Riddles of the Sphinx, by Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller
Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2020 4:18 am
Riddles of the Sphinx: A Study in the Philosophy of Evolution
by A TROGLODYTE [Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller]
1891
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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.
by A TROGLODYTE [Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller]
1891
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.
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]