Front matter (continued 2)

Thus Kant is not undeservedly called the father of a philosophy which succeeded him, and which was based upon the idea of the supremacy of feeling. But, at the same time, that title is more accurate as an estimate of another philosopher of rather different characteristics.

Rousseau.—Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was a man of unique genius whose figure occupies a prominent position not only in the annals of philosophy, but in social, political, and literary history. Even more than Voltaire was he responsible for sowing seeds of thought which bore fruit in the events of the Revolution. And indeed, it is as the author of the notorious Contrat Social that he is most widely known.

Rousseau's "Sensibility."—Rousseau was one of those philosophers whose character is the formative element which gives shape to their doctrines. His was a profoundly emotional temperament. He left behind him an invaluable document which lays bare all the psychological sources of his philosophy. The Confessions reveal to us a man highly sensitive and morbidly introspective, the slave of unreasoning impulses and passions. In the eyes of some short-sighted persons, these first-hand revelations will obscure or cast doubt upon the capacity and genius of the man, for they do little to prejudice opinion in his favour.

He Defies the Zeitgeist.—Rousseau's profound originality lies in his having dared to dispute a dogma to which the prestige of an axiom then attached. He endeavoured to undermine the popular faith in scientific and philosophic culture. He went right back to Pascal, who, a century before, had raised the question as to the value of scientific knowledge for personal life, by proclaiming "The whole of philosophy is not worth an hour's study."

Rousseau's first philosophical work was occasioned by the offer of a prize on the part of a provincial academy for a thesis on the problem "Whether the restoration of the sciences and arts has contributed to purify manners?" "The question pierced Rousseau's soul like a flash of lightning." He felt (he tells us) that he saw a new world, and felt a new man; he saw no longer the world of culture, of science, of philosophy (which he felt to be as artificial as it was ineffective and vain), but the real world of personality, of living feeling, of the inner life. It flashed upon him that it was the primitive and elementary feelings, the great and simple relations of life, which gave to existence its value. The rest was superficial and irrelevant.

Rousseau and Religion.—The intellectualist is ever the aristocrat.[25] Voltaire and the philosophers of the "enlightenment" spoke of the unenlightened multitude as la canaille. Its beliefs were superstitions. Rousseau knew that the things which men have in common are more vital than those in which they differ, and the primitive instincts of the race which we all share, are the most important part of our nature.

Among these primitive instincts, indomitable and irrepressible, is the instinct of religion. Thus Rousseau transferred the religious problem from the sphere of external observation and explanation of the world (to which the rationalists had promoted or degraded it), back to inner personal feeling. This marked an epoch in the philosophy of religion.

Moreover, Rousseau was able to write in a convincing fashion of religion, because (and here he differed from the intellectuals of his day) he had personal experience of what it meant. Hence wherever he alludes to religion his language has the ring of sincerity; it is always spontaneous, and sometimes it is passionate and poetic. His religious experience took the form of nature-mysticism, undogmatic (because non-intellectualist), but rich and deep:

"I can find no more worthy adoration of God than the silent admiration which the contemplation of His works begets in us, and which cannot be expressed by any prescribed acts.... In my room I pray seldomer and more coldly; but the sight of a beautiful landscape moves me, I cannot tell why. I once read of a certain bishop, who, when visiting in his diocese, encountered an old woman whose only prayers consisted in a sigh 'Oh!' The bishop said to her, 'Good mother, always pray like that; your prayer is worth more than ours.' My prayer is of that kind."[26]

Here we have one form of the religious spirit; for the mystic it is always true that "there is neither speech nor language." The mystic and the dogmatist stand at opposite poles, for dogmatism is always an attempt at definition even when that which is to be defined is indefinable; and here is to be found the common denominator between Kant and Rousseau. The former, by his analysis of reason, discredited dogmatism: the latter, by his apotheosis of feeling, contributed towards the same result.

