE LIGHT OF TRUTH

ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. [PDF Here]
• PREFACE
BOOK I.
• Chapter I. Introductory
o § 1. The prevalent despair of solving the highest problems of knowledge not justified in an age of progress. § 2. Causes of this despair in the faulty attitude of religion, philosophy, and science. § 3. Its results — a positivist temper — "we can do without philosophy." § 4. But we can not. Philosophy as the theory of Life, and so practical. §§ 5-8. The problem of philosophy really that of all knowledge; shown both in the common origin of religion (§ 6), philosophy (§ 7), and science (§ 8), viz., Animism, and in their common end, viz., practice. § 9. Hence Positivism must admit that philosophy is desirable and important. It can only assert that it is impossible, and § 10 thereby become Agnosticism.
• Chapter II. Agnosticism
o § 1. Its two varieties, scientific and epistemological, Spencer and Kant.
o §§ 2-6. Objections to both. § 2. Suspense of judgment on the problems of life impossible in practice. § 3. The argument from the known to the unknowable always involves a contradiction. § 4. The impossibility of a transition from the known to the unknowable. § 5. No infinity in things to suggest an unknowable. § 6. Agnosticism must be rendered consistent by a denial of the causality of the Unknowable, which is thereby reduced to nought.
o §§ 7-10. Spencerian Agnosticism. § 7. (a) Direct arguments to show the existence of the Unknowable refuted: (1) growth of knowledge is not a growth of ignorance; (2) explanations are not required ad infinitum; (3) a limit does not imply something beyond it; this is true of (conceptual) space, but not of knowledge. §§ 8-10. Spencer's indirect arguments from the difficulties of metaphysics should not daunt an evolutionist. § 9. The self-existence of God, how tenable. § 10. The infinite regress of causation and the question as to the cause of the first cause. But this difficulty is one of all causation, extending also to science, and therefore sceptical. Insuperable, if an absolute first cause is meant, but not if only a cause of our world.
o §§ 11-21. Kantian Agnosticism. The defects of our minds preclude us from the knowledge of things as they really are. §§ 12-17. His positive arguments examined, § 12. Kant's refutation of his own distinction of things in themselves and appearances. § 13. His claim to have made an exhaustive analysis of the mind. § 14. His distinction of Form and Matter in knowledge. But we cannot know until we try. § 15. The epistemological standpoint incompatible with the evolution of the mind and the development of its categories. § 16. Epistemology is futile as well as false. (§ 17) if the "immanent criticism of experience'' does not transcend its limits. The ambiguity of "a priori": it should be taken logically only, and not of priority in time. §§ 18-21. Indirect arguments from the metaphysical difficulties of (§ 19) theology, of (§ 20) the antinomies, of (§ 21) psychology. § 19. Kant's claim that of three possible proofs of the existence of God, two are false and the third is inadequate. But if the third can prove a limited God, is not this all that is needed? § 20. The antinomies, the infinity of Space and Time. The thesis inadequately stated, being supported by science as well as by metaphysics; the proof of the antithesis holds good only of our ideas of Space and Time, and identifies Space with what fills it. A third alternative in the case of Time, ignored by Kant. § 21. Kant's attack on the reality of the soul; its assumptions and contradictions. § 22. The origin of agnosticism, a phenomenon of the growth of knowledge. § 23. The transition into Scepticism owing (1) to the impossibility of refuting metaphysics without upsetting science, and § 24 (2) to the self-criticism of Agnosticism.
• Chapter III. Scepticism
o § 1. The meaning of Scepticism, and § 2 its invalid forms. § 3. It must be immanent and base itself on the irreconcilable conflict of the data of consciousness, e.g., between thought and reality.
o §§ 4-14. The origin and flaws of the conceptions forming the first principles of science. § 4. They are mutilated anthropomorphisms, and (§ 5) cannot grasp the Becoming of things. § 6. This shown in the case of Time. The fiction of its discreteness. Time measured by motions and motions by Time, a vicious circle. Its infinity and self-contradiction. § 7. Space. Its infinity. Atomism v. its infinite divisibility. Matter and Space and the Void. Real and conceptual Space and the truth of geometry. § 8. Motion measured by Rest, but Rest illusory. If all motive is relative, what of the conservation of energy? How can there be potential energy or position in infinite Space? § 9. Matter, an abstraction. The solidity of atoms does not account for the hardness of bodies. The wonders of the Ether. Action at a distance and inertia. Matter a hypothesis which is not even self-consistent. § 10. Force, only depersonalized will. The interaction of bodies a theory. § 11. Causation, its animistic origin. It will not work unless arbitrary isolations and connections are made in the complex of phenomena. Even so it involves the difficulties of an infinite regress or of a First Cause, and finally, it conflicts with free will. § 12. Substance, the permanent in change; no proof of this. § 13. Becoming not a category, but a contradiction to thought, which science can deal with only as Being and Not Being. But Being a fiction, for all things become. So (§ 14) none of our principles can deal with Becoming, because of the radical difference of thought and feeling (reality). The meaning of the a priority of thought.
o § 15. The characteristics of the Real; individual, substantival, presented, becomes in Time and Space, has infinite content. And of Thought, does not become in Time or Space, but is valid eternally; abstract, universal, discursive, discrete, adjectival, necessary. Hence, § 16, a harmony of truth and fact, viz., knowledge, is impossible. §§ 17-18. This conclusion is confirmed by logic, both as to judgment, which states ideas as facts, and (§ 18) as to inference, which does not even pretend to correspond with facts. The course of explanation leads away from reality. § 19. Hence the case for knowledge is hopeless. § 20. But yet our assumptions work. This plea only shifts the ground of the argument, and by denying (§ 21) that knowledge ultimately works in practice, Scepticism passes into Pessimism.
• CHAPTER IV. Pessimism
o §§ 1-2. Pessimism essentially the theory of the inherent perversity of things, rendering all the aims of life illusory. § 3. Not based on hedonism; the belief that life is misery the consequence, not the cause of Pessimism.
o §§ 4-19. The Ideal of Happiness. § 4. As happiness is complete adaptation to environment, it is impossible in a world of change. § 5. So there is no adaptation to the physical environment — all must die. Nor (§ 6) to the social— births, marriages and deaths. Nor (§ 7) is harmony attainable in the soul — inherited discords and incompatible claims. Life for the individual a fruitless struggle, with a certain prospect of defeat. §§ 8-10. The prospects of the race no better, either physically, § 8; socially, § 9; or psychologically, § 10. Owing to the rapidity of the changes in the conditions of life, our feelings are survivals from obsolete modes of life, and conflict with our reason. Our bodies still less harmonized with our duties. §§ 11-17. The evidence for Pejorism, the growth of misery. § 12. Evidence that the physical organism does not adapt itself quickly enough to changed conditions. Increased sensitiveness to pain, and diminished power of recuperation. Death itself evolved. § 13. Material progress renders spiritual misery possible, and (§ 14) provokes social discontent. § 15. the social environment has grown too fast, and so (§ 16) has the discord in the soul, most obviously (§ 17) in the case of the sexual feelings, which have retained an excessive strength from animal times, although the smaller waste of life renders it needless. They are fostered by society, but their wholesome gratification becomes more and more difficult. Consequent growth of immorality and misery, § 18. The evolutionist argument for Meliorism: adaptation must prevail, for the unadapted die, — § 19, unless the nature of things is so perverse that the environment changes more rapidly than adaptation takes place.
o § 20. The Ideal of Goodness. The moral value of life would only aggravate its misery. But goodness is as impossible as happiness: depends on the proportion between the moral ideal and actual conduct. If then the moral ideal is capable of infinite growth, it is unattainable, and we fall farther and further short of it.
o § 21. The Ideal of Beauty. The sense of beauty the least developed; its conflict with the other ideals; makes us sensitive to the ugliness of ordinary life.
o § 22. The Ideal of Knowledge. It, like the rest, requires a fixed environment, and so baffled by the Becoming of the world. § 23. But the success of Pessimism may be due to the rejection of metaphysics.
BOOK II
• Chapter V. Reconstruction
o § 1. Result so far to prove that metaphysics alone can answer Pessimism, though, § 2, even that will only be an alternative. No direct answer to Scepticism or Pessimism possible. But if philosophy can solve all the problems of life, it may be esteemed successful. The three great characteristics of life to be accounted for. § 3. The one indisputable fact and basis of philosophy, viz., the reality of the Self. Attacked in vain by Hume, and by Kant (§ 4). § 5. The Self as the concrete union of thought and feeling rises superior to the sceptical attack on knowledge, and suggests that the ideals of thought are nearer to truth than sensible reality, and that the change of the real may be due to its striving after the ideal. § 6. The necessary anthropomorphism of all thought; choice only between good and bad. § 7. The bad either false or confused. § 8. The confused anthropomorphism of science, and, § 9, the ideal of true anthropomorphism: to show how all things are of like nature with the mind.
• Chapter VI. The Method of Philosophy
o § 1. Epistemological and psychological methods must be rejected, as they do not take the mind in its historical context. Hence, § 2, the method must be either metaphysical or pseudo-metaphysical. § 3. The latter misapplies the methods of science to ultimate questions. But (1) the principles of the sciences involve contradictions which philosophy has to solve. And (2) this method explains the higher by the lower, which is impossible, and then denies the higher. (3) Its strength lies in its appreciation of the continuity of things and its accumulation of data. § 4. The metaphysical method rightly protests against the explanation of the higher by the lower, but merely asserts their difference, while their connection is wanted. § 5. By denying the continuity of higher and lower it either regards them as antagonistic, and ends in dualism and pessimism, e.g., Platonism, or, § 6, it ignores the lower altogether, like the Eleatics and Hegel. § 7. The fact is that the method is abstract, and that first principles which are abstractions are all false, all the more (§ 8) when they are picked up at random. § 9. The true method is metaphysical, but concrete. It explains the lower by the higher, but admits their connection. Metaphysics to be derived from the sciences. § 10. Its difficulties; (1) scarcity of precedents, § 11 (2) Our imperfect knowledge of the lower, and § 12 (3) Our imperfect attainment of the higher, which remains unimaginable to the lower. § 13. These defects limit its achievements, yet, § 14, much light may be derived from the new data of science.
• Chapter VII. The Metaphysics of Evolution
o § 1. The theory of evolution, like all others, must be based on ultimate principles, i.e., metaphysics. § 2. It is a special case of the historical method, which assumes the reality of history, and so of time. Also (§ 3) that the past has caused the present, and that things have had an origin. But how if causal connexion is an illusion, and the infinity of time renders a beginning incredible? Hence the historical method assumes a real beginning of things, or at least of their history. § 4. Evolutionism shares these assumptions, and adds the assertion that history proceeds from the simple to the complex. § 5. By erecting this fact into a universal principle evolutionism becomes metaphysical and philosophic, as in Spencer. § 6. Evolution as a history of all things, and so involving a sort of teleology. § 7. But in what sense is a history an explanation? The three results of historical explanations, an inexplicable datum, a passing into something else, or an origination out of nothing, and, § 8, ultimately they all resolve into the last. § 9. The logical necessity of this process illustrated by evolutionist theories, and §§ 10-12 most completely by Mr. Crookes' theory of prothyle, and of the genesis of the elements. § 13. Does it refer to a historical event or assert an eternal process? If the latter, the mechanical cosmogony of evolutionism would be complete. § 14. But prothyle is indistinguishable from nothing. The genesis and dissolution of atoms a couple of miracles. §15. Hence historical evolutionism must be supplemented by metaphysics, and it must be admitted, §16, that it is really successful only when it derives the actual from its germ or potentiality, as explained by Aristotle. § 17. Though in Time the potential comes first, metaphysically the actual is prior. § 18. So prothyle, as the pure potentiality of the whole phenomenal world, implies a prior actuality, i.e., a non-phenomenal cause of its evolution, and so a transcendent Deity becomes necessary, of whose purpose the world-process is the working out. And as its earlier stages are more remote from that purpose, the true significance of things lies in their end, and all explanation is ultimately teleological. § 19. The necessity of teleology is also derivable from the analysis of the conception of a process, for, § 20, a process is necessarily finite, and so the world, if it is in process, must have a beginning and an end in Time, with reference to which fixed points all events must be arranged teleologically. § 21. But this teleology does not lend itself to abuse by human conceit, nor is it incompatible with scientific mechanism, which it supplements but does not supersede, being itself based on scientific data. § 22. Yet it can only gradually work down to the lower facts. § 23. The process cannot be everlasting, nor, § 24, alternate in cycles. This idea due (1) to the difficulty of grasping the reality of progress, and to the confusion of our world with the totality of existence, and (2) to ignorance of the nature of eternity. § 25. Summary.
• Chapter VIII. Formulas of the Law of Evolution.
o § 1. Evolutionism asserts that the course of the world conforms to the conception of a process. But a process of what? § 2. Mr. Spencer's formula — true as far as it goes, but inadequate. § 3. Von Hartmann's formula: not applicable to the inorganic. § 4. The perfection of the societies of the ants and bees. But, § 5, it is attained by the sacrifice of the individual and of the possibility of progress. § 6. This suggests that real progress concurrently develops the individual and the social medium. § 7. Shown in actual society, in the division of labour, § 8, in the growth of knowledge and science, § 9, in military strength, § 10, in social intercourse, and § 11, may be traced also in the earlier stages of human evolution. § 12. Apparent exceptions. Caste States have higher social structure, but repress individuality. Greece sacrificed the family to the State, but could not control the individual. Rome secured the self-subordination of the individuals, but made them too mediocre to find anyone who could adapt the Roman training to a universal empire. § 13. Among animals both individuality and sociality are at a lower stage. § 14. In plants and the lowest animals individuality becomes too faint to be any longer distinguished from the social medium. Perhaps dependence on it has here become a physical bond, as, § 15, is certainly the case in inorganic nature, where physical combination is the analogue of society and individuality is evanescent. § 16. In the evolution of chemical substances, the most complex came last, though before life. But even in the elements there are signs of individual differences. §17. The precosmic condition of atoms before combination began. § 18. But can this formula of Evolution also supply an ideal? Yes, for as yet neither society nor individuals are perfect. Evidence that we are imperfectly individualized. Hence, § 19, the ideal of perfect individuals in a perfect society is the ideal of Heaven. § 20. The advantages of this formula.
BOOK III.
• Chapter IX. Man and the World
o § 1. Its subject, the "material" environment. §§ 2-11. Space and Time and their infinity. § 2. The senses of infinity, the popular, § 3, the proper, and § 4, the mathematical sense; but infinity is inapplicable to quantity. § 5. There is no need to regard the infinity of Time and Space as anything but ideal; and § 6, it is impossible to infer from this ideal infinity that of the real world, which would render knowledge impossible. § 7. The metaphysical difficulties of infinity. Space and Time abstractions. § 8. Infinite Time self-contradictory. An infinite whole, an infinite process, and an infinite regress of causes impossible. § 9. These difficulties reappear in science. The dissipation of energy in infinite Space. The atom and infinite divisibility. The equilibration of energy. If the world is infinite. Evolution is a mistake. § 10. In favour of infinity there is only a disability of our thought. In the case of Space this may prove purely subjective and temporary. § 11. But in the case of Time the reality of the world-process is bound up with it. But the consciousness of Time depends on that of change. If, then, change can be transcended, so can Time. Time, Becoming and Evil, as corruptions of Eternity, Being, and Perfection, and so Time passes into Eternity at the completion of the world-process.
o §§ 12-15. Idealism and Science. § 12. The denial of an "external world," a corollary from the primary fact of idealism, which idealists are anxious to avoid. § 13. That fact being inconclusive in itself must be interpreted either by a universal mind (in which case the world remains an illusion) or, § 14, by transcendent realities, existing in consciousness, but not only in consciousness, i.e., the Self and the world are correlative facts, and if ultimate existence is ascribed to the one, it must be also to the other. But they need not turn out to be such as they appear. § 15. Thus idealism refutes materialism, and brings out the distinction between phenomenal and ultimate existence; § 16, but this must be shown in detail.
o §§ 17-25. The explanation of Matter. §17. Matter an abstraction. The unknowable substratum of Force. All its effects due to forces. But the substratum of the forces need not be material. § 18. Intelligence as the substratum of Force. Monads as the metaphysical account of the material. § 19. These result also from the analysis of "Force." § 20. Reconciliation of idealism and science, matter not being an ultimate fact. § 21. It is the result in consciousness of an interaction between the Deity and ultimate spirits, or Egos. § 22. The relation of these Egos to the Deity and to our phenomenal "selves." § 23. This account borne out by scientific evidence. Hypnotism and the conception of an objective hallucination. Secondary selves. § 24. Thus the progressive phases of the interaction of the Egos with the Deity, form the history of the world. § 25. Flow the world's existence in consciousness is compatible with its reality and with the plurality of spirits. Parallels in dreams and the collective hallucinations of hypnotism.
o §§ 26-28. The significance of Matter. § 26. The fallacy of separating body and soul as aspects of the same interaction. § 27. This rejection of dualism does not lead to materialism if the relation of body and soul be inverted, and the body regarded not as what causes but as what represses consciousness. The growth of organization a growth of labour-saving mechanism which liberates consciousness. § 28. Hence matter is a divine mechanism for controlling resisting spirits, an explanation which fits the facts as well or better than materialism.
o §§ 29-31. The spiritual evolution of Matter. § 29. The properties of matter are seen to be less opposed to those of spirit. Modern materialism less uncompromising than ancient. § 30. Matter less of an obstacle to spiritual evolution. Material and spiritual progress interdependent in society, and also in the individual. True development is harmonious, and does not involve antagonism with lower phases of life. § 31. Yet there is truth also in the ascetic view of matter, as it characterizes an essentially imperfect world. § 32. How the existence of the world, before that of conscious beings, may be reconciled with the idealist assertion that matter exists only in consciousness.
• Chapter X. Man and God
o § 1. Man and his cause — God. His nature as implied in the earlier results, (a) As the first cause, but only of the phenomenal world, (b) As a factor in the interaction which produces the world, (c) As personal, (d) as finite, because only a finite God can be inferred, and all force implies resistance. So God is in all, but not all. § 2. The finiteness of God conflicts with religious and philosophic tradition, but may be proved.
o §§ 3-23. The doctrine of the Infinite. §§ 3-7. The religious conception of God — a mass of contradictions. His infinity incompatible with all His other attributes, e.g., (1) personality, (2) consciousness, (3) power, (4) wisdom, § 4. (5) Goodness; either God is evil or everything is good. The failure of the attempts at reconciliation. § 5. For the Infinite there can be no reality in good and evil, nor meaning in the phenomenal world and its process. § 6. Nor does it admit of Revelation. § 7. The origin and history of the attribute of infinity. Monotheism a compromise between polytheism and pantheism. But it may be purged of its contradiction by omitting the infinity.
o §§ 8-23. The Infinite in philosophy — Pantheism. § 8. In pantheism "God" = the universe as a whole. § 9. The exceptions to this view, e.g., J. S. Mill. § 10. Pantheism a mistake (1) emotionally, because it renders good and evil illusory. §§ 11, 12. (2) Scientifically, because it destroys the reality of the world-process and the meaning of the world, and ultimately (§ 12) must declare all change illusory. Hence, either we and our world, or the Absolute, an illusion, g 13. The objection that finite minds cannot grasp the Infinite, untenable, for if true, they would never have formed the conception of an Infinite. § 14. The attempt to make the Infinite a postulate of feeling. But how can feeling decide delicate questions of metaphysics?
o §§ 15-20. (3) The logical basis of Pantheism. §15. The main basis of Pantheism logical— but fallacious. § 16. The words "all" and "whole" ambiguous. A finite totality v. an infinite maximum. §17. The "Infinite" a misnomer because a real whole must be finite. § 18. But anyhow the world is not a real whole. The two ways of conceiving the relation of a whole to its parts, of which the one would not apply to the absolute "All," and the other would make it an ideal whole. § 19. A third way conceivable, if the reality of the whole could be directly inferred from the reality of the parts. But it is not yet realized, and (§ 20) if it were, it would make the parts as necessary to the existence of the whole, as the whole to the parts. Though the ideal of social harmony, this does not justify Pantheism.
o §§ 21-23. (4) The metaphysical basis of Pantheisin. § 21. The ultimate question of ontology. Is existence one, dual, or many? Monism, Dualism, Pluralism. Why Dualism must be rejected. The difficulties of Monism — it cannot explain phenomenal plurality. § 22. Pluralism does not need to do so. The relation of the Many to the One. The One as the possibility of the interaction of the Many. § 23. Pluralism can also regard the One as the ideal of a real union. Perfection.
o §§ 24-30. The nature of God. § 24. The finiteness of God follows from the adoption of Pluralism in metaphysics. God not = "Nature," and hence "Nature" can contain an element which resists God, i.e., Evil, due to the imperfect harmony of ultimate spirits. The world-process designed to harmonize them. § 25. This view verified in the actual character of evil. Evil that which obstructs the course of Evolution. § 26. Change and death as consequences of inharmonious interaction. § 27. God immanent as well as transcendent. Can be in all because not = all. § 28. Our conception of the Divine Power really heightened by this view: its practical value. § 29. Why pluralism must be theistic — a Deity required to guide the world-process. § 30. Pluralism not Polytheism.
• Chapter XI. Immortality
o § 1. The unreasonable attitude of men towards the subject. Do they really desire to believe in a future life? § 2. Is such belief really desirable? Its dangers and advantages. § 3. Can the question be settled by an appeal to facts in the shape of ghost stories, etc.? Facts which are not reasonable carry no conviction.
o §§ 4-13. But the reasons on both sides are inadequate, (a) In favour of immortality. §4. (1) The religious argument. § 5. (2) The argument from moral necessity and the postulates of feeling. § 6. (3) From dualism and the different natures of body and soul. This ends in materialism, or in the immortality of a universal Soul, which is not personal.
o §§ 7-13 (b) The arguments against immortality. § 7. (1) Materialism. § 8. (2) The self-evidence of death. But we know what death is only from the point of view of the survivors, and, taking an idealist view of the material world, this is insufficient. § 9. (3) The gradual evolution of consciousness: either all beings are immortal or none. § 10. This objection to be answered only by a doctrine of gradations in immortality, corresponding to those of consciousness. §11. Practically a future life dependent on self-identity and memory. § 12. But memory is a matter of degree. Immortality proportioned to spiritual development. § 13. Objections.
o §§ 14-16. The metaphysical basis for the belief in immortality. § 14. Its only secure basis in the plurality of ultimate existences, whose spiritual evolution inspires the material evolution. § 15. Their relation to our phenomenal selves. The latter phases in the development of the former, which persist as factors in that development. The immortality of the good and transitoriness of evil. § 16. This theory meets the chief difficulties.
o §§ 17-25. Elucidation of difficulties. § 17. Preexistence, confirmed by Darwinist account of the "descent of man." §§ 18-22. Pre-existence and Heredity. § 18. Not incompatible, owing (§ 19) to the possibility of double causation. § 20. Examples of this. §21. Hence the scientific and the metaphysical views both true. § 22. The significance of heredity. § 23. Do several phenomenal beings correspond to a single ultimate spirit? Evidence in favour of this view. § 24. Especially in the existence of Sex. A metaphysic of Love. § 25. Yet this does not affect the ultimate ideal.
• Chapter XII. Conclusion
o § 1. The relation of the world's evolution to ultimate reality. § 2. The ultimate aim of the process — the perfectioning of a society of harmonious individuals. § 3. If so, its starting-point must have been a minimum of harmony. This implies a precosmic state, when no interaction, and hence no world, existed. It preceded Time and Change, and does not admit of further inquiries. § 4. The end of the world-process — in the attainment of perfect harmony or adaptation — the perfection and aim of all the activities of life. Distinguished by its metaphysical character from the Becoming of the time-process, a changeless and eternal state of perfect Being. This includes a solution of all difficulties, evil, Time, divergence of thought and feeling, etc.
o §§ 5-11. The nature of Perfection. § 5. It is conscious, but not self-conscious. § 6. It is perfect Activity rather than Rest, Being rather than Not-Being, Heaven rather than Nirvana. The conception of the Ideal as the perfection of activity, held by Aristotle. § 7. The analogy of perfect motion. § 8. The content of the perfect activity of Being cannot be imagined, but only conceived, as it is an ideal of thought which lacks all analogy in sensuous experience. But if reality realizes the ideals of thought, i.e., if the world is rational and knowledge possible, the ideal of Being must be realized. For it is implied in the assumption of all thought that what becomes is. But it must be experienced and cannot be anticipated. § 9. Hence it can be described only as the perfection of the activities of life, and yet transcends them. It is perfect goodness, knowledge, beauty, and happiness, and yet something more. § 10. It is all-embracing, else its harmony might be destroyed. Hence the existing imperfection of the world reflected in the divine consciousness. The expression of this principle in philosophy and religion — the sympathetic suffering of Christ. The world-process a redemption of all beings. §11. It is attainable, as a real process does not admit of infinite approximations.
o § 12. The ultimate answer to the problem — the world-process leads from timeless Not-Being through temporal Becoming to eternal Being. § 13. Yet this answer is hypothetical, and only gives an alternative to Pessimism, for the final rejection of which (§ 14) Faith in the rationality of things is required; demonstration must issue in belief.
Appendix. Freedom and Necessity
• § 1. The difficulty as usually stated insoluble, as (§ 2) both terms have several senses. § 3. The difficulty really one about the nature, not of the will, but of causation. § 4. This shown by fact that both determinists and libertarians ultimately arrive at indeterminism. § 5. But the question has been wrongly put, for to explain the will by causation is to explain the prototype by the derivative. The assumptions made. § 6. Causation and necessity strictly applicable only to the will. Necessity should mean the feeling of compulsion, § 7, when, like Freedom, it would be a psychological fact. Freedom and Necessity as correlative, and both abnormal. § 8. For the maximum consciousness of either involves an unhealthy mental condition, while thorough degradation is unconscious of either necessity or freedom. § 9. This is the condition of inanimate nature, the Becoming of which is neither necessary nor free. But we read causal necessity into what simply happens. § 10. But as there is a state beneath morality and freedom, so there is one which transcends the consciousness of a freedom and necessity, viz., perfect wisdom and perfect virtue. So both necessity and freedom are defects of a nature only partly rational, and would vanish together in perfection, i.e., at the end of the world-process.

It seems doubtful whether an assertion of the unity of things which left no room for the recognition of their difference was a change for the better. Certainly philosophy has since had occasion to repent of its hasty identification of the Deity with the unity of the universe, and to lament the failure of every system which attempted to understand the world on this assumption....

§ 10. The conception of the Deity adopted by philosophic pantheism is from every point of view a mistake. Emotionally it is a mistake, because the philosophic infinite is not God, and cannot satisfy the religious emotions. Scientifically it is a mistake, because it is not a principle which is capable of explaining anything in or about the world. Logically it is a mistake, because it is grounded upon fallacies and paralogisms.

Emotionally Pantheism is disastrous, because it has destroyed the soil on which alone human emotions can develop. Religious emotion is destroyed by the fact that the god of Pantheism is, to all intents and purposes, nothing. Moral activity is destroyed by the fact that the distinctions of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, what is and what ought to be, must to Pantheism be ever and entirely unmeaning.

Scientific activity is destroyed by the fact that the world, in whatever way we look at it, must of necessity be meaning[less] and purposeless. In short, it is in vain that Pantheism tries to avoid the confession that our life is a senseless illusion: it cannot vindicate the reality of our partial life against the all-absorbing claims of the whole.

In the first place Pantheism is Atheism, and only a lack of courage or of logic can distinguish between them. For if all is God and all is one, all distinctions vanish. All is right and all is well, for all things exist but by the favour and support of the infinite: to decry the perfection of any existing thing is to blaspheme against God. Hence all appeal to God is futile: it is for God to appeal to God against God. So being equally in all, God is not a factor in the course of life: God is a quantite negligeable, because equally shared by all things....

In the second place, Pantheism is no less fatal to the moral than to the religious sentiments. For it must regard all good and evil as relative and therefore as illusory. It is only from our perverted standpoint that the distinction of Good and Right and Evil and Wrong and imperfection exists; from that of the infinite, that which is, is what it ought to be, and everything occupies just the position it should. The ''God" of Pantheism is not only impotent to alleviate our sufferings — sufferings which he himself inflicts upon himself — but he is actually indifferent to them; the physical and mental tortures of myriad beings are actually seen to be "very good" in the eyes of "God." And of this diabolical indifference he can only be acquitted if we reflect that it must evidently proceed from ignorance. For God cannot be in any way aware of our woes, not only because an infinite God cannot be in any way conscious (§ 3), but because, from the standpoint of the infinite, our whole phenomenal world must be nought, unfelt, uncared for, and unknown. Our "real" world is as relative as good and evil, and like them would vanish sub specie aeternitatis, For the all-embracing infinite admits of change as little as it does of imperfection or of Time. It is all things and has all things, and therefore no change could add to or subtract from its substance. If, therefore, change appears to exist, it must be an illusion of our deluded sight, which does not penetrate to the infinite. The world would be an inexplicable illusion, an unmeaning, incoherent pageant, dreamt by the grotesque creatures of the Absolute's unconscious dream, an unreal chase of shadows across the dark background of the Absolute, a phantasmagoria existing only in the fancy of the phantoms that behold it. And so its fleeting shadows would not affect the Absolute, nor it them: not though we cry aloud shall we awake the sleeping "god" of whom we are the dream. Heaven is as dumb and irresponsive to the prophesyings of the philosophers of the Absolute as it ever was to the priests of Baal.

§ 11. And earth also: for the Absolute is no less incompatible with the methods of human science. An infinite God is as much out of relation to human knowledge as to human feeling. Pantheism explains nothing, just because it professes to explain everything. For a principle which may be regarded as the ultimate ground of all things cannot be used as the explanation of anything in particular. Hence we arrive at the paradox that the ultimate ground of all things, and cause of their existence, is the cause of nothing in the nature of that existence. In other words, for the purposes of science as well as for sentiment, Pantheism resolves itself into Atheism.

It follows that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Pantheism and all the finite methods by which men have sought to understand the world. The evolutionist method especially, regarding the world as a process, is pledged to deny the infinite in every form (cp, ch. vii. § 20). For nothing infinite can be in process, or if it is in process, the process must be unintelligible.

The vulgar hear and admire such explanations of things as that ''the Absolute can realize itself only in the world," that ''it becomes self-conscious only in man," and even that ''the history of the world is the process whereby the Absolute returns into itself enriched."...

If, e.g., the Absolute is realized in the world, then either the existence of the world is necessary to that of the Absolute, or it is not. If it is, the world must either have existed forever, for the Absolute to be real, and it is absurd to speak of the Absolute as the First Cause (ch. ii. § 10), or the world and the Absolute have come into existence together. But if the Absolute has come into existence, it must have become either out of something or else out of nothing, for it cannot have originated out of itself before it existed itself. If out of nothing, cadit quaestio, it is admitted that nothing is the ultimate ground of existence, and that existence is ultimately irrational. If out of something else, then that something and not the Absolute is the real ground of existence ultimately, and the same question must be raised about it, and so on to infinity.

If, on the other hand, the world was not necessary to the existence of the Absolute, then why was it generated? If it was generated for any reason, then why did that reason impel the Absolute to generate the world at the time it did, rather than at any other? Did the infinite begin to find infinite time hang heavily on its hands, and if so, why did it begin to do so? Or if the world was generated for no reason, if we are driven to admit that the Absolute cannot be moved by reasons, is not this the most absolute indeterminism (cp. App. § 4), the most complete confession of the irrationality of the world? For what explanation is it of the world to derive it from an uncaused, unprovoked, and (as we shall see in § 12) impossible change in the Absolute?

And even supposing that in some utterly inscrutable way the Absolute somehow had something to do with the generation of the world, what could it possibly have effected thereby? What difference could creation make to it? What could it realize by creation that was not already real? It must be supposed to have created all things out of itself, seeing that it could create them neither out of nothing nor out of something outside it. But it already was all things, and contained all things; and so could neither realize itself nor anything else any more than it was realized already.

And the idea that the Absolute attains to self-consciousness in man is equally untenable, when analysed. The Absolute either contains self-consciousness already, and then it is nothing new, or it does not, and then the same question arises as to how anything can come into being within the circle of an all-embracing being. For the paltry excuse that all things exist potentially in the Absolute before the creation, but not actually until the world is created, will not help us out of the difficulty. Potential existence, as we saw, is nothing (ch. vii. § 18), nothing but a reference to a higher actuality. And in this case there is no higher actuality to refer to; for it would have to be an actuality that could dispose the all-including Absolute to realize its potentialities. We require something to explain how in the Absolute potentiality can be something and something different from actuality, to explain how the difference between them could arise. If the world was ever potential, then why did it become actual?

And besides, the idea that our consciousness is of any value to the infinite surely displays the most extreme extravagance of human arrogance. Why should the Absolute become self-conscious in man? Because he happens to be the highest being with which our limited knowledge is acquainted? But why should not the unnumbered stars contain myriads of beings incomparably loftier than the obscure denizens of a paltry planet? What, then, is the use of man, and the use, in any case, of countless beings? Why should the Absolute strive to become imperfectly self-conscious in the lower stages of spiritual existence, when it might do so perfectly in the highest? What sense is there in attaining by a long, laborious process, what might have been attained with instantaneous ease? Assuredly, neither the human nor any other reason can ever discover the meaning of a world-process, which takes means to an end which might have been attained without them. To our "finite" minds such a process must always appear an absurdity; it is a process which can reveal nothing but the ultimate insanity of all things.

And if the means of the world-process are thus absurd and irrational, its end is no less meaningless. For how can it "enrich the Absolute"? Can any process which takes place within the Infinite All add one feather's weight to its substance, diminish or increase by one jot or tittle the being of that which is all things and has all things? Will it not be what it is alike amid the crash of worlds and amid the throes of their birth? It would be paying the utter absurdity of this conception of the infinite concerned in a process, an unmerited compliment to liken it to a spider spinning elaborate cobwebs out of its own substance, and then, finding that there was nothing else to catch in them, proceeding to enmesh itself in its own web, and after infinite labour succeeding in reabsorbing its own production. And yet such melancholy absurdities are put forward not by one or two philosophies, but by nearly all who attempt these ultimate questions at all, as the deepest truth about the nature of things! It is perhaps fortunate that the obscurity of their language conceals this final void from the generality of men, but it exists in all philosophies which make an infinite God their first principle.4

-- Riddles of the Sphinx: A Study in the Philosophy of Evolution, by A TROGLODYTE [Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller]

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PREFACE.

It is the privilege of a preface that it enables the author to deprecate some misconception of the scope and tendencies of his work by a preliminary explanation. And this privilege is doubly valuable when the author has to excuse himself for writing a book upon subjects of the highest human interest. For he feels that it is no adequate excuse to plead that the condition of philosophy is such that his efforts cannot make it worse, and still less that the conclusions to which he has been led by many years of reflection may present some degree of novelty. He knows that real or apparent novelty is the greatest obstacle to success, even in this most progressive century, and that the mental attitude which was ever eager "to hear some new thing" is as extinct as the "Attic salt" which seasoned the disputations of the ancient philosophers. And the more fundamental the ideas are, upon which change is alleged to be necessary, the more violent is the resistance with which novel doctrines are resented. There is no subject, therefore, on which mankind is more conservative, and more unintelligently conservative, than metaphysics, and a novelty in metaphysics is met as coldly as a novelty in fashions is welcomed warmly. So far, then, from priding himself upon his novelty, the author would rather hope that he has not carried Innovation to a pitch too audacious, and has made it sufficiently clear that his principles are either ancient principles which he has revived, or commonly current principles which he has worked out to their logical conclusions, and cleared of the inconsistencies which ordinarily deface them.

It is not upon the ground of novelty that the author would base his appeal for indulgence, but rather upon two wholly different facts.