Romanticism in Germany.—This strong movement of feeling, created on the one hand by Kant's Critique, and by the mysticism of Rousseau, took different forms in the two countries to which these two philosophers belonged. In France the new philosophy became the hot-bed of revolutionary ideas; whereas in Germany it found vent in a ferment of speculative systems, and in an outcrop of artistic production. It produced the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, and the prose and poetry of Goethe and Schiller.

"It was the age of 'beautiful souls' and of 'noble hearts'; men believed themselves capable of the highest things; the immediate needs of the heart were set over against reason ... under many successive forms Romanticism prevailed in literature, effecting the re-birth of human fancy after the long labour of intellect."[27]

The Goal of Philosophy.—Philosophic young Germany had set itself an ambitious programme. Kant, indeed, had cleared the ground for them, but his warnings that an eagle cannot soar beyond the atmosphere which supports it, were disregarded.

The philosophy of Kant himself was felt by the successors to be lacking in the idea of totality—in the conception of a whole. His division of existence into Appearance and Reality seemed to indicate a certain lack of finish in his philosophy; and they set themselves to explore the root of reality which to Kant seemed undiscoverable, but in which the sensuous and super-sensuous worlds are united, and from which they have emerged. This task became and remained the grand problem of philosophy for a whole generation of thinkers. All externality, isolation, and division were to disappear, all existence must be shown to be but degrees and phases of the one infinite reality. Spinoza's work had to be done again in the light of increased psychological knowledge.

Fichte.—Of the thinkers who addressed themselves to this ambitious task, only two need be considered here; and these are chosen because they attacked the problem from different directions.

In the first place, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), who had been the first to lay down the programme of thought with explicitness, realised and admitted that the task which philosophy had set itself was beyond the powers of any logical train of thought. The "higher unity" of existence, the demonstration of which was the goal of philosophy, could be reached only by a process of intellectual intuition,[28] it must be guessed or divined; for it presents itself (and this is a characteristically "Romanticist" idea) to the human mind in the immediacy of feeling, and not by discursive thought.

It was of the essence of Fichte's philosophy, as it had been of Spinoza's, that a point may be attained where the mind feels itself to be at one with the truly real, and only when this point is reached—i.e. sub specie aeternitatis, will it arrive at and retain the conviction of the universal order and unity of existence. From this standpoint, and from this alone, does it become possible to grasp "the meaning of those dualities and contrasts which we find around and in us, the differences of self and not-self, of mind and matter, of subject and object, of appearance and reality, of truth and semblance."

Hegel.—It has been said, perhaps with justice, that "philosophy is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct." The remark might seem, at least in the eyes of some, to be particularly applicable to the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Not because his arguments are bad, but because he attempted to establish by strict logic the conclusions which Fichte sought to reach by means of intuition, and which perhaps are only attainable by that method. Hegel attempted to climb, by a strict process of reasoning, to the position from which the Fichtean landscape might spread itself below as a logical whole: he claimed to be a reasoner as well as a seer. And thereby he may be said to have furnished "the programme of thought for a certain class of intellects which will never die out."

Thus Hegel was something of a hybrid, and may be described as a rationalistic-romanticist. Nor are his arguments the easiest to understand. "The only thing that is certain," writes a commentator who stands at an opposite philosophical pole, "is that whatever you may say of his procedure, some one will accuse you of misunderstanding it. I make no claim to understanding it; I treat it merely impressionistically."[29] And this is all we can do here.

Hegel's Method.—Hegel proceeds by means of what he calls the Dialectical Method. He understands by "dialectic" (1) a property of all our thoughts in virtue of which, each particular thought necessarily passes over into another; and also (2) a property of things, in virtue of which every particular thing necessarily belongs to, or is related to, all other things. A thing "by itself" is nothing.

Hence a similarity or parallelism between the method of thought and the nature of things. Logic is of the nature of things. The way in which thought reaches truth is also the way in which things exist. Hegel expressed this in his well-known saying "the real is the rational, and the rational is the real." Perhaps more poetically or obscurely the same proposition is expressed by declaring: "When we think existence, existence thinks in us," and "The pulse of existence itself beats in our thinking."

Hegel's logic may, in fact, be described as an attempt to conceive the movement of thought as being at the same time the law of the universe. Logic (to repeat what we said before) is of the nature of things: reality is rational, and what is rational is real.

Thus logic for Hegel did not mean (as it meant for Kant) the forms or laws of thought: it signified the very core of reality. For all that Kant knew, reality might or might not be rational: all he asserted was that the human mind rationalised reality (or parts of it). For Hegel, logic or reason was the living and moving spirit of the world. The essence of reality and the essence of thought were one. The absolute reality was spirit.[30]

Hegelianism.—Hegel's philosophy may be described as an attempt to reach the standpoint of religious mysticism by means of purely rational processes. It is the finding of rational grounds for supra-rational intuitions. The attempt is laudable, and, in the eyes of many, it was successful. And, as we shall see, Hegelianism had an important future, especially in England; nor, as a system of thought, is it yet extinct. Its central conception is that which, in one shape or another, will never cease to appeal to mankind—that existence is, at bottom, spiritual in character—that spirit is the only ultimate reality.

That Hegelianism provides a rational basis for a spiritual religion is obvious enough; nor is it necessary to indicate the possibilities of linking up the Christian doctrine of the Logos with a philosophy for which Reason was the very core and ground of existence. Hegel may indeed be said to have laid the foundation of Christian theology afresh; or rather to have restored what was best in the old theology, and given it the prestige of modernity.

Religion and Philosophy.—In fact, for Hegel as for all rationalists whose attitude is also religious, religion and philosophy were two forms of the same thing. Religion contains philosophic truths under the form of imagination: philosophy contains religious truth under the form of reason. The difference is one of form only, not of content. This had not been the view of Rousseau, nor is it the deepest view; and it was not the view of a thinker of the Romantic school who did more than any individual among his predecessors to bring the religious problem to the point where it now stands.

Schleiermacher.—While the sun of Romanticism was at its zenith, the spirit of Kant's critical philosophy was kept alive by a thinker of as deep spiritual and intellectual insight as Hegel himself.

Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher (1768-1834) brought the religious problem down from those altitudes to which Romanticist metaphysics had raised it, to what Kant had called "the fertile bathos of experience." He approached religion from the side of inner experience, the point of view of psychology. The profound insight of Kant had already shown that this was the direction on which future thought would travel, by tracing back the religious problem to a personal need more clearly and penetratingly than ever before—a need set up by the incongruity of the real and the ideal.

His View of Religious Ideas.—Just as Rousseau, owing to his own religious experience, was in a better position to attack the religious problem than the philosophers of the "enlightenment," so Schleiermacher had the advantage of some Romanticists. As a boy, he had been put to school with the Moravians, and throughout his own life he never ceased to declare that the years spent among them had been of vital importance to the development of his views. In 1801 he writes:

"My way of thinking has indeed no other foundation than my own peculiar character, my inborn mysticism, my education as it has been determined from within."

And his own experience of religion established in him the conviction that the innermost life of men must be lived in feeling, and that this alone can bring man into immediate relation to the highest. His acceptance of Kant's criticism of reason led him to understand that intellectual concepts, in the religious sphere, (i.e. dogmas) must always be of secondary importance: experience comes first. And his profound originality lies just here, and it is just here that Schleiermacher stands out as the forerunner of the modern view. He it was who first made it evident that religious ideas derive their validity from that inner experience which they are an attempt to describe. If a dogma is an expression of an experience felt by man in his innermost life, it is a valid dogma, even if philosophic criticism hesitates to sanction it.[31]

What Is Religion?—The distance of this position from that of the eighteenth century intellectualism which regarded religion either as a form of philosophy or of superstition, is obvious. Schleiermacher attacks two intellectualist prejudices in particular: (1) That according to which religion is conceived of primarily as a doctrine (either revealed, or grounded on reason), and (2) That which regards religion as merely a means towards morality.