To the more or less technical public of those who love philosophy for its own sake and study it irrespective of its results, as one of the finest and most salutary disciplines of the mind, he would appeal because he believes that the experience of the last sixty years must have generated in their minds an unavowed but deep-seated and widespread distrust of and disgust with the methods which have starved philosophy in the midst of plenty, and condemned it to sterility and decay in the very midst of the unparalleled progress of all the other branches of knowledge. Can they really believe that a science is on the right path, which in the opinion of its most authoritative exponents "has made no substantial advance since Hegel," and which meets the advances of the other sciences by an attitude of querulous negation? Our philosophers have given more or less intelligible reasons, mostly in the form of voluminous commentaries on their predecessors, for their inability to accept a scientific interpretation of things which was so unduly neglectful of this or that technical distinction, laid down by Hegel, or Kant, or Thomas Aquinas, or Aristotle. But though they have abounded in endless criticisms of one another and of the scientists, they have not found it possible to inform us what interpretation they themselves would put upon the world in the light of modern discoveries. Where is the cultivated reader to go for a positive statement of the philosophic view of the world, for an exposition of modern metaphysics, and for an explanation of their bearing on the problem of life in its modern shape?

It was the sense of this want, of the absence of any interpretation of modern results in the light of ancient principles, which prompted the author to give what is substantially a philosophy of Evolution,1 the first perhaps which accepts without reserve the data of modern science, and derives from them a philosophical cosmology, which can emulate the completeness of our scientific cosmogonies. He believes that quite apart from professed philosophers, there exists a large and growing body of men, who are interested to know "what it all comes to," who are impressed by the mystery of the claim made on behalf of philosophy, and yet repelled by the fragmentariness, the unattractive form and the inconclusiveness of modern philosophy. Thus there exists a great deal of philosophic interest which is baffled by the difficulties of the subject, a great deal of philosophic reflection which comes to nothing, or still worse, leads only to confusion, for lack of the most ordinary facilities for studying the subject. It is with a view to affording these, and in the hope that his book may be found not only a contribution to modern philosophy, but useful also as an introduction to its study, that the author has avoided needless technicalities, and as far as possible explained their use on their first appearance. And to some extent the same motive has led him to treat his subject in the order which it assumes to the individual mind as it sets out on its explorations. By setting out from the anti-metaphysical agnosticism of ordinary men, it starts with a stock of ideas which are more familiar to men than the fundamental conceptions of metaphysics, which come last in the order of discovery. And at the same time this arrangement brings out more clearly the natural dialectic of the soul, and the necessity of the process which impels it, step by step, from the coarsest prejudice and crassest "fact," towards the loftiest ideals of metaphysics. But an adequate defence of the plan of the book may be made also on its intrinsic merits. It is written not only in the order which is likely to be most palatable to the ordinary reader, but also in the order which is natural both to human thought and to the course of the world, which is required by its inductive method of philosophizing (ch. vi. § 2), the order in which it took shape in the author's brain, and the order which is most worthy of the dignity of the subject. For by representing the course of the argument as a sort of philosophical Pilgrim's Progress, it most emphatically asserts the vital importance of the points at issue.

And yet, of course, the author is well aware that his order is not devoid of countervailing disadvantages. It makes him liable, e.g., to verbal contradictions between the earlier and more imperfect adumbrations of a conception, and the clearer and more perfect grasp which is possible only later on, i.e., it renders it necessary to read the earlier to some extent in the light of the later assertions. This danger it has been attempted to minimize by a frequent use of cross-references. And, secondly, it was unfortunately impossible to avoid a good deal of technical discussion in chapters ii. and iii., in the refutation of Agnosticism and the establishment of Scepticism: all that could be done was to warn the non-technical reader of what to omit by means of the analysis of the argument.

As to the remaining points which might seem to require explanation, the author must refuse to apologize for what may seem the romantic character of some of his conclusions. For romance is a relative term, and for his part he would often be inclined to agree with the uninitiated public in looking upon some of the most ordinary assertions of the dullest every-day philosophy as the wildest and most pernicious romance. And in any case, no apology should be needed for the romance of philosophy in an age which has rightly learned to appreciate "the fairy tales of science." If truth seems stranger than fiction, it is because we have previously abased our minds to the level of superstitions none the less fictitious for being unpoetical.

The attitude of ''Riddles of the Sphinx" to the established religion is a subject more important and more difficult, and it would be presumptuous to attempt any forecast of its reception. But its author may sincerely claim that its relation to Christianity is one of complete independence, and even that it was intended rather for the deniers and doubters of religious truth. And this was all the more possible that on the whole the discussion dealt with subjects upon which religious tradition was silent, or discussed them on planes so different that their respective assertions could hardly come into contact. Nevertheless, whenever the conclusions arrived at coincided with those of religion, this has been frankly admitted. But in no case has this coincidence been quoted as an authority, or taken the place of independent argument. Neither, on the other hand, has the author concealed his disagreement with certain widely prevalent religious views, such as, e.g., that as to the infinity of the Deity. But he has been at pains to point out that the views he combats have not been unambiguously asserted by the Christian Church, and that they are incompatible with the spirit of all religion. He trusts, therefore, that rather than impugn the orthodoxy of a philosophy which contains no doctrine inconsistent with the principles of religion, theologians will find it possible to put such an interpretation upon the dogmas in question as will at length reconcile faith with reason.

Instead of hastily condemning verbal divergencies from the wording of the Athanasian Creed, let them reflect rather whether it is not wiser to meet in a conciliatory spirit the well-meant efforts of a philosophical theory which may sincerely claim that its metaphysics enable it to grant to religion the substance, though not the shadow of its demands, and which challenges careful consideration of the question whether all the alternative systems do not do just the reverse, and sacrifice the substance to the shadow. Certainly religion can still less afford to quarrel needlessly with philosophy than science; but even the votaries of the physical sciences may find it growing more and more impossible to disavow their metaphysical basis, and more and more needful to recognize that the problems of philosophy concern the first principles of all knowing and all living. Hence it was with the idea of diminishing this estrangement between philosophy and ''science," that the author has attempted to bring out the metaphysical conclusions implied in the frank and full acceptance of the methods of modern science, and in the hope that both parties might discover in them some possibility of composing their differences in a manner equally advantageous and honourable to both.

But though the shock of diametrically opposed views is generating in many thoughtful minds, the conviction that their common ground and reconciliation must be sought deeper down than has been the fashion, the anti-metaphysical surface current is still sufficiently violent, both in religion and in science, to render discretion the duty of all who do not covet the barren honours of a useless martyrdom. Hence it would be needless to assign any further reason for the last point it is necessary to allude to, viz., the anonymity of the Riddles of the Sphinx, even if the professional position of its author were such that he could afford to disregard men's intolerance of real or seeming innovation. For the splendid satire of Plato is unfortunately still too true to the spirit of men's treatment of those whose souls have risen by rough paths of speculation to the supernal spheres of metaphysics, and who return to tell them that the shadows on the walls of their Cave are not the whole truth, nor precisely what their nurses have taught them, and such as they have learnt from their grandmothers. In their wrath ''they would, if perchance they could lay their hands upon them, verily put them to death;" for their first impulse is still to stone the prophets, whose spirit their bootless reverence will afterwards oppress beneath the burden of memorial sepulchres. Who then will take it upon him to blame a philosopher if he wraps his mantle closely around his face?

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Notes:

1 Of course, in speaking of the attitude of the philosophers proper towards scientific data, writers like Mr. Herbert Spencer are excluded. For he is just a typical representative of modern ideas which have failed to obtain due notice at the hands of the metaphysicians. In von Hartmann's case there is indeed no disputing the reality of the old metaphysics, but their juncture with the new ideas of Evolution is too superficial, and the latter have not been able substantially to affect the character of the former (cp. ch. x. § 11, note).

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Part 1 of 2

CHAPTER VII. THE METAPHYSICS OF EVOLUTION.

§ 1. The discussion of the metaphysics of Evolution may come with the shock of seeming paradox on those who pride themselves on their complete exemption from metaphysical views and metaphysical knowledge. But In reality their surprise is quite uncalled for; and if they knew what metaphysics were, they would perceive that it was as difficult to avoid talking metaphysics as it is to avoid talking prose. It requires a real poet to avoid prose, and it requires a real metaphysician to avoid metaphysical assumptions. For ordinary men the choice is only between good and bad metaphysics as between good and bad prose.

For metaphysics is simply the science of the fundamental principles of all knowing and being, and it is impossible to act or think without assuming and implying some such principles. It is as impossible to carry on life without metaphysical principles as it is to carry on thought without logical principles. The only real question is whether our various metaphysical principles are to be consistent with one another and capable of being combined into a connected whole or not; and it is highly probable that, unless great care is taken, they will not be so consistent. Hence the object of the systematic study of metaphysics is to render us conscious of the errors of the bad metaphysics of common life and common science, and to avoid such views of fundamental principles as will make nonsense of all things. In this respect metaphysics resemble logic, the science of the principles on which our thought proceeds; for logical principles also cannot be with impunity ignored. If we are ignorant of them, it is probable that our thought will misapply them; but to dispense with them is impossible. But though metaphysical and logical principles cannot be dispensed with, it is not necessary to be conscious of them; on the contrary, just as people reasoned rightly and thought logically long before Aristotle explicitly stated the principles of logic, so it is possible to discover and to use metaphysical principles in ordinary life and in science long before they are consciously appropriated by systematic philosophy.

And so it is not too much to say that every considerable advance in science has involved a parallel advance in our view of metaphysical first principles; and it would not be difficult to illustrate this by the history of metaphysical principles of acknowledged importance, which have owed their discovery, or at least their acceptance, to the progress of the other sciences. Thus it was nothing but Newton's discovery of gravitation which enabled the principle of Interaction to supersede the old conceptions of Activity and Passivity (cf, ch. iii. § 10); and the full import of the metaphysical revolution which was thus worked by a physical discovery has hardly even now been realized in all philosophic controversies (ch. xii. § 10).1

This explanation should suffice to render the assertion of metaphysical principles in Evolution a truism rather than a paradox, and to convince us that, if their importance is in any way proportionate to their scientific value, they will throw much light upon the ultimate problems of life. And it will be the object of this chapter to show, not only what the metaphysical principles underlying the progress of modern science are, but also that our expectations as to their value are likely to be more than fulfilled.

§ 2. The great method of science which has proved so fruitful of progress in modern times has been the Historical Method, which investigates things by tracing their history. Wherever it has been possible to apply it, the light thrown on the nature of things by the study of their history has been such that in most branches of science a rejection of the Historic Method would justly be regarded as a conclusive mark of unscientific perversity. And in its origin evolutionism is nothing but a special application and development of the Historical Method, the metaphysical assumptions of which it shares. Those assumptions are so few and so simple that ordinary thought would hardly think of calling them metaphysical; and yet they really involve some very grave metaphysical difficulties.

The fundamental assumption on which every form of the Historical Method is based is that the thing investigated has had a history. And to say that a thing has had a history is to assert, not only that it has had a past, but that this past has a bearing upon and a connexion with its present condition.

These postulates are so easily granted on ordinary occasions that we are apt to overlook the metaphysical assumptions to which they commit us. The reality of history implies the reality of the past; i.e., the reality of Time and the causality of the past with respect to the present. For the conditions which render the application of the Historical Method valid are absent, if a thing has not existed in the past, or if its past is not causally connected with its present. And these conditions, which make it possible to speak of a history at all, will be found ultimately to involve, not only the reality, but also, as a further metaphysical postulate, the limitation of Time, or, at all events, of the past of the thing to which a history is ascribed.

But this very important point deserves further elucidation.

§ 3. The Historical Method supposes that the cause and explanation of the present state of a thing is to be found in its past, that its nature will appear when its origin has been discovered. But what if this supposition be an illusion? What if there is no real causal connexion between the past and present states of things, and the succession of their phases resembles rather the successive arrangements of a kaleidoscope, or of dissolving views in a magic-lantern, in which picture follows upon picture without any intrinsic connexion between them (cf. ch. iii. § 11)?2

And again, what if things have had no origin? Surely the search for origins, the claim that the explanation of things is to be found in their history, is fundamentally false if the infinity of Time renders the whole conception of a beginning or origin a delusive prejudice of our fancy? If things have fluctuated to and fro from all eternity, in a confused and unintelligible series of indeterminate changes, if everything has passed into everything else by insensible and indefinite gradations, not in virtue of any determinate and discoverable law, but in consequence of the kaleidoscopic freaks of an irrational, inscrutable, and irresponsible ''Unknowable," will not their nature baffle the utmost efforts of historical research? If men have "developed" into protoplasm and protoplasm into man, in an infinite number of infinitely various and capricious ways, what meaning can any longer be attached to the history of the Evolution of man out of protoplasm? If the Becoming of the world has really been infinite, no amount of history will bring us any nearer to its real origin; it is vain to sound the bottomless abyss of the past with the puny plummet of science. The Historical Method is futile, all theories of Evolution are false, and the nature of things is really unknowable.

And if we refuse to admit these conclusions, we must admit as the metaphysical postulate of the Historical Method in all its forms, that things have had an origin, and their history a beginning. And so it appears that the ancient historians, who began their histories with the beginning of the world, were prompted by a correct and truly scientific instinct; they felt that unless they began at the beginning, they would have to leave much obscure, and, that if a beginning was in the nature of things unattainable, all would be left obscure, and all explanations would ultimately come to nought. Thus the vindication of a determinate beginning and a real origin as the necessary pre-supposition of any historical account, commits us to the doctrine of a beginning of the world, or at least of the present order of things. But it does not directly compel us to assert the finiteness of Time. Until the nature of the infinity of Time has been investigated (in ch. ix. § 11), we may here reserve judgment, all the more easily that we do not perhaps really require to limit Time for the purposes of the Historical Method. But we can avoid it only by a supposition at least as difficult. The origin which the method requires need not have an origin of Time; it is conceivable that the world existed for an infinity of time, and then entered into the historical process of development at some fixed point in the past. Supposing e.g., that life had existed from all time in the form of protoplasm, it might suddenly have taken to developing more complex forms, and this point would form the starting-point of biology, and the ideal fixed point to which the Historical Method would go back. Or again, an "eternal" Deity may have existed always, and at some point in the past have created the beginnings of the world. In this second case the ideal starting-point of the Historical Method would be also the real beginning of the world (at least as a world); in the first, it would be ideal only, and mark the limit merely for our knowledge. But in either case, the Historical Method would be unable to distinguish the ideal from the real limit; it could not determine whether its starting-point was merely an instantaneous phase in the history, or whether it had not existed for an infinity before the beginning of change and beyond the reach of all history. It is thus an intrinsic limitation of the Historical Method, that even where it does penetrate to an apparent beginning, it cannot tell us whether it is the beginning of the existence of the thing or only of its history.

§ 4. Now It follows from the fact that modern Evolutionism is a special application of the Historical Method that it shares all the metaphysical assumption and limitations of that method. But in the course of its development it has superadded several others. And as its history affords the most instructive examples of how scientific progress unwittingly develops metaphysical conceptions (ch. vi. §§ 9, 16), it will be no real digression to trace the history of the theory of Evolution.

The evolutionism which has revolutionized the thought of our century is the evolutionism of Charles Darwin, and confessedly arose out of an interpretation of the gradations and affinities of animal species in the light of the Malthusian law of population. That is to say, it arose out of a hint which the single science of zoology received from the science of sociology.3 After revolutionizing zoology, it found its scope so much enlarged by that process, that it could be applied with success to many other sciences, such as botany, biology and anthropology, with especial appropriateness to sociology (from which it had received its original impulse), and even to psychology and ethics.4 And every new application had the effect of bringing out more definitely the principles by which it proceeded.

Thus it appeared as the common result of all evolutionist histories, what had not before seemed a necessary characteristic of historical explanations, that they traced the genesis of the higher and more differentiated subsequent forms out of earlier forms which were lower and simpler and more homogeneous. And hence arose the first specific addition Evolutionism made to the Historical Method proper, which may be described as the assertion that historical research leads us from the more complex to the simpler, and ''explains" complexity by deriving it from simplicity. And perhaps it is the aesthetic obviousness of this process, rather than any magic virtue in mere history, which has rendered evolutionist explanations so plausible and so popular. But it is this addition also which commits the evolutionist theory of descent to a course of metaphysical assertion by which it becomes at the outset a specimen, though a most favourable one, of the pseudo-metaphysical method (ch. vi. § 3). And if in this it errs, its error Is yet venial. It had achieved so much In the way of extending the borders of science, and thrown such a surprising light upon so many obscure problems, that we might well be pardoned for a greater blindness to the limitations of the theory than we have actually displayed. For we were able to carry the histories of things so much further back than we had ever expected, and were so wholly absorbed in disputing the details of those histories, that our dazzled and distracted reason could hardly muster the composure to inquire whether the historical explanations of evolutionism were successful as a whole, and whether their complete success would not bring out an inherent weakness of the method. The consciousness of this difficulty was generated only by the further advance of the theory of Evolution itself.

§ 5. That historical explanations should trace the development of the complex out of the simple was at first merely an empirical fact of observation; it was an interesting scientific fact, but not a philosophic principle. But when this turned out to be the invariable result of each new extension of the Historical Method, the idea was imperatively suggested that this fact was no mere accident, but the result of an essential law in the history of things. The development of the simple into the complex came to be regarded as the higher law which all the applications of the Historical Method to the various sciences illustrated, and the theory of Evolution thereby ceased to be merely scientific, and became avowedly metaphysical.

The merit of the discovery and formulation of this great generalization belongs to Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose evolutionism is related to the biological evolutionism of Darwin much as the Newtonian law of gravitation is related to Kepler's laws of the motions of the heavenly bodies. And the step taken by Mr. Spencer was not only one of the utmost importance for the development of the philosophic implications of the theory of Evolution, but also thoroughly justified by purely scientific considerations. For it was only by such a generalization that the applications of evolutionist principles to the various sciences could be brought into a connection that explained the similarity of their evolutions. A merely biological evolutionism, e.g., could never have accounted for the evolution of the chemical elements (§ 9); but from the standpoint of philosophic evolutionism the evolution in biology and in chemistry are instances of one and the same law.

6. When Evolution has been recognised as the universal law of the Becoming of things, the position of affairs is, that all things are subject to a law, which explains the higher as the development of the lower, and that this law may be formulated by means of the historical data of this development. We have thus advanced beyond the conception of isolated things having a history, to the conception a history of all things, a world-history; not only must things be taken in their historical context, but that context is one and the same for all.

And the world has not only got a history, but that history has a meaning, it is the process which works out the universal law of Evolution. The different sections of the world's history must be consistently interpreted with a reference to the universal law which they illustrate, i.e., interpreted as parts of the world-process.

And here we come upon the first distinct trace of the teleology which is inseparable from all evolutionism.5 For when the phenomena of the world's evolution are subordinated to the general law of Evolution, their relation inevitably tends to become that of means to an end. All things happen as illustrations of, or in order to illustrate the general law of Evolution. But it is still possible to disavow the teleology at this point in the development of evolutionism, although it admits of little doubt that the success of evolutionism in combating other kinds of teleological explanation is due to its own teleology.

For the attraction which teleology has for the human mind is indestructible; an ineradicable instinct forbids us to renounce the hope of finding in the rest of nature that action for the sake of rational ends which is so prominent in that section of nature represented by intelligence. And, as we saw (ch. V. § 6), all knowledge is based on the anthropomorphic assumption that the course of nature corresponds to the operation of our minds. If, then, it must correspond to some extent for knowledge to be possible at all, the completer the correspondence, the more knowable will the world be, and the teleological explanation of things, which asserts this correspondence to the fullest extent, thus becomes a legitimate ideal of knowledge.

But before describing the fully developed teleology of an evolutionism which is fully conscious of its metaphysical implications, it is necessary to return to the question of the value and validity of the explanation of the higher by its development out of the lower, which has been asserted to be a prominent feature, not only in philosophic evolutionism, but also in its merely biological stage.

§ 7. In what sense and under what conditions is a history of the development of the lower into the higher a complete and satisfactory explanation of anything? Is the mere fact that such an evolution takes place sufficient to satisfy us? If so, we might without further inquiry credit a conjuror, when before our eyes he changes a mango-seed into a mango-tree, or an egg into a handkerchief. It is not sufficient that a fact should happen for it to be intelligible; on the contrary, many facts, like death, e.g:, remain mysteries although they continually come under our observation. Hence it is not true that a mere history, merely as history, always explains the matter it deals with. In so far, therefore, as historical explanations of things seem satisfactory, it must be because they fulfil other conditions also.

What those conditions are will perhaps appear most clearly from an examination of the actual procedure of historical explanations. It appears from such examinations that one of three things may happen to a thing, the evolution of which is investigated by the Historical Method.

(1) It may be traced up to a point beyond which historical knowledge will not carry us; we may come to an unresolved and irresolvable residuum, which is the basis and datum of evolution, and which no evolution can explain.

(2) The thing to be explained may merge into something else, and cease to exist, or at least to be distinguishable as such.

(3) It may vanish entirely: it may be traced to its first appearance on the scene.

It is possible to illustrate each of these results of the historical explanation from various evolutionist theories. The first may perhaps be said to be the most common result in the present condition of our data. If we rigorously refuse to follow the evolutionist method beyond the data which are indisputably given, instead of prolonging our histories inferentially, we almost everywhere come to a point at which our evidence fails us. To take the most striking example, we can trace the history of life down to protoplasm, but we have no evidence that could explain how life arose out of lifeless matter. Strictly speaking, therefore, protoplasm is the inexplicable datum of biological evolution. For, though it so happens that protoplasm, or something very like that hypothetical basis of biology, is an actually visible substance, and so capable of further analysis by chemical and physical methods, there is nothing in its chemical and physical properties to bridge the gulf between them and the phenomena of life, nothing that renders it less of an ultimate fact for biology.

As an instance of the second we may quote the supposed origin of the intellectual and the moral consciousness in the evolution of life. As we trace the history of intelligence downwards, we seem to pass from the highest reason of man by insensible gradations to a form of life in which nothing that can fairly be called reason can any longer be distinguished. In the lowest forms of life there is not only no reason, but hardly any feeling, to be detected. It is only by the analogy of the higher forms of life that we ascribe to protoplasm the rudiments of thought and sensation. And what is true of intellectual and sensory consciousness, is still more conspicuous in the case of the moral consciousness. There is no need here to go down into animal life, for we find abundant examples in what must be called human beings of what seems a total absence of all moral feeling. We can all but fix the date of the origin of the moral consciousness, all but see how it differentiated itself out of the other factors of savage life. Of the third result we should obtain an example if by any chance we could witness the creation or coming into being of anything.

§ 8. But let us consider what effect would be produced upon the actual results of evolutionist explanations, if the law of evolution could be really and completely universalized. The first case will evidently not bear universalizing. An evolution which starts with an original datum is not completely successful in explaining a thing. On the contrary, it is probable that we should attribute to the original datum the germs at least of all the qualities of the final product, and thereby render the whole explanation illusory. For if we have already got in the original germ all the differences and difficulties we detect in the final product, the whole explanation becomes a petitio principii, and merely unfolds what we have taken care to put into the thing beforehand.

Neither can the second case be universalized. For it is clear that things cannot go on indefinitely being merged into other things, for the last thing would have nothing else for it to be merged into.

There remains, then, the third case, viz., that our theory of Evolution traces all things back to the point where they arise out of nothing.

But is this an explanation? Have we gained anything by showing laboriously and with an immense mass of illustration how A arises out of B, B out of C, etc., until we come to Z, and say that Z arises out of nothing?

And so we are, finally, confronted with this unthinkable miracle of the creation of all things out of nothing, as the final completion and logical perfection of the historical explanation! And yet it is an axiomatic principle of human thought that things cannot arise out of nothing, i.e., causelessly! 6

§ 9. And that origination out of nothing is not merely the logical conclusion to which a consistent use of the historical explanation must lead, appears from the fact that it has already been not obscurely asserted in certain evolutionist theories.

If we follow the bolder theories of the evolutionists, as illustrating the logical development of the method, without for the moment considering whether they are justified by the scientific data, we find that they derive all the phenomena of human life from the properties of original protoplasm. And they do not hesitate to carry us beyond this and to construct histories of "biogenesis," intended to account for the origin of life out of inorganic matter. They may attack the problem in a purely mechanical manner by regarding the phenomena of life as differing only in degree from processes of combination and crystallization, or they may also grapple with the logical difficulty of conceiving a transition from the unconscious to the conscious by theories of "mind-stuff" and the like. When once this mauvais pas has been surmounted, evolutionism finds more congenial material in the region of chemical and physical theories. Indeed, the most recent advances of chemical theory, as represented by Mr. Crookes' doctrine of Protyle (prothyle?),7 enable it to construct an extremely interesting and complete cosmogony.

The importance of Mr. Crookes' views to the theory of evolutionism is so great, and they have as yet penetrated so little into the general culture of the day, that no apology is needed for dwelling on them at greater length than on the well-known theories of Darwin and Spencer.8

Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) was an English physicist and chemist, and an early member of the Theosophical Society....

He achieved some remarkable results with experiments in "Radiant Matter." He was one of the "highest minds" whom the Adept Founders of the TS had hoped to interest in Theosophy. He became a member of the TS and One of the five councilors of the Society. HPB states (LBS, pp 224-5) that he was teaching a very occult doctrine and the the Mahatmas intended to help him.

Sir William Crookes and his wife joined The Theosophical Society in London on December 15, 1883, together with Charles Webster Leadbeater. In 1890 he was initiated into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and in the 1890s joined the Society for Psychical Research. Later, he joined the Ghost Club, a paranormal research organization, of which he was president from 1907 to 1912....

He studied mediums such as Kate Fox, Florence Cook, and others, and witnessed many phenomena, including the appearance of ghostly characters, such as Katie King. His report on this research in 1874, concluded that these phenomena could not be explained as conjuring, and that further research would be useful. Most scientists were convinced that spiritualism was fraudulent, and Crookes' final report so outraged the scientific establishment "that there was talk of depriving him of his Fellowship of the Royal Society." Crookes then became much more cautious and didn't discuss his views publicly until 1898, when he felt his position was secure. From that time until his death in 1919, letters and interviews show that Crookes was a believer in spiritualism.

-- William Crookes, by Theosophy Wiki

§ 10. Chemists have for some time been struck by the fact that a certain order and connection may be detected among the "elements." The working out of the periodic law, i.e., of the law of the natural grouping of the elements, is now one of the chief problems of theoretic chemistry. But to assert that the elements are not only different, but differ in a determinate manner, is to assert that there is a connection underlying their differences. The fact that the elements are capable of being arranged in a series, in groups of which the members resemble one another more closely than they do those of other groups, suggests that the seventy and odd substances which are accounted elements, because we have not hitherto been able to decompose them, are not final and ultimate facts. The law which explains their grouping must be regarded as anterior to them, and its operation may be described as the genesis of the elements. Hence it becomes possible to speak of the evolution of the elements.

But the analogy with biological evolution extends much further. It is impossible not to be struck with the great quantitative inequality in the occurrence of the elements. Some of them are widely distributed and occur in large masses, whereas others only occur rarely and in small quantities. If, therefore, the elements are to be regarded as the products of a process of evolution, it is evident that the process has been much more favourable to metals like iron than to one like platinum or uranium. "A rare element, like a rare plant or animal, is one which has failed to develop in harmony with its surroundings," i.e., failed in the struggle for existence.

And it is even possible to guess at the cause. One of the most striking facts about the rare metals is that they occur in rare minerals composed of several of these metals, and often occur in these minerals alone. Thus rare minerals, like samarskite or gadolinite, may be found to contain three or four of the rare metals, samarium, yttrium, erbium, etc., and their close and constant association evidently cannot be a matter of chance. Now if a soluble salt of one of these earths, e.g., yttria, be taken, and subjected to an extremely delicate and laborious process of "fractionation," by which the more soluble portions are separated out from the less soluble, it appears that the apparently elemental yttrium may be split up into several closely related substances, which, though in some cases their chemical properties may be indistinguishable, yet show marked differences in their spectra. And so, instead of a single metal, yttrium, with five bright lines in its spectrum, we get five substances with one line each in their spectrum. Similar results have been obtained with didymium and other metals, and quite lately (1889), even such common and apparently well-known metals as cobalt and nickel have been found to be constantly alloyed with a third substance, and the multiplication of such results seems simply a question of time.

§ 11. Now, says Mr. Crookes, what are we to make of these facts? Are we to give up our tests as worthless, or are we to dub all these membra disjecta of an element elements? To do this we should require some graduation of the conception of elementicity, which would dispense us from putting the constituents of yttrium and didymium on a par with oxygen and carbon with respect to their elementicity. But Mr. Crookes propounds another interpretation, which may startle old- fashioned chemists, but has the merit of being both sensible and philosophic. It is a mere prejudice, he says, to regard a thing as an element, because it has resisted all our reagents and all our tests: for each test can only cleave it in two, can only divide a compound into two portions, which are elements as far as that test is concerned. But if a new test is applied, the supposed element splits up with perfect ease. All that can be inferred from our "elements" is that the tests which would subdivide them further have not yet been discovered. And these experiments suggest also that the supposed homogeneity of the particles of a chemical substance was based upon our ignorance. Atoms are not, as Sir J. Herschel said, and Clerk Maxwell endorsed, "manufactured articles," exactly equal and similar, but, like all other real things, they possess individual differences and have an individual character. The individual differences appear so small only because of the minuteness of the whole scale, just as from a sufficiently lofty standpoint the individual differences between men also might appear as evanescent as those between the atoms do to us. And in chemical interactions these individual differences would be manifested by differences of atomic weight, not only between the different "elements," but within them. Some atoms of calcium might have the atomic weight of 39.9, and others of 40.1, and the ''atomic weight" of calcium, viz., 40, would be only the average of the closely related groups. Hence if we discover any method of separating the atoms of the atomic weight, 39.9, from those of the atomic weight, 40.1, we should get two substances differing slightly from the ordinary calcium of the chemists, and differing still more from each other. This, or something similar, is what may be supposed to have happened in the case of didymium and yttrium. It is probable, then, that the splitting up of elements into ''meta-elements" has been first observed among these rare metals only because they present greater individual divergences between their atoms than the rest, and perhaps it may be suggested that it was this very individualism, this lack of coherence and similarity between their more heterogeneous and loosely knitted constituents, which accounts for their comparative failure in the evolution of the elements.

§ 12. As to the manner of this evolution, Mr. Crookes' suggestion rests on astronomical facts. He infers from the fact that stars are not of all sizes, but seem to vary within certain limits, that there must be some agency to prevent the accretion of the stars beyond a certain point. He also infers from the fact that compound bodies are dissociated by heat, that the ''elements," if compound, must also be dissociated at very high temperatures. Hence he supposes that in the centre of the hottest stars all elements are dissociated. But dissociated into what? Into that out of which they were all evolved, says Mr. Crookes, i.e., into prothyle, the undifferentiated basis of chemical evolution, the formless stuff which was the origin of all substances. And so, while from our point of view matter simply disappears at the centres of the hottest stars, when the temperature exceeds a certain point, it is really reconverted into prothyle, which does not gravitate, because it is anterior to the differentiation of gravitating matter and imponderable ether. But though (sensible) matter is thus apparently destroyed at the centres of the universe, this loss is compensated by the genesis of matter at its confines. The existence of limits to space Mr. Crookes supports by an ingenious calculation, that "if an unlimited world of stars sent us radiations, we should receive 200,000 times as much light and heat as we do receive, unless radiations are absorbed or intercepted to such an extent that only 1/200,000 reaches us. This is so improbable that the conclusion that the universe is limited is with some emphasis declared by astronomy."9 And there is the less reason to object to this limitation of Space, as it will subsequently appear a necessary postulate also on other scientific and philosophic grounds (ch. ix. §§ 2-10). By this limitation of Space Mr. Crookes avoids the dissipation of energy by reason of its conversion into light and heat, and its subsequent loss by radiation Into the Infinite. He supposes that at the confines of the universe the ether vibrations constituting light are re-converted, first into prothyle, and then into atoms of ponderable matter, which, as soon as they are formed, commence to gravitate Inward, and close their careers by reaching the larger stars, and there being again dissolved Into prothyle.

Thus the atoms of sensible matter also are in a way individual beings. And both their individual and their chemical characteristics (as it were, their personal and racial character) will depend on the general physical conditions at the time and place of their formation, in accordance with the periodic law. And when formed a process of segregation and aggregation takes place among the atoms in consequence of which ''those which have approximately the same rates of motion" cohere to form sensible aggregates of practically homogeneous matter, "heaping themselves together by virtue of that ill-understood tendency through which like and like come together, that principle by which Identical or approximately identical bodies are found collected in masses in the earthy crust, instead of being uniformly distributed." There result certain ''nodal points In space with approximately void Intervals," which explains a difficulty which the theory of the evolution of the elements has to meet in common with that of the evolution of species, viz., the absence or scarcity of intermediate forms. And thus the larger aggregates first formed tend to absorb and force into conformity with their motions the surrounding atoms, and thus to grow disproportionately at the expense of the others: the common elements are those which have obtained a start in the process of genesis and improved their initial advantage.

Such is the life-history of the chemical atoms, for, like all things, they have a limited term of existence. They ''share with all created (? generated) beings the attributes of decay and death"; they are generated out of prothyle, according to the laws of the generation of matter, and when their due course has been accomplished, they return into that which gave them birth.

Prout's hypothesis was an early 19th-century attempt to explain the existence of the various chemical elements through a hypothesis regarding the internal structure of the atom. In 1815 and 1816, the English chemist William Prout published two papers in which he observed that the atomic weights that had been measured for the elements known at that time appeared to be whole multiples of the atomic weight of hydrogen. He then hypothesized that the hydrogen atom was the only truly fundamental object, which he called protyle, and that the atoms of other elements were actually groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms.

Prout's hypothesis was an influence on Ernest Rutherford when he succeeded in "knocking" hydrogen nuclei out of nitrogen atoms with alpha particles in 1917, and thus concluded that perhaps the nuclei of all elements were made of such particles (the hydrogen nucleus), which in 1920 he suggested be named protons, from the suffix "-on" for particles, added to the stem of Prout's word "protyle".

The discrepancy between Prout's hypothesis and the known variation of some atomic weights to values far from integral multiples of hydrogen, was explained between 1913 and 1932 by the discovery of isotopes and the neutron. According to the whole number rule of Francis Aston, Prout's hypothesis is correct for atomic masses of individual isotopes, with an error of at most 1%.

Prout's hypothesis remained influential in chemistry throughout the 1820s. However, more careful measurements of the atomic weights, such as those compiled by Jöns Jakob Berzelius in 1828 or Edward Turner in 1832, disproved the hypothesis.[4]:682-683 In particular, the atomic weight of chlorine, which is 35.45 times that of hydrogen, could not at the time be explained in terms of Prout's hypothesis. Some came up with the ad hoc claim that the basic unit was one-half of a hydrogen atom, but further discrepancies surfaced. This resulted in the hypothesis that one-quarter of a hydrogen atom was the common unit. Although they turned out to be wrong, these conjectures catalyzed further measurement of atomic weights.

The discrepancy in the atomic weights was by 1919 suspected to be the result of the natural occurrence of multiple isotopes of the same element. F. W. Aston discovered multiple stable isotopes for numerous elements using a mass spectrograph. In 1919 Aston studied neon with sufficient resolution to show that the two isotopic masses are very close to the integers 20 and 22, and that neither is equal to the known molar mass (20.2) of neon gas.

By 1925, the problematic chlorine was found to be composed of the isotopes 35Cl and 37Cl, in proportions such that the average weight of natural chlorine was about 35.45 times that of hydrogen. For all elements, each individual isotope (nuclide) of mass number A was eventually found to have a mass very close to A times the mass of a hydrogen atom, with an error always less than 1%. This is a near miss to Prout's law being correct. Nevertheless, the rule was not found to predict isotope masses better than this for all isotopes, due mostly to mass-defects resulting from release of binding energy in atomic nuclei, when they are formed.

Although all elements are the product of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into higher elements, it is now understood that atoms consist of both protons (hydrogen nuclei) and neutrons. The modern version of Prout's rule is that the atomic mass of an isotope of proton number (atomic number) Z and neutron number N is equal to sum of the masses of its constituent protons and neutrons, minus the mass of the nuclear binding energy, the mass defect. According to the whole number rule proposed by Francis Aston, the mass of an isotope is roughly, but not exactly, its mass number A (Z + N) times an atomic mass unit (u), plus or minus binding energy discrepancy – atomic mass unit being the modern approximation for "mass of a proton, neutron, or hydrogen atom". For example iron-56 atoms (which have among the highest binding-energies) weigh only about 99.1% as much as 56 hydrogen atoms. The missing 0.9% of mass represents the energy lost when the nucleus of iron was made from hydrogen inside a star. (See stellar nucleosynthesis).

-- Prout's hypothesis, by Wikipedia

Protyle (from Greek prōt- proto- + hylē substance) is a hypothetical base substance from which all chemical elements were believed, in the 19th century, to have been formed.

The term "protyle" was coined by the English chemist William Prout in early 19th-century in an attempt to explain the existence of the various chemical elements. He hypothesized that the hydrogen atom was the only truly fundamental object, which he called Protyle, and that the atoms of other elements were actually groupings of various numbers of hydrogen atoms.

In 1886, scientist and Theosophist Sir William Crookes revived the term to refer to original primal matter in an unorganized state, before the evolution of chemical elements. He proposed that this matter would not be hydrogen, but perhaps a half or a fourth part of hydrogen. He considered that this state of primordial matter would be intangible, unable to be perceived by the senses.

-- Protyle, by Theosophy Wiki

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Part 2 of 2

§ 13. But it is a more difficult question to determine what is the exact relation of this genesis of the elements to the life of the universe at large, and to decide whether it took place at a definite point in its past history, or continually renews its youth. For there is much that tells in favour of either view. Mr. Crookes himself frequently speaks of an original genesis of the elements out of prothyle as an event in the past; he speaks of primitive matter as formed by "an act of generative force throwing off at intervals atoms endowed with varying quantities of primary forms of energy," and even suggests, on very adequate chemical grounds, that "it is extremely probable that the chemism-forming energy is itself dying out, like the fires of the cosmic furnace." Moreover we have already seen that a real evolution implies a beginning (§ 3), and shall see that a valid evolutionism implies also an end (§ 20), so that Mr. Crookes' own interpretation of his speculations may claim greater consonance with the ultimate requirements of evolutionist metaphysics.

On the other hand, it would seem that unless new atoms were continually generated to repair the loss of those which revert into prothyle, and to restore to the universe the energy which is radiated out to its confines, the theory will not only fail to dissipate the fear of "a final decrepitude of the universe through the dissipation of energy," but also invalidate the famous metaphysical postulate of science as to the conservation of the same amount of matter in the universe, at least as far as sensible matter is concerned. So it is not surprising to find passages in which Mr. Crookes asserts that ''heat radiations propagated outwards through the ether from the ponderable matter of the universe, by some as yet unknown process, are transformed at the confines into the primary essential motions of chemical atoms, which, the instant they are formed, gravitate inwards, and thus restore to the universe the energy which would otherwise be lost to it." Hence it is perhaps preferable at the present stage of the inquiry to regard the continual generation and regeneration of the universe as the theory more in accordance with the spirit of pseudo-metaphysical evolutionism.

Thus, though stars and sidereal systems may have come into being and perished, formed matter must have been as eternal as prothyle, and it must be held that the universe itself at no time was not.10 The universe is an ever active, self-sustaining, and self-sufficing organism, living on for ever, though all its parts are born and die, and nourished by the constant and correlative transformations of atomic matter into prothyle and of prothyle into atoms, and having in prothyle a basis which all things have been and will be, but which itself never is. For though prothyle is the ground of all reality and the basis out of which all things are evolved, it is itself never actual: when atoms are dissolved into prothyle, they apparently perish, when they are generated, they arise out of nothing: for prothyle lacks all the qualities which could make it knowable or perceptible (§ 14).

Such is the theory of the evolution of all things out of prothyle, a theory deserving of the highest praise, not only for its scientific ingenuity, but also as being the logical completion of the evolutionist method of explanation. For it has derived all complexity and all differences from the absolutely simple and homogeneous, viz., prothyle. And as it depicts the universe as a perfectly self-existent whole, we may predict for it a very considerable popularity among the foes of "supernaturalism," as dispensing with the last apology for the belief in creation.

§ 14. But the very excess of the theory's success paves the way for its irretrievable overthrow of the method of which it is the logical result.

The prothyle, from which it derives all things, is in reality nothing, for it is devoid of all the characteristics of sensible reality. It is not tangible, because its particles, if it has any, would exist in atomic isolation; nor audible, because sound depends on vibrations in very complex matter; nor visible, because it is anterior to the differentiation of gravitating matter and ether, upon which the phenomenon of light depends. For the same reason it can have neither colour, nor weight, nor electric properties. It has no temperature, because heat is but molecular motion, and ex hyp. it precedes distinctions of chemical properties. In short, it has no qualities that could render it in any way perceptible; in the words of Empedocles, —

[x]11 [Thus it is neither to be seen by men, nor to be heard, nor to  be grasped by thought.]

and if it could actually exist, its existence could not be known.

And so the transition of matter into, and generation out of, prothyle, would have every appearance of a couple of miracles, of a passing into nothing, and of a generation out of nothing. For let us suppose that we were somehow able to be present when this unperceivable prothyle developed some properties. What we should experience would be that at one moment nothing appeared to exist, and that at the next so nothing came into being. And similarly in the case of the destruction of formed matter with definite qualities; it would appear simply to vanish away. Even, therefore, if we could be present at the evolution of prothyle, we should be none the wiser, and any explanation would appear more probable than the miraculous generation of something out of nothing.

Thus it seems to have been a mere delusion that prompted us to trace the origin of things out of what has no meaning, no qualities, and no reality apart from that which it develops into. In tracing the universe back to prothyle the Historical Method has reduced it to a fantastic and irrational nonentity, without form and without qualities, which differs from all other nothings only by its mysterious capacity to develop Into everything.

§ 15. Shall we conclude from this result that the evolutionist method is worthless, after the fashion of many who have perceived this intrinsic weakness of a professedly "unmetaphysical" (i.e., pseudo-metaphysical) evolutionism? It is true that as an ultimate explanation of things it has failed. It has reduced the "complex" to the ''simple," until it arrived at things so simple as to be indistinguishable from nothing, at simple substances which had a meaning only with reference to the complex ones which they were supposed to explain. Must we then reject the whole method as an error and the whole process by which it traced the connection between the higher and the lower as a delusion? To do this would be to do violence to our best instincts: we cannot lightly or wholly abandon a method which has added such great and varied realms to science. But the difficulty is such as might convince even the most anti-metaphysical of the necessity of a systematic criticism of ultimate questions, and of an investigation of the metaphysical implications of the evolutionist method, as being done capable of separating the valid and valuable elements in it from those which are delusive and absurd.

§ 16. Taken as the type of the pseudo-metaphysical method, which explains the higher by the lower, the theory of Evolution derives the actual reality from its germ, i.e., from that which was, what it became, potentially. Wherever we cannot conceive the lower as containing the germ of the higher potentially, the method fails. Thus it does not explain the genesis of consciousness out of unconscious matter, because we cannot, or do not, attribute potential consciousness to matter.

Now the metaphysical implications of the potential and the actual, i.e., of the theory of Evolution in its only tenable form, were fully worked out by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. Aristotle's doctrine of potentiality and actuality ([x]) is the most complete form of evolutionism conceivable. It admits of no differences in kind anywhere in the universe. From the lowest form of matter to the highest form of mind, the lower is the potentiality of which the higher is the actuality or realization. And so we ascend by insensible gradations from the first matter (prothyle), which is merely potential and never actual (cf. § 13), to the divine being which has completely realized all its potentialities, i.e., is all it can possibly be.

It is true, however, that Aristotle does not conceive this process from the potential to the actual to be one in Time, as the historical theories of Evolution are wont to do, but supposes the different degrees of perfection to coexist in Space rather than to succeed one another in Time. For he regards the world as eternal, and rejects the supposition of a secular progress in things.

But it is remarkable that he rejects it merely on the ground of lack of evidence. It would be absurd, he says,12 on account of slight and brief changes, like the growth of the Nile delta, to suppose a general cosmic motion ([x]).

Thus, for lack of the requisite scientific illustration, the true theory of Evolution had to remain still-born for 2,000 years, until the progress of physical science could ratify the results Aristotle had anticipated! But as soon as the scientific evidence was forthcoming, it was found necessary to revive Aristotle's speculations down to their special details, down to the very name bestowed upon the potentiality of Becoming, down to the assertion of the finiteness of the universe, and of the generation of its energy at its confines. And the correspondence between Mr. Crookes and Aristotle is the more valuable because it seems undesigned, and because the name of prothyle is (as its incorrect form shows) borrowed through the mediation of Roger Bacon.

17. But Aristotle had the advantage of being a metaphysician as well as a scientist, and so was well aware of the metaphysical value of the symbol he used in his physics and called prote hyle. He recognized that it was nothing in itself, and so laid down the axiom, which is so contrary to our ordinary modes of thinking, viz., that though the potentiality is prior to the actuality in the order of time ([x]) and in the order of our knowledge ([x]), yet the actuality is really prior to, and presupposed by the potential (it is [x] or [x]). That is to say, to take the old puzzle which really involves the whole question of philosophic method, though historically the egg comes before the chicken, it is yet an egg only in virtue of its potentiality to become a chicken; the egg exists in order to [bring] the development of the chicken out of it. Or, to put it into modern phraseology, the lower is prior to the higher historically, but the higher is prior metaphysically, because the lower can be understood only by reference to the higher, which gives it a meaning and of which it is the potentiality.

It is clear that this derivation of all things from pure potentiality, and the subsequent analysis of its meaning, explains, justifies, and reconciles the scientific and the metaphysical way of regarding things. Neither of them is gratuitous or useless, but each is adapted to certain purposes. In ordinary life and science, where we think backwards, and are more concerned with the past than with the future of things, the explanation by their causes, germs and potentialities is more in point. But in ultimate analysis none of these explanations are metaphysically adequate: things must be explained by their significance and purpose instead of by their ''causes," by their ideals instead of by their germs, by their actualities instead of by their potentialities. And these two ways of looking upon things are reconciled by the fact that they regard the same connexion of things in reverse order; the process is one and the same, but we find it convenient to look at it now from the one end and now from the other.

§ 18. Applying these results of the Aristotelian analysis to the prothyle of evolutionism, it appears that the more certainly it can reduce the whole sensible and material world to a pure potentiality, the more necessary does it make the existence of a prior actuality, as the cause of the evolution of the sensible. And that actuality must be not only prior (in Time, if the process is conceived as one in Time, or only in idea, or in both), but, by the very terms of the hypothesis, external to the evolving world, non-material and non-phenomenal. For since the whole of the material and phenomenal was supposed to have been derived out of the pure potentiality, the reality pre-supposed by that potentiality cannot itself have formed part of the material and phenomenal world.

And thus, so far from dispensing with the need for a Divine First Cause, the theory of Evolution, if only we have the faith in science to carry it to its conclusion, and the courage to interpret it, proves irrefragably that no evolution was possible without a pre-existent Deity, and a Deity, moreover, transcendent, non-material and non-phenomenal.

And for the power of such a Deity to produce the world, the pure potentiality with which evolutionism starts, is merely the expression. And the world as actual is prior to the germ which potentially contains it, simply because the world-process is the working out of an anterior purpose or idea in the divine consciousness. And as all things are, as far as possible, directed to the realization of that end or purpose, the real nature of things is to be found in their final cause, and not in their historical antecedents, which, just because they take precedence in Time, are means to an end, and of inferior significance in truth.

Thus it is not true, in the last analysis, that the lower explains the higher, or that the antecedent is truer than the final cause. On the contrary, it is only from the standpoint of the higher that the lower can be explained, and it is only by a recognition of final causes that the conception of causation can be cleared of its difficulties (cf. iii. § ii). The evolutionist method, which was to have abolished teleology, turns out itself to require the most boldly teleological treatment.

Aristotle's teleology, i.e. his stress upon the end or aim of change as its final cause, is an expression of his predominantly biological interests. It is influenced by Plato's biological theories, and also by Plato's extension of his theory of justice to the universe. For Plato did not confine himself to teaching that each of the different classes of citizens has its natural place in society, a place to which it belongs and for which it is naturally fitted; he also tried to interpret the world of physical bodies and their different classes or kinds on similar principles. He tried to explain the weight of heavy bodies, like stones, or earth, and their tendency to fall, as well as the tendency of air and fire to rise, by the assumption that they strive to retain, or to regain, the place inhabited by their kind. Stones and earth fall because they strive to be where most stones and earth are, and where they belong, in the just order of nature; air and fire rise because they strive to be where air and fire (the heavenly bodies) are, and where they belong, in the just order of nature. This theory of motion appealed to the zoologist Aristotle; it combines easily with the theory of final causes, and it allows an explanation of all motion as being analogous with the canter of horses keen to return to their stables. He developed it as his famous theory of natural places. Everything if removed from its own natural place has a natural tendency to return to it.

Despite some alterations, Aristotle's version of Plato's essentialism shows only unimportant differences. Aristotle insists, of course, that unlike Plato he does not conceive the Forms or Ideas as existing apart from sensible things. But in so far as this difference is important, it is closely connected with the adjustment in the theory of change. For one of the main points in Plato's theory is that he must consider the Forms or essences or originals (or fathers) as existing prior to, and therefore apart from, sensible things, since these move further and further away from them. Aristotle makes sensible things move towards their final causes or ends, and these he identifies with their Forms or essences. And as a biologist, he assumes that sensible things carry potentially within themselves the seeds, as it were, of their final states, or of their essences. This is one of the reasons why he can say that the Form or essence is in the thing, not, as Plato said, prior and external to it. For Aristotle, all movement or change means the realization (or 'actualization') of some of the potentialities inherent in the essence of a thing. It is, for example, an essential potentiality of a piece of timber, that it can float on water, or that it can burn; these potentialities remain inherent in its essence even if it should never float or burn. But if it does, then it realizes a potentiality, and thereby changes or moves. Accordingly, the essence, which embraces all the potentialities of a thing, is something like its internal source of change or motion. This Aristotelian essence or Form, this 'formal' or 'final' cause, is therefore practically identical with Plato's 'nature' or 'soul'; and this identification is corroborated by Aristotle himself. 'Nature', he writes in the Metaphysics, 'belongs also to the same class as potentiality; for it is a principle of movement inherent in the thing itself.' On the other hand, he defines the 'soul' as the 'first entelechy of a living body', and since 'entelechy', in turn, is explained as the Form, or the formal cause, considered as a motive force, we arrive, with the help of this somewhat complicated terminological apparatus, back at Plato's original point of view: that the soul or nature is something akin to the Form or Idea, but inherent in the thing, and its principle of motion....

Aristotle, who was a historian of the more encyclopaedic type, made no direct contribution to historicism. He adhered to a more restricted version of Plato's theory that floods and other recurring catastrophes destroy the human race from time to time, leaving only a few survivors. But he does not seem, apart from this, to have interested himself in the problem of historical trends. In spite of this fact, it may be shown here how his theory of change lends itself to historicist interpretations, and that it contains all the elements needed for elaborating a grandiose historicist philosophy. (This opportunity was not fully exploited before Hegel.) Three historicist doctrines which directly follow from Aristotle's essentialism may be distinguished.

(1) Only if a person or a state develops, and only by way of its history, can we get to know anything about its 'hidden, undeveloped essence' (to use a phrase of Hegel's). This doctrine leads later, first of all, to the adoption of an historicist method; that is to say, of the principle that we can obtain any knowledge of social entities or essences only by applying the historical method, by studying social changes. But the doctrine leads further (especially when connected with Hegel's moral positivism which identifies the known as well as the real with the good) to the worship of History and its exaltation as the Grand Theatre of Reality as well as the World's Court of Justice.

(2) Change, by revealing what is hidden in the undeveloped essence, can only make apparent the essence, the potentialities, the seeds, which from the beginning have inhered in the changing object. This doctrine leads to the historicist idea of an historical fate or an inescapable essential destiny; for, as Hegel showed later, 'what we call principle, aim, destiny' is nothing but the 'hidden undeveloped essence'. This means that whatever may befall a man, a nation, or a state, must be considered to emanate from, and to be understandable through, the essence, the real thing, the real 'personality' that manifests itself in this man, this nation, or this state. 'A man's fate is immediately connected with his own being; it is something which, indeed, he may fight against, but which is really a part of his own life.' This formulation (due to Caird— [23]) of Hegel's theory of fate is clearly the historical and romantic counterpart of Aristotle's theory that all bodies seek their own 'natural places'. It is, of course, no more than a bombastic expression of the platitude, that what befalls a man depends not only on his external circumstances, but also on himself, on the way he reacts to them. But the naive reader is extremely pleased with his ability to understand, and to feel the truth of this depth of wisdom that needs to be formulated with the help of such thrilling words as 'fate' and especially 'his own being'.

(3) In order to become real or actual, the essence must unfold itself in change. This doctrine assumes later, with Hegel, the following form: 'That which exists for itself only, is ... a mere potentiality: it has not yet emerged into Existence ... It is only by activity that the Idea is actualized.' Thus if I wish to 'emerge into Existence' (surely a very modest wish), then I must 'assert my personality'. This still rather popular theory leads, as Hegel sees clearly, to a new justification of the theory of slavery. For self-assertion means, in so far as one's relations to others are concerned, the attempt to dominate them. Indeed, Hegel points out that all personal relations can thus be reduced to the fundamental relation of master and slave, of domination and submission. Each must strive to assert and prove himself, and he who has not the nature, the courage, and the general capacity for preserving his independence, must be reduced to servitude. This charming theory of personal relations has, of course, its counterpart in Hegel's theory of international relations. Nations must assert themselves on the Stage of History; it is their duty to attempt the domination of the World.

All these far-reaching historicist consequences, which will be approached from a different angle in the next chapter, were slumbering for more than twenty centuries, 'hidden and undeveloped', in Aristotle's essentialism. Aristotelianism was more fertile and promising than most of its many admirers know....

Gomperz comments rightly (Greek Thinkers, book 5, ch. 19, § 7; German edn, vol. II, 495 f) that Plato's teleology is only understandable if we remember that 'animals are degenerate men, and that their organization may therefore exhibit purposes which were originally only the ends of man'.

-- The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl R. Popper

§ 19. And the same conclusion as to the necessity of teleology may be reached, perhaps more clearly, from an investigation of the other metaphysical implications of evolutionism.

It has been already stated (§ 4) that the evolutionist method involved the conception of a world-history and the belief that that history had a meaning, and was capable of rational formulation. But we may now go a step further and assert that the conception of the world as an evolution is the conception of the world as a process. In applying to the world the conception of evolution, we apply to it the metaphysical conception of a process, and hence we continually hear evolutionists talking of "processes of evolution." But they hardly perhaps realize how much metaphysic is contained in that single word.

§ 20. In the first place, a process is necessarily finite and involves a beginning or starting-point and an end, as two fixed points, between which the process lies. For a process consists in A's becoming B; but if neither A nor B is fixed, the becoming cannot be described as a process. In order to describe what happens we must have a definite and determinate starting-point in A, and a definite and determinate end in B. And even if the real does not, strictly speaking, appear to possess this definite character, we must assume it in idea for the purposes of knowledge. For our thought, and the language which is the expression of that thought, can only work with definite and determinate conceptions, and would be rendered unmeaning if the flux of the Real extended to them, and a term did not mean one thing to the exclusion of everything else. For this reason mere Becoming, which nowhere presents any salient phases which our thought can seize upon as fixed points for a process, is unknowable (ch. iv. § 22, ch. iii. § 13). Nothing that happens, therefore, can ever be described except as a process, for our thought cannot grasp nor our language express a becoming which does not indicate, however vaguely, something definite happening within fixed limits. If, e.g., we say, as vaguely as possible, "something became something else," we do at least imply that the ill-defined "something" was at least not anything and everything else; for in that case it would have been the "something else," and nothing would have happened at all, seeing that the "something" was the "something else" already, and so did not have to become it, and thus there would have been no becoming at all, and the original statement would have been false. But if both the "somethings" mean something with a definite though unspecified character, then the becoming is limited, in this case also, by the initial something at the one end and the final something at the other.

All this may be illustrated by the old and famous example of the egg and the chicken. Supposing we are considering the process of the hatching of the chicken, then the egg will represent the fixed starting-point A, and the chicken the fixed end B, and the process will consist in A's becoming B. Now let us suppose per impossibile that neither A nor B Is fixed, i.e., that no chicken ever results. In that case we may give any name we please to the manipulations to which we subject the egg, but the "process" cannot be described as one of "hatching." For the end of the process Is never reached, and we hatch nothing. But now suppose that what we had described by the definite term "egg" was not an egg at all, but, say, a piece of chalk. In that case surely our original description of the process of hatching a chicken out of an egg becomes ludicrously false and Inapplicable. If A is not A, B is not B, and A (which is a delusion) cannot reach B (which is still more of a delusion) from A. And if our supposed egg was not even a piece of chalk, but an illusive appearance, an ever-changing Proteus, we cannot only make nothing of it, but cannot even describe what happens.

In saying, therefore, that the world is evolving, we say that it is in process, i.e., it is becoming something determinate out of something determinate. And Evolutionism shares this assumption of the knowableness of things, in spite of their apparent flux, with all description and knowledge of the world, and only goes a step further than the simplest utterance concerning the world, by being more conscious of all that is involved in the least that can be said. If, therefore, that initial assumption is justified (ch. v. § 2), and if our description of the world as a process is true, the world must satisfy all the characteristics of that description. Hence, if the conception of a process involves two ideal fixed points, then if we assert the process to be a real one, its fixed points must also be real fixed points in the history of the world.

We may infer, then, from the supposed truth of our theories of Evolution that the world-process is a determinate Becoming, proceeding from one fixed point or beginning to another fixed point or end, and that all the events which take place within it are susceptible of having their places in that process assigned to them as members of a series, and with reference to those fixed points. In other words, all things are susceptible of explanation from the point of view of the end of that process, as tending towards, or aiming at that end. But such an explanation is necessarily teleological, an explanation by ends or final causes. If everything that is grouped with reference to the end of the process, and has a meaning only in its context, it is what it is only as a means to the end of the process. The teleological explanation, therefore, is not only a perfectly valid one, but the only possible one (cf. §6).

§ 21. But it is teleology of a totally different kind to that which is so vehemently, and on the whole so justly, dreaded by the modern exponents of natural science. It does not attempt to explain things anthropocentrically, or regard all creation as existing for the use and benefit of man; it is as far as the scientist from supposing that cork-trees grow in order to supply us with champagne corks. The end to which it supposes all things to subserve is not the good for man, and still less for any individual man, but the universal End of the world-process, to which all things tend, and which will coincide with the idiocentric end and desires of the sections of the whole just in proportion to their position in the process.

Hence the world will not appear perfect from the point of view of the imperfect, and if it did, it would be most truly imperfect; it can be only from the loftier standpoint of the highest members in the hierarchy of existence that the world will seem to be what it ought, in their opinion, to be, and that all things will be really seen to be "very good." And to judge by the treatment which is meted out to man by the present constitution of things, and the still more ruthless disregard of the feelings of the lower beings, which nature almost ostentatiously displays, there is little in our position that could minister to the conceit of anthropocentric teleology. On the contrary, we shall be disposed to hold rather that the spiritual value of human existence is no greater in the spiritual cosmos, than is the physical importance of our earth in the sidereal universe.

And yet there is a grain of truth even in anthropocentric teleology. For after all, man is the highest of the beings we know, and the most highly evolved, and so the nearest to the end of things, and hence in a way entitled to regard the other beings he knows, representing lower phases in the process of Evolution, as means to his ends.

And this teleology is not only true and inevitable, but in no wise conflicts with the principle of scientific mechanism. For it does not supersede, but supplement it; it permits, nay, requires, science to carry its mechanical explanation to the furthest possible point, because it desires to know the whole mechanism of the teleology, and because it is confident that only so it most easily and most clearly displays the whole extent of the essential limitation and insufficiency of the mechanical explanation. It is only when the explanation of "unmetaphysical" science has reached the limit of its tether and ended in perplexity, that the consciously metaphysical explanation of teleology steps in and reinterprets the facts in their proper order. But any attempt to introduce teleological points of view in the purely scientific explanation of things must be resisted as fatal to the true interests both of science and of philosophy.

And in its reinterpretation of the scientific facts teleology again comes into no conflict with mechanism. For it is guided by the data amassed by science, and does not indulge in random speculation. It is only from a knowledge of the tendencies of things in the past that we are able to predict their future: it is by a study of what has been that we discover what is to be, both in the sense of what is about to, and of what ought to be. The process which the theory of Evolution divined the history of the world to be, must have its content and meaning determined from the basis of the scientific data; it is only by a careful study of the history of a thing that we can determine the direction of its development, and discover the general principle which formulates its evolution. And it is only when we have discovered a formula holding good of all things that we can be said to have made the first approximation to the knowledge of the End ([x]) of the world-process.

Thus the new teleology would not be capricious or random in its application, but firmly rooted in the conclusions of the sciences, on which it would be based and by which it would be regulated. It would stand in definite and recognized relations to the methods of the sciences, and would share in and stimulate their growth.

§ 22. The only danger to be guarded against, when a valid principle of teleological explanation has been obtained, is that arising from human impatience. We must not allow ourselves to forget that the teleological method just reverses the order of historical explanation. What comes first in science, comes last in metaphysics. It is in the higher and subsequent that the explanation of the lower and anterior is to be sought. And instead of being simpler and more susceptible of explanation, the lower stages of the process are really the obscurer and more unintelligible, because they do not so clearly exhibit the drift of the process. Hence their explanation comes last, just because in the historical process they came first. We must not therefore hastily conclude that because the teleological method is true, it will be at once possible to give a teleological explanation of the physical laws of nature. The physical laws of nature are the earliest and lowest laws of the world-process, the first attempts at the realization of its End, and so are the very last to become intelligible. If we ever arrive at a teleological explanation of them, it will be only after we have worked down to them from the higher laws of the more complex phenomena. The basis, in other words, for a teleological interpretation of nature will not be found in sciences like physics and mechanics, but in sciences like sociology and ethics.

But if this principle is borne in mind, and no attempt is made at premature interpretation of the lower orders, which is bound to fail, we need not despair of ultimately being able to give a rational account of why everything is what it is and nothing else.

§ 23. But though enough has perhaps been said to elucidate the teleology of the world-process, its relation to Time yet requires further discussion. We saw in § 2 that every assertion of the reality of history involved the reality of the Past, i.e. of Time, and a beginning of that history either in or with Time. But we must now consider whether the end, which is involved In the conception of a world-process, applies also to Time, whether it is a real or merely a logical end.

We saw (§ 13) that it seemed not impossible to regard the world as a process which went on everlastingly reproducing itself, without beginning and without end. It might be that the development of prothyle into matter and of matter into prothyle should go on to all time, without change of character.

But though this would be a conception tenable in itself, it must yet be rejected as inadequate to the explanation of terrestrial history. The evolution of the planets and of the life they bear would be an utterly irrelevant concomitant of the evolution of prothyle. Terrestrial evolution would be an inexplicable and meaningless bye-product, which has aimlessly diverged on a bye-path very remote from the world's real process, viz., the formation of atoms at its confines and their subsequent destruction in the centres of the hottest stars. For in the majority of cases the life-history of the atoms would come to an end, without their reaching any further stages of development into inorganic and organic compounds, animal life and human reason at all. If, therefore, the world-process is one, either our terrestrial evolution has no part in it, or our view of the development of prothyle was an imperfect one. For its development cannot include our terrestrial evolution. Biological, and even the later forms of chemical development cannot be stated in terms of this merely chemical evolution, and so they must either be illusory, or our formulation of the latter is erroneous.

And that the latter is the alternative to be adopted, appears not only from the fact that it cannot interpret a large portion of our data, and that the evolution of the earth lies without its scope, but also from this, that a constant generation and destruction of atoms is not properly a process at all. It could hardly be called even a history of the world, for it would be a history in which nothing ever really happened and no progress was made, and this history could certainly not lay claim to any meaning. For in so far as anything new happens, it happens on our planet and falls without the main process, while in so far as the main process is real our history is unreal.

If, then, as has been agreed, we must regard the process of Evolution as the same for the whole of the universe, it must be formulated so as to include the course of events on our earth, and similarly situated parts of the world. It is preferable, therefore, to construe the evolution of elements also in terms of Time, and to regard it also as exemplifying that general process towards heterogeneity which has been emphasized by Mr. Spencer. In this way the world-process will be one and will have a real beginning in Time, and also a real end — in the attainment of the maximum or perfection of that in which the process consists. For a process cannot go on for ever, but must pass into a generically different state of things when it has reached its highest development. To suppose anything to the contrary would be as erroneous as to suppose that motion could continue when all the bodies in the universe had attained to a position of equilibrium.

§ 24. Hence we need not hesitate to reject Mr. Spencer's theory of alternating periods of evolution and dissolution. This belief is one of venerable antiquity: it Is found in the mythologies of ancient religions and endorsed by the speculations of ancient philosophers. Hence we may be confident that it is concerned with what appears a real difficulty to the human imagination.

That difficulty is twofold. It relates in the first place to the difficulty of really grasping the reality of the process and admitting a real increase and growth in the content or significance of the world. The force of facts compels to the admission that the world really progresses, really contains more than it did of the quality in terms of which the process is formulated, that its Becoming involves a progressive increase in Being. But in spite of the avowal of dynamical principles, the statical tendency to regard the amount of Reality as stationary, irresistibly reasserts itself. The actual fact of growth cannot be denied, but its significance may be disputed. And so it is asserted to be merely apparent: it is really only the manifestation of the great Cycle, which reels off the appointed series of events in precisely the same order forever. It is therefore a mere illusion to fancy that the total content of the universe changes: it is an equation which is represented by A = A = A . . . to infinity, in spite of the apparent progress of the phenomenal series from A to Z.

And, as will be shown (ch. x. § 12), there is a sense in which this is true, but it is not true in any sense which is relevant to the explanation of the Becoming of the actual world. In as far as we and our world are real at all, in so far the change and progress of our world is real, and the world-process is a real growth in the content of our world.

The second difficulty to which the cycle-theory is due, is that men find it hard to conceive the world as reaching the end of any process without the question of — What next? And as they have not troubled to consider the nature of the eternal state of equilibrium, which would supersede the Becoming of the world-process (cf. ch. xii.), they have failed to perceive that it would render meaningless the question they ask. And so It seems easier to say — "Oh, when heterogeneity has reached Its maximum, a return to homogeneity will set in," or "the systole will follow on the diastole of the world," or "the night of Brahma, in which all worlds are re-absorbed into the Absolute, recurs after each cycle of creation" (manvantara).

But really this belief in cycles of progression and regression is based upon a mere prejudice. Indefensible alike on philosophic and on scientific grounds. Philosophically it is to be execrated; for it would be difficult to imagine any theory that rendered the world more meaningless than this pointless and futile fluctuation of things: the ceaseless play of systole and diastole may be the amusement of an insane Absolute, but it is not an end the human reason can ever hope to appreciate. Scientifically it is gratuitous: for, ex hypothesis if all things In the universe are evolving heterogeneity, there cannot possibly be any evidence in favour of a reverse process towards homogeneity. The assertion, therefore, that process of dissolution will again reduce the world to homogeneity is an entirely baseless speculation, necessarily unsupported by evidence. It is an arbitrary assumption, devised "for the pastime of eternity," by systems which mistake its nature. Neither our science nor our philosophy has any valid reason to stray beyond the limits of the world-process and the states which are directly inferred from its character.

§ 25. We may sum up, then, the results of the investigation of the metaphysics of Evolution as being that if our theories of Evolution are true, (1) the Becoming of the world is a process: (2) a real process, and not a process in or of thought: (3) with a determinate beginning and end in Time: (4) tending towards its perfection without any suggestion of a reversal: (5) the process proceeds from the potential to the actual, and hence the world possesses more actuality, more real significance and "Being" in the later stages of the process than in the earlier. But as (6) in the order of Time the less perfect precedes the more perfect, that order reverses the true relations of things. Hence (7) the true method of philosophy is necessarily teleological, and explains the lower as the imperfect realization of the higher, and with a reference to the End of the world-process. And lastly (8), the End and meaning of the process must be determined from the historical data, the future must be predicted from the past.

And it is to this task of determining the meaning of the world-process, by means of formulas which hold good universally of the Evolution of things, that we must next devote our attention.

_______________

Notes:

1 It must not, however, be supposed that metaphysical advances are always conditioned by scientific progress, and that the sciences owe nothing to metaphysics. On the contrary, the obligation is reciprocal, and metaphysics react upon science and accelerate its progress. And in early times metaphysical knowledge is often far ahead of physical science. But in such cases the metaphysical conceptions are apt to prove barren, because no physical facts are known which exemplify them. And being thus destitute of illustration by reason of the backwardness of the physical sciences, the true metaphysics are often rejected in favour of less advanced principles, which may be supported by a plausible show of facts. It is pretty clear, for instance, that in the time of Aristotle Greek metaphysics were far ahead, not only of Greek science, but also of all but the most recent developments of modern science. The lack of progressiveness of pure metaphysics since is to be attributed, not merely to the disastrous introduction into speculative philosophy of the popular doctrine of God's "infinity" (ch. x. § 7), but also to the fact that metaphysics had to wait until the physical sciences had reached a  point which afforded the data for further metaphysical progress.  Hence, as we shall see (§ 16), the metaphysical principles of Evolution were already contemplated by Aristotle, but rejected by him for lack of the scientific corroboration which they are now receiving.

2 Of course it is not intended to assert that there is no connexion between the successive pictures, but only that there is no direct connexion; i.e., that the earlier image is not the cause of its successor. And just as the structure of the kaleidoscope underlies the appearances in the one case, so the ultimate perversity of things (ch. v. § 2, p. 137) would underlie them on the other hypothesis.

3 Cf. Darwin's Life, I., p. 83, and compare Mr. Spencer's Study of Sociology, p. 438.

4 For a similar example, of Study of Sociology, p. 335, ff- (13th ed.).

5 For even biological evolutionism is not free from teleology of a sort. It explains structure as arising by natural selection in order to survival in the struggle for existence, and thereby puts it in the position of a means to an end.

6 Ex nihilo nihil; in nihilum nil posse reverti. [Nothing from nothing; In nothing can be returned]

7 Prothyle is the proper form of the word, as it is the "prote hyle" of Aristotle, derived through the medieval "yle." We have ventured, therefore, to substitute the correcter form.

8 For Mr. Crookes' views v. his Presidential Address to the Chemical Society in May, 1888 (Journal of Chem. Soc, p. 487). Also his Address to the Chemical Section of the British Association in 1886.

9 V. Mr. J. G. Stoney's letter to the Times (4th April, 1888), in support of Mr. Crookes' speculations.

10 In this respect also there is a marked similarity between Mr. Crookes' cosmology and Aristotle's (cf. § 16 s.f.)

11 Thus it is neither to be seen by men, nor to be heard, nor to be grasped by thought.

12 Meteorol. I. 14.  

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CHAPTER VIII. FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTION.

§ 1. We have seen in the last chapter what is implied in saying that the world is an evolution. To speak of Evolution, of a world-process, is to put before ourselves a metaphysical ideal, to which we assert the course of Reality will conform. And this faith might be held even though we were utterly unable to define this world-process, to divine the content of our conception in our particular case, or to predict from what the world develops into what. We might say that the world was evolving, and as yet not know what it was evolving. We might feel sure that the phenomena of the world are not merely an aimless flux of change, but a development in a definite direction, even though the state of our knowledge might not enable us to determine and to formulate that direction.