Religion, according to Schleiermacher, has an existence independent of (though, no doubt, associated with) philosophy, superstition, or morality. Its essence consists neither in speculation nor in action, but in a certain type of feeling, of inner experience. Schleiermacher characterised this particular type of feeling as a feeling of dependence: the immediate consciousness that everything finite exists in and through the infinite, everything temporal in and through the eternal.

That Schleiermacher should have described the specifically religious feeling in this particular way is comparatively irrelevant so far as our present purpose is concerned. The point of importance is that he was the first to recognise the independence of religion, to see in it a legitimate and natural form of human activity, which exists, not for the sake of knowledge or of morality, but for its own sake, and on its own account.

Here, though Hegel took a different view, Schleiermacher is one in spirit with the Romantic school; indeed, he may be said to have drawn the logical conclusions of Romanticism. The independence and originality of religion is the necessary consequence of a philosophy which set itself against the unbalanced intellectualism of the "enlightenment."

The permanent significance of Romanticism lies here: That it discredited once for all the notion that there is only one road to reality—that of logic. It is not only philosophy, but religion and art that remove the veil which hides the supra-sensible world from us. And to close our eyes to the facts of religious experience, or to attempt to discredit them by the application of irrelevant terms such as "superstition," is not only to display ourselves as philistines, but also to forsake the highest traditions of science—veneration for experience, and the realms of fact.

CHAPTER VIII

MECHANISM AND LIFE

Recapitulatory.—We have already observed the mechanical theory, in the hands of Descartes, expanding itself to cover organisms and the phenomena of life, and in La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine, reducing even human beings to the status of automata. These theories were, however, known to be insecurely based upon somewhat hasty generalisations, for, in point of fact, the science of biology was as yet in its infancy; the data for a complete vindication of the mechanical position were as yet wanting.

Advance of Biology.—Biological science, however, during the first half of the nineteenth century made considerable advances, and research continually kept bringing to light facts which seemed to substantiate the brilliant, if premature, hypothesis of Descartes. It will not be necessary for us to do more than take hasty note of certain important developments.

It was in 1828 that the German chemist Whöler (1800-1882) for the first time in biological history prepared an organic compound (urea) from inorganic materials—an achievement universally recognised to be of the utmost significance. As a distinguished historian of the science of chemistry puts it:

"This discovery destroyed the difference which was then considered to exist between organic and inorganic bodies, viz. that the former could only be formed under the influence of vegetable or animal vital forces, whereas the latter could be artificially produced."[32]

Ten years later another German, Schleider (1804-1881) propounded the cellular theory of the structure and growth of plants, a theory which was soon extended to animal organisms by Schwann (1810-1882). The publication of this famous theory was described by a contemporary as "a burst of daylight"; it indeed illuminated what had hitherto been buried in mystery and mythology—the structure and method of growth of plants and animals. It seemed to render superfluous any form of the old conception of a "vital force" to explain the phenomena of growth, if it could now be assumed that the cells automatically absorbed outside material, increased in number by the division of individuals, and built up the organism by continual repetition of this process.

Schwann was also responsible for initiating a number of minute physiological investigations which led to a far more intimate knowledge of the action of nerves and muscles, and interpreted these in mechanical terms. "Investigations which were carried on with all the resources of modern physics regarding the phenomena of animal movements, gradually substituted for the miracles of the 'vital forces' a molecular mechanism, complicated, indeed, and likely to baffle our efforts for a long time to come, but intelligible, nevertheless, as a mechanism."[33]

Subsequent researches, notably of Helmholtz (1821-1895) and Meyer, lent strong support to this interpretation. The conception of the conservation of energy (an important axiom of the mechanical theory) was successfully applied by them to the economy of organisms. The organism was found not to create energy, but only to contain remarkably efficient means of deriving it from materials absorbed as food. Thus animal warmth and the power of motion are originally "sunlight transformed in the organism of the plant," and afterwards appropriated by the animal. The power with which we move our limbs is as much the product of combustion as is the power of a steam engine, the only difference being that the organism is, of the two, the more efficient converter of energy.

The Mechanical Theory Substantiated.—Thus, whether biologists were considering the structure or the behaviour of organisms, they were arriving at the same conclusions. The structure was revealed as physical and chemical structure, and the behaviour as the resultant of familiar physical and chemical processes. Hence biology came to be regarded as a compartment of physics and chemistry, for life itself was nothing but a complex physical or chemical phenomenon. Life could thus be satisfactorily expressed in terms of matter and energy. The speculations of Descartes seemed to be established by experimental science.

The Final Obstacle.—The situation, already satisfactory to those whose hope it was to see the mechanical theory impregnably established, was marred, however, by one untoward circumstance. The phenomena of organic structure, growth, and behaviour having been reduced to order, and expressed in terms of physics and chemistry, certain important facts still resisted explanation, and stood out as a last stronghold of the older view.

The Origin of Species.—The existence of definite forms of animal and vegetable life, whose infinite variety and complexity was continually being increased by research[34]—still remained a mystery. How did these innumerable species naturally and automatically come into being? was the question that must be satisfactorily answered before the mechanical view could be held to cover all the facts.

The direction in which to look for a reply had been indicated by a number of thinkers. The French naturalist Buffon, the philosopher Kant, and the poet Goethe—besides other thinkers—had already in the eighteenth century familiarised the idea that species are not immutable, but that, by some means or other, new forms of life are derived from pre-existing ones. The conception had gained a firm foothold in England, where it was hospitably entertained by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and where it formed the staple of a book which caused a good deal of controversy in its day, and which is not yet forgotten.[35]

Lamarck.—The evolutionary idea, however, though attractive to philosophers, and even to men of science, was insufficient as an explanation of the origin of species so long as the processes of transformation remained obscure. Naturalists could not accept an hypothesis for which there seemed to be such imperfect evidence. An ingenious French scientist, J. Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829) had indeed, in 1809, propounded the theory—ever since known by his name—that the use or disuse of particular organs might, after a long series of generations, result in the formation of new species. (The ideas denoted by the words "environment," "adaptation," "acquired habits"—now so familiar—may be said to have been introduced by him). But the scientific prejudices of the time were against Lamarck's theories, and he had to lament their inhospitable reception. Indeed Lamarck's critics did not hesitate to exercise their powers of ridicule, or to make fun of the giraffe who derived his long neck from the attempts of his ancestors to browse on high trees. Darwin himself talks of "Lamarck's nonsense," and of his "veritable rubbish"—language, however, which he was subsequently able to retract.

The New Geology.—Perhaps the most stubborn obstacle which Lamarckian theories had to meet was the current prejudice as to the age (or youth) of the earth. Contemporary geologists were by no means prepared to grant Lamarck the illimitable periods of time which his transformation processes seemed to require. Consequently it is not surprising that the new theories, perhaps for the first time, received a measure of justice at the hands of one who himself became responsible for a revolution in the science of geology.

"I devoured Lamarck en voyage," writes Charles Lyell, describing a journey from Oxford in 1827. "His theories delighted me more than any novel I ever read, and much in the same way, for they address themselves to the imagination.... That the earth is quite as old as he supposes, has long been my creed."[36]

In spite of the fascination of these theories, however, Lyell was not carried away by them, and it was not for some years that he estimated them at their true value. Meanwhile the new geology made its appearance with the publication of the three volumes of his own Principles of Geology, between 1829 and 1833. The significance of the book for biological speculation—for theories of the origin of species—lay in its thesis that the present condition of the earth is the product of geological processes incalculably long. Hitherto the "catastrophic theory" had been dominant—the notion that a series of immense catastrophic events (like the Deluge) had been responsible for the present condition of the earth's surface. For this Lyell substituted his "Evolutionary Theory," according to which the almost invisibly slow geological processes which we may now see operating around us, are typical of the behaviour of the crust of this planet for incalculable periods of time; for even the slowest changes, if sufficient time is allowed them, are capable of producing the most stupendous results. Lyell may be said to have extended the age of the earth ad infinitum. Just as Galileo removed all barriers of space, Lyell removed those of time. Their joint achievement was to present to humanity a universe infinite both in space and time—a staggering conception.

Results of Lyell's Theory.—Though Lyell's boldness disturbed a good many of his contemporaries, those biologists who were engaged upon seeking the origin of species were thankful to one who had removed the chief obstacle to the solution of their difficulties. They were now relieved of one embarrassment: Lyell gave them the power to draw on the Bank of Time to any extent; bankruptcy was no longer possible.[37]

Indeed, Lyell seems himself to have been convinced of the evolutionary origin of species (though the mode of its operation still remained a mystery for him no less than for the biologists themselves). In fact, it became quite evident that the idea of "continuity" which the Principles of Geology had established in the inorganic world, must be equally applicable to the organic world.

Darwin.—The theory of a common descent of species had occurred, as early as 1837, to an enthusiastic student of Lyell's writings, who was also a personal friend. Charles Darwin had collected much geological, botanical, and zoological matter on his voyage with the Beagle round the world, and continued for twenty years to accumulate an immense volume of data to substantiate a theory which had first suddenly suggested itself to him in 1838 as the result of reading for amusement Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population.

This celebrated book, first published in 1798, had attempted to describe the forces which ensure the multiplication, or check the increase of population. The proposition laid down by Malthus was that population tends to vary with the means of subsistence. He had studied his problem from a social or political point of view, but the same principle was seen by Darwin to apply to all living creatures. Two forces are seen everywhere in conflict: (a) the luxuriant powers of reproduction possessed by and exercised by each species; (b) the difficulties and obstacles by which the species tend to be eliminated. The contest between the powers of reproduction and those of elimination—this "over-production" and "crowding-out"—is what was afterwards termed the "struggle for existence."

"Natural Selection."—Darwin's momentous theory was that this struggle, proceeding for untold ages, had resulted in the continual formation of new species. Granted that the numerous offspring of any individual member of a species tend to vary, those variations survive which happen to be best fitted to cope with the environment. These in their turn leave offspring, the variations and the selections are repeated, and so on ad infinitum; and the result is that entirely new species are formed by a long process of insignificant changes. This, briefly put, is the celebrated theory of "Natural Selection."

The habit of scientific caution was characteristic of Darwin, who at first would not write down "even the briefest sketch" of his hypothesis, but devoted nearly twenty years to the accumulation of evidential data. His friends continually warned him that he would be forestalled, and this actually occurred, as is well known, in 1858, when the book which was to give the new theory to the world was already half written. The naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, on a collecting expedition in the East Indies, "in a flash of insight" while sick with fever, found the same solution of the mystery that had puzzled biologists so long. Wallace's letter to Darwin, containing the abstract of his theory, came "like a bolt from the blue."

The behaviour of the two men was worthy of the highest traditions of scientific research. The matter was put into the hands of Lyell, and Wallace's paper, together with certain extracts from Darwin's unpublished notes, were read before the Linnean Society, and the preparation of Darwin's book was hurried on. In November, 1859, The Origin of Species was published.

Results of Darwin's Theory.—The importance (for the general trend of thought) of this joint achievement of Darwin and Wallace was considerable, and could not but be regarded as an extension of the mechanical theory. The origin of species might still to some extent remain mysterious (for "natural selection" was soon realised to be only one of many factors at work in evolution), yet the area of mystery was patently reduced, and the "inexplicable" driven further back. A formula had been provided, which seemed to be as valid, and likely to prove as permanent and fruitful in biological research as Newton's law of gravity had been in the realm of physics.

In point of fact, Darwin had only substituted new problems of "variation" and "heredity" for the old one of the diversity of species; but an impression was created by the new discoveries that a purely mechanical explanation of the origin of life and even of mind was within reach.

The Descent of Man.—With regard to "mind," the impression was re-inforced by Darwin's next book—the Descent of Man, where the gap between man and the animals was finally bridged. The work was merely an extension of the principles previously applied by him, and as a theory it had been present to Darwin's mind as far back as 1837. As soon as he had become "convinced that species were mutable productions," he could not "avoid the belief that man must come under the same law."[38] Indeed the Descent was nothing more than a corollary to the Origin of Species. The earlier work contains the whole of Darwinism.

The Position Reached.—And with the full publication of Darwin's theories a point was reached when a more or less consistently materialistic position seemed possible. The foundations of such a position had been strengthened by the scientific atomism of Dalton, and the results of German research in the field of organic chemistry seemed to open up possibilities of expressing even life in terms of matter. And, finally, the evolutionary hypothesis had reduced some of the most obscure biological problems to manageable proportions. The prospects for a purely naturalistic philosophy were phenomenally bright.

CHAPTER IX

MATERIALISM AND AGNOSTICISM

From Science to Philosophy.—The record of certain important scientific discoveries has occupied us in two recent chapters, and it is now time to examine the philosophic results that were drawn from them. It is true that the generalisations drawn from the results of scientific research were sometimes hasty, and not always sanctioned by the gifted minds to whom these results were due; yet they were assured a popular reception, and exercised an immense influence. It is not always the most accurate thinkers whose ideas gain the widest currency.

Discredit of Romanticism.—The Idealistic movement in philosophy which we have seen flourishing in Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had begun, after the lapse of a generation, to decline.[39] The causes of decline, as often happens, were in part, at least, other than intellectual. Hegelianism had become associated with political reaction, and "a philosophy has lost its charm when it enters the service of absolutism." And a rising spirit of enterprise in commerce and industry also contributed to a change of attitude, for as material interests develop, men have less leisure for speculation, and often lose their taste for ideals. Probably there should also be taken into account the sentimentality that had attached itself to Romanticism and with which men were sated. This revolt has its most pointed expression in the prose writings of the poet Heine, who attacks with satiric bitterness "the new troubadours, so morbid and somnambulistic, so high-flown and aristocratic, and altogether so unnatural."

Metaphysics Rejected.—The reaction against the philosophy of Romanticism took the form of a complete revolt against speculative philosophy. But instead of going back to Kant, and taking up a vigorously critical attitude, it took refuge in the prejudices of "common sense." The new movement must be associated in the first place with a French thinker, Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who made the attempt to substitute scientific and positive knowledge for the vague speculations which had hitherto passed for philosophy. He was, in fact, the founder of that system of ideas known as Positivism, which (as we shall see) gained great vogue later, especially in England. Comte's doctrine was that, all spheres of Nature now being brought under the sway of positive science, the time had arrived for men, when constructing their conceptions of life and the world, to reject all but such ideas as positive science can accept. The age of theology and speculation was past; the new age of positive science, where both imagination and argumentation should be subordinate to observation, was at hand. Comte, as is well known, became the founder of what he hoped might develop into a new Catholicism—the "Religion of Humanity," and an atmosphere of moral idealism permeates his thought.

German Extremists.—In Germany, the home of Romanticism, the revolt took a radical shape in the hands of writers like Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) and Büchner. "I unconditionally repudiate absolute, self-sufficing speculation—speculation which draws its material from within," says the former, in the Introduction to his Essence of Christianity[40] (1841) and asserts that he "places philosophy in the negation of philosophy." Büchner, a far less acute thinker than Feuerbach, adopts a similar attitude, protests against pedantry, and appeals (the appeal is always dangerous) to common sense:

"Expositions which are not intelligible to an educated man are scarcely worth the ink they are printed with. Whatever is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed."

It is not surprising that the book Force and Matter (1855)—in the preface to which these sentiments are expressed—went through sixteen editions in thirty years and was translated into most European languages. It is an extreme expression of the most thorough-going materialism, and the circumstance that its conclusions were acceptable neither to cautious scientists nor to critical philosophers, did not compromise its authority with the general public. As was only natural, for materialism is a creed for which the evidence is all on the surface, and to which the objections, being less obvious, escape notice. And Büchner's pleas for intelligibility and clearness, though in some sense justified by the inconceivable pedantry of much German metaphysics, was, in point of fact, only a form of cant; for "there are difficulties lying in the subject-matter itself which cannot be banished from the sphere of philosophy." Appeals to popular prejudices are not a more legitimate form of philosophic, than of scientific controversy; serious thinkers do not thus stoop to the expedients of the politician.

Effects of Darwin's Theory.—It would be a serious mistake, then, to imagine that materialistic naturalism had to wait for the publication of the Origin of Species (1859) before it could become a formidable theory. And yet the appearance of Darwin's book had important effects, and among these is to be reckoned a certain weakening of the old "Argument from Design," according to which the complexity and delicacy evident everywhere in the world of nature, could not be attributed to chance, but pointed to the existence and activity of a divine Designer. Paley, during the eighteenth century, had elaborated the argument with a wealth of detailed instances of "contrivance":

"The pivot upon which the head turns, the ligament within the socket of the hip-joint, the pulley or trochlear muscles of the eye; the epiglottis, the bandages which tie down the tendons of the wrist and instep," and so on.

And it was not so much the doubt cast by it upon the separate creation of particular species that was the disturbing element in Darwin's hypothesis (few men now regarded the book of Genesis as a manual of natural science, or faith in it, as such, as a matter of religious obligation); it was rather that the new doctrine of "natural selection" seemed to invalidate the "argument from design." Design or chance had been the alternatives offered by Paley, and chance only had to be mentioned to be rejected; but Darwin made it possible to escape from the dilemma. He showed how, if certain conditions were granted, the whole process of the manufacture of species would naturally and inevitably follow. Neither design nor chance was the explanation: there was another alternative, the influence of environment. Thus Paley's instances of elaborate "contrivance" were explained by Darwin as instances of adaptation. The environment under which these organs had developed had made them what they were; they could not, under the given circumstances, have been different. As a very lucid writer puts it:

"Before Darwin's great discovery, those who denied the existence of a Contriver were hard put to it to explain the appearance of contrivance. Darwin, within certain limits and on certain suppositions, provided an explanation. He showed how the most complicated and purposeful organs, if only they were useful to the species, might gradually arise out of random variations, continuously weeded by an unthinking process of elimination."[41]

Darwinism Exploited.—In fact, it became evident that popular materialism had been strongly reinforced by the new biology; and though Darwin himself was cautious in adding philosophic or religious corollaries to his own propositions, some of his more eager disciples did not hesitate to fill in his blanks, and to draw conclusions which the master was too conservative, too blind, or perhaps too scientific to sanction.

The distinguished zoologist Haeckel (1834-1919) may be reckoned the most notable amongst these. He was one of the first German scientists to give his adherence to Darwin, who seems to have considered him too zealous a disciple. "Your boldness sometimes makes me tremble," he wrote (November 19, 1868). It is not every scientist who can perceive the limits of an hypothesis, or who insists so conscientiously as Darwin did, upon the necessity for its verification.

Herbert Spencer.—Though there were not wanting in England writers to exploit Darwinian theories in the interests of a narrow secularism, their work was not of first-rate importance, and need not detain us. A new evolutionary philosophy was, however, worked out by a conscientious thinker of a different calibre—Mr. Herbert Spencer. He indeed may be described as the Aristotle of a new world-view. He attempted to co-ordinate and unify all human knowledge, and to present the world with a final philosophy based upon the data supplied by natural science. To this ambitious task he devoted a lifetime of patient work, broken