But such a strain upon the faculty of faith is fortunately uncalled for. The same scientific evidence which first suggested the application of the metaphysical conception of process to the world, also instructs us as to the nature of that process. The formulas of the law of Evolution are generalizations similar to the other generalizations about the world, and to some extent they have already been discovered.

§ 2. Mr. Spencer defines the process of Evolution as being "an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."1

As the first to give in these terms a general formula of the law of Evolution, Mr. Spencer deserves the undying gratitude of all philosophers. But it will only enhance Mr. Spencer's glory if, contrary to the drift of his own utterances, we maintain that being the first he cannot for this very reason be the last, and express a hope that he may prove the founder of a long dynasty of evolutionist philosophers. For he has begun, but he has not ended the philosophy of Evolution. His statement may be true, and wholly true, but it is not on that account the whole truth. Nay, if we reflect, this is impossible. It would be improbable, though possible, that the first shot should have hit the mark, but it is not possible either to state the whole truth of the higher in terms of the lower, or to state the whole truth about Evolution in a single formula. Thus, in the first place, Mr. Spencer's formula is inadequate, because, though all things are perhaps matter and motion, many things are so much more, and the conceptions of matter and motion cannot reach their deeper import. Hence, though it is a great triumph to have shown how a definite formulation can be given even of the material changes that accompany Evolution, yet this does not suffice. That violin-playing "is a scraping of the hair of a horse on the intestines of a cat" is doubtless true, but it conveys no adequate idea of the music. The most accurate and scientific analysis of the pigments of a picture will not take the place of an explanation of its meaning. And so with Mr. Spencer's formula: it is true, but it is not significant, it is a formula which cannot be utilized to explain many things in life, although as Mr. Spencer has so well shown, it will throw fresh light on many more things than might have been expected.

Secondly, though true, it is neither exhaustive nor exclusive, as indeed no formula of the law can well be. For all our formulas attempt to state a real process in ideal terms, and if the Evolution of the world is real, its content can, like all reality, never be exhausted by our ideal symbols. Hence various formulations of the law of Evolution may all be true and equally true: true not merely in the sense of approximating in different degrees to the truth, but rather as each embracing a more or less prominent aspect of the whole truth.

Hence it is no disparagement of Mr. Spencer's formula to say that it is unsuited for many purposes, for which more significant statements of the nature of Evolution are required. Thus, in sociology the promotion of heterogeneity, is not an aim for which it is possible to feel much enthusiasm, nor even one which would stimulate to any definite course of conduct. For so many things might lead to so many kinds of heterogeneity, many of which would appear far from desirable, that we should probably neglect more pressing necessities in the perplexities of promoting heterogeneity.

§ 3. If, on the other hand, we take a formula like Eduard von Hartmann's, according to whom Evolution consists in the development of consciousness, or more precisely, in the development of conscious reason out of the Unconscious, we find that the process is at once raised from the merely physical to the intellectual sphere, and that we have a formula which would afford considerable guidance in sociology. Indeed, it would be both significant and true of the whole of organic evolution; for whatever else, and whatever more it is, it certainly involves a continuous raising and intensifying of consciousness. But on the other hand, it seems difficult to apply this to inorganic evolution. How shall we regard the evolution of the solar system out of a homogeneous nebula, to say nothing of the evolution of differentiated matter out of indeterminate prothyle, as a growth of consciousness? And even if in our distress we had recourse to the difficult, and perhaps gratuitous, hypothesis, that inorganic matter was really conscious, it would be difficult to detect any higher consciousness In a stone than in an incandescent gas. Or shall we say that the inorganic evolution prepared the way for the organic? But why then all these aeons of inorganic evolution? Surely It Is too large a factor in the world's history to be denied all intrinsic significance. If it is a mere means to the production of conscious organisms, could the means not be prepared without such a portentous waste of time and energy? Von Hartmann's formula, then, cannot be applied universally without supplementary hypotheses which largely impair its value.

Let us see, however, whether it is not possible to discover a formula as true as Spencer's and as significant as von Hartmann's, and to elicit from nature a lesson which shall at the same time illustrate more clearly than all previous discussions, how the method of concrete metaphysics draws its philosophical results from scientific facts.

§ 4. In studying the wonderful organization of the polities of social insects like the ants and bees, the political philosopher will be tempted to compare their States with those of men. And at first sight the comparison is greatly to man's disadvantage. The social insects appear to have solved many problems the solution of which would in human States be justly esteemed Utopian. They have solved the great fundamental questions of Feeding and Breeding, which underlie all social life: the demons of Hunger and of Love have lost their terrors for the citizen of the City of the Bees. Short of natural calamities such as no foresight can avert, his labour secures to each member sufficient food and shelter (for clothing he does not need). Nor can starvation arise from over- (or under-) population, for population can be accurately regulated, without difficulty and without disturbance. No amatory passions can disturb the calm of social amity, for all the citizens are sexless, or at least unsexed. No wonder, then, that the cities of the Ants and Bees have no need of prisons or police, that their discipline displays perfect obedience and perfect harmony, that their members support one another like one united family, that, in a word, their instincts prompt them to do what they ought, and are perfectly harmonious with their social environment. We have here perfect socialism harmonized with all but perfect industry, organization and legality, and there Is no doubt that, as far as form goes, the structural perfection of these societies is far higher than that of any men have ever attained to. In so far as civilization is measured by the capacity for social communion and co-operation, the ants and bees are immeasurably our superiors.

§ 5. Why, then, are they not the masters of our planet? Their diminutive size is an obstacle, but size is unavailing against intelligence. The real reason is different.

The social insects did not achieve these marvellous results, except at a severe and, as it proved, a fatal cost. They solved the social question by eliminating the factors they ought to have reconciled with the social welfare. Sexuality and the difficulties of population being disturbing elements in social organisms, they cut the Gordian knot by confining membership of the State to the sexless. The males and females, both of the bees and of the ants, contribute more or less to its existence, for which they supply the necessary basis, but they do not form part of the community. The males are, as is well known, simply turned out to starve, while the queen-bee or ant, in spite of the reverence shown her, is kept as a sort of State-prisoner, upon whom the security of the State depends. What is the effect of this curious solution of the social problem? This, that the training of the citizens in each generation is wasted, and that, as they leave no descendants, there is no possibility of hereditary improvement, either by direct inheritance of acquired intelligence or by the survival of the descendants of the more intelligent. Each generation is descended from queens that have no training, and no occasion to exert their intellectual faculties, and hence each generation is as wise as its predecessor. In other words, the State of the social insects is unprogressive, because the development of the individual has been stopped; its perfection has been bought by the sacrifice of progress. The individual has been harmonized with social requirements, but only by having his individuality crushed, and with it has vanished all the hope of the race. The ants and bees, therefore, may be said to present a terrible example of the fallacy of Abstract Socialism.

§ 6. This example may well suggest the reflection that true progress avoids alike excessive individualism and excessive socialism, and consists in a harmonious development of the individual and his social medium.

And in fact we find that whereas neither the individual by himself, nor the society which has crushed the individual, can develop beyond a limited extent, all real progress concurrently develops both the individual and the social medium. It is a development of the individual in society, and of society through individuals, A harmonious development like this does not develop the individual in a fakir-like isolation, by himself and for himself, but as a member of society and together with society: and similarly the development of society involves that of the individuals who compose it, and consists therein. The two progress pari passu, so that we may perhaps conjecture that they are not two facts but one.

And by the development of the individual is meant that the individual becomes more of an individual, a fuller and more perfect individual; by the development of society, that society becomes more of a society, a fuller and more perfect society, of which the members are more and more dependent on one another, act and react upon one another with greater and greater intensity.

But this formula must be tested and verified by its applicability to the different stages of Evolution, alike to the evolution of human society, to that of the lower animals, and finally to that of the inorganic world.  

§ 7. With regard to actual human society the illustrations of its truth meet us on all sides.

Thus it is to adopt what has become almost a commonplace definition of civilization to say that a civilized society is a highly complex, differentiated and specialized organism, and that in progressive societies its complexity, the specialization and differentiation of the functions of the parts, are increased every day. But what does this mean but that in the progress of Evolution the social organism is ever becoming more and more of a society?

The division of labour, which is one of the chief factors of increasing efficiency, makes each specialized class more dependent on the others, which supply it, in exchange for the products of its labour, with the means of satisfying all the wants of life; for everything but the single article which it produces far in excess of its own requirements, it is dependent upon society.

The effect of higher evolution in making the individuals of higher societies more individual, is less obvious at first, because highly specialized work becomes monotonous and mechanical, and so soul-destroying. But perhaps much of the mischief is due to the fact that our social sympathies are not yet sufficiently developed for us to take interest in each other's specialisms. And in any case, the evil works its own cure, for surely some of the surplus wealth produced by the division of labour might be devoted to the alleviation of its secondary mischiefs. And if we consider the total effects of the division of labour on society, we find that it does facilitate higher developments of individuality. Division of labour and the general complexity of social structure in higher societies renders possible accumulation of wealth and the growth of leisured classes, possessing that leisure ([x]) and freedom from the soul-destroying drudgery ([x]) which the Greeks so well perceived to be essential to the highest developments of the human soul, i.e., in this more perfect society more perfect developments of individuality become possible, and if our leisured classes have not hitherto made a particularly good use of their opportunities, the fault once more lies in the society which has educated them perversely. Our social reformers are too apt to forget that their labours in raising the lower classes are likely to be to a large extent wasted, while the social ideal the upper classes put before the masses is one of "sport" and merely animal enjoyment.

§ 8. If, again, we consider the second great factor in social progress, the growth of knowledge and of the consequent command over the material conditions of life, we find that it is closely bound up with a proper correspondence between the individual and his social medium.

Knowledge can only be accumulated in a society sufficiently wealthy and civilized to support a leisured class which can cultivate knowledge. Only a highly elaborated social order offers the inducements necessary to the cultivation of the sciences, and secures the fruits of discovery. Hence it is only in such a society that knowledge can be permanent. A society which is so little of a society that violence reigns supreme, and the arbitrary aggressions of individuals upon others remain unchecked, can neither itself acquire knowledge nor maintain the knowledge it possesses. Hence the path of progress is closed to it, its members remain immersed in brutish ignorance and Cyclopian barbarism. On the other hand, good patent laws are the greatest encouragement of material, and good copyright laws of moral and intellectual progress. The social order which makes the growth of knowledge possible is not only a permanent source of greater wealth, but also of higher culture. It generates a higher stamp both of society and of individuals. And these higher individuals are more dependent upon society. The great author or the great poet whom we may perhaps take as the type of the highest individualization, pre-eminently needs the social medium of the public which reads him; and society again is benefited by his work.

And the social medium not only enters indirectly Into the growth of knowledge, by supplying the conditions of life which make it possible, but to a growing extent also directly. For the growing complexity of modern sciences renders co-operation in work as indispensable to the achievements of great results in science as in industry, and will continue to do so increasingly in the future.

Thus, on the one hand, perfect societies can be composed only of perfect individuals, and on the other, the perfection of individuals implies a corresponding growth in the perfection of society. For any considerable perfection of the individuals implies more or less complete exemption from the degrading influences of the material conditions of life, i.e., a considerable command over nature. But both the sources of this command over nature, alike division of labour and knowledge of the properties of things, require a highly developed social organization, and this again, to be stable, must possess a very considerable power over nature. Unless the amount of leisure in a society is relatively considerable and well-employed, i.e., unless the wealthy classes are comparatively numerous and benevolent, the constitution of society will hardly be permanent. There is much latent or explicit social amity and good feeling involved in the very existence of a complex and highly organized society. Thus much social sympathy is necessary to the existence and security of highly developed individuals, nor ought we perhaps to regard those individuals as highly developed in whom that sympathy Is wanting.

§ 9. This mutual implication of individual and social development is seen not only in industrial progress, but even more obviously in the methods of social competition, e.g. warfare. For it is clear that social combination and co-operation is of primary importance in warfare. No Individual fighting for his own hand, however strong he may be, can possibly maintain himself against combinations of many individuals. Society, therefore, is based upon the simple physical fact that in the long run two are stronger than one, and that hence the limitation of the struggle of all against all by social restraints is a more effective method of survival than unrestricted competition. Thus socialism conquers the atomism of individuals in the interests of the individuals themselves. And so the least military efficiency Implies some limitations on the aggressions of individuals on one another; for evidently no man will fight, if he is liable to be treacherously attacked by his comrades. And as it was, so it still is: discipline, superior organization and equipment, all of them implying a superior capacity to subordinate oneself to social aims and to co-operate with others, are ever growing more important factors In military success, than individual courage and mere numbers. Yet even numbers are in a way a test of social virtue. For they indicate at least a capacity to act together on a large scale. And while military efficiency thus implies a growth of social co-operation, social development does not in the long run involve a deterioration in the military prowess of the individual. It is true that in ancient times civilization had an unfavourable effect on the military virtues. But this was perhaps due to the want of firmness in the moral texture of the social tissue, which caused wealth to lead merely to luxurious self-indulgence, rather than to any intrinsic effect of civilization. It is also true that owing to the different directions which the development of the individual has taken in modern societies, the superiority of the civilized individual over the savage is less marked in military than in other matters. But even on this score it is not true that the average civilized European soldier is inferior in physique, courage and endurance to the average savage warrior, while our picked and trained men will challenge comparison with the most warlike savages.

§ 10. There is, in fact, no aspect of life in which the intensity of social action does not depend on the development of its component individuals. Even in the case of social intercourse it appears that its pleasantness is largely dependent on the personal distinction of the individuals who take part in it: social "lions" are individuals distinguished for some quality in which they differ from and surpass other individuals, and individuals are interesting in proportion as their individuality is more marked.

Thus civilization, even though it destroys the spurious individuality which is bestowed by varieties of costume, and the vagaries of barbarous customs, is everywhere aiming at developing the intrinsic individuality of its possessors, and at developing it in harmony with the social environment.

§ 11. But it is not enough to show that our formula is an adequate description of the actual condition of the world. We must show also both that the same tendency may be traced in the lower stages of the process beneath civilization and beneath man, and that it may be anticipated for the higher stages, and will afford an adequate end and ideal of cosmic evolution.

Now with regard to the lower stages of Evolution, it will not be difficult to show this while the lower stages are still human. It is clear that under barbarous and savage conditions of life both the individual and the society are only imperfectly developed; it is a commonplace that even physically one savage looks almost exactly like another. The individual has as yet hardly emerged from the type, and a horde of savages are as like as a herd of sheep, or, as we say, by a comparison with still lower grades of individuality, as one pea is to another. And even the apparent exceptions in history only serve to confirm our theory, while at the same time it throws fresh light on the historical facts.

§ 12. Thus it seems at first sight anomalous that in an early civilization like the Greek, individuality and sociality should have been more perfectly developed than in any modern society, and that at the dawn of history States with highly developed structure and highly complex organization, like the caste-states of Egypt, India and China should lead the van of civilization, while after a time they were overwhelmed and outstripped by barbarous tribes with comparatively little social coherence. Why did civilization arise in the despotic East? why did Greece remain free, to become the mother and model of science, art and philosophy? why, again, did Greece succumb to Rome, and Rome to the rude vigour of the Teutons? At first sight the course of civilization does not seem to have always run smooth.

Now in order to understand these facts, we must remember the rhythm of progress, which may be likened to the billows of an ever-growing tide which never recedes. But as it deepens, disturbances of its surface waves bear an ever-diminishing proportion to its total bulk. While civilization was young, its temporary vicissitudes and its transient eclipses, which accompanied the decay of the nations that represented it, might well seem alarming, and If we confine our view to sufficiently narrow limits, we may find ages of almost unmitigated retrogression. But for all that civilization advances, and the rate of its advance is ever accelerated with the growing momentum of its growing bulk. Secondly, we may admit that in some respects the early civilizations were more perfect, not only than the societies which supplanted them, but even than our own (cf. ch. iv.

15). A society which is articulated into castes does possess a higher structure and a higher formal perfection of organization than one in which functions are not yet differentiated, and every one is a jack-of-all-trades. So, too, the highest insects are more highly organized than the lowest fishes. And a system of castes is not only a high form of social organization, but also one particularly valuable in the beginnings of civilization, and conducive to the progress of tribes which adopted it. As is so well shown by Mr. Bagehot,2 the chief difficulty of early societies was that they had to bring wild men with rudimentary social instincts to live together in States. The caste-system effected this admirably, and hence the early civilizations were all distinguished by the rigid and rigorous character of the social organization. But subsequently, as the structure consolidated and ossified, it became incompatible with the mobility requisite; the ancient civilizations were, as it were, stifled in the armour which had protected them; their institutions became too rigid to be adapted to the changing conditions of life. And above all, the system depressed individuality too completely. The time came when there was need for it, when the individuals energy and sense of responsibility alone could save the State, and when they were not forthcoming. What wonder then that the earliest civilizations decayed and perished, and that their cumbrous organizations collapsed for the same reasons as the State of the Incas collapsed when Pizarro had seized its ruler? So, too, the Persians could not conquer Greece; because the blind onset of slaves was no match for the voluntary combination of intelligent men who knew the value of individual effort. Again, Greek civilization was in some ways more perfect than ours; their ideas of the formal perfection of science, of ethics, and of a noble life generally, were higher than any to which we dare to aspire. But the basis of Greek civilization was extremely narrow, and so it was fatally unstable. It developed the individual to an unequalled perfection, but at a heavy cost. The economic basis of the "noble" life of social leisure was slavery. The Greek ideal of life was one for a select and privileged class. Nor were the relations of the individual to the State really satisfactory. In theory, no doubt, the State was supreme; but in practice the individual was constantly recalcitrant, and generally succeeded in doing pretty much as he pleased — at least to judge by the complaints of Greek thinkers. There were only very few Greek States which were not chronically in danger of subversion by the lawless ambition of their own citizens. And such practical control over the individual as the State did attain was only gained by the almost complete sacrifice of the institution which is the primary source of the individual's altruism, viz., the family. The State crushed the family life in Greece, in the supposed interests of the social life; but It could not tame the exuberance of the Individual. The Greeks discovered no antidote to the excessive ambition and vanity of the individual Greek. Not only Athens, but every Greek city was ruined by its Alcibiades. And indeed the political failure of the Greeks as a nation was also due to an extension of the characteristic which ruined the different Greek cities. The ineradicable particularism and mutual jealousies of the Greek cities, which rendered any lasting combination or joint action impossible, is only one more instance of their irrepressible vanity and self-conceit. The individual Greek and the individual city alike preferred to let the common cause perish rather than tolerate a policy In which they should have no opportunity of playing a leading part. And just as the minor actors in the melodrama of Greek history were incapable of self-subordination, so the leading States were equally incapable of self-control, and consequently sacrificed a just and generous policy to short-sighted whims that prompted them to abuse their power.

The secret of Rome's success, on the other hand, lay in her political virtue. The Romans were justly proud of the sternness of Roman discipline, and rightly reckoned among their heroes the men who were capable of sacrificing their lives and the lives of their dearest for the letter of the law. The cruel rigour of Brutus and Manlius was but the extreme manifestation of a spirit of strict legality, unquestioning obedience, and unflinching adherence to duty, which made Rome great. This self-control and respect for legality was displayed in a marvellous way during the struggle between the plebeians and patricians; and it may be safely asserted that in no other state would the Licinian and Sextian laws have been rejected for eight years without causing a revolution. But this was a quality the Greeks could never learn; general principles of policy and respect for the forms of legal procedure were always powerless against the impulse of the moment; the Athenians sacrificed their empire rather than postpone the trial of Alcibiades on a domestic charge until his return from active service. With the Romans, on the other hand, the immunity of magistrates from accusation during their year of office was a cardinal principle of state-craft. They yielded implicit obedience to their magistrates, however arbitrary and incapable they might be, and with whatever severity they might call them to account when they had laid down their functions. And the reason why the Roman was able to practise a self-control as wise as it was difficult was that from his youth he had been trained to obey as well as to command, and that the discipline of the army was but the continuation of the discipline exercised by the father of each family. For absolute as was the devotion which the State required of its citizens in military matters, it yet did not crush the individual, because the State never thought of interfering with the relations of a Roman to his family and his household. Hence the ambassadors of Pyrrhus might well report that the Roman Senators were 300 kings; and we may add a truth no less incomprehensible to Greek ears, that not one of them would have been capable of playing the tyrant. The Roman training produced a succession of "golden mediocrities," who carried out their task with unhesitating devotion and unyielding pertinacity. But it was too narrow to cope with the problems which arose out of the growth of the city by the Tiber into a world-wide empire, too narrow to reconcile the spirit of old Roman morality with the claims of Hellenic culture. It could neither produce a man who could solve the political problem of combining empire with freedom, nor one to solve the intellectual problem of combining reason with virtue. And so the Romans lost first their virtue and then their freedom, and in the end their empire.

Thus we may learn from the history of Greece and Egypt how necessary it is to keep the proper balance between the development of society and of the individual; from that of Rome, how necessary it is to advance, if one desires to avoid failure due not to any intrinsic deterioration, but to inability to cope with new and uncalculated conditions. It is from excess of conservatism and self-satisfaction, from unwillingness to adopt new methods for dealing with new difficulties, and not from any ineluctable law of natural mortality, that civilizations have decayed, and that backward races, who have not been too conceited to modify the traditional methods that did good service in the past, have outstripped the leaders of civilization who had handicapped themselves by their previous successes. And so we may say that the keenness of the struggle for existence between European nations at present is the best guarantee of progress, the best security that no physical, intellectual, or moral element of success will be neglected.

§ 13. When from the earlier stages of human development we pass to the higher stages of animal development, we find that among animals, if we except the case of the social animals already considered, both individuality and sociality have been little developed. The chief exceptions to this statement are to be found among domesticated animals. Dogs, e.g., have very distinctly marked individual characters, so much so that we may be tempted to rank their individuality above that of many savages. But what is the reason of this development of individual character? What but the nature of the social medium in which their domestication places them? They are the slaves of man, but their slavery to superior beings raises them above the level they could have reached unaided, and develops their souls to a degree not justified by their position in the hierarchy of existence.

But though in general the development both of individuality and of sociality is slight, neither of them disappears entirely among the animals sexually reproduced. There must always be among them at least that amount of social connection which is implied in the relation of male and female and of parents and offspring.

§ 14. But when we go still lower, the lines of demarcation between one individual and another seem to grow faint, and perplexities beset us. Is each segment of a tapeworm an individual, and which is the original individual when a jelly-fish is cut up into equal pieces, each of which develops into a perfect animal? Shall we say that each leaf of a tree is an individual, or confine that term to the whole tree? And if each leaf is a true individual, why not each cell? And if it is not, what shall we say of cuttings and leaves, each of which is able to develop into a perfect tree? What, again, of the colonies of zoophytes? Are they one or many? Is a coral reef one animal or a multitude? Shall we regard rather the individual polypes or their common organization?

The only answer, perhaps, which it is possible to give is that we have sunk too low to find anything exactly corresponding to our conception of individuality. We receive here the first hint that individuality is an ideal, to which the reality only imperfectly attains, a category of our thought, to which even the highest developments of reality only approximate. But nevertheless we can trace the working of the ideal even in the lowest forms of the real; with the appropriate modifications the unity of the same design runs through the whole.

As we trace it downwards, the formula is transformed but not destroyed: it persists in a lower form.

The social bond which connected physically discrete individuals was spiritual, and can no longer be traced as such: but it now takes the lower and grosser form of physical connection. A coral reef is a society in which the union of the individual members is no longer conscious and voluntary, but compulsory and physical; their connection is no longer trusted to their own action, but forced upon them from without. Sociality is no longer a moral but a physical necessity. Or if we choose to regard the facts from the opposite point of view, we may say that the coral reef is an individual in whom the growing insubordination of the members to the central authority has almost dissolved away the individuality.

§ 15. But It matters little how we decide, and whether we decide, the question of the individuality of the lower organisms: the essential point is that they are transitional between individuals and societies in the higher sense, and the form which they take in inanimate nature.

Thus, in a crystal formed out of crystals, or a drop of water composed of drops of water, the individuality of the component parts seems evanescent, and their combination to be purely physical. Yet their combination is as real whether it is that of a system of physical particles or of a society of conscious individuals. The difference is that the forces which hold it together are in the one case physical, and in the other psychical.3 But they exist as much in the one case as in the other, and inanimate bodies also are held together by forces of cohesion, surface-tension, etc.

And if we next descend below the limits of the visible to chemical theory and the question of the composition of substances, we find that the same law still holds. As the individual molecules are hypothetical, we cannot indeed detect any gradations in their individuality; but in the complexity of the physical systems of associated particles, the fact which here corresponds to the development of social complexity, we can trace a gradual evolution.

§ 16. Of all chemical compounds, the so-called organic compounds are the most complex, i.e., they contain and unite the largest number of individual molecules. They are thus the most highly organized forms of matter. And they are also the most recently evolved. For a comparatively slight degree of heat will break them up, or, as chemists say, with a significant suggestion of the social character of chemical combination, will dissociate them. Hence they cannot have been formed until the earth had cooled considerably. And yet their appearance must have preceded that of living matter, as they supply the basis of the higher evolution of the animate. Thus the organic compounds represent the highest form of chemical combination, not only because they are the basis of living organisms, but also because they are evolved later.

Taking next the inorganic compounds we find that they are on the whole less complex and more stable than the organic. But though they can stand a higher degree of heat, they are yet dissociated at high temperatures. Hence they stand lower In the scale of evolution, and if the nebular theory may be trusted, they are also, historically speaking, more ancient.

The chemical "elements" again are "simple" bodies which we have not hitherto been able to dissociate. And yet, under the delicate manipulations of modern chemistry, and in the terrific temperatures of the hottest stars, they also betray signs of dissociation (cf. ch. vii. §§ 10, 11). And as was shown in the last chapter (§ 12), the evidence points not only at their dissociation into simpler forms of matter, but at something radically different and very much more interesting. Mr. Crookes' ingenious inferences from the subtle differences he has discovered among the molecules of the same "element" irresistibly suggest that the atoms and molecules out of which it is composed still possess individual differences and individual characters. And so, at the very lowest grade of cosmic evolution, we should still detect the persistence of individual entities combined with others into social systems; and though our elements be complex, their name would not be wholly undeserved, in that their structure is simpler and their generation earlier than that of any other forms of sensible matter.

§ 17. But what lies beyond? Can we penetrate beyond the evolution of the elements? In one sense we cannot; the primitive condition of things which precedes Evolution forms the zero-point of Evolution, the absolute negation of the process in which Evolution consists.

But if we recognize that we are now dealing with a state of things generically different from that of cosmic evolution, we may yet form certain theories about the pre-cosmic conditions of the world-process. Indeed, we may be troubled by alternative theories, according as we adopt more or less advanced views about the evolution of the elements. If we accept Mr. Crookes' theory of prothyle, the question vanishes, for, being anterior to the differentiation into atoms, it leaves room neither for individuals nor for their combination. But prothyle is nothing (ch. vii. § 14), or rather, a symbol standing for the action of spiritual forces (ch. vii. § 18): if, therefore, the question is to be pursued further, the method must be changed into one of metaphysical investigation (cf. ch. xii. § 3).

But we may check the impulse of speculation before it oversteps the ground of chemical theory, and suppose that Evolution stops short at something which has still got enough of the characteristics of sensible matter to be atomic. Evolution, then, would start from matter in which the atoms existed in perfect isolation and without the least combination.

But this would raise a difficulty. If, as has been maintained, the evolution of society and of the individual is coincident, and the perfection of society produces also the maximum of individuality, individuality should vanish at the opposite extreme together with combination. Whereas now the individual at this very point appears completely individualized, entirely independent and self-sufficing.

This difficulty may be explained in several ways.

In the first place, we may lay stress on the fact that at the outset of the process the individual is a mere abstract individual, an individual and nothing more, an atom of which nothing can be said except that it is an atom, and that individuality here has a minimum of meaning, which is surpassed by every individual who enters into the combination of a system.

Secondly, we may point out that even so it is contrary to the accepted chemical doctrine to suppose that the individual atoms can exist in isolation, and may remember that the minimum of independent existence is the molecule composed of at least two atoms. And if it be supposed that this rule does not apply to the atom of primitive matter, the answer is that no scientific rules or conceptions do apply to it, that in it we have reached the limits of scientific thought, and that the whole condition of things in the primitive nebula is an over-ingenious fiction of the scientific imagination, which could never have existed in actual fact. For unless this nebula was prior to the development of gravity, a uniform distribution of matter in space is impossible, while as soon as we have aggregation, combination at once follows. 

And lastly, from a metaphysical point of view, it is not true that the atoms in the primitive nebula exist in entire isolation, so long as they coexist: they must have formed some sort of a system in order that their interaction or attraction could be possible either then or afterwards.

§ 18. We have seen that the formula of the development of the individual in social combination is applicable both to the actual condition of the world and to its past evolution, although, in the latter case it ends in no more or less perplexity, like all merely scientific explanations, if it is driven back too far. It now behoves us to ask whether our formula is equally satisfactory when regarded as the ideal and end of Evolution, i.e., as that to which the history of the past justifies us in expecting that Evolution will tend.

Regarding the development of the individual in society as the end of Evolution, will compel us, in the first place, to assert that not even the highest existing societies and individuals are perfect, either as societies or as individuals.

And with respect to existing societies this will perhaps be easily admitted.

But it is at first more difficult to realize that we are not yet perfect individuals. In the sense, indeed, that we are not all we are capable of being, it is perhaps pretty obvious that we are not yet perfect individuals, but it is equally true that we are not yet perfectly individualized. There are many facts about our constitution which it is difficult to explain except on the theory that from a higher point of view our individuality would appear almost as shadowy and imperfect as that of a zoophyte does to us.

If by a person we mean a conscious and spiritual individual, possessing moral and legal responsibility, who must be treated as an end and never as a means, then the higher phase of individuality, which we designate by the term personality, is an ideal to which we have very imperfectly attained. Heredity, which seems to render our moral, intellectual and physical characteristics more or less dependent on the action of our parents and ancestors, limits, if it does not destroy, our freedom and our responsibility. A corresponding limitation is indicated by the feelings which prompt us to the maintenance of our species and thereby put us in the position of means to the production of other beings; and perhaps they are indicative of imperfections of personality in other ways also (ch. xi. § 24). Our spiritual liberty, moreover, is constantly dependent on the physical necessities of our organism, which are very far from being always compatible with the requirements of our spiritual activities. This, indeed, is only a single instance of the imperfect correspondence which prevails between the elements of our being and of the imperfect co-ordination of the portions of our organism. For it is not merely in disease that the subordinate parts of the organism disobey and ignore the behests of the ruling principle, and act on their own account: the physical processes of our organism are always largely independent of our will.

But the clearest proof of the imperfect combination of the elements of our personality is to be found in the curious phenomena of "multiplex" consciousness or personality. These represent what we are ordinarily wont to call our self, i.e., our normal consciousness, as but one out of many psychical processes which go on within our organism. The normal consciousness is the primary self, but there are indefinite possibilities of secondary selves, which may coexist with it, alternate with it, and even supplant it. So it has been well said that the normal self is that which has a good working majority for carrying on the affairs of life, and that when the majority becomes disorganized, there ensues chaos in the soul, i.e., insanity.

But perhaps we need hardly go so far afield for examples of this imperfect psychic synthesis, for we nightly experience in our dreams powers which our waking self does not possess. It is not merely that we may remember in dreams what we had forgotten in waking life, but that the dream-self possesses the power of clothing its ideas with all the vividness and wealth of sensuous perception; its fancy is creative of its objects, and while the dream lasts they are real. And yet when we awake, we cannot give sensuous shape to our thoughts, and no amount of thinking of a cat will enable us to see one. Or again, who has not experienced the delicious certainty of the intuitive knowledge we possess in dreams, and the ease of absolute conviction with which we attain to the knowledge we require?

§ 19. These and similar facts which we shall subsequently have to regard from a different point of view (ch. ix. § 2 3), more than justify the assertion that our individuality is as yet very ill-defined, and that consequently personality is for us an ideal, which we have not yet fully realized.

And if we had realized it, what would it be? What but the life of perfected individuals in a perfect society?

And what, again, is this but the ideal of the Communion of Saints, of the Christian conception of Heaven?

If, then, the process of Evolution may be defined as the progressive development of the individual in combination with other individuals, in which the individual passes from the atom to the moral person, does not the completion of the process promise us the attainment of our boldest desires?

§ 20. This formula for the world-process cannot at least be accused of lacking in significance or fulness of import. And perhaps the reason is that it deals throughout, not with abstractions, but with realities; it makes use of abstractions, but continually refers them to the realities which they symbolize. For while all the terms of the other definitions of Evolution (§§ 2, 3), "heterogeneity," "motion," "matter," ''consciousness," etc., are abstractions which stand for qualities of reality, which could never exist by themselves, terms like "individual," "person," and "society," designate realities. Atoms (?) crystals, animals, and men, the successive embodiments of the process towards individuality, are all of them real, and as such possess an infinity of attributes. Hence, while the other formulations of the world-process can give us only partial aspects of reality (§ 2), we here seem to have grasped the ultimate reality itself. It is true, however, that not even so do we escape the taint of imperfection: for though we see the ultimate reality, we as yet behold it only as in a glass darkly, and can express it only inadequately; its true nature is as yet scarce conjectured.

But even this has the advantage that we need not shift our ground in order to obtain new views of the world-process by means of new abstractions; for after all, reality is the three-dimensional which can never be fully expressed by one-dimensional thought. If, however, we have grasped the Real, even though dimly, we need merely persevere in order to arrive at its deeper and deeper comprehension, as it manifests itself in higher and higher forms, and to enter more and more fully into the meaning of the individual and of society. And as we ourselves are the highest examples of individuals we know, it is in exploring the depths of our own nature that the clue to the riddle of the world is to be sought, and we are once more led back to take an ancient saying in a novel sense, to know the universe in knowing ourselves, to seek the truth in seeking what we are.4

Thus the end to which things seem to tend is an end which is also capable of being regarded teleologically, and an aim of action we can adopt. Our only doubt can be as to whether the world will attain it. But why should not things attain the end to which they tend? What, short of the pessimistic possibility of an incurable perversity of things, is to prevent the world from reaching the goal of its evolution? For no failure of partial processes within the All can justify this fear: for these fail through the interference of other things, and what could interfere with the all-embracing world-process? But the full vindication of our hopes will be the arduous task of the succeeding Book; for the present we must content ourselves with the first glimpse of Heaven we have caught through a rift in the clouds.

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Notes:

1 "First Princ.," p. 396.

2 "Physics and Politics."

3 This does not imply that social combinations are unaffected by physical influences, but that these only act mediately, by producing certain states of mind.

4 [x] (Heraclitus).

[admin]

Part 1 of 3

BOOK III. CHAPTER IX. MAN AND THE WORLD

§ 1. We are now in a position to attack the "riddles of the Sphinx" themselves, which, as we said at the outset (ch. i. § 3), concern the relation of Man to the World which environs him, to his Cause and to his Future.

Of these questions we shall most fitly commence with the first, for, as will be shown, it leads on to the others.

By the environment of man we mean primarily his material environment, the world of material things in Space and Time, the existence of which presents an abundance of perplexities to the philosophic mind. In this question of the relation of man to his environment are involved the questions of the existence of an external world, which has been called the battle-ground of metaphysics — because the inconclusive skirmishes of unprofitable philosophies have been largely conducted in a field in which neither side could gain anything but confusion — of the nature of Matter and its relation to Spirit, of the infinity of Space and Time, and generally of the characteristics of the Becoming of things.

Of these it will be convenient to consider first the existence of the world in Space and Time.

For if our environment is infinite in respect to Space and Time, all hope of a solution of the problem of life must be at once abandoned; for to an infinite environment there can be no adaptation (cp. ch. iv. § 4). Hence to admit the infinity of Space and Time is to give up all hope of transcending Pessimism, and it is necessary to subject this doctrine to careful criticism.

§ 2. It is necessary, in the first place, to determine the proper sense of infinity.

First of all we must reject the popular and poetical use in which infinity is vaguely used as the equivalent of any extremely large quantity, and indicates merely the point at which the intelligent appreciation of magnitude ceases. This limit, of course, varies immensely with times and seasons and stages of civilization. Thus the Greeks, as their language shows, at one time regarded 10,000 as an infinitely large number; the Romans contented themselves with 600, while to many savages everything above two or three is ''many," and "infinity" begins before five has been reached. So, too, the sands of the seashore, the hairs of the head, and even the stars of heaven have all been popular representatives of infinity. Yet an exact computation shows that a luxuriant head of hair does not contain much over 100,000, and that the stars visible to the naked eye at any one time amount to less than 3,000. And the number of grains of sand on a definite piece of shore, though it may be indefinitely large, is not infinite.

The popular usage, in short, means very little: infinity is merely a big word which impresses people because they do not understand it. And how little they understand its proper meaning is shown by the history of allied words like "endless," ''immense," "incalculable," "immeasurable," "innumerable," etc., all of which originally implied infinity. From this point of view infinity is the last straggler of a whole host of words, which under the persuasive influence of popular usage have long come to mean nothing more than great magnitude, and is distinguished from them merely by the precarious allegiance it still owns to the technical terminology of the learned.

§ 3. From this wholly improper and positive use of infinity we may pass to one wholly proper, when used in its strictness, but negative. This is the mathematical use, which asserts that there can be no end to the successive synthesis of unity in measuring a quantity. We can never in our thought arrive at a point when the addition of unity to a quantity, however large, is impossible.

Now as to this, it is noticeable (1) that the definition is purely negative, and makes the conception of infinity the conception of a limit, and (2) that it is purely subjective. The definition makes no reference to reality, but merely asserts that ''we cannot help thinking. ..."

We seem thus to receive a hint that the idea of infinity indicates a defect, imperfection or limitation of our thought, to which reality is only subjected in so far as we must interpret it by our thought.

§ 4. From this, the true conception of infinity, is derived the mathematical doctrine of infinity, that since infinity contains a number of given units greater than all number, all finite quantities may be neglected in comparison with it. This reasoning involves a subtle transition from the negative to a positive conception, which finally results in infinity becoming a kind of mathematical topsyturvydom, where two parallel straight lines meet and enclose spaces, and two circles intersect at four points, etc. And, of course, so long as these symbols are recognized as fictions convenient, and even necessary, for the technical purposes of mathematicians, nobody need complain (cp. ch. vi. § 3), but unfortunately mathematicians, like other mortals, are apt to forget this, and frequently require a gentle reminder of their logical absurdity. When, e.g., they say that two parallel straight lines meet at infinity, they really mean that they do not meet at all, or that we can continue to conceive ourselves as prolonging them, without their approaching. Or, again, the doctrine that one infinity can be greater than another, is, to say the least, inaccurate. For if infinity be taken positively, it must mean something out of relation to quantity, and different in kind, to which, therefore, phrases like ''greater and less than" are totally inapplicable. If, e.g., one of two straight lines may be produced indefinitely in one direction and the other in both, the mathematical doctrine is that the second infinity is greater than the first. But the question whether one will at any time be greater or less than the other will depend on the rate at which they are produced and the size of the "successive syntheses," and not on their being infinite in one or two directions. But in order to measure them at all, and so to be able to speak of greater or less with respect to them, they must both be limited first, which is ex hypothesi impossible. Hence the category of quantity is inapplicable to the case, and the positive conception of infinity is absurd, an infinite quantity being a contradiction in terms. For being infinite, no measure can exhaust it, while a quantity is that which is composed of units of measurement.

§ 5. Now does the infinity of Space resemble the valid negative, or the invalid positive conception of infinity?

There is no need to regard it as anything but the former. We need not mean by the infinity of Space anything more than that we cannot think a limit to Space, can conceive no space which is not bounded by spaces, and similarly in the case of Time; we can conceive no time which was not preceded by an earlier time.

It is evident that this infinity is purely conceptual and negative. No man has ever found by experience that Space and Time have no limits. The infinity of Space and Time can never be given as an actual fact. We can never, except in poetry, get to the limits of the universe, and gaze into the Void beyond, if only because of the prosaic attraction of the bodies behind us. But, unfortunately, we seem since the days of Aristotle to have forgotten the obvious fact that infinity can never be anything real, anything more than a potential infinity in our thought.

But can we argue from this potential infinity of our conceptions to the infinity of the spatially extended world, and of the Becoming in Time? This would seem to be an argument based upon hazardous assumptions and resulting in inextricable difficulties.

§ 6. It involves, in the first place, a relapse into the illegitimate conception of infinity as something positive and actual, if it is to state facts about the real world and not to make correct but useless statements about our subjective frame of mind. For a while we adhere to the true definition of infinity, the proposition that the world is infinite in Space and Time must resolve itself into the assertion that we cannot think Space and Time exhausted and limited by successive additions of spaces and times. But this tells us nothing as to whether the real world is infinite, when not in relation to our present modes of thinking it.

This brings out, secondly, the robust assumption, on which the inference of the infinity of the world from the infinity of our conceptions is based. It assumes a complete agreement between reality and thought, in virtue of which an infinity, which is true primarily of our ideas, may be safely transferred to the real world. But our experience in dealing with Scepticism (ch. iii.) ought to have left us very sceptical as to the ease with which such a correspondence can be effected. And even if we hope and believe that concord between thought and reality will be ultimately attained, this faith will afford but one more reason for regarding the assertion of their present correspondence with grave suspicion. The infinity contained in our conceptions of Space and Time, therefore, so far from leading on to the infinity of the real world as a matter of course, militates rather in favour of the conclusion that the real world is limited in Space and had a beginning in Time.

And this presumption is confirmed by the strongest positive reasons. The doctrine of the infinity of Space and Time turns out, in the first place, to be vicious in its origin and based upon an abuse of the faculty of abstraction. And further, it cannot even claim the undivided support of the necessities of thought. On the contrary, it is in the sharpest conflict with some of the strongest necessities of our thought. The infinity of Space and Time contradicts some of the chief conceptions of our thought, and that of Time even contradicts itself (ch. iii. § 6). The infinity of Space conflicts with the conception of the world as a whole, the infinity of Time with that of the world as a process, and as has been already shown (ch. vii. §§ 3, 20), all evolutionist or historic methods imply that Time is limited and that the world had a beginning. Lastly, the infinity of the world involves a reductio ad absurdum of the category of causation.

And, of course, these metaphysical difficulties about the infinity of Space and Time reappear in science, and generate conflicts between the principal and most approved scientific doctrines and this alleged infinity. It is not merely that science knows nothing of anything infinite, but that it is in various ways compelled to assert that infinity is directly incompatible with verified knowledge. It is necessary, therefore, to give a sketch of these objections.

§ 7. We are too apt, in the first place, to forget that "Space" and "Time" are mere abstractions. We speak as though things were plunged in Space and Time, and as if Space and Time could exist without them. But as a matter of fact Space and Time are constituted by things, and are only two prominent aspects of their interaction. It is as the result of the attractions and repulsions of things that they constitute certain spaces between one another. Empty Space and empty Time are bogies which we have no business to conjure up out of the limbo of vain imaginings. Hence there is no real difficulty in conceiving (with Aristotle) that Space should be limited by the spatially-extended, i.e. bodies, seeing that the conception has no meaning except in connection with bodies: where bodies cease, there Space would cease also, and the question as to what is beyond is unanswerable, because unmeaning and invalid. If, then, ''pure" Space is an abstraction from the spatially-extended reality, and if real Space is actually delimited by that which fills it, viz. bodies, the resulting position of affairs is, that the infinity of conceptual Space is merely a trick of abstraction, which imposes upon us by dint of its very simplicity. For it ceases to be surprising that if we abstract from that which really limits Space, the remaining abstraction, viz., conceptual or ideal "Space," should have to be regarded as unlimited — in idea. Only of course this vice of our thought proves less than nothing as to the infinity of the physical world. A similar argument would dispose of the question as to the infinity of real Time and as to what existed before the beginning of the world, and thus the whole difficulty would be shown to rest upon a misconception.

§ 8. The metaphysical difficulties of the infinity of Time amount to a self-contradiction, i.e., to a conflict with the supreme law of human thought. For the infinity of the past is regarded as limited by the present, i.e., it is a completed infinity. But a completed infinity is a contradiction of the very conception of infinity, which consisted in the impossibility of completing the infinite by successive synthesis.

Again, the infinity of the world in Space involves a hopeless contradiction of the conception of a whole. For when we speak of the world or universe, we mean the totality of existing things. But in order to attain to such a whole, it would be necessary to grasp things together as a totality, and to define off the existent against the non-existent. But this condition cannot be satisfied in the case of an infinite, which can never be completed by successive synthesis, and never therefore be grasped together as a whole. We may generalize the case of the infinite quantity (§ 4), and say that an infinite whole is, like a bottomless pit, a contradiction in terms, in which the infinity negates the whole and the whole excludes infinity. We must abandon, therefore, either the conception of a totality or that of the infinity of the world. If the world is a whole, it is not infinite, if it is infinite, it is not a whole, i.e., not a world at all.

And there is a parallel contradiction between the conception of infinity and of a process. It was shown in chapter vii. § 20 that a process is necessarily and essentially finite, and limited by the two points between which the process lies. Unless it were finite, it would be a mere wavering and fluctuating Becoming, void of Being, and as such unknowable. The Becoming, therefore, of reality must be enclosed within the limits of a conception, which enables us to define it as having Being relatively to one point and Not-Being relatively to another. To apply to the world the conception of a process is to imply that its Becoming is definite and finite. If, therefore, we wish to assert that the world has a real history, that its Evolution is a fact and that our formulas of Evolution are true, we must think the world as finite in Space and Time.

Lastly, the belief in infinity conflicts with the most indispensable organon of all knowledge and all science, the conception of causation (cp. ch. iii. § 11 s.f.). For a chain of causation depends on the strength of its initial member, and if the series of causes be infinite, if there be no such thing as a first cause, the whole series dangles uselessly in the air or falls asunder, inasmuch as each of the relative causes receives no necessity to transmit to the next beneath it, and hence the ultimate effect also is not necessary.

§ 9. And, as might have been expected, these metaphysical contradictions reappear in science in the shape of conflicts between the supposed infinity of the physical world and some of the most valuable scientific principles.

Thus the impossibility of thinking a world infinite in Space as a whole nullifies the principle of the conservation of energy, makes it impossible to regard the universe as a conservative system, and thus brings upon physics a terrible Nemesis in the shape of the dissipation of energy. For if we duly take successively increasing spheres in Space, it is easily apparent that there is uncompensated loss of energy in each, and that the greater part of the energy radiated out by the bodies within it is lost, not being arrested, by bodies on which it can impinge. Hence the larger the concentric spheres become, the greater the loss of energy, until finally the amount of energy would become infinitesimal. Now at first it might seem possible to reply to this by the mathematical argument that the universe being infinite, the energy radiated out in any direction is certain sooner or later to hit upon some body and thus to avoid being lost. But to this it might be similarly answered, that as in an infinite number of these cases the body absorbing the energy would be at an infinite distance, the energy protected would be infinitely small, i.e., nothing. And besides the argument presupposes an impossibility, and tacitly assumes that it is possible to speak of the universe as an infinite whole possessing infinite energy. Hence our present physics cannot evade the inference that the energy of any finite part of the world must be undergoing gradual dissipation, and would have been entirely dissipated, if it had existed infinitely in the past. And as this has not as a matter of fact happened, the conclusion is that the world with its store of energy, which is now being dissipated, came into being at some definite point in the past. In order, therefore, to assert the real infinity of Space, the facts of the world and the principles of science compel us to deny its infinity in Time, and to infer both a beginning of the existence of energy and an end, in its inevitable dissipation. Science, in short, must be consistent and treat the infinite extension of Space as it has already treated its infinite divisibility. In idea Space is not only infinite but infinitely divisible; in reality science posits the atom as the indivisible minimum of spatially-extended reality. If therefore science is entitled to assume a minimum of material reality and to reject the reality of the infinitesimal, it is by a parity of reasoning entitled to postulate also a maximum extent of the world and to reject the reality of the infinite.

Further, it was shown in ch. iii. § 8 that the infinity of Space contradicted the reality of motion and hence of energy, and scepticism inferred from this the illusoriness of the latter. But we may equally well infer the illusoriness of infinity, and when science is reduced to a choice between the reality of energy and the reality of infinity, it cannot for a moment hesitate to reject the latter.

But if science must reject the infinity of Space it cannot maintain that of Time. Just as the infinity of Space, combined with the finiteness of Time, resulted in the destruction of energy by dissipation, so conversely, the finitude of Space, combined with the infinity of Time, results in the destruction of energy by equilibration. For in infinite Time a finite world must have gone through all possible changes already, and thus have arrived at a condition of equilibrium and a changeless state of Being sharply contrasted with its actual Becoming.

As to the infinity of Time, it contradicts, under any circumstances, the conception of the world as a process, i.e., as a whole in Time. This contradiction gives us no choice between denying the infinity of Time and admitting that the search for a beginning is comparable to the labour of the Danaids, that common sense, which inquires into the "whence" of things in order to discover their nature, is but the crude basis of subtler error, that the Historical Method is futile, that all our theories of Evolution are false, and that the nature of things is really unknowable. Yet science is surely entitled to struggle hard against the relinquishment of such approved principles, against the demolition of the whole fabric of knowledge, in deference to what cannot but appear to it a mere metaphysical prejudice.

And not only is the finiteness of Time essential to knowledge, but it also carries with it that of Space. For a world finite in Time but infinite in Space cannot be included under a finite process, and hence baffles all attempts at grasping it by an intelligible conception. A spatially infinite world cannot be said to be evolving or engaged in a process at all, i.e., to be passing from state A to state B. For it could never wholly get to A, and hence could never wholly be becoming B.

And the converse supposition of a world finite in Space and infinite in Time, which from the point of view of a whole has been already shown to be absurd, is equally impossible from that of the conception of a process. Its absurdity may be illustrated by the fact that if it were engaged in a process, it would require an infinite Time to reach any given point in the process, and an infinite number of infinities to reach the present, i.e., would never reach the present at all.

10. And to set against the cumulative force of all these metaphysical and scientific contradictions, nothing can be urged in favour of the infinity of Space and Time, except a disability of our imperfect thought, a disability, moreover, which does not even profess to warrant the assertion of a positive infinity of real Space and Time. We cannot think Space and Time as limited, we cannot conceive how the world is limited in Space and Time. But can we assert this ideal infinity of the real world? Assuredly we cannot: nothing compels us to go behind the contradiction. At the utmost all it proves is that there is a lack of correspondence between the constitution of our minds and that of the world, and there is no need to regard this conflict as likely to be permanent. If, therefore, we are not satisfied with saying that the world must be finite, though we cannot, while our intuition of Space remains what it is, see how, a solution is yet possible through a change in that intuition.1

The idea of infinity need not form part of an intuition of Space different from ours, and after all, that intuition is only subjective. Subjective not only as existing in consciousness like the whole world of phenomena (cp. § 13), but subjective also as being a peculiarity of thought unconfirmed by feeling. There is nothing, therefore, impossible in the suggestion that in the progress of Evolution the infinity of Space should disappear either with or before the intuition of Space itself. It would thus turn out to be nothing more than a transitory phase or condition of our minds, accidental to our present imperfect development, which would cease to lay claim to ultimate reality when the upward struggle of Evolution had raised us to a more harmonious state of being. And indeed there would be nothing inadmissible even in the idea of a non-spatial and non-material existence as the goal of the development of the spatial and material, if our examination of the nature of the material should justify a doubt of the permanence of Matter as a mode of our consciousness (cp. §§ 17-32).

Our attitude, therefore, towards Space will be twofold: speaking as scientists and accepting the phenomenal reality of Space and of the sensible world for what it is worth, we shall distinguish between our idea of Space and real Space, deny that real Space is infinite, and contend that the sensible world is finite. But this scientific postulate does not so much solve as carve through the metaphysical perplexity. To metaphysicians, therefore, the conflict between the conceptual and the sensible will suggest their reconciliation in a non-spatial "intelligible world." And with regard to this intelligible world, we must protest against two misconstructions by which Kant sought to damage the conception. It is not unknowable, and has nothing to do with what Kant strangely called Noumena (objects of thought), because they were unthinkable. And, secondly, it is not the abstract conception of a world in general. It is a real existence, which is legitimately, and perhaps necessarily, inferred from the discords of the phenomenal world. And though our data may not at first enable us to assert much more than its real existence, there is no reason why similar inferences should not eventually give us more definite information as to the nature of that existence.

The final solution, therefore, may be briefly stated as being that the subjectivity of Space, or at least of the infinity involved in its conception, is likely to be brought out in the future evolution of the world, and this solution has the advantage of harmonizing with two such important doctrines as those of Evolution and of idealism: and idealism would surely be a still more futile and useless doctrine than its worst enemies or wildest champions would assert, if it cannot be appealed to to rescue philosophy from this perplexity.

§ 11. The infinity of Time, however, cannot be disposed of so easily by a decree of subjectivity. For the reality of Time is involved in the reality of the world-process. Now a process need not be in Space (as, e.g., a process of thought), and the world-process may therefore retain its meaning, even though spatial extension be nothing more than a passing phase of that process in our consciousness; but the subjectivity of Time would destroy the whole meaning and reality of the world-process, and negate the idea of the world as an evolution. Hence theories which have regarded Time as an illusion, as the phenomenal distortion of the Eternal, have ultimately had to confess their inability to assign any meaning to the course of events in Time, and so arrived at despair, practical and theoretical, with regard to the phenomenal world. For it is evident that a process is necessarily in Time,2 and involves a temporal connection between its successive phases. Our dilemma then is this, that if the reality of Time is denied, the whole meaning and rationality of the world is destroyed at one blow; if it is admitted, we do not rid ourselves of its infinity and its contradiction of itself and of science.

A clue out of the labyrinth may be found by observing with Aristotle (Phys. IV. 223a) that our consciousness of Time depends on the perception of motion ([x]), i.e., on the changes, and the regularity of the changes, in short, on the Becoming of the world. Time, as the consciousness of succession, is not indeed, as we feel at first sight tempted to assert, bound up with the permanence of physical motions, by which we at present measure it, and regulate the subjective times of our several consciousnesses (ch. iii. § 6); but it does seem to depend upon our consciousness of Change or Becoming in the wider sense, of which physical motion is but a single example. If, therefore, there were no change, Time would not exist for us, i.e., would not exist at all.

The question therefore arises whether we can form a conception of a state in which change is transcended, and to this question we must answer yes. The ideal of perfect adaptation is such a conception, and in a state of perfect adaptation there would be no consciousness of change (cp. ch. ii. § 9,. p. 32; ch. iv. § 4). Unless, therefore, happiness and harmony are the illusions the Pessimist asserts them to be, we must conclude that in such a state of perfection Time would be transcended.

But transcended by what? It is easy to answer that its place will be taken by Eternity, but less easy to explain the meaning of that much-abused word, and its relation to Time. For nothing would be gained if Eternity were regarded merely as the negation of Time: this would neither save the meaning of the world-process nor correspond to the positive character of happiness. Eternity must be regarded as positive, and its relation to Time must be conceived analogous to the relation of Being to Becoming. The parallelism of the two is indeed surprising. The idea of Time involves an inherent contradiction, and so also does Becoming. For though Becoming is a fact of daily experience, it remains a contradiction to thought, and cannot be defined except as a union of Being and Not-Being (ch. iii. § 13). And in this union Being is the positive element, the standard to which all Becoming is referred. That which becomes, is only in so far as it has Being, and in so far as it is not, it is nothing. Construed on this analogy, Time would be real only as the presage of Eternity, and Eternity would be the ultimate standard by which its contradictions would be measured and harmonized. And Time and Becoming are not only analogous, but inseparably connected. For not only does all Becoming take place in Time, but without Becoming there would be no Time. And may we not then say that what Becoming is without Being, that Time would be without Eternity, viz., self-contradictory and unmeaning?

Thus we begin to perceive the nature of the limits of Time. The beginning of Time and the birth of our present universe (cp. ch. ii. § 20 s.f.) must have been a coincident transition from equable and unchanging Being, from the harmonious Now of Eternity into the unrest, struggle and discord of Becoming, and the self-contradictory flow of Time. Thus Time might be called a Corruption of Eternity, just as Becoming is a Corruption of Being. For in either case the change must be conceived as one of decadence, and Being and Eternity as the positive conceptions from which Becoming and Time represent a partial falling away.

And both Time and Becoming may be called corruptions of Eternal Being also with reference to their intimate connection with Evil and imperfection. For in the ever-changing world of Time, complete adaptation and adjustment, a perfect harmony between a thing and its environment does not and cannot exist, and it is just certain aspects of this non-adaptation, non-equilibrium and discord, that we denominate evil (ch., iv. § 4). Thus Time, Becoming, and Evil form part of the same problem (cp. ch. V. § 2 s.f.), and to recognize that the question as to the origin of each is a question as to the origin of all, is the first great step towards the solution of this triune perplexity of philosophy. And the mystery of Time is in a fair way of solution when we can express it in terms of the others, and say that Time is but the measure of the impermanence of the imperfect, and that the reason why we fail to attain to the ideal of Eternity is that we fail equally to attain to the cognate ideals of Being and Adaptation. The question thereby resolves itself into the old difficulty (ch. v. § 5) of why the Real cannot Realize the perfection of the ideals of our reason. But if it could, is it not evident that there would be an end of Time, as of Change and of Evil, and would not Time pass into Eternity?

Regarding Eternity, therefore, as the ideal, and not as the negation of Time, as that into which Time tends to pass in the process of Evolution, as that into which it will pass at the end of that process, it is possible to resolve the difficulty of the dependence of the world-process on the reality of Time. If Time is the corruption of Eternity, if it is but the imperfect shadow cast by Eternity on the prescient soul of man, then what is true of Time holds of Eternity sensu eminentiori, and in becoming a process in Eternity the world-process does not have its meaning annihilated. On the contrary, it for the first time attains to its full plenitude of import.

We may conclude therefore, for the present, that the solution of the problem of Time lies in its re-attainment of Eternity.

§ 12. The next subject which awaits discussion in our relations to our environment is that of man's relation to the material world. But before entering into a discussion of the relations and functions of Matter and Spirit, it will be necessary to allude as briefly as may be to the question of idealism and the external world.

Idealism is popularly supposed to consist in a denial of the existence of an external world. But this accusation is really a corollary from the fundamental fact of idealism, which idealists have been by no means anxious to draw. On the contrary, they have made every effort to evade it, although their opponents may uncharitably think that their efforts were either unsuccessful, or succeeded only at a disproportionate cost of further absurdities. But that idealists should strain every nerve to escape from the most obvious corollary of their doctrine was but natural. No serious philosopher can really hold a doctrine which would hardly be credible even at an advanced stage of insanity, viz., that nothing exists beside himself. Or rather, if he is all that exists, he is certainly insane.3 Subjective idealists therefore do not exist outside lunatic asylums and certain histories of philosophy.

Into the various devices of idealists to avoid subjective idealism, it is not necessary to enter, as they mostly consist in appeals to a deus ex machina, a "divine mind in which the world exists." But even if it should not be considered derogatory to the divine majesty that a God should be invented to help philosophers out of a difficulty of their own creation, the difficulties that beset the relation of the individual and the "universal" mind are even greater than those of idealism.

It will be more profitable, therefore, to analyse the basis of all idealism, and to consider what it proves, and whether it necessitates the inferences of idealism.

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Part 2 of 3

§ 13. The primary fact of idealism is that all things exist in our consciousness — exist as objects of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions; that that which does not and cannot enter into our consciousness in one of these ways is unknowable and imperceptible, and therefore nothing. It is thus the positive converse of the proposition that the unknowable is nothing (ch. ii. § 6), But this fact is just as unimportant, controversially, as it is scientifically irrefragable. Thinkers of all parties, who know what they are about, are agreed that it is undeniable, and that it is impossible to acquiesce in it as final. Idealists and realists alike perceive the necessity of so interpreting it as to render it compatible with the objective existence of the phenomenal world: their only difference is about the means.

Idealists mostly seek to preserve the verbal statement of the primary fact of idealism by saying that all things exist in consciousness, but in a divine consciousness, appear to a divine "I," and hence are subjective to the Absolute, but objective to us, and independent of our thoughts and feelings. But in so doing they forget that they have transmuted a fact into a theory, if not into a fiction. "My" consciousness assures me that all things appear to me, exist in my consciousness, but it carries with it no such reference to a divine consciousness. There is only a verbal and illusory identity between my own "I" and that of God. My consciousness tells me nothing directly about the way in which things appear to God. The transition, therefore, from my consciousness to God's is an extremely hazardous one, and does not of itself imply any similarity between the contents of my consciousness and of God's. Indeed, upon reflection, it will seem probable that things would appear widely different to a divine being, and one would be sorry to think that they should appear no better. But the "objective world" is a world which appears to me, and no appearances to someone else will explain it. For the pantheistic proposition that in appearing to me, the world really appears to God, and that my own "I" is but a section of the divine "I," is not one capable of being thought out. For the universal "I" either has another consciousness beside mine, or it has not. If it has, the objective reality of things will be things as they appear to that consciousness, and things as they appear to mine will be reduced to a subjective illusion, i.e., we fall back into the subjective idealism from which we are seeking to escape. If it has not, why should the reality of things be constituted by my consciousness, rather than by that of any other self-conscious "I," which is also a fragment of the divine self-consciousness? Things appear differently to me and to others, but to whom do they appear as they really are? It matters not what answer is given to this question, the result will be the same; the world, as it appears to every consciousness but one, will be an illusion.

§ 14. But if idealism cannot extricate itself from the toils of illusionism, let us see whether Realism is more successful in getting over the primary subjectivity of the world.

Realism will naturally seek to draw a distinction between existing in consciousness and existing solely in consciousness. It does not follow that because the world exists in my consciousness, it exists only in my consciousness. We may cheerfully admit even that the world cannot exist out of my consciousness. For it may be that ultimately the independence, either of the world or of the "I," will be seen to involve the same fallacy of false abstraction (cp. ch. vi. § 2 s.f.), and that in the end "I" can no more exist without the world than the world can exist without me (cp, ch. x. § 20). Indeed, even now the content of the Self is given only by interaction and contrast with the world, or Not-Self.

But at present this is a mere suggestion, and we must content ourselves with showing that the fact will bear the interpretation Realism puts upon it. It is a mistake to suppose that the only inference from the existence of the world in consciousness is that it exists only in consciousness, and that its existence is therefore dependent on the subject's consciousness. For, granting the self-existence of the world independently of my consciousness, it would yet exist for me only as reflected in my consciousness. In other words, the fact of its existence in my consciousness would be the same, whether or not the world were self-existent. Both interpretations being thus possible, there can be no doubt as to which is preferable. Sense and science alike require us to believe that the existence of the world is not dependent on its appearance in any one's consciousness. The phenomenal world and the phenomenal self, to whom it appears, are mutually implicated facts, and we have no business to assume the existence of either out of their given context. And this mutual implication of the self and the world is equally fatal to both the extremes, both to subjective idealism and to Materialism. We have as little ground for asserting that consciousness is merely a phenomenon of Matter, as for asserting that the material world is merely a phenomenon of anyone's consciousness. But a choice is still left between transcendental, or ultimate, and phenomenal, or immediate, realism.

This choice is decided in favour of the former, not only by the contradictions which the assumption of the ultimate reality of the phenomenal world involves (cp. ch. iii. §§ 2-12, and § 21), but also by the fact that one of the factors in the phenomenal world lays claim to ultimate reality. For each of us is strongly persuaded of the absolute existence of his own self. And the proper inference from this is not that the phenomenal world exists in an absolute Self, but that a transcendent world of ultimate reality corresponds to the reality of the Self.

Of this existence of ultimate realities outside ourselves we can have no direct proof: there can be no direct disproof of subjective idealism, just as there can be no direct disproof of pessimism. It is sufficient to show that it is practically impossible and absurd, and that its competitor can give an alternative interpretation of the facts, which gives a rational and harmonious solution. And indeed it is a mistake to suppose that all things require to be proved (cp. ch. ii. § 5), for proof is an activity of thought, and thought does not constitute the whole of consciousness. A fact may be as surely attested by feeling or will, as by the most rigorous demonstration, and ultimately all demonstration rests on such self-evident facts.4 The existence of a reality outside ourselves is such a fact, irresistibly attested by feeling, and one which does not require further proof. In this respect it is exactly on a par with the existence of one's self. No man can prove his own existence; and, we may add, no sane man wants to. The correlative facts of the existence of Self and Not-Self are certified by the same evidence, the irresistible affirmation of feeling, and their supreme certainty cannot be touched, and much less shaken, by any idealist argument.

§ 15. Was idealism, then, merely an unprofitable sophism — merely a troublesome quibble which obstructed our path? By no means: we may learn much from the difficulty to which it drew attention. In the first place, it brought out clearly the important distinction, which we had already anticipated in our account of Space and Time, of phenomenal and ultimate reality, and our answer depended on the distinction between them. What was reasserted against subjective idealism was the existence of ultimate reality, but we refrained from identifying this with phenomenal reality. We did not commit ourselves to the assertion of the absolute reality of every stick and every stone exactly as we now behold it. The world, as it now appears to us, may be but the subjective reflexion of the ultimate reality, and thus idealism would be true, at least of our phenomenal world.

And, secondly, idealism supplies the antidote to the materialism which regards consciousness as an accident without which the world is quite capable of existing.

Idealism and Materialism, starting from opposite standpoints, are impelled by the force of all but insuperable reasonings towards contrary conclusions, and as they meet midway, the shock of their collision seems like to shatter the authority of human reason. For just as idealism concluded from the fact that the world exists in consciousness, that it existed only in the individual's consciousness, so Materialism concludes from the fact that the world dispenses with every individual, that all may be dispensed with. The exaggeration and the flaw is the same in both. Materialism overlooks that the world it speaks of is phenomenal, that the individual dispensed with is phenomenal also; and that what appears need not be all that ultimately is. Its arguments, therefore, do not touch the individual's conviction of his ultimate reality. Similarly, idealism cannot affect the individual's conviction that there must be something beside himself to account for the appearances to him. If, then, we recognize the distinction of the phenomenal and ultimate reality, the contradiction between Materialism and idealism ceases to be insoluble.

§ 16. And to say nothing of other difficulties which it alone can solve, this fact is in itself sufficient reason for making the distinction between phenomenal and transcendent reality, which may at first sight appear somewhat needless. In so doing we are proving true to the principle of our method, by solving a conflict between thought and fact by an appeal to metaphysic. And it is certainly a more satisfactory method thus to reconcile the contending parties than for each to go on reasserting the untenableness of its opponent's position from its own point of view. Students of philosophy must be well-nigh sick by this time of hearing the well-worn philosophic argument against Materialism, that it is a gigantic hysteron-proteron, and a logical contradiction. And the small impression this mode of argument has hitherto produced, might well arouse the most supine of philosophers to abandon the method of sterile and captious criticism, and to bethink himself of an alternative explanation of the phenomenal world. If Materialism is bad metaphysics, what is the true metaphysical explanation of Matter? If self-consciousness is the primary fact of knowledge, what part does it play in the explanation of the phenomenal world? What is the relation of Matter and Spirit? what is the meaning of the distinction of Body and Soul? and what is the function and purpose of the arrangement of the material cosmos?

If we remember the primary subjectivity of the phenomenal world, and proceed by the right method, we shall be enabled to give substantially sufficient answers to these questions. And the right method will here as elsewhere be one which derives its metaphysical conclusions from scientific data and justifies them by parallels from acknowledged scientific facts.

§ 17. In analysing the conception of Matter, the first thing to remark is that Matter is an abstraction from material bodies or things. Things are all individual and no one thing is exactly like any other. Nevertheless we detect in them certain resemblances in virtue of which we call them material, and regard them as composed of the abstraction "Matter." Matter, therefore, like all abstractions, is an adjective but not a substantive fact (cp. ch. iii. § 15, p. 82), and it is this which justifies the philosophic protest against the materialist annihilation of the mind by means of one of its own abstractions.

This abstract Matter, moreover, stands in a curious relation to the equally abstract conception of Force. According to the ordinary scientific doctrine, which ignores the metaphysical character of Matter, forgets that it is an abstraction, and treats it as a reality, Matter is the substratum or vehicle of Force. All the sensible qualities of Matter are due to forces, gravitative, cohesive, repulsive, chemical, electrical, or to motions (like Heat, Sound, Light, etc.), or "motive forces." Matter itself, therefore, is left as the unknown and unknowable substratum of Force. There is no reason why the term Matter should appear from one end of a scientific account of the world to the other. It is not required to explain the appearance of anything we can experience, and is merely a metaphysical fiction designed to provide forces with a vehicle.

Hence the idea easily suggested itself to scientists to drop out the totally otiose conception of Matter, and to regard the "atoms" of physics as Force-centres. But though physics could perfectly well employ such force-centres, their nature requires further elucidation. It is impossible, in the first place, to regard them, with Faraday, as material points, devoid of magnitude. For this would not only stultify the whole aim of the theory by reintroducing Matter, but involve the further difficulty that as the material points would be infinitely small, the velocity which any force, however small, would impart to them, would be infinite, and they would rush about the universe with infinite velocities, and never remain long enough anywhere for their existence to become known. If, on the other hand, the force-centres are really points, i.e., mathematical points "without parts and without magnitude," it is difficult to see how real forces could be attached to ideal points. And again, unless each of these atomic forces were attached to some real substratum, what would keep them separate, or prevent them from combining into one gigantic resultant Force, which would sweep the universe headlong into Chaos?

In short, the whole conception of independent force-centres rests upon insufficient metaphysical analysis. A force which has no substratum, which acting from nothing, is the force of nothing, but as it were in the air, is utterly unthinkable.

But is this any reason for reverting to unknowable "Matter" as the substratum, in order that our forces may inhere in it, and not stray about helplessly? It would be a great mistake to suppose this. Our "forces" may require a substratum, but there is no reason why that substratum should be material. It is, as Mr. Mill says, a coarse prejudice of popular thought, to which science has needlessly deferred, to suppose that the cause must be like the effect, that a nightmare, e.g., must resemble the plum-pudding which caused it. So there is no need to suppose that an unknowable "Matter" is an ultimate reality, merely because phenomenal things have the attribute of materiality. Matter is not the only conceivable substratum of Force.

§ 18. We found just now that Force-centres, in order to be a satisfactory scientific explanation of things, required some agency to prevent the individual atomic forces from coalescing into one. This postulate is realized if the force-atoms be endowed with something like intelligence, and thus enabled to keep their positions with respect to one another, i.e., to keep their positions in Space. We shall then say that they act at or from the points where they appear, and shall have substituted a known and knowable substratum, viz., intelligence, for unknowable ''Matter." Our "force-atoms" will have developed into "monads", spiritual entities akin to ourselves. Thus the dualism of Matter and Spirit would have been transcended, and the lower, viz. Matter, would have been interpreted as a phenomenal appearance of the higher, viz. Spirit.

§ 19. And a similar result follows from the analysis of the conception of Force. Just as Matter was a conception which could not be applied to ultimate reality at all, so Force is a conception which inevitably implies the spiritual character of the ultimate reality. Historically it is undeniable that Force is depersonalized Will, that the prototype of Force is Will, which even now is the Force par excellence and the only one we know directly. The sense of Effort also, which is a distinctive element in the conception of Force, is irresistibly suggestive of the action of a spiritual being. For how can there be effort without intelligence and will?

It is this closer reference to our own consciousness which makes Force a more satisfactory explanation of things than Matter: it is nearer to the higher, and hence more capable of really explaining than the lower. And we see this also by the issue of the attempt to interpret Force in terms of lower conceptions. Force is frequently defined as the cause of motion (cp. ch. iii. § 10), and if this definition were metaphysically true, the sooner Force were obliterated from the vocabulary of science the better. Its association with the sense of effort would lead to groundless suggestions of similarity with the action of our wills, which could only be misleading. But, as we saw (ch. iii. §11, 8), the conceptions of cause and motion are even more replete with contradiction and perplexity, and to explain Force in terms of cause and motion is to explain what is imperfectly known in terms of what is still less known. When we assert that the Becoming of things is due to the action of forces, we can form some sort of inadequate idea of how the process works, but we have not the least idea of what causation consists in as soon as we rigidly exclude all human analogies. To use causation without a reference to our own wills is to use a category which has been reduced to a mere word without meaning, a category, moreover, the use of which involves us in the inextricable difficulties of an infinite regress.

§ 20. If, on the other hand, we admit that Matter may be resolved into forces, and that the only possible substratum of Force is intelligence, the way is open for a reconciliation of the metaphysics of idealism with the requirements of science. Idealism admits the phenomenal reality of the "material" world, and science recognizes that it has neither need nor right to assert its ultimate reality. The unity of philosophy and of the universe is vindicated by the discovery of the fundamental identity of Matter and Spirit, and the ultimate reduction of the former to the latter.

And not only has science no need to assert the ultimate reality of Matter, but it actually benefits, in a hardly less degree than metaphysics, from the interpretation of the phenomena of Matter we have propounded. If Matter is not and cannot be an ultimate mode of being, it follows that the pseudo-metaphysical speculations as to its ultimate constitution lead only to a loss of time and temper. The conceptions of atoms, ether, space, etc., are not capable of being cleared of their contradictions, because they have only a relative validity in the phenomenal world, and the phenomenal world taken by itself is full of contradictions. Science therefore need not concern itself to pursue its assumptions beyond the point at which they are most useful practically, nor attempt the hopeless task of solving the perplexities which arise when it is essayed to give them an ontological validity. And this is the true answer to the sceptical criticism of the first principles of science (ch. iii. §§ 6-11). Hence it will be sufficient to assume as many undulating agencies as are requisite to explain the phenomena of light and electricity, without troubling whether the assumption of the reality of a luminiferous ether would not involve impossibilities. The difficulties inherent in the conceptions of Matter, Motion, and infinity, puzzles like that of the infinitude of the material universe, of the infinite divisibility of Matter and the relativity of Motion, lose their sting, when we cease to imagine that the facts with which they are concerned are ultimate. It is enough to know that we shall never get to the end of the world, or come to a particle we cannot divide.

But though Matter ultimately be but a form of the Evolution of Spirit, difficulties remain in plenty. Before the reconciliation can be considered complete, e.g., it is necessary to determine the nature of the intelligence which Matter is divined to conceal, and to discover what is the function of this disguise of Spirit.

§ 21. After the dispersion of the doubts which Scepticism had cast on the first principles of science, we must consider the nature of the intelligence of the Force-atoms. It is possible either to regard each atom, with Leibnitz and Lotze, as a metaphysical entity or monad, and to regard their interactions as constituting the material universe, or to ascribe them to the direct action of divine force. Nor is it a question of vital importance which we prefer. For, on the one hand, we cannot dispense with the divine force in trying to understand the arrangement of the world and the aim of its process, and, on the other, it is not very much more difficult to conceive of an atom as possessing rudimentary consciousness and individuality than to do this in the case of an amoeba. But perhaps it is better. In the present state of our knowledge, and until Mr. Crookes' theories of the individualities of atoms (ch. vii. § 11) have received fuller confirmation, to recognize the distinction between organic and inorganic being, and to ascribe consciousness only to living beings, out of which it is historically probable that our highly evolved consciousness has directly developed.

An atom, then, may be defined as a constant manifestation of divine Force or Will, exercised at a definite point. In this definition, which moreover can be easily adapted to new requirements, should the old conceptions of atoms cease to be serviceable expressions for the scientific facts, the constancy of the divine Will excludes the association of caprice, while the localization prevents the fusion and confusion of the force-atoms. It must not, however, be supposed that there is any intrinsic connection between the forces and the mathematical points at which they act. It is merely that at these points we come under the influence of a certain intensity of divine Force. That this intensity is a constant and definite one, and that we can therefore measure it in numbers of force units, and speak of the conservation of mass and energy, is a fact given only by experience, and one which need hold good only in so far as it subserves to the idea of the whole. And if it be objected that a thing cannot act where it is not, it may be replied that the divine Force is omnipresent, or its action in matter may be compared to a piece of machinery which remained in action in the absence of its constructor, which affected us on reaching certain spots, and which might fairly be said to represent a constant will of its constructor. But if we penetrate a little deeper, the difficulty will appear gratuitous. For we have seen (§ 10) that Space cannot be an ultimate reality, but must be regarded as a creation of the divine Force on precisely the same footing as Matter, and need not appear real to us except in our present condition.

Thus the ''objective" world in Space and Time would be the direct creation in our consciousness of the divine Force, and represent merely a state or condition of our mind, which need not be true or exist at all, except for a being in that condition. And yet it would be the only reality and the primary object of knowledge for such a consciousness.

§ 22. We have spoken hitherto of the world as a manifestation of divine Force, and treated the physical forces from the point of view of the subject of which they were forces. But Force, to be real, requires at least two factors, and cannot act upon nothing, any more than it can be the force of nothing. We must consider, then, the objects also upon which the divine Force acts. It must be a manifestation to (something or) somebody, it must act upon (something or) somebody. Upon whom? Upon us, surely, for it is to us that the world appears. But that it should appear to us implies a certain independence and distinction from the Deity. For Force implies resistance, and there would be nothing for the divine Force to act upon, if we were not distinct and resisting entities. Or rather, we should remember that the conception of Force is imperfect, if we regard only the force which acts, and not that which it acts upon, and which calls it out by its resistance, that every action implies reaction, and that to speak of forces is but a convenient but inaccurate way of speaking of a Stress or interaction between two factors. And of these factors each must be real in order to make possible the existence of the force exercised by either. When, therefore, we call the universe a manifestation of divine Force, we are not speaking with perfect precision, but leaving out of account the other half of the Stress, viz., the Reaction of the Ego upon that force. The cosmos of our experience is a stress or interaction between God and ourselves.

And in such interaction both sides are affected. If God appears to us as the world, if the splendour of perfection can be thus distorted in the dross of the material, the Self also, which is a factor in that interaction, cannot appear in its fulness.

We must distinguish therefore between the Self as it ultimately is, and as it appears to itself in its interaction with the Deity. This distinction may be marked by calling the Self as it appears, the phenomenal self, and the self as the ultimate reality, the Transcendental Ego. By the latter name it is intended to express its transcendence of the limitations of our ordinary consciousness and of our phenomenal world, and yet to emphasize its fundamental kinship with our normal self. And in agreement with Kant's phraseology, it is called "transcendental," because its existence is not directly presented, but inferred, based upon a metaphysical inference from the phenomenal to the transcendent.5 On the other hand, our ordinary selves are phenomenal, just as phenomenal as the phenomenal world. We can discover our character only from our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and introspective psychology is a science of observation. It is by experience and experiment that we arrive at a knowledge of ourselves, by an examination of the varying flow of consciousness. But in order to be conscious of the connection of the flow of phenomena in consciousness, in order to be convinced that my feelings to-day and yesterday both belong to me, it is necessary that there should be something permanent which connects them (cp. ch. v. § 3). This permanent being, which holds together the Becoming of the phenomenal selves, is secured by the Transcendental Ego, which is, as it were, the form containing as its content the whole of our psychic life. But the form cannot be separated from its content (ch. ii. § 14), and hence the Ego cannot be reduced to an empty form, or regarded as different from the Self. They must be in some way one, and their unity must correspond to our conviction that we change and yet are the same. What, then, is the relation of the Ego to the Self? For it seems that the Transcendental Ego can neither be separate from or equivalent to the phenomenal self ( = the content of consciousness). If it were separate, the "I" would be divided, would be not one but two; if it were equivalent, the self which interacts with the Deity would be equivalent to the self which is the result of that interaction.

To understand this relation, we must remember that the ordinary phenomenal ''I" is essentially changing, and displays different sides of its nature at different times. Hence its actual consciousness never represents the whole capacity of the self. What "I" think, feel, etc.. is only a small portion at any time of what I am capable of thinking and feeling, and its amount is very different when I am intensely active and half asleep. But do not the latent capacities of feeling, etc., truly belong to myself, or does its reality admit of degrees corresponding to the intensities of consciousness? Am "I" annihilated when I fall asleep, and resurrected when I awake? Assuredly this would be a strange doctrine, and one from which the acceptance of the Transcendental Ego delivers us. The Transcendental Ego is the "I" with all its powers and latent capacities of development, the ultimate reality which we have not yet actually reached. The phenomenal self is that portion of the Transcendental Ego which is at any time actual (exists [x]), or present in consciousness, and forms but a feeble and partial excerpt of the Ego. But the Self is as yet alone real, and as in the progress of its development it unfolds all its hidden powers, it approximates more and more to the Ego, until at last the actual and the potential would become co-extensive, the Self and the Ego would coincide, and in the attainment of perfection we should be all we are capable of being.

§ 23. And this account of the relation of the Ego to the Self is not only metaphysically necessary, but supported also by the direct scientific evidence of experimental psychology. For it seems to provide an explanation of the exceedingly perplexing phenomena of double or multifold and alternating consciousness, multiplex personality and ''secondary" selves. These curious phenomena forcibly bring home to us what a partial and imperfect thing our ordinary consciousness is, how much goes on within us of which we know nothing, how far the phenomenal falls short of being co-extensive with our whole nature. And yet we must either include these changes of personality within the limits of our own "self," or ascribe them to possession by "spirits." And there can be little doubt that the former theory is in most cases obviously preferable. The secondary selves show such close relations to the primary, display such complications of inclusive and exclusive memories, betray such constant tendencies to merge into or to absorb their primaries, that we cannot exclude them from our "selves." Indeed, it is often difficult to decide which of several personalities is to be regarded as the primary self. What, e,g., is the real self of personages like Felida X. or Madame B.?6 Is it the Leonie of waking life, the dull uneducated peasant woman, who knows nothing of the higher faculties she is capable of displaying when the habitual grouping of the elements of her being has been resifted by hypnotization? Or is it the bright and lively Leontine of the hypnotic condition, who knows all that Leonie does, but speaks of her in the third person? Or is it not rather the Leonore of a still deeper stage, with her higher intellect and perfect memory of all that she, Leontine and Leonie have done?

By the theory suggested all these difficulties may be solved. They merely illustrate the contention that our ordinary selves are neither our whole selves nor our true selves. They are, as Mr. Myers phrases it, merely that portion of our self which has happened to come to the surface, or which it has paid to develop into actual consciousness in the course of Evolution. They are our habitual or normal selves, more or less on a par with the secondary selves, and like them, phenomenal. But the Ego includes them all, and this inclusion justifies us in reckoning these phenomena part of ourselves. In it the phenomenal selves unite and combine, and as a beginning of this fusion it is interesting to find traces of coalescence in the higher stages of personalities which at lower stages had seemed exclusive and antagonistic.7

§ 24. The way in which the world arises may now be represented as follows. If there are two beings, God and an Ego, capable of interacting, and if thereupon interaction takes place, there will be a reflexion of that interaction presented to or conceived by the Ego. And if, for reasons to be subsequently elucidated (ch. x. §§ 25, 26), there is an element of non-adaptation and imperfection in this interaction, both factors will appear to the Ego in a distorted shape. Its image of the interaction will not correspond to the reality. And such a distorted image our universe is, and hence the divine half of the stress (cp. § 22) is represented by the material world, and that of the Ego by our present phenomenal selves. But just as the development of ourselves reveals more and more our full nature, so it must be supposed that the development of the world will reveal more and more fully the nature of God, so that in the course of Evolution, our conception of the interaction between us and the Deity would come to correspond more and more to the reality, until at the completion of the process, the last thin veil would be rent asunder, and the perfected spirits would behold the undimmed splendour of truth in the light of the countenance of God.

§ 25. But many difficulties remain. Granting that Matter is the product of an interaction between the Deity and the Ego, we have not yet fully accounted for the objective world. The objective world includes not only things but persons, i.e., spiritual beings. Are these then also subjective hallucinations of each man's Ego?

It is not as imperative to deny the ultimate reality of spiritual beings as it was to deny that of unknowable and lifeless Matter. But it is undeniable that the admission of their reality creates some difficulty. For how can others share in the subjective cosmos arising out of the interaction between the Deity and the Ego of each of us? Metaphysic alone might long have failed to find an answer to this question, and the idea of a "pre-established harmony" between the phenomenal worlds of several spirits might long have continued to seem a strange flight of fancy, if the progress of science had not enabled us to conceive the process on scientific analogies.

The problem, in the first place, has much affinity, with what we see in dreams. In a dream also we have a sensuous presentation laying claim to reality, and yet possessing only subjective validity. A dream is a hallucination, and yet not a random hallucination: each feature in the wildest dream is causally connected with a reality transcending the dream state (in this case our ordinary "waking" life), and when we awake we can generally account even for its greatest absurdities. And yet those absurdities do not, as a rule, strike us while we dream. We live for the nonce in topsyturvydom, and are surprised at nothing. While it lasts, therefore, a dream has all the characteristics of reality. And so with our present life: it seems real and rational, because we are yet asleep, because the eyes of the soul are not yet opened to pierce the veil of illusion. But if the rough touch of death awoke us from the lethargy of life, and withdrew the veil that shrouded from our sight the true nature of the cosmos, would not our earth-life appear a dream, the hallucination of an evil nightmare?

Certainly the analogy holds very exactly. The world of dreams is moulded, although with strange distortions, upon that of our waking life; so is our present world on that of ultimate reality. It is real while it lasts; so is our world; when we awake, both cease to be true, but not to be significant. And both, moreover, may be seen through by reflection. Just as we are sometimes so struck by the monstrous incongruity of our dreams that, even as we dream, we are conscious that we dream, so philosophy arouses us to a consciousness that the phenomenal is not the real.

But yet the parallel would not be complete unless different people had parallel and corresponding dreams or hallucinations. Exceptionally this correspondence has been recorded even in the case of dreams,8 but for a frequent and normal occurrence of such parallelism we must go to the nascent science of hypnotism.

Not only are hypnotized subjects easily subjected to hallucinations at the will of their operator, both while hypnotized and when they have apparently returned to their normal condition, but it is quite possible to make several subjects share in the same hallucination.

Now as yet our knowledge of these phenomena is too rudimentary for us to assign limits to the extent and complexity of the hallucinations which may be in this way induced, but even now their consistency is quite astounding. The subject to whom it has been suggested that he will at such and such a time have audience of the President of the French Republic, is not disillusioned by any incongruity in the appearance and demeanour of his phantom president: a hallucinatory photograph on a spotless piece of paper obeys all the laws of optics; it is reflected in a mirror, doubled by a prism, magnified by a lens, etc.9

And if such effects are possible to us, if we can experimentally create subjective worlds of objective reality (i.e., valid for several persons), even though of comparatively limited extent and variety, in a human consciousness, what may not be achieved by an operator of vastly greater knowledge and power? Shall we assert that this hallucinatory cosmos would fall short even of the almost infinite complexity and variety of our world?

We may put, then, the analogy in terms of a continuous proportion, and say that the hypnotic or dream-consciousness is to the normal, as the normal is to the ultimate. And in each case the lower is related to the higher as the actual to the potential: while we sleep our dream-consciousness is all that is actual and our waking self exists only potentially; while we live on earth our normal consciousness alone is actual and our true selves are the ideals of unrealized aspirations.

And thus to philosophy, as to religion, its reproach has become its glory. Just as the Cross has become the symbol of religious hope, so philosophy has answered the taunts that truth is a dream and God a hallucination, by gathering truth from dreams, and by tracing the method of God's working through hallucinations.

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Part 3 of 3

§ 26. But though the "objective world" be a hallucination, subjective in its mode of genesis, it is not on that account without a meaning, without a purpose. Not even our own casual and disconnected hallucinations are without connection with the real world, without the most direct significance for our real life. Still less can this be the case with the material world: it must be possible to determine the teleological significance of Matter, and of the phenomenal selves incarnated in it. For it is necessary, on metaphysical grounds, to endorse the protest which is generally made in the interests of Materialism, against the separation of Body and Soul, the dualism of Matter and Spirit, and to welcome the accumulating proofs of their complete correspondence and interdependence.

For the universe is one; Body and Soul, Matter and Spirit are but different aspects, the outside and the inside of the same fact: the material is but the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual state. No other theory of their relations can possibly be drawn from our premisses: for if the phenomenal world is a stress between the Deity and the Ego, the soul is but the reaction of the Ego upon the divine action which encases it as the body. But this very analysis of a stress, this very distinction between force and resistance, action and reaction is a logical and not a real one, and so it is not surprising that they should be distinguishable in thought but inseparable in reality.

§ 27. And this close connection of the material and the spiritual will enable us to understand why the single process of Evolution is a correlated development of both, why the development of a spirit is naturally accompanied by a growth in the complexity of its material reflex.

Of this fact Materialism gives an explanation which is not only plausible in itself, but persuasive by its favourable contrast with all the other metaphysical explanations hitherto offered. It is all very well, a materialist may urge, to give metaphysical explanations of Matter in the lofty region of vague generalities, but when we come down to humble but solid facts, and require a specific explanation of this or that, the courage and the metaphysics of the opponents of Materialism evaporate, and shedding around them a "divine mist" of mystical verbiage they hasten to regain the cloudy peaks of metaphysics. Granted, therefore, that it is hard to conceive the constitution of Matter as an ultimate fact, that Matter may quite well be an immediate activity of the Divine Energy, that the conception of the universe as a stress between the Deity and the Ego is a possible explanation of the interaction and close connection of Matter and Spirit, — granted all this, the question may yet be asked why the growth of the complexity of material organization should be the invariable accompaniment of the growth of consciousness. Is it not the easiest and most reasonable explanation of this fact to suppose that spirit is a kind of harmony, resulting from the proper collocation of material particles? And indeed, do not the facts of the evolution of life directly negative the supposition that Matter is an instrument of the Deity? For if the world-process were the realization of a Divine purpose, the lower forms of material organisms would necessarily be less harmonious to that purpose, and hence should require a more powerful and complicated machinery of Matter than the higher and more harmonized, instead of which, material organization rises in complexity and power pari passu with the development of consciousness, and the obvious inference is that it is the cause of the development of consciousness.

That such a materialistic explanation of the facts is the most obvious to the vulgar, it is needless to dispute, that it is also the soundest, it is imperative to deny. We may boldly accept the challenge of Materialism, and if we succeed, we may reasonably expect that a defeat of Materialism on the ground of its own choice will not mean merely a passing foray of the metaphysical mountaineers, but a final conquest of the rich lowlands of science from the materialists who have terrorized over them so long.

For the greater complexity of material organization in the development of the world several reasons may be given. In the first place, we may appeal to the fact that growth of complexity seems to be the law of Evolution in all things, and might parallel the greater complexity and delicacy of the individual organism by the growing complexity and delicacy of the higher social organism (cp. ch. viii. § 7). For if growth of complexity is a universal law of Evolution, there need be no inter-dependence between the manifestations of that law, i.e., no causal relation between the greater complexity of material organization and the development of consciousness.

Secondly, we may say quite generally, that if the world-process represents a gradual harmonizing of the Deity and the Ego, it must bring with it an increase in the intercourse and interaction between them. Hence the reflex of that interaction in the consciousness of the Ego, viz., the world, would show a parallel development. The greater intensity and the greater number of relations between the Ego and the Deity would generate an intenser consciousness on the one side and a more complex organization on the other. Thus the materialist explanation of the fact would in both these cases be a fallacy of cum hoc ergo propter hoc, and confuse a parallelism due to a common origin with causal dependence.

These considerations, however, are perhaps insufficient to explain the whole function of Matter in the Evolution of the world, and we must examine rather the part material organization plays in the different organisms.

In the lowest and simplest forms of life, e.g., protoplasm, consciousness is reduced to a minimum, and it has no organization to speak of. The protoplasm has to do all its work itself; the amoeba catches its food consciously and digests it consciously. When it feels, its consciousness has to be all there, and on the spot where the feeling is.

Now let us suppose that it differentiates itself and sets up a rudimentary organization, say a stomach, it no longer requires to supervise the digestion of its food in its proper person and with its whole consciousness, but only gets called in by the structure it has set up when something has gone wrong, and it has dyspepsia. It is a familiar observation that we know and feel nothing of our bodily organism until it is out of order. In health our nerves and our digestion do not demand the attention of our consciousness. And the conjecture may be hazarded that this is precisely the reason why we have grown nerves and a digestive apparatus. For the establishment of a nervous system makes it possible for consciousness to be concentrated at the centre of affairs and quietly to receive reports and send orders through the nerves, instead of rushing about all over the body.

There is thus a considerable economy of consciousness involved in every piece of material organization, its raison d'etre is that it liberates a certain amount of consciousness. That is to say, consciousness, instead of being bound down to the performance of lower and mechanical functions, is set free to pursue higher aims or to perfect its attainment of the lower, and thus the total of intelligence is increased. E.g., our original protoplasm, when it has got a stomach, can devote the attention it formerly bestowed upon digesting its breakfast to improved methods of catching it, and so its descendants, as they increase the complexity and efficiency of their organic machinery, may rise to the contemplation of the highest problems of life.

Thus organization is not a primary fact in the history of life. The unconscious material organization is simply the ex-conscious. Our unconsciousness of how we (our wills) control our bodies, gives no support to the view that body and soul are different: we have merely forgotten how we grew our bodies in the long process of Evolution. But as the process still goes on we can retrace the steps of our past development. Our acts still form our bodies for good and ill. First, they generate habits, and habits gradually become mechanical and unconscious. Habits, again, gradually produce organic changes, at first slight changes, it may be, in the development of the muscles and the expression of countenance. But in the course of generations these are summed up into hereditary organization. The only reason why this production of physical changes as the expression of psychical nature is not more obvious is, in the first place, that for reasons already stated (ch. iv. §§ 10, 16), our faculties have not been harmoniously developed, and that the correspondence between the different elements of our being is very far from perfect. And moreover, by far the greater part of our nature is given us, and in the course of a single life-time comparatively little can be done towards changing the outer into conformity with the inner man. Nevertheless, it may perhaps be suspected that our direct control of our bodily organism, though an obscured, is not an extinct power, that under favourable circumstances we possess what appears to be a supernatural and is certainly a supernormal power over our bodies, and that this is the true source of the perennial accounts of miracles of healing and extraordinary faculties.  

The essential meaning, then, of material organization in the evolution of the individual is Mechanism, and structure is essentially a labour-saving apparatus which sets free consciousness.

And this estimate of the function of Matter and the meaning of complexity of organization in the individual is confirmed by its applicability to the organization of society. For both the complex structure of higher societies (cp. ch. viii. § 7) and their elaborate material machinery are essentially contrivances for liberating force, and enabling them to produce a higher intelligence, which shall be competent to deal with higher problems.

§ 28. And it is not only from the point of view of the individual organism that Matter seems to be mechanism, but no less from that of the Deity. It is not merely that Atoms have the appearance of being "manufactured articles," from their equality, regularity and similarity, for they may not be of divine manufacture, and we may be compelled to deny their uniformity (cp. ch. vii. § 11). But if we think out the relation which on our theory must exist between the Deity and the Egos, we shall perceive that Matter is an admirably calculated machinery for regulating, limiting, and restraining the consciousness which it encases. Its impersonal character gives it the superiority which Aristotle ascribed to the law over personal rule.10 It does not cause hatred, and escapes ''the detestation which men feel for those who thwart their impulses, even when they do it rightly." Even children and savages cannot long be angry with sticks and stones. The dull resistance with which it meets and checks the outbursts of unreasoning passion, is more subduing than the most active display of power. The irresponsive and impassive inertia, against which we dash ourselves in vain, binds us with more rigid and yet securer bonds than any our fancy could have imagined. Matter constrains us by a necessity we can neither resist nor resent, and to dispute its sway would not only be a waste of time and strength, but display a ludicrous lack of the sense of the ridiculous.

But if Matter be a controlling mechanism, we can see also why the lower beings possess a less complex organization. A simpler and coarser machinery depresses their consciousness to a very low point, and so they have not the intelligence seriously to affect the course of events. On the other hand, in order to permit of the higher manifestations of consciousness, admitting of greater spontaneity, of greater powers for good and for evil, a more complex, elaborate and delicate mechanism of Matter is required, to secure the necessary control of the resultant action. Slaves may be driven by the lash, governed by simple and violent means, but free men require to be guided by subtler and more complicated modes of suasion. Or, to vary the metaphor, if the material encasement be coarse and simple, as in the lower organisms, it permits only a little intelligence to permeate through it; if it is delicate and complex, it leaves more pores and exits, as it were, for the manifestations of consciousness. Or, to appeal to the analogy already found so serviceable (§ 24), it is far easier for the operator to put his hypnotized subject asleep than to produce the higher manifestations in which the consciousness of the subject is called forth, but guided by the will of the operator; and these require far more elaborate and delicate preparations. On this analogy, then, we may say that the lower animals are still entranced in the lower stage of brute lethargy, while we have passed into the higher phase of somnambulism, which already permits us strange glimpses of a lucidity that divines the realities of a transcendent world.

And this gives the final answer to Materialism: it consists in showing in detail what was asserted at the outset (§ 16), viz., that Materialism is a hysteron proteron, a putting of the cart before the horse, which may be rectified by just inverting the connection between Matter and consciousness. Matter is not that which produces consciousness, but that which limits it and confines its intensity within certain limits: material organization does not construct consciousness out of arrangements of atoms, but contracts its manifestation within the sphere which it permits.

This explanation does not involve the denial either of the facts or of the principle involved in Materialism, viz., the unity of all life and the continuity of all existence. It admits the connection of Matter and consciousness, but contends that the course of interpretation must proceed in the contrary direction. Thus it will fit the facts alleged in favour of Materialism equally well, besides enabling us to understand facts which Materialism rejected as ''supernatural." It explains the lower by the higher, Matter by Spirit, instead of vice versa, and thereby attains to an explanation which is ultimately tenable instead of one which is ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation the possibility of which no evidence in favour of Materialism can possibly affect. For if, e.g., a man loses consciousness as soon as his brain is injured, it is clearly as good an explanation to say the injury to the brain destroyed the mechanism by which the manifestation of consciousness was rendered possible, as to say that it destroyed the seat of consciousness. On the other hand, there are facts which the former theory suits far better. If, e.g., as sometimes happens, the man after a time more or less recovers the faculties of which the injury to his brain had deprived him, and that not in consequence of a renewal of the injured part, but in consequence of the inhibited functions being performed by the vicarious action of other parts, the easiest explanation certainly is that after a time consciousness constitutes the remaining parts into a mechanism capable of acting as a substitute for the lost parts.

And again, if the body is a mechanism for inhibiting consciousness, for preventing the full powers of the Ego from being prematurely actualized, it will be necessary to invert also our ordinary ideas on the subject of memory, and to account for forgetfulness instead of for memory. It will be during life that we drink the bitter cup of Lethe, it will be with our brain that we are enabled to forget. And this will serve to explain not only the extraordinary memories of the drowning and the dying generally, but also the curious hints which experimental psychology occasionally affords us that nothing is ever forgotten wholly and beyond recall.11

§ 29. And that Matter is ultimately divine force and divine mechanism, is shown also by the development it undergoes. For coincidentally with the spiritual development of spiritual beings, Matter also undergoes a process of spiritualization. And of spiritualization in two senses, (1) The gulf between its (apparent) properties and those of Spirit diminishes. We discover that it possesses more and more analogies with Spirit. And curiously enough this is one of the chief reasons why the advance of science has seemed favourable to Materialism. For as the spiritual character of Matter became better known, it became less absurd to explain all things by Matter. But such successes of Materialism have been gained only by absorbing alien elements, and have hopelessly impaired its metaphysical value. In this sense Materialism has, since the days of Democritus and Lucretius, been fighting a losing battle.

Since I have not so far said much about Pericles, and nothing at all about Democritus, I may use some of their own words in order to illustrate the new faith. First Democritus: 'Not out of fear but out of a feeling of what is right should we abstain from doing wrong . . . Virtue is based, most of all, upon respecting the other man . . . Every man is a little world of his own . . . We ought to do our utmost to help those who have suffered injustice ... To be good means to do no wrong; and also, not to want to do wrong ... It is good deeds, not words, that count ... The poverty of a democracy is better than the prosperity which allegedly goes with aristocracy or monarchy, just as liberty is better than slavery . . . The wise man belongs to all countries, for the home of a great soul is the whole world.' To him is due also that remark of a true scientist: 'I would rather find a single causal law than be the king of Persia!'

In their humanitarian and universalistic emphasis some of these fragments of Democritus sound, although they are of earlier date, as if they were directed against Plato. The same impression is conveyed, only much more strongly, by Pericles' famous funeral oration, delivered at least half a century before the Republic was written. I have quoted two sentences from this oration in chapter 6, when discussing equalitarianism, but a few passages may be quoted here more fully in order to give a clearer impression of its spirit. 'Our political system does not compete with institutions which are elsewhere in force. We do not copy our neighbours, but try to be an example. Our administration favours the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we do not ignore the claims of excellence. When a citizen distinguishes himself, then he will be called to serve the state, in preference to others, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit; and poverty is no bar ... The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not suspicious of one another, and do not nag our neighbour if he chooses to go his own way . . . But this freedom does not make us lawless. We are taught to respect the magistrates and the laws, and never to forget that we must protect the injured. And we are also taught to observe those unwritten laws whose sanction lies only in the universal feeling of what is right ...

'Our city is thrown open to the world; we never expel a foreigner ... We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet we are always ready to face any danger ... We love beauty without indulging in fancies, and although we try to improve our intellect, this does not weaken our will ... To admit one's poverty is no disgrace with us; but we consider it disgraceful not to make an effort to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not neglect public affairs when attending to his private business ... We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely ... We believe that happiness is the fruit of freedom and freedom that of valour, and we do not shrink from the dangers of war ... To sum up, I claim that Athens is the School of Hellas, and that the individual Athenian grows up to develop a happy versatility, a readiness for emergencies, and self-reliance.'

These words are not merely a eulogy on Athens; they express the true spirit of the Great Generation. They formulate the political programme of a great equalitarian individualist, of a democrat who well understands that democracy cannot be exhausted by the meaningless principle that 'the people should rule', but that it must be based on faith in reason, and on humanitarianism. At the same time, they are an expression of true patriotism, of just pride in a city which had made it its task to set an example; which became the school, not only of Hellas, but, as we know, of mankind, for millennia past and yet to come.

Pericles' speech is not only a programme. It is also a defence, and perhaps even an attack. It reads, as I have already hinted, like a direct attack on Plato. I do not doubt that it was directed, not only against the arrested tribalism of Sparta, but also against the totalitarian ring or 'link' at home; against the movement for the paternal state, the Athenian 'Society of the Friends of Laconia' (as Th. Gomperz called them in 1902). The speech is the earliest and at the same time perhaps the strongest statement ever made in opposition to this kind of movement. Its importance was felt by Plato, who caricatured Pericles' oration half a century later in the passages of the Republic in which he attacks democracy, as well as in that undisguised parody, the dialogue called Menexenus or the Funeral Oration. But the Friends of Laconia whom Pericles attacked retaliated long before Plato. Only five or six years after Pericles' oration, a pamphlet on the Constitution of Athens was published by an unknown author (possibly Critias), now usually called the 'Old Oligarch'. This ingenious pamphlet, the oldest extant treatise on political theory, is, at the same time, perhaps the oldest monument of the desertion of mankind by its intellectual leaders. It is a ruthless attack upon Athens, written no doubt by one of her best brains. Its central idea, an idea which became an article of faith with Thucydides and Plato, is the close connection between naval imperialism and democracy. And it tries to show that there can be no compromise in a conflict between two worlds, the worlds of democracy and of oligarchy; that only the use of ruthless violence, of total measures, including the intervention of allies from outside (the Spartans), can put an end to the unholy rule of freedom. This remarkable pamphlet was to become the first of a practically infinite sequence of works on political philosophy which were to repeat more or less, openly or covertly, the same theme down to our own day. Unwilling and unable to help mankind along their difficult path into an unknown future which they have to create for themselves, some of the 'educated' tried to make them turn back into the past. Incapable of leading a new way, they could only make themselves leaders of the perennial revolt against freedom. It became the more necessary for them to assert their superiority by fighting against equality as they were (using Socratic language) misanthropists and misologists — incapable of that simple and ordinary generosity which inspires faith in men, and faith in human reason and freedom.

-- The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl R. Popper

Its seeming victories have been won by the absorption of spiritualistic elements which have corrupted the simplicity of its original conception of Matter, and caused it to diverge further and further from the "clear and definitely intelligible" motions of solid particles. The connection of the scientific conception of Matter with the hard Matter of common experience has become fainter and fainter, as science is compelled to multiply invisible, impalpable and imponderable substances in the ''unseen universe," by which it explains the visible. The ignorance of Lucretius permitted him to give to his Atomism a far greater formal perfection, than the fuller knowledge of modern physicists admits of, and every far-sighted materialist must lament that science should have been driven to give metaphysicians such openings for crushing tu quoques as it has by asserting the existence of supra-sensible substances like the ether and of timeless forces like gravitation (cp. ch. iii. § 9). For with what face after this can science protest against the admission of supra-sensible world of eternal Being, as involved in the complete explanation of the physical universe, when precisely similar assumptions have already been used by science for the purposes of a partial explanation? Metaphysicians, on the other hand, will regard these facts as indications that the development of Matter and Spirit proceeds along converging lines, and that by the time the supra-sensible is reached a single reality will be seen to embrace the manifestations of both.

§ 30. And (2) the spiritualization of Matter is displayed also in its relations to spiritual beings. As in the course of Evolution these become more harmonized with the Divine Will. Matter, the expression of that Will, becomes more and more harmonized with the desires of spiritual beings. The chains that bound us are gradually relaxed, the restrictions that fettered us are one by one removed, as intelligent insight grows strong enough to take the place of physical compulsion. We obtain command of Nature by knowledge of her laws, and it is by our obedience to the laws of the material that we win our way to spiritual freedom. Hence there is deep symbolic truth in the myth of Prometheus the Firebearer, which connects the discovery of fire with man's advance to a higher spiritual condition. For it is difficult to realize, and impossible to over-estimate, the importance of this step in the spiritualization of Matter, whereby what had seemed hopelessly unmanageable and immovable vanished and volatilized at the magic touch of flame. And in the spiritualization of man the discovery of fire was no less essential, as the foundation of all subsequent spiritual progress.

Man, it is well to remember, is the discoverer but not the inventor of fire. Long before this meddling little Prometheus took to experimenting with flints, then matches, and finally (we hope not too finally) hydrogen bombs, fires had burned on this planet. Volcanoes had belched molten lava, lightning had struck in dry grass, winds had rubbed dead branches against each other until they burst into flame. There are evidences of fire in ancient fossil beds that lie deep below the time of man.

Man did not invent fire but he did make it one of the giant powers on the earth. He began this experiment long ago in the red morning of the human mind. Today he continues it in the midst of coruscating heat that is capable of rending the very fabric of his universe. Man's long adventure with knowledge has, to a very marked degree, been a climb up the heat ladder, for heat alone enables man to mold metals and glassware, to create his great chemical industries, to drive his swift machines. It is my intention here to trace man's manipulation of this force far back into its ice-age beginnings and to observe the part that fire has played in the human journey across the planet....

Today the flames grow hotter in the furnaces. Man has come far up the heat ladder. The creature that crept furred through the glitter of blue glacial nights lives surrounded by the hiss of steam, the roar of engines, and the bubbling of vats. Like a long-armed crab, he manipulates the tongs in dangerous atomic furnaces. In asbestos suits he plunges into the flaming debris of hideous accidents. With intricate heat-measuring instruments he investigates the secrets of the stars, and he has already found heat-resistant alloys that have enabled him to hurl himself into space.

How far will he go? Three hundred years of the scientific method have built the great sky-touching buildings and nourished the incalculable fertility of the human species. But man is also Homo duplex, as they knew in the darker ages. He partakes of evil and of good, of god and of man. Both struggle in him perpetually. And he is himself a flame -- a great, roaring, wasteful furnace devouring irreplaceable substances of the earth. Before this century is out, either Homo duplex must learn that knowledge without greatness of spirit is not enough for man, or there will remain only his calcined cities and the little charcoal of his bones.

-- Man the Firemaker, by Loren Eiseley

And it is still true that spiritual progress in the long run depends on material progress, and this is equally true of the development of the individual and of the race. Indeed, it is even more obviously true in the case of the race, when the process takes place on a larger scale and our survey extends over a longer history. Historically it is true that the higher has developed out of the lower, the moral and intellectual life out of the material, and ultimately it can only rise pari passu with the improvement of the material. It is a fact to which our vulgar Theodicy loves to blind itself, that a great, and perhaps the greater, part of the evil in the world is not due to the perversity of men and institutions, to the tyranny of priests and princes, but to the material conditions of life, and cannot therefore be removed by the mere progress of intelligence or morality. These evils are but the reaction of ordinary human nature upon the ineluctable pressure of material conditions, and can be eradicated only by a completer command of those conditions, by the knowledge which is power. On the other hand, the growth of knowledge brings with it a slow but sure remedy for these evils: every extension of our knowledge of the nature of Matter affords the material basis for a higher spiritual condition; ultimately material progress means spiritual progress. And thus it is true of social, as of metaphysical, problems, that many which at present seem insoluble are slowly ripening to their solution. Hence it is our business to take care that a due balance of functions, a proper harmony is preserved of the material, intellectual and moral elements of progress. For a one-sided development is in the end fatal to all. Material progress alone, if it neglects the spiritual elements of life, will in the end bring about moral and intellectual decay, and a condition of society not only unfavourable to further material progress, but incapable of maintaining the prosperity it has acquired. Power over Matter which does not rest on an assured basis of intelligence and morality is certain to be lost in the ignorance and violence of a society which does not make a proper use of the knowledge it possesses. And the limits of spiritual progress in the absence of a material basis are equally obvious. When "plain living" becomes a euphemism for starvation, "high thinking" is no longer possible, and fakirism is a caricature of spirituality.

And so in the case of the individual. Psychical progress is evolved on a physical basis. The intellectual and moral qualities are developed subsequently to the physical, and developed out of them. And though this does not of course explain them away — for the lower cannot explain away the higher — it yet shows that the distinction of body and soul must not be exaggerated into an irreconcilable difference. For just as Matter approximates to Spirit in the course of Evolution, so the body approximates to the soul. In neither case, indeed, does the lower become absorbed into the higher, but it becomes more distinctly subordinated to it. As we progress, the higher intellectual and moral qualities play a more and more important part in life, and tend to predominate in consciousness over the physical functions. For the physical processes tend to become unconscious. Consciousness, therefore, is less engrossed by the mechanism of life. Hence the body itself becomes more and more fitted to be the body of a spiritual being, better and better adapted as the vehicle of a life which is more than physical. It develops higher physical powers, and becomes less of an obstacle to spiritual progress. And when the individual development is allowed to proceed normally and harmoniously, there does not arise any conflict between the higher and the lower stages: the lower are the potentialities of which the higher are the realization, the promise of which the higher are the fulfilment, the foundation upon which the higher rear the edifice, the stem of which the higher are the flowers. Hence the higher does not destroy or supersede the lower, but transforms it, and includes it in what is its realization also. The intellectual and the moral life is higher than and more than the physical, and also its perfection.

Wherever, therefore, there appears an antagonism between the higher and the lower, we may rest assured that there the higher also has not been fully attained, and that whether the blame fall on the individual, or, as is more frequently the case, on the society, a higher life which involves the mortification and neglect of the physical is both wrong and foolish, i.e., both morally and intellectually defective. Ethical systems, therefore, which inculcate such a neglect of the material are fundamentally false: for just because the physical duties are the lower, they take precedence over the higher: the physical necessities of life ([x]) precede both in Time and in urgency the moral necessities of living well ([x]).

On the other hand, the true meaning and function of the lower activities is to be sought in their relation to the higher, which they prepare and promote. The natural shows its spiritual nature by supplying the machinery of spiritual progress and by promoting it in spite of the unavailing protests of spiritual beings. For though human stupidity has hitherto resisted rather than assisted the steady pressure of "natural" causes, we may trace, even within the narrow limits of human history, an irresistible secular progress, which has strengthened the intellectual and moral elements in human nature at the expense of the purely animal. And even if we do not always approve of the methods employed, who are we that we should pit our insight against that of the power that works in Evolution?

Thus this view enables us fully to appreciate the social value of a materialism which calls attention to the importance of our foundations; and while it is no less powerful in dispelling the Utopias of our fancies, dissipating our castles in the air and compelling us to uprear the structure of the higher life, stone by stone, by unremitting labour, it yet solaces us with loftier prospects based on the surer foundation of scientific retrospect.

§ 31. And yet there is an element of truth even in the ascetic view of Matter. We might indeed have gathered this from the frequency and persistency at all times and under all conditions of the theory which makes Matter the principle of Evil; for it would be contrary to all belief in the rationality of Evolution to suppose that even error, when persistent, is ever gratuitous. Accordingly we find that though Matter, being nothing in itself, cannot be the principle of Evil, and is not in itself evil, it is yet characteristic of an essentially imperfect order of things: it is, as it were, the outward indication and visible reflexion of Evil. For Evil is, like all things, ultimately psychical, and what is evil about Matter is the condition of the spirits which require the restraint of Matter. If, therefore, as Plato says, the body is the grave of the soul, and Matter is the prison of the Spirit, it must yet be admitted that it is not the existence of prisons which is to be deplored, but of those whom it is necessary to imprison.

And Matter is connected with Evil in its double aspect, both as the engine of progress and the mechanism of the divine education of spirits, and also as the check upon consciousness. For if evil, i.e., inharmonious spirits were permitted the full realization of their conscious powers, they would be able to thwart and to delay, if not to prevent, the attainment of the divine purpose of the world-process. But if they are permitted intelligence only when they are ready to recognize the cosmic order and in proportion as they are ready to do so, the aptness of the contrivance of Matter becomes manifest. The lower existences, i.e., the less harmonized, have their consciousness limited and repressed by material organization, in order that their power for evil may be practically neutralized, and that in the impotence of their stupidity they may have little influence on the course of events. On the other hand, the higher existences who have learnt the necessity of social order and harmony, are thereby enabled to acquire that knowledge which gives them power over Matter. Thus there is a correspondence, on the whole, between the spiritual condition of an individual and a race and their material resources. We are too apt to chafe against the material limits of our being, too hasty in resenting the physical obstacles to our higher aspirations: it is possible that the real obstacle lies in the condition of our own souls, and that God knows us better than we know ourselves. What man, at all events, could claim to be entrusted with higher knowledge, and confidently assert that he would use the Ring of Gyges, the Philosopher's Stone, or the Elixir of Life, so as to further the highest spiritual interests of himself and of the world? And so with societies. Let us suppose the realization of what many of our social philosophers regard as the proper goal of human ambition. Suppose a humorous fairy revealed to us a secret by which we might satisfy all the material wants of life without labour. What would be the result on a society at the present level of intelligence and morality? Would it not convert it in very deed into a "city of the pigs," intent only on making merry and making love, and totally forgetful of any higher destiny of man? The truth and the true justification of the divine government of the universe is that we are not fit to be better off than we are, and that the whole gigantic mechanism of the material world is designed to further the attainment of the purpose of the world.

But we need not fear that this mechanism will be found too rigid and mechanical, that in the ripeness of time it will put an absolute limit upon spiritual evolution. The time may come when Matter will no longer offer any obstacles to our wishes, and when in sober truth Man will, with a word, precipitate a mountain into the sea. Or can it be that a completer harmony of the human with the Divine Will can anticipate the course of social evolution, and give to saints and sages a power over Matter which transcends that of ordinary men, and even now enables their faith to move mountains? Might not their power over Matter already rise to the level to be attained in far-distant ages, just as their intellectual and moral development towers above that of the societies in which they dwell? But whether a belief which has found strong favour at all times and in all countries be well founded, is not a question for a philosopher to decide: it is enough for him to assert that there is nothing inherently absurd in the supposition, and that a will completely congruous with the Divine would needs have a complete control of the material.

§ 32. And with this suggestion we must leave the subject and close a chapter which has already been unduly prolonged, by a brief explanation of a difficulty which has often been felt an insuperable obstacle in the way of any idealist view of the material world.

Granted, it may be said, that Matter is in itself unknowable, that a satisfactory metaphysical account of the world must always explain it in terms of Spirit; yet how is it that the material world existed, apparently, long before spiritual beings came into existence? Is not this conclusive proof that the world does not exist in the consciousness of spirits, whether as an "objective hallucination" or otherwise?

The objection sounds more serious than it is, and the evolutionist idealist at least will have no difficulty in answering it. For in the first place, what does the previous existence of the world prove? What but that the world-process was proceeding at a time when, to judge by the knowledge which we, immersed in a certain stage of that process, at present possess, there were no beings in that phase of the process represented by physical existence on our earth. But this falls very far short of being a refutation of idealism, or of proving that the material world is not a phenomenon in the consciousness of spirits.

For (1), as we saw in chapter viii., material evolution is an integral part of the world-process, and obeys the same law as spiritual evolution, viz., that of the development of the individual in association. Hence it is not true that the material existed outside of and before the spiritual process. We may not be in the habit of calling the development of atoms an evolution of spiritual beings, but the process which developed the material world and developed spiritual beings is one and the same, and the material is but an earlier and less perfect phase of the spiritual development.

(2) It is at the utmost true only from our present point of view that in its earlier stages the universe contained no spiritual beings for whom it existed, and our ignorance of the possibilities of existence is no proof against the idealist view of Matter. For there might have existed, and still exist, myriads of beings in the world of a different order from ourselves, the denizens of stellar fires or interstellar Space, whose constitution and mode of life concealed them from our sight. There may be phase upon phase of existence, forming worlds upon worlds impenetrable to our knowledge in our present phase, the existence of which may be indicated by the pre-human evolution of our world.

And, lastly (3), the objection shows how slowly scientific discoveries find their way into philosophy. Philosophers still argue as if our earth were the universe, as if spiritual existence must be conceived to be confined to a single planet of a tenth-rate sun. Because 10,000,000 years ago no conscious beings inhabited our earth, it is forsooth impossible that other heavenly bodies were more populous! But if spiritual beings in our phase of physical existence existed in other worlds, it is surely as probable that our solar system existed to adorn their skies, as that we are now the sole intelligent beings in the universe, and that the uncounted hosts of suns and planets exist either for no purpose at all or to provide employment for our astronomers.

Thus it is (1) highly improbable that the phenomenal world ever existed without spiritual beings in many, if not in all, the heavenly bodies. (2) It is highly probable that there are many other phases or stages of Evolution, different from that which constitutes our present physical world, and of which the existence of the world before that of spiritual beings would be a symbol, a piece of salutary scene-painting, which would produce an illusion in lieu of a reality we were not yet fitted to grasp. Or (3), it may be directly denied that the material world existed without spirit, seeing that it represented the lower stages of the evolution of spirits. And whichever of these explanations be adopted, they are one and all competent to account for the existence of the material world and in harmony with the account given of the spiritual nature of Matter in the above chapter.

The result, then, of this chapter has been to show that the difficulties presented by the nature of our environment admit of solution only if we refer the phenomenal world to the transcendent or ultimate reality. By this reference we were enabled to transcend the infinities of Space and Time, the conflict of idealism and the facts of life, to give a rough sketch of the nature and function of Matter in the economy of the universe, and so to solve the old puzzles as to the relation of Matter and Spirit, of body and soul. But in so doing, two further subjects were also introduced, those of the nature of God and of Evil. These subjects will have to be investigated in the following chapters, in which it will be necessary to make good the assumptions that God and Good and Evil exist in any intelligible sense, and so that they can make intelligible anything else about the world.

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Notes:

1 The word "intuition" here is used merely as a translation of  the preciser German term "Anschauung," and has no reference to any contrast with "experience."

2 A "logical process" is really a psychological one: the process is only in the mind which traces the co-existing links of logical necessity. Cp. ch. iii. § 15 s.f.

3 Compare the remark Goethe attributes to the idealist: —

"Furwahr, wenn ich dies alles bin,
So bin ich heute narrisch.

-- Faust I.: Walpurgisnachtstraum.

4 The only alternative to this view of ultimate certainty is that which regards consistency as the basis of proof.. But consistency may mean two very different things. If we mean by it that the premisses of arguments do not contradict one another, and that  on the strength of this we can go on proving everything by everything else all round, we are surely deluded. For such an argument in a circle is fallacious, as Aristotle pointed out long ago, even though the circle be as large as the universe. If, on the other hand, it means that things are so fitted together as to excite no sense of incongruity, then consistency just describes one of the chief characteristics of self-evidence, and becomes simply a lax statement of the rival theory.

5 There is, however, this difference: in Kant's "transcendental" = that which is reached by an epistemological argument, a truth implied in the nature of our knowledge. Having, however, rejected epistemology, we must modify the meaning of a ''transcendental proof" into being "a proof the transcendent," viz., that which transcends— not experience generally, as in  Kant— but our actual presentations, i.e., which is based on metaphysical necessities.

6 Compare Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol.  iv. p. 129. The case of Felida X., given fully in Hypnotisme et  Double Conscience, par le Dr. Azam. Paris, 1887.

7 Compare Proceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. iv. p. 529 s.f.

8 Vide Phantasms of the Living, vol. ii. p. 380 ff., 590 ff.

9 Proceedings of the Psychical Society, vol. iv. p. 11, vol. iii. p. 167.

10 Eth. Nic. X. 9, 12.

11 And yet this is a fact which to materialism is utterly inexplicable. For on a materialist hypothesis the memory of anything must consist of a certain arrangement of certain particles of brain  tissue, and in the case of complex facts, the memory would evidently require a very complex system of particles. Now as the contents of the brain are limited, it is clear that there can only be a limited number of such systems of particles, and hence a limited number of facts remembered. It would be physically impossible that the brain could be charged with memories beyond a certain point. And if we consider the number of impressions and ideas which daily enter into our consciousness, it is clear that even in youth the brain must soon reach the saturation point of memory, and that the struggle for existence in our memory must be very severe. If therefore we receive unexpected proofs of the survival in memory of the facts most unlikely to be remembered, we have evidently reached a phenomenon which it is exceedingly difficult for materialism to explain.

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Part 1 of 3

CHAPTER X. MAN AND GOD.

§ 1. The subject of this chapter is that of the relation of man to his cause, or his past, and if we denominate the supposed First Cause of the world God, it will possess two main connections with the preceding inquiries. In the first place, the conception of a first cause of the world requires to be vindicated against the criticism stated in chapter ii. (§ 10). In the second place, we were led in the last chapter to explain the material cosmos as an interaction between God and the Ego, and to suggest positions which require further elucidation.

It was shown by an examination of the contradiction of causation in chapter ii. that a first cause of existence in general is an irrational conception, in chapter iii. (§ 11) that causation is a thoroughly anthropomorphic conception, derived from, and applicable to, the phenomenal world. On both these grounds, therefore, to say that God is the First Cause of the world is to say that God is the First Cause of the phenomenal world, i.e., the cause of the world-process. For the category of causation does not carry beyond the process of Evolution or the phenomenal world (cp. ch. ii. § 9). But if so interpreted, there is no absurdity in the conception of a First Cause. Our reason impels us to ask for a cause of the changes we see, and at the same time forbids us to say that they arise out of nothing, i.e. causelessly. But if we applied these postulates of our reason to all things, to existence as such, they would lead us into the absurdity that all things having been caused, they must ultimately have been caused by nothing. But if this is impossible, if we cannot derive existence out of nothing, then there must be at least one existence which has never come into existence. Such an existence would be an ultimate fact, and the question as to its cause would be unmeaning. For being non-phenomenal, the idea of coming into existence, or Becoming, which is a conception applying only to the facts of the phenomenal world, would not here be applicable. If, then, God is such an existence, such a conception of God satisfies both the requirements of our demand for causation and solves the difficulty which the conception of a First Cause presents, if taken in an absolute sense.

Thus God is, (1) the unbecome and non-phenomenal Cause of the world-process — the Creator.

(2) We saw in the last chapter that God was also the Sustainer, as being a factor in the interaction of the Ego and the Deity.

(3) It has been implicitly asserted in our discussions of method in chapters v. and viii., that the Deity must be conceived as an intelligent and personal Spirit. For Cause is a category which is valid only if used by persons and of persons (cp. ch. iii. § 11), while personality is the conception expressive of the highest fact we know (cp. ch. viii. § 18); hence it is only by ascribing personality to God that He can be regarded either as the Cause or as the Perfector of the world-process.1 Lastly, Evolution is meaningless if it is not teleological (cp. ch. vll. §§ 20, 21), and we cannot conceive a purpose except in the intelligence of a personal being. And we are prevented by the principle of not multiplying entities needlessly to invent gratuitous fictions like an impersonal intelligence or unconscious purpose.

It follows (4) that God is finite, or rather that to God, as to all realities, infinite is an unmeaning epithet. This conclusion also has already been foreshadowed in many ways. Thus (a) it followed from Kant's criticism of the proofs of the existence of God, that only a finite God could be inferred from the nature of the world (cp. ch. ii. § 19 s.f). No evidence can prove an infinite cause of the world, for no evidence can prove anything but a cause adequate to the production of the world, but not infinite. To infer the infinite from the finite is a fallacy like inferring the unknowable from the known, and all arguments in favour of an infinite God must commit it. We argue with finite minds from finite data, and our conclusions must be of a like nature. (b) It follows from the conception of God as Force (cp. ch. ix. § 21); for Force implies resistance, and if God is to enforce His will upon the world. He cannot just for that reason, be all — unless indeed He is by some inexplicable chance divided against Himself. And so, too (c), just because God is a factor in all things, He cannot be all things. For to interact implies a not-God to react upon God. Lastly (a), finiteness follows from the whole account given in the last chapter of the divine economy of the world.

§ 2. But these conclusions conflict sharply with the ordinary doctrines both of theology and of philosophy. In theology we are wont to hear God called the infinite, omnipotent, Creator of all things, while in philosophy we hear of the all-embracing Absolute and infinite, in which all things are and have their being. And as this conflict can be no longer dissembled or postponed, we must now either make good our defiance of the united forces of theology and philosophy, or be crushed by the overwhelming weight of their authority. In so unequal a contest our only hope lies in the divisions and hesitations of our adversaries. For it may be that their agreement is not so perfect as we had feared, that the bearing of some of their chief objections is ambiguous, and that with a little skill we can find efficient support in the very citadels of our opponents. Hence we must aim at reconciling to the novelty of our views all but the most hopelessly prejudiced, and seek to address appeals to them to which they cannot but listen. In dealing with philosophy we may appeal to reason, in dealing with religion to feeling, and in dealing with theology, which has not hitherto always shown itself very susceptible either to reason or to feeling, to its own interests. Thus we shall show to the first that the rational grounds for the assumption of an infinite existence are mistaken and absurd, to the second, that its emotional consequences are atrocious and destructive of all religious feeling, and to the third, that it is this doctrine which has been the fatal canker that produced the chronic debility of faith, and the real obstacle to the practical supremacy of religion.

§ 3. In pursuance of our practice of starting from the apparently simple and intelligible, but really so confused, conceptions of ordinary thought, we shall examine first the religious conception of God. In the course of that examination it will soon appear that it is a self-contradictory jumble of inconsistent elements, of which those which are practically the most important imply the finiteness of the Deity, and tend in the direction of the doctrine we have propounded, while the others, which are theoretically more prominent, but might be with great advantage dispensed with in practical religion, would, if carried out consistently, result in philosophic atheism.

And not only is the combination of human and infinite elements in the conception of God an outrage upon the human reason, but it leads to no less outrageous consequences from the point of view of human feeling. For by ascribing unlimited power to God, it makes God the author of all evil, and imprisons us in a Hell to escape from which would be rebellion against omnipotence. To be brief, the attribute of infinity contradicts and neutralizes all the other attributes of God, and makes it impossible to ascribe to the Deity either personality, or consciousness, or power, or intelligence, or wisdom, or goodness, or purpose or object in creating the world; an infinite Deity does not effect a single one of the functions which the religious consciousness demands of its God.

It is easy to show that every one of the religious attributes must be excluded from an infinite Deity. Thus an infinite God can have neither personality nor consciousness, for they both depend on limitation. Personality rests on the distinction of one person from another, consciousness on the distinction of Self and Not-Self.2 An all-embracing person, therefore, is an utterly unmeaning phrase, and if it meant anything, it would mean something utterly subversive of all religion. For the infinite personality would equally embrace and impartially absorb the personalities of all finite individuals, and so Jesus and Barabbas would be revealed as co-existent, and therefore as co-equal incarnations of an infinite God.

The phrase infinite power is, as has been stated (§ 1), equally meaningless. Not only is power a finite conception, applicable only to a finite world in which force implies resistance, but when used out of its setting it becomes a contradiction. Power is power only if it overpowers what resists, and it is not infinite if anything resists it. Infinite power, therefore, is as unmeaning as a round square.

Neither can intelligence or wisdom be ascribed to an infinite God. For such a God could have neither personality nor consciousness, his intelligence would have to be impersonal and his wisdom unconscious, and to such terms our minds can give no meaning. And moreover, what we understand by wisdom is an essentially finite quality, shown in the adaptation of means to ends. But the infinite can neither have ends nor require means to attain them.

§ 4. Goodness, again, is doubly impossible as an attribute of an infinite God; in the first place, because to him all things are good, and in the second, because the distinction of good and evil must be entirely unmeaning. To put the difficulty in its homeliest form, God cannot be both all-good and all-powerful, in a world in which evil is a reality. For if God is all-powerful everything must be exactly what it should be, from God's point of view, else He would instantly alter it. If, then, evil things exist, it must be because God wills to have it so, i.e., because God is, from our point of view, evil. Or conversely, if God is good, He must put up with the continuance of evil because He cannot remove it. This is the 'terrible mystery of evil' which for 2,000 years has been a stumbling-block to all practical religion, tried the faith of all believers, and depressed and debased all thought on the ultimate questions of life, and is as 'insoluble a mystery' to theologians now as it was in the beginning. And it is perhaps likely to remain so, seeing that, as Goethe says, "a complete contradiction is alike mysterious to wise men and to fools," and that no labour can ever extract any sense out of a gratuitous combination of incoherent words.

Hence it is not surprising that no attempt at reconciling the divine goodness with divine power has ever been successful; indeed, the only way in which they have ever appeared to be successful was either by covertly limiting the divine power, or by misusing the term goodness in some non-human sense, to denote a quality shown in God's action towards imaginary beings other than man.

Thus Leibnitz's famous Theodicy, e.g., depends on a limitation of God. For to show that the world is the best of all possible worlds is to imply that not all worlds were possible, so that the best possible did not turn out a perfect one.

So, again, to say that God created the world because it was good, is to limit God by the preexistence of a good and evil independent of divine enactment.

Nor, again, can the responsibility for evil be shifted to the Devil or the perversity due to human Free-will, unless these powers really limit the divine omnipotence. For if we or the Devil are permitted to do evil while God is able to prevent or destroy us, the real responsibility rests with God.

On the other hand, the commonplace suggestion that, if we could see the whole universe, the good would be seen to predominate immensely, depends on an invalid use of goodness out of relation to man. For "what care I how good he be, if he be not good to me?" What does goodness mean to us, if it is not goodness to us? And besides, it does not answer the difficulty; for it is still necessary to ask why God could or would not create a world, which was not only predominantly, but entirely good. It surely does not befit infinite power to neglect even the most infinitesimal section, to overlook even the remotest corner, to fall short of making the whole universe perfect.

But perhaps the most curious interference of human limitations with the course of superhuman action is shown in the argument which sets down evil to the imperfection of Law. It is supposed that by a series of miracles all things might have been made perfect, but that this would have been inconsistent with the divine determination to conduct the world according to natural laws. Thus evil is the price paid for 'the reign of Law,' for which we have in modern times developed a good deal of superstitious reverence. But the plausibility of the argument depends upon a wholly unwarranted analogy with human law. It is true that human laws cannot avoid the commission of a certain amount of injustice, because law is general, and cannot be made to fit the requirements of particular cases. But how can we argue from the impotence of limited beings to the powers of omnipotence? How can we suppose the divine intelligence incapable of devising, or the divine omnipotence incapable of executing, laws, which should not fail to be just in every case, to be absolutely good always and under all circumstances? The argument surely forgets that the laws of nature are ex hypothesi the outcome of absolute legislative power directed by absolute wisdom, and might surely have been so enacted as to work with perfect smoothness. And even if the universality of law were incompatible with perfection, why should not perfect goodness have been secured by a series of miraculous interventions? How should we have been the wiser or the worse? Would not such a series have ipso facto become the legitimate order of things? And how could even the most fastidious taste have objected to a deus ex machina, when no other procedure was known? What then can have prompted the preference of law with its imperfection? Shall it be said that it was preferred as demanding less exertion of the divine power? But it is both unprofitable and repugnant to exhaust the resources of unworthy human analogies in order to reject one after another the foolish palliatives of an insoluble contradiction.

§ 5. The simple truth is that the human distinctions of good and evil have no application to an infinite Deity. We must admit that either all things are good, or that God himself is evil; but in either case the value of the human distinction is destroyed. From the standpoint of an infinite Deity, on the other hand, all things must be good, for they depend absolutely on his will, and it is his will that all things should be what they are. God alone is responsible for all that happens, and every action is wholly God's and wholly good. And yet a true instinct tells us that the distinction of good and evil is a vital one, that things are not perfect, that Evil is as real as Good, as real as life, as real as we are, as real as our whole world and its process, and that it can be explained away only at the cost of dissolving the world into a baseless dream.

Yet this is precisely what this unhappy dogma of the infinity of God leads to; it denies the reality of evil, because it denies the reality and destroys the rationality of the whole world. So long as we deal with finite factors, the function of pain and the nature of Evil can be more or less understood, but as soon as it is supposed to display the working of an infinite power, everything becomes wholly unintelligible. We can no longer console ourselves with the hope that "good becomes the final goal of ill," we can no longer fancy that imperfection serves any secondary purpose in the economy of the universe. A process by which evil becomes good is unintelligible as the action of a truly infinite power which can attain its end without a process; it is absurd to ascribe imperfection as a secondary result to a power which can attain all its aims without evil. Hence the world-process, and the intelligent purpose we fancy we detect in it, must be illusory, in precisely the same way and for precisely the same reason, as evil. God can have no purpose, and the world cannot be in process. For a purpose and process both imply limitation. To adapt means to ends implies that the ends cannot be achieved without them; to attain aims by a process implies that they cannot be reached instantaneously. An infinite power, therefore, can have no need of means to attain its ends, no need of a process whereby to evolve the world, no need of evil as a means to good. It requires no means, and hence the ''means" it uses can have no meaning. The world becomes an unintelligible freak of irresponsible insanity. If the world is the product of an infinite power, it is utterly unknowable, because its process and its nature would be alike unnecessary and unaccountable.

Thus the attribute of infinity, so far from exalting the Deity, would rather make him into a devil, careless of, and even rejoicing in, evil and misery, infinitely worse than the Devil of tradition , because armed with omnipotence, and, in view of the impossibility of admitting the independence of the Finite, also infinitely more unaccountable, inasmuch as in inflicting misery on the world, he would after all only be lacerating himself.

§ 6. And perhaps it may be added, for the benefit of theologians, and in order to complete the cycle of absurdities in which this supposed infinity of the Deity results, that it is utterly fatal to any belief in revelation. Revelation may be conceived appropriate on the part of a Deity of limited powers, who either cannot govern the world perfectly by ordinary law, or uses it as an exceptional means which it would be too expensive to employ constantly, or as an occasional stimulus to accelerate a process which cannot be completed at once. But no such suppositions will apply to an infinite Deity, who does not require to economize his forces. For what novel perfection could he reveal to a world already perfect, or how could one thing reveal his will more than another, when all have been sealed with the approval of infinite might? All things would reveal his will equally, and would be equally perfect and equally remote from the necessity of revelation.

§ 7. We have considered so far the contradictions in the current theological conception of God, and pointed out that they could be easily removed by omitting the attribute of infinity. But it must appear astonishing that so simple a solution was not adopted, especially when we consider the history of the conception. The monotheistic conception of God has existed in the world for nearly 3,000 years, and yet it has never been purged of so fatal a contradiction. Shall we then suppose that mankind takes a perverse pleasure in contradictions for their own sake, or rather admit that there must have been good reasons why so contradictory a conception was originally devised and has survived so long and on the whole so successfully?

A brief historic retrospect may clear up matters. The God of the theologians is, and has always been, a mass of contradictions, and the reason is that he is a hybrid between the God of the philosophers and the God of the people. Theological Monotheism is a compromise between Pantheism and Polytheism which has arisen but once in the history of the world, a marvellous accident in the development of the religious consciousness, which may well be esteemed divine by all who recognize that the contradictions were the husk which preserved a kernel of substantial truth.

Here, 25 centuries ago, on the island of Samos, and in the other Greek colonies that had grown up in the busy Aegean sea, there was a glorious awakening. Suddenly, there were people who believed everything was made of atoms, that human beings and other animals had evolved from simpler forms, that diseases were not caused by demons or the gods, that the earth was only a planet going around a sun which was very far away.

This revolution made Cosmos out of Chaos. Here, in the 6th Century B.C., a new idea developed, one of the great ideas of the human species. It was argued that the universe was knowable. Why? Because it was ordered, because there are regularities in nature which permitted secrets to be uncovered. Nature was not entirely unpredictable. There were rules that even she had to obey. This ordered and admirable character of the universe was called Cosmos, and it was set in stark contradiction to the idea of Chaos. This was the first conflict of which we know between science and mysticism, between nature and the gods.

By why here? Why in these remote islands and inlets of the Eastern Mediterranean? Why not in the great cities of India or Egypt, Babylon, China, Mesoamerica? Because they were all at the center of old empires. They were set in their ways. Hostile to new ideas. But here in Ionia were a multitude of newly colonized islands and city states. Isolation, even if incomplete, promotes diversity. No single concentration of power could enforce conformity. Free inquiry became possible. They were beyond the frontiers of the empires. The merchants and tourists and sailors of Africa, Asia, and Europe met in the harbors of Ionia to exchange goods and stories and ideas. It was a vigorous and heady interaction of many traditions, prejudices, languages and gods.

These people were ready to experiment. Once you are open to questioning rituals and time-honored practices, you find that one question leads to another. What do you do when you're faced with several different gods, each claiming the same territory? The Babylonian Marduk and the Greek Zeus were each considered King of the Gods, Master of the Sky. You might decide that since they otherwise had rather different attributes, that one of them was merely invented by the priests. But if one, why not both?

-- A Personal Voyage: The Backbone of Night, by Carl Sagan

For Monotheism cannot be esteemed a stable or normal form of religion. It requires so perfect a balance of conflicting considerations, so accurate a retention of a very restricted standpoint, and, it may be added, so pious a blindness to its latent contradictions, that it has not hitherto succeeded in permanently existing, except in Judaism and the two great religions which are its direct descendants.

The earliest religion of man is, as has been stated (ch. i. § 6), animistic, and gradually passes into polytheism, as the consciousness of the uniformity of nature becomes more vivid. As the result of this process, monotheism arises when the supreme god absorbs all the minor deities, and degrades them to the position of obedient ministers or angels. But as the minor deities are generally deeply rooted in the affections of the people, matters hardly ever advance so far towards unification before the thinkers have made religion the subject of their speculations. Philosophy thus begins in the polytheistic stage, while the majority of men still believe in many personal spirits, and so, by an easily intelligible reaction, the ultimate reality of the universe is conceived to be both one and impersonal.

In other words, polytheism passes directly into pantheism, without traversing any monotheistic phase, and this process may be traced in the religions of Egypt, Greece, India, China, etc. Thus the vulgar are permitted to retain their personal gods, while the educated regard them as being all manifestations or epithets of the One and All, of Brahma, Isis, etc.

Now the interesting point about Jewish monotheism is that it stopped in the middle of this process. The tribal God of the Hebrews was indeed exalted into the absolute Creator of all things, but, either from lack of philosophy, or from the intensity of their conception of personality, they yet illogically retained the attributes of personality, goodness, wisdom, consciousness, etc. Hence there was from the first an irreconcilable conflict between the discordant elements of personality and of pantheism , which could be palliated by various expedients, but never transcended, and which has been passed on from Judaism to Christianity and Mohammedanism.

And while, with the aid of a personal Devil and a personal Redeemer, the personal element in our monotheism has received more popular emphasis, the more philosophic theologians have shown a constant tendency to lapse into pantheism. And so religious philosophy has varied through all shades of opinion, from Pantheism and the confines of Atheism to those of Dualism and Manichaeism, without ever arriving at consistency. Nor was it possible to arrive at consistency without sacrificing elements which seemed indispensable. To have renounced the pantheistic side of monotheism would have been to defy, not so much philosophy — which at that time at least was largely dualistic, and subsequently accepted its doctrine of the infinite largely from religion — but the popular prejudice which regarded infinity as the ideal of magnitude (cp. ch. ix. § 2), and could not distinguish between creation out of Aristotle's "formless matter" and creation out of nothing.

Matter having a certain form has a limited potentiality for acquiring other forms. This is true of every kind of matter, all the different kinds of materials that people can work on to produce things -- chairs, electric light bulbs, and fountains.

Now suppose there was matter totally deprived of form -- utterly formless matter. It would not actually be any kind of matter. But it would also be potentially every kind of matter; since, lacking all forms, it would have the capacity to acquire any form. It would have an unlimited potentiality for forms.

You would be quite right if, thinking about this, you were to say, "Hold on, matter without any form might have an unlimited potentiality, an unlimited capacity, for acquiring forms, but lacking all forms, it would be actually nothing. What is actually nothing does not exist. Hence to talk about formless matter is to talk about something that cannot exist." Why, then, you may ask, did I bother to mention it in the first place? what's the point in thinking about it?

Aristotle would say that, looked at in one way, you are right in thinking that pure matter, formless matter, is not actually anything or, in other words, is nothing. You are, therefore, also right in thinking that formless matter does not exist. But Aristotle would add that, although formless matter is actually nothing, it is also potentially everything. It is potentially ever possible kind of thing that can be.

Still, you persist in asking, if formless matter does not exist and cannot exist, what is the point in mentioning it or thinking about it? Aristotle's answer is that there would be no need to mention it or think about it if we confined ourselves to trying to understand artificial productions and destructions -- the making and unmaking of such things as chairs. But the birth and death of animals are not so easy to understand.

Let's take an animal's death first. Our pet rabbit dies -- decays, disintegrates, and eventually disappears. The matter that had the form of a rabbit no longer has that form. It now has acquired another form, as would happen if the rabbit were killed and devoured by a wolf. When this happens, matter that was the matter of one kind of thing (rabbit) has now become the matter of another kind of thing (wolf).

If you think about this for a moment, you will see that what has occurred here is different from what occurred when wood, which is a certain kind of matter, becomes a chair. Becoming a chair, it does not cease to be wood. It does not cease to be matter of a certain kind. A certain kind of matter has persisted throughout this change. It can be identified as the subject of the change. These pieces of wood that at one time were not actually a chair have now become actually a chair.

But in the transformation that occurred when the wolf killed and devoured the rabbit, a certain kind of matter did not persist throughout the change. The matter of a certain kind of thing (matter having the form of a rabbit) became the matter of another kind of thing (matter having the form of a wolf). The only identifiable subject of this change is matter -- not matter of a certain kind, since matter of a particular kind does not persist throughout the change.

Let us now turn from death to birth. That pet rabbit of yours came into being as a result of sexual reproduction. Aristotle was as well acquainted with the facts of life as you and I are. The process that results in the birth of a living rabbit began when an ovum of a female rabbit was fertilized by the sperm of a male rabbit.

From the moment of fertilization, a new organism has begun to develop, though while it is still being carried in the female rabbit's uterus, it is not a separate living thing. The birth of the rabbit is just a phase in the rabbit's process of development. It has been developing within the mother rabbit before being born, and it goes on developing after it is born until it reaches full growth.

Birth is nothing but the separation of one living body from another -- the baby rabbit from the mother rabbit. And that separation is a local motion, a movement of the baby rabbit from being in one place to being in another -- from being inside the mother rabbit to being outside the mother rabbit.

Let us now go back to the beginning of the baby rabbit -- the moment when it first came to be. Before that moment, there was the female rabbit's ovum and the male rabbit's sperm. Neither the ovum nor the sperm was actually a rabbit, though both together had the potentiality for becoming a rabbit. The actualization of that potentiality took place at the moment of fertilization, when the matter of the sperm was merged or fused with the matter of ovum.

Do the matter of the ovum and the matter of the sperm in separation from each other stand in the same relation to the matter of the baby rabbit after fertilization occurs, as the matter of the rabbit stands to the matter of the wolf after the rabbit has been killed and devoured by the wolf? If so, then something like what Aristotle had in mind when he asked us to think about formless matter is the subject of change in the coming to be and passing away of living organism. It is that which we identify as persisting or enduring in this special kind of change.

This is as near as I can come to explaining why Aristotle thought it necessary to mention formless matter. You may think that he went too far -- that natural generation may be accounted for in the same way as artificial production. If you do think so, let me ask you to consider one more example.

The example is one that Aristotle himself considered. He said that "nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to living things in such a way that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation." He was quite capable of imagining the line between the nonliving and the living being crossed when the first living organisms on earth emerged from nonliving matter. In that coming to be of the first living organisms, can we identify the matter that is the subject of this remarkable change as being matter of a certain kind? Does it remain the same kind of matter both before and after the first living organisms came into being?

You may not want to go so far as to call it formless matter. But, on the other hand, you may find it difficult to identify it as a matter of a certain kind, which would mean that it had and retained a certain form. If this is your state of mind, then you understand why Aristotle thought natural generation more difficult to explain than artificial production, and you also understand why he thought it necessary to mention and ask you to think about pure or formless matter, which, of course, does not exist.

-- Aristotle for Everybody, by Mortimer J. Adler

To have abandoned the personal elements would have been still more fatal. It was by finiteness and limitation that God was brought near to the religious consciousness; it was the personality of God which supplied the real motive force of the religious emotions. For whereas many religions have failed because they did not render God human enough, the success of our own is an eloquent example that no religion can ever make God too human. Accordingly, it was felt that if the personality of God were lost, all would be lost, nothing would be left that would be able or desirable to explain the world. And so it was felt to be better to assert the personality of God as an irrational and incomprehensible dogma of faith than to annihilate religion in the abyss of pantheism. And we may trace in this the working also of the feeling that the personality of God embodied a truth which could not as yet be stated in set terms, the working of the faith which preserves the truth until it grows great and prevails. Thus the contradictions of monotheism in the past have preserved the doctrine of the divine personality, which would otherwise have been merged in pantheism, have preserved a truth which the earliest stage in the development of religious consciousness instinctively grasped, but which the spiral of the line of progress subsequently obscured.

But the merits of monotheism in the past are no reason why we should forever acquiesce in its failure to find a solution: it is neither prudent nor reasonable to regard the contradiction as final. And least of all is it feasible in a crisis like the present. The incomprehensible has passed from the language of religion to that of irreligion, and by a Nemesis not wholly undeserved, theology is now being devoured by a phantom of its own creation — the Unknowable. The traditional monotheism has lost most of its hold over thinking minds, and has been expelled by the very Agnosticism it had fostered for its own protection. The world no longer seeks to escape from the perplexities of the human reason by an appeal to the Bible: the appeal lies to "the exact methods of verified knowledge," which by their very nature are bound to treat the Book of the Revelation of an (unknowable) God as one of the most curious of the repositories of primitive superstition. Thus do the eternal laws of retribution avenge the truth upon those who wittingly or unwittingly use bad arguments, by the way in which they invariably recoil upon their authors. Even, therefore, if acquiescence in a contradiction ever really profited the cause of religion, it can now do so no longer. Religion is lost if it sinks into the morass of the unknowable infinite, in which it can find no foothold.

In pressing this advice upon the religious guides of mankind, it is impossible not to feel painfully that the patient to whom the advice is tendered has already suffered much advice from every quarter. But though a sick man receives much advice, it does not follow that it is all bad. And in this case the advice is at least new. For it has at last become possible for religion to save itself by the other alternative. It has become possible to purify Theism of its contradiction without dissolving it in Pantheism. The accumulation of the data enabling us to estimate the drift of the world-process enable us also for the first time to develop consistently the finite and personal elements in Theism; and following out this train of thought we shall come to realize that religion, philosophy and science alike demand a belief in a personal and limited God.

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Part 2 of 3

§ 8. But before we can engage upon this task it will be necessary to wage a lengthy war with philosophic Pantheism, in order to demonstrate that the grounds on which it claimed to be rationally unassailable are without exception illusory.

The philosophic conception of God is that of the unity of the universe, the all-embracing, all-sustaining whole of which all things are parts, the underlying reality of which all things are manifestations. All is God, even where it is attempted to deny that God = the All, and there is attributed to him an existence for himself. But by God, through God, for God, and in God all things are.

§ 9. This conception of God, which in the more consciously anti-theistic systems is also called that of the Absolute or infinite, occurs more or less explicitly in nearly all modern philosophers. An honourable exception must be made in favour of Mr. Mill, who alone in modern times has pleaded in favour of a limited God.3 Such limitation, moreover, is really required by consistency in all individualistic systems, notably in those of Berkeley and Leibnitz. Greek philosophy, on the other hand, is almost exclusively dualistic, and hence, though the Deity is rarely conceived as personal, he is never = the All, i.e., is never infinite. But down to the latest times of Neoplatonism, Matter is conceived as a principle which contests the supremacy of the Good. And though of course this dualism of Matter and Reason, of the unknowable and knowable, is objectionable on several grounds — and not least because Matter is not able to explain itself, much less the world and the limitation of the Deity — it may be thought a moot point whether a false distinction was not preferable to an unjustifiable confusion. It seems doubtful whether an assertion of the unity of things which left no room for the recognition of their difference was a change for the better. Certainly philosophy has since had occasion to repent of its hasty identification of the Deity with the unity of the universe, and to lament the failure of every system which attempted to understand the world on this assumption. Bitter experience alone of the impotence of philosophy, of the stagnation and retrogression of metaphysics, which have now dropped as far behind the physical sciences as they were ahead of them 2,000 years ago, might have raised doubts as to the correctness of this fundamental assumption of philosophy. And those doubts our examination will fully confirm.

§ 10. The conception of the Deity adopted by philosophic pantheism is from every point of view a mistake. Emotionally it is a mistake, because the philosophic infinite is not God, and cannot satisfy the religious emotions. Scientifically it is a mistake, because it is not a principle which is capable of explaining anything in or about the world. Logically it is a mistake, because it is grounded upon fallacies and paralogisms.

Emotionally Pantheism is disastrous, because it has destroyed the soil on which alone human emotions can develop. Religious emotion is destroyed by the fact that the god of Pantheism is, to all intents and purposes, nothing. Moral activity is destroyed by the fact that the distinctions of Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, what is and what ought to be, must to Pantheism be ever and entirely unmeaning.

Scientific activity is destroyed by the fact that the world, in whatever way we look at it, must of necessity be meaning[less] and purposeless. In short, it is in vain that Pantheism tries to avoid the confession that our life is a senseless illusion: it cannot vindicate the reality of our partial life against the all-absorbing claims of the whole.

In the first place Pantheism is Atheism, and only a lack of courage or of logic can distinguish between them. For if all is God and all is one, all distinctions vanish. All is right and all is well, for all things exist but by the favour and support of the infinite: to decry the perfection of any existing thing is to blaspheme against God. Hence all appeal to God is futile: it is for God to appeal to God against God. So being equally in all, God is not a factor in the course of life: God is a quantite negligeable, because equally shared by all things. To suppose that Pantheism leaves more room for religion than Atheism is as absurd as though we thought to diminish the inequalities of wealth by multiplying every man's property a thousandfold. So for practical purposes Pantheism and Atheism are the same, except that the latter has the frankness to call things by their true names. In the mouth of a Pantheist the accusation of Atheism is indeed ridiculous. For just as King Charles II. wittily declared during the Popish Plot, that he feared to be dethroned for his complicity in the plot against his own life, so the Atheist may plead against the Pantheist that in his impiety he offends against no one but himself, and that no one need interfere if it pleases God to blaspheme himself.

In the second place, Pantheism is no less fatal to the moral than to the religious sentiments. For it must regard all good and evil as relative and therefore as illusory. It is only from our perverted standpoint that the distinction of Good and Right and Evil and Wrong and imperfection exists; from that of the infinite, that which is, is what it ought to be, and everything occupies just the position it should. The ''God" of Pantheism is not only impotent to alleviate our sufferings — sufferings which he himself inflicts upon himself — but he is actually indifferent to them; the physical and mental tortures of myriad beings are actually seen to be "very good" in the eyes of "God." And of this diabolical indifference he can only be acquitted if we reflect that it must evidently proceed from ignorance. For God cannot be in any way aware of our woes, not only because an infinite God cannot be in any way conscious (§ 3), but because, from the standpoint of the infinite, our whole phenomenal world must be nought, unfelt, uncared for, and unknown. Our "real" world is as relative as good and evil, and like them would vanish sub specie aeternitatis, For the all-embracing infinite admits of change as little as it does of imperfection or of Time. It is all things and has all things, and therefore no change could add to or subtract from its substance. If, therefore, change appears to exist, it must be an illusion of our deluded sight, which does not penetrate to the infinite. The world would be an inexplicable illusion, an unmeaning, incoherent pageant, dreamt by the grotesque creatures of the Absolute's unconscious dream, an unreal chase of shadows across the dark background of the Absolute, a phantasmagoria existing only in the fancy of the phantoms that behold it. And so its fleeting shadows would not affect the Absolute, nor it them: not though we cry aloud shall we awake the sleeping "god" of whom we are the dream. Heaven is as dumb and irresponsive to the prophesyings of the philosophers of the Absolute as it ever was to the priests of Baal.

§ 11. And earth also: for the Absolute is no less incompatible with the methods of human science. An infinite God is as much out of relation to human knowledge as to human feeling. Pantheism explains nothing, just because it professes to explain everything. For a principle which may be regarded as the ultimate ground of all things cannot be used as the explanation of anything in particular. Hence we arrive at the paradox that the ultimate ground of all things, and cause of their existence, is the cause of nothing in the nature of that existence. In other words, for the purposes of science as well as for sentiment, Pantheism resolves itself into Atheism.

It follows that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Pantheism and all the finite methods by which men have sought to understand the world. The evolutionist method especially, regarding the world as a process, is pledged to deny the infinite in every form (cp, ch. vii. § 20). For nothing infinite can be in process, or if it is in process, the process must be unintelligible.

The vulgar hear and admire such explanations of things as that ''the Absolute can realize itself only in the world," that ''it becomes self-conscious only in man," and even that ''the history of the world is the process whereby the Absolute returns into itself enriched." But if such phrases can, upon reflection, satisfy philosophic minds, the whilom adversaries of anthropomorphism must have come to content themselves with the flimsiest metaphors of a very sorry anthropomorphism.

If, e.g., the Absolute is realized in the world, then either the existence of the world is necessary to that of the Absolute, or it is not. If it is, the world must either have existed forever, for the Absolute to be real, and it is absurd to speak of the Absolute as the First Cause (ch. ii. § 10), or the world and the Absolute have come into existence together. But if the Absolute has come into existence, it must have become either out of something or else out of nothing, for it cannot have originated out of itself before it existed itself. If out of nothing, cadit quaestio, it is admitted that nothing is the ultimate ground of existence, and that existence is ultimately irrational. If out of something else, then that something and not the Absolute is the real ground of existence ultimately, and the same question must be raised about it, and so on to infinity.

If, on the other hand, the world was not necessary to the existence of the Absolute, then why was it generated? If it was generated for any reason, then why did that reason impel the Absolute to generate the world at the time it did, rather than at any other? Did the infinite begin to find infinite time hang heavily on its hands, and if so, why did it begin to do so? Or if the world was generated for no reason, if we are driven to admit that the Absolute cannot be moved by reasons, is not this the most absolute indeterminism (cp. App. § 4), the most complete confession of the irrationality of the world? For what explanation is it of the world to derive it from an uncaused, unprovoked, and (as we shall see in § 12) impossible change in the Absolute?

And even supposing that in some utterly inscrutable way the Absolute somehow had something to do with the generation of the world, what could it possibly have effected thereby? What difference could creation make to it? What could it realize by creation that was not already real? It must be supposed to have created all things out of itself, seeing that it could create them neither out of nothing nor out of something outside it. But it already was all things, and contained all things; and so could neither realize itself nor anything else any more than it was realized already.

And the idea that the Absolute attains to self-consciousness in man is equally untenable, when analysed. The Absolute either contains self-consciousness already, and then it is nothing new, or it does not, and then the same question arises as to how anything can come into being within the circle of an all-embracing being. For the paltry excuse that all things exist potentially in the Absolute before the creation, but not actually until the world is created, will not help us out of the difficulty. Potential existence, as we saw, is nothing (ch. vii. § 18), nothing but a reference to a higher actuality. And in this case there is no higher actuality to refer to; for it would have to be an actuality that could dispose the all-including Absolute to realize its potentialities. We require something to explain how in the Absolute potentiality can be something and something different from actuality, to explain how the difference between them could arise. If the world was ever potential, then why did it become actual?

And besides, the idea that our consciousness is of any value to the infinite surely displays the most extreme extravagance of human arrogance. Why should the Absolute become self-conscious in man? Because he happens to be the highest being with which our limited knowledge is acquainted? But why should not the unnumbered stars contain myriads of beings incomparably loftier than the obscure denizens of a paltry planet? What, then, is the use of man, and the use, in any case, of countless beings? Why should the Absolute strive to become imperfectly self-conscious in the lower stages of spiritual existence, when it might do so perfectly in the highest? What sense is there in attaining by a long, laborious process, what might have been attained with instantaneous ease? Assuredly, neither the human nor any other reason can ever discover the meaning of a world-process, which takes means to an end which might have been attained without them. To our "finite" minds such a process must always appear an absurdity; it is a process which can reveal nothing but the ultimate insanity of all things.

And if the means of the world-process are thus absurd and irrational, its end is no less meaningless. For how can it "enrich the Absolute"? Can any process which takes place within the Infinite All add one feather's weight to its substance, diminish or increase by one jot or tittle the being of that which is all things and has all things? Will it not be what it is alike amid the crash of worlds and amid the throes of their birth? It would be paying the utter absurdity of this conception of the infinite concerned in a process, an unmerited compliment to liken it to a spider spinning elaborate cobwebs out of its own substance, and then, finding that there was nothing else to catch in them, proceeding to enmesh itself in its own web, and after infinite labour succeeding in reabsorbing its own production. And yet such melancholy absurdities are put forward not by one or two philosophies, but by nearly all who attempt these ultimate questions at all, as the deepest truth about the nature of things! It is perhaps fortunate that the obscurity of their language conceals this final void from the generality of men, but it exists in all philosophies which make an infinite God their first principle.4

§ 12. Pantheism, then, destroys the reality of the world-process. But we may go further and say that it is for similar reasons equally incompatible with all Change or Becoming. This is not, it is true, a consequence Pantheists have been willing to admit, since the days of the Eleatics, but all this proves is the pitiful inferiority and inconsistency of subsequent Pantheists. For the impossibility of Becoming follows incontestably from the reality of the All.

For let us suppose that the world has a content or meaning A, i.e., A of the quality or attribute in which its meaning consists. Now let us suppose that a change takes place, and its content becomes a. Now whether the change of A into a be an increase or a diminution, the amount of its Being has changed. Its content or meaning has increased or diminished. But the Absolute can neither increase nor diminish the amount of its Being, for it already is and has all. Its content, therefore, must be expressed by the equation A = A = A to all eternity, i.e., it is unchangeable.5

If, therefore, changes take place in the phenomenal world, the inference is either that that world is not the absolute All, or that the absolute All is a delusion. If, however, we identify or connect the changing world with the Absolute, we must necessarily hold that its changes are merely phenomenal, illusions of our senses which do not affect the Absolute, that properly speaking, i.e., from the true standpoint of the Absolute, change is impossible. And this is precisely what the Eleatics did: they showed that the conceptions of the changes and motions which appeared to our senses involved contradictions to our reason (cp. ch. iii. § 8), and inferred from this that the sensible world was an illusion. And, we may add, an inexplicable and impracticable illusion. For what theory or practice is possible of life, if change, the fundamental characteristic of the world, is to be treated as nought? To us change is real, and change of content is real; to us there is a meaning in saying the world is poorer in virtue and in wisdom when a good and wise man dies. Does it not then sound like a derision of our whole life to say the All is as rich as before, and all our changes and our losses are illusions? A view of the Deity which leads to such conclusions has nothing to do with human life; it must be banished from all minds that wish to retain their sanity.

For the examination shows that if the Absolute is real, the relative is absolutely unreal, and that the philosophic account of the real world thus leads to the curious conclusion that it is supposed to be explained by a principle which reduces it to absolute unreality. The pantheistic conception of the Deity absorbs the world into God, and then discovers that the latter cannot assimilate it: so it is compelled to reject it as an illusion, and arrives at the self-contradictory reductio ad absurdum, that from the standpoint of the finite, God is nothing, while from the standpoint of the infinite, the world is nothing, whereas from the standpoint of Practice they both agree in the corollary that the world is irrational and inexplicable.

§ 13. But here we may fitly introduce the hackneyed objection which may long have seemed the only refuge of the belief in the infinite. These difficulties, it may be said, only show that our finite minds cannot grasp the infinite, and that the infinite, therefore, must appear a mass of contradictions from the standpoint of the Finite. The abstractions of our finite reasoning produce a show of contradiction in what is perfectly consistent from the standpoint of the infinite. The true attitude of the human mind in such matters is a reverent confession of weakness, which admits as a faith, and bases upon feeling, a mystery which is insoluble to our finite reason.

Such has ever been the language of hard-pressed absurdities, when driven into a corner. They envelop themselves in a cap of darkness, and seek to escape under the protecting gloom of our ignorance.

But in reality this pseudo-religious agnosticism has as little to do with religion as it has with reason. Agnosticism is a superstition equally baleful and hateful, whether it masquerades in the vestments of religion or of science (as in ch. ii.), and the worship of the infinite is an idolatry precisely on a par with the reverence for the Unknowable. They are both self-contradictory phantoms which the human mind has conjured up out of the boundless maze of error, and hypostaslzed and materialized by parallel paralogisms. And if we look at the magnitude of the issues involved, it must surely be admitted that the worst of all idolatries is that which requires the human mind to sacrifice its faith in the rationality of things, in its own competency to solve the problems of its life, in order that it may fall down and worship the contradictions it has itself set up.

The argument from the "finiteness" of our minds will not bear the light of day. Its very statement is involved in all sorts of insuperable difficulties. It declares, e.g., that our minds cannot grasp the infinite, and yet, in the same breath, goes on to assert what it had asserted to be impossible. Just as the very assertion of the Unknowable involved its knowableness (ch. ii. § 3), so the very assertion of the infinite involves either its finiteness or the infinity of the mind which somehow claims to be conscious of its existence. For if the Finite could not really grasp the infinite, it could not so much as become aware of its existence. We must dismiss, then, the absurd contention that our minds cannot grasp the infinite. If it had been true, they would assuredly never have formed so troublesome a conception as that of the infinite. But the inquiry into how the human mind arrives at the idea of the infinite is no less perplexing. We may suppose the mind itself to be either finite or infinite. Now if the mind is finite, and if the whole phenomenal world is finite also, there can be no ground either in thought or in things for assuming an infinite, and the saying that the Finite cannot understand the infinite is true merely because there is nothing to understand, because the infinite is an utterly gratuitous fiction. In order, therefore, to infer the existence of a real infinite, either thought or things must in a way be infinite. Now, as has been shown (ch. ix. § 5), the infinity cannot lie in things, for if Space and Time are ultimately infinite, the world is unknowable. It remains that the mind is infinite, that the so-called Finite is of like nature with the ''infinite," and that there is no difference in kind between them. But if the mind forms the conception of the infinite in virtue of its infinitude, that conception also must follow the laws of the mind's thought, and can as little contradict the laws of logic as its thought upon the most trivial of finite things. As, therefore, no matter whether we call the mind finite or infinite, there can be no such thing as a real difference in kind between the Finite and the infinite, but only a difference in degree, the infinite is not exempted from the sway of the laws of logic and of sane thought, and hence no indulgence can be shown to the attempt to combine contradictory attributes in the same conception. The infinite must be judged by the logical rules applicable to all things, and in dealing with the infinite, as with everything else, a contradiction must be taken as an indication of something amiss somewhere.

§ 14. But perhaps it will be admitted that the belief in the infinite is not a matter of reason, not susceptible of logical statement. It is a matter of feeling, and not even of all feeling (for it is not a matter of perception, ch. ix. § 5), but of subjective emotion. Now this plea may be admitted in so far as it seems to recognize that the belief in the infinite is reached by an unprovoked and ungrounded leap into the Void, which can be justified neither by reasoning nor by sense-experience. But the feeling to which it appeals must assuredly be of the most curious description. It affords an intuitive and immediate consciousness of the infinite, which is superior to all argument. It assures men not only of the existence of the infinite, but also of its infinity. Its perception is so delicate that, even in the most ignorant and unthinking, it can distinguish with absolute certitude between real and practical infiniteness. So when it asserts that God's power is infinite rather than incalculably great, we are bound to credit it against all the opposition of our reason and of our senses. Such an emotion would truly be the most fearful and wonderful thing in our mental furniture, and we should have to contemplate it with unceasing amazement if there were any ground for supposing that it existed.

As a matter of fact it has already been shown that our feelings not only do not require the assumption of an infinite, but vehemently repudiate it (§ 10). A deity which is unknowable, inactive and indifferent to all that happens in the world, is not one which "finite minds" can either grasp or cling to.

§ 15. We have been considering hitherto the inferences to be drawn from Pantheism in its bearing upon life and science, and shown how unacceptable it is from every emotional and scientific point of view. But the real root of the doctrine, the real reason of its persistence, in spite of its more or less obviously unsatisfactory consequences, is to be found in certain supposed requirements of logic and metaphysics. Hence it is necessary to subject the logical validity of the philosophic conception of the Absolute or infinite to a most careful scrutiny. As the result of that scrutiny, it will appear that the logical arguments for Pantheism are either fallacious or inconclusive.

§ 16. It must be observed, in the first place, that the conception of a whole or totality, which is used in the arguments concerning the infinity of the Deity, is ambiguous.

When, e.g., we speak of the attribute of omnipotence, we may mean two very different things. To say that the Deity possesses "all" power may mean either that he has all the power there is, and can do all that can be done, or that he can do anything and everything. We may assert by "all" either perfection with respect to the attributes in question (power, goodness, wisdom, etc.), or an unlimited maximum. But the first of these conceptions is really that of a finite whole. To say that God can do all that can be done, is to imply that there are things impossible even to God, is to assert that He is limited by an ultimate constitution of things. And, as we shall see (§ 17), this is the true conception of a totality or whole; the true interpretation of the "all" is ''almighty," the true reconciliation of "omnipotence," with the finiteness, which is the condition of reality. But on the other hand, the generality of men do not realize that a whole or "all" is necessarily finite, and that an infinite whole is a contradiction (cp. ch. ii. § 20; ch. ix. § 8), and imagining that an infinite maximum can be a whole, they attribute infinity to God. But in reality an infinite whole is impossible, and the infinite is only the negative limit of the finite, which can exist only in idea, and can never be actual.

§ 17. Now it is evident that if we can make good what has been asserted above, viz., that a whole is necessarily finite, the assumption of an infinite Deity becomes logically inadmissible. It will follow not only that the All must be finite, but that the infinite is an absurd and misleading appellation of the All of Pantheism. But we must go further and assert that not even as a finite whole can the All be real, and thereby destroy the whole logical basis of Pantheism. For the infinite or absolute "God" of Pantheism is nothing but the hypostasizatlon of the conception of the world as a whole, nothing but the abstract conception of a totality of things, nothing but the logical form of a universe as such. And as every world, irrespective of its content and character, may be equally conceived as a whole, it was inevitable that the Deity of Pantheism should be absolutely indifferent to the world (§§ 11, 12) and to everything happening within it. For the inference from the worst world, and the most discordant content to such an Absolute would be just as valid and just as cogent as from the most perfect. God would in any case and under all circumstances be the totality of existence.

But this reasoning contains flaws which thoroughly vitiate it. In the first place, a whole is necessarily finite, for two reasons, (1) Because all our thought deals only with conceptions, and conceptions are necessarily finite (cp. § 12 note): hence we, in applying to a thing any conception of our thought, in this case the conception of a whole, necessarily imply that the reality is as finite as our conception, (2) Because, according to its only true and valid definition, infinity consists just in the impossibility of completing a whole by successive synthesis (cp, ch. ix. § 3). If, therefore, the world is a real whole, it is for that very reason not infinite. But this proof of the necessary finitude of wholes may be said to show not so much that Pantheism is mistaken in deifying the universe as a whole, as that the expression of ''the infinite" is ill-suited to describe the totality of things. Yet even granting this, it would be no slight help to the cause of clear thought, if the infinite could be finally banished from the vocabulary of philosophy.

§ 18. Secondly, even permitting Pantheism to regard its deity, the absolute whole, as finite, it is yet impossible to regard it, in the way Pantheism does, as a real and all-embracing existence. For such a View would involve a mistaken conception of the relation of a whole to its parts.

For the conception of a whole is finite also in this, that it is modelled upon the wholes given in our experience, and that we have no business to extend the analogy off-hand to a whole in which the relation to its parts would be fundamentally different from anything with which we are acquainted.

The wholes which fall within the range of our experience may be conceived in two ways, and in two ways alone. They must either be regarded from without, and given as wholes external to the spectator, or regarded from within, as the sum of their parts. In the first case alone, however, are the parts at once given as parts by direct inspection, and is the whole a reality which includes the parts. In the second, the whole has to be constituted by the successive synthesis of the parts, and hence it is always ideal and exists for thought only.

Now the universe, as the totality of things, is necessarily a whole of the second kind, since it is evident that there cannot be any existence outside it, which could regard it from without. But if so, it follows that the All is not a real whole, but literally "the sum of things"; the universe, as a whole, is simply a collective expression for the sum of its "parts." In other words, the whole is simply the ideal limit of its parts, and not anything which has real existence apart from them. The individual existences in the universe alone possess reality, and are the "first substances," and their inclusion in a supposed Absolute is simply an unpardonable repetition of the old Platonic fallacy of a transcendent universal, apart from and superior to the real individual. But the All is nothing beside the individual substances who compose and define it, just as the British nation is nothing real by the side of the individual Britons. For though it may be claimed that such a whole is in a sense real, it is not real in the sense in which Pantheism asserts the reality of the Absolute. The reality of a nation depends on the existence of its individual members, and simply expresses the fact that they act together in certain ways. Hence such a whole might be destroyed without the destruction of a single real individual, if, e.g., all the members of a nation joined other communities.

It follows, therefore, from the analysis of the relation of a whole to its parts that our experience of the real world affords us no analogy for the existence of a real whole, which should be both all-embracing and more real than its parts : the universe is not anything to which this our human conception of a whole can be applied. Thus Pantheism, in deifying the All, is proceeding upon a mistaken logical analogy, and we have here traced to its logical source the practical equivalence of Pantheism and Atheism. For if "the sum of things" cannot be a real being, it can have no real effect upon life.

§ 19. Thus Pantheism must resign itself to the conclusion that no valid meaning can be given to the assertion that God is the All, unless we frankly depart from the facts of the phenomenal world. For it is possible to conceive the ideal of a third way of relating a whole to its parts. It is possible to conceive parts which should be logically implied in the whole, and incapable of existing except as parts of the whole. In such a case the whole would be as real as the parts, by which it was irresistibly and certainly suggested, so that in stating the part we should ipso facto state the whole, and in asserting the existence of the part we should also assert the existence of the whole. And in this way, and in this way alone, we could argue from the given reality of the parts to the reality of the whole of which they were parts.

And at first sight it would seem as if this conception of a whole was not only logically thinkable, but also actually realizable. But this would be an over-hasty inference. For owing to the discord between thought and reality which at present exists (cp. ch. iii. § 14; ch. v. § 2), we cannot argue from an ideal of our thought to a corresponding reality. The Real is ''contingent," things cannot be deduced, and facts cannot be demonstrated. At the best, reality is only realizing our ideals, and will not attain to them until the world-process is completed.

And so it is not surprising that the apparent examples of such a relation of parts to wholes, with which reality as yet presents us, turn out upon closer inspection to be delusive. All real things are more or less capable of being parts of many wholes, of being wholes that can vary their parts. There is never any real necessity to regard a thing as the part of any single whole, and hence we can never conclude by a sure and single inference from the given existence of the parts to that of any particular whole. The inference from the part to the whole is always precarious and probable, and never attains to strict and absolute certitude. We can find no examples even in the ideal regions of mathematics. There is nothing in an angle to compel us to regard it as the angle of a triangle, or in a semicircle to prevent us from treating it as a simple curve, without reference to the circle of which it may form part. Nor do the relations of a body to its members realize this ideal. The mutual implication of members of bodies is in all cases more or less transitory and impermanent. The parts of all bodies are more or less capable of existing independently of their wholes, while all bodies have the power more or less of repairing the loss of their parts. In the lower organisms especially, the mutual independence of whole and parts reaches an astonishing height. To say nothing of leaves and cuttings capable of developing into complete plants, of the grafting of one plant upon another of a totally different order, we find that crabs will repair the loss of their legs, claws and eyes, that a lizard will part with its tail with the greatest equanimity, and that the arms of a male cuttle fish can sever themselves from their body and embark upon the romance of life on their own account.6 Even in man, operations like the transfusion of the blood of one organism into another, and the transplantation of skin from one body to another, are perfectly easy. Hence we cannot from the mere sight of a member infer the existence of the body of which it was a member, although, as knowledge grows, we can define within gradually narrower limits the sort of body it must belong to. But the mere sight of an arm will not enable us to assert positively whose arm it is, nor even establish its connection with a body; for it may have been cut off from its body, nor will it tell us whether the body is alive or dead. Everywhere we find wholes which can dispense with their individual members with disgusting facility, and parts capable of standing related to many and various wholes. The connection is never permanent and unconditionally valid.

But perhaps it may be answered that in the case of an all-embracing whole, like the universe, the source of error arising out of the multiplicity of wholes to which the parts may be related is eliminated by the fact that there is only one whole of which the individual existences can form part. There can be no misinterpretation of the parts of the universal whole, for everything that exists must form part of the Absolute.

This rejoinder, however, would rest upon an illusion. It appears correct only while we treat "the universe" as an abstract conception, and only because the real question has already been begged in the mode of statement. In speaking of "the universe," i.e., of an empty category, its unity has already been covertly assumed, i.e., it has been assumed that no misinterpretation of the parts was possible, that they could only be related to a single whole. But it is a delusion to suppose that when things have been shown to form part of a whole, they have also been shown to form part of any particular whole. Accordingly, as soon as ever it is attempted qualitatively to determine our category, i.e., to infer that the individual existences must form part, not of a universe as such, but of a real universe of a certain character, the old difficulty recurs, and it appears that they might form part of all sorts of qualitatively different cosmical constructions, and hence are not logically implied in any one of them. Taking, that is to say, the individual existences as our data, we can so arrange them as to construct ''the universe" in many different ways, and our data do not compel us to assume any particular kind of universe. For instance, we are attempting to interpret the facts of life upon the assumption of the ultimate rationality of existence, but we were in Book I. forced to admit that they might also be interpreted consistently with its ultimate irrationality. But which of these two theories about our data is right, is just what we want to know, and what Pantheism does not enable us to decide. To tell us that things may be regarded as a universe by means of the conception of a totality, is to tell us nothing of the least importance, and to offer us this trivial truism in lieu of a God, is to mock our demand for a reality with the unsubstantial shadow of a logical distinction. Pantheism, therefore, has elucidated and explained nothing by applying to the world the abstract conception of a whole; its Deity is indifferent to the world, because an abstract conception carries with it no reference to any definite content; its Deity is not real, because it is merely an irrelevant play with logical counters; its Deity is not valid, because it requires an unwarranted manipulation of its data.

§ 20. The conception, then, of a whole necessarily inferred from its parts is an ideal and not a reality, and as such cannot guarantee the reality of the pantheist's All, nor affect our belief in the self-sufficing reality of the individual existences. And yet it is interesting to observe that, even if it could be realized, it would after all vindicate the reality of the whole only at a cost of concession to the parts which more than compensates them for the loss of their logical self-existence.

For though it would have to be admitted that the whole possessed a sort of honorary priority, the necessary implication of the whole and the parts would yet have to be really reciprocal. For in order to secure the certainty of the inference from the part to the whole, the part must be incapable of being anything but the part of that whole, and as essential to the whole as the whole is to it. The parts could not escape from the whole, but neither could the whole destroy the parts. If the whole is necessary, the parts would also have to be necessary. There could be no such thing as coming into or passing out of existence in the relation of the parts to such a whole, no possibility of regarding their relation under the category of cause and effect. And even the most self-assertive individual might well endure to be called a section of the Absolute, if this relation guaranteed to him eternal and changeless existence.

In this reciprocity of mutual dependence doubtless lies the true solution of the difficulty, and the true reconciliation of the conflicting claims of the individual and the whole of which he is a part, a reconciliation equally remote from either extreme, from an intractable self-assertion of the parts no less than from an all-absorbing encroachment of the whole. And though it is an ideal which as yet finds no exact counterpart amid the imperfections of the real world, we have yet some reason to believe that the world is approximating towards it. The individual is becoming more valuable to the whole as certainly as he is becoming less able to dispense with it. As the intrinsic worth of the individual rises, so does his social value. The greater a man, the greater the void his loss leaves, the more keenly is it felt by the society in which he had been a factor. And it is one of the crudest necessities of our imperfect State that we are not able to mourn our dead as we ought, that love and grief are transient, and, like ourselves, are swept away in the rushing flood of life. But even so, we may, in this approximation to a mutual dependence of part and whole, catch another view of the ideal we first caught sight of at the end of chapter viii., that of an eternal and harmonious interaction of individuals, who could not exist except as members of a perfect society, in a society which could not dispense with the services of a single member. But though such a whole would be heavenly, it would not be God, for it would be a hypostasization of the interaction of the existent. And still less would it explain what after all needs explanation most, viz., the why of the world-process, why the world of which we form "parts" at present falls so far short of the purity of our ideals. If, therefore, we choose to hypostasize the interaction of the Existent under the name of the Absolute, we must do so with a full consciousness that it is out of relation to the world as it actually exists, and can explain nothing in it.

But there is no need to hypostasize it; no reason to assume an "infinite" to envelop and sustain the "Finite." To make the infinite the metaphysical support of reality only involves us in superstitions as endless and as groundless as those which supported the physical world on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, etc., etc. But just as little as the physical world requires an Atlas to bear it up, as little does the spiritual world require an infinite Absolute to confer reality upon it. And just as the celestial bodies maintain their positions by their mutual attractions and repulsions, so the Finite suffices to limit itself and the individuals are real and are also limited in virtue of their actions and reactions upon one another. All things are finite and relative, and the relative is relative to itself, and not to an absolute and unlimited nonentity, which must needs be out of all relation to the Real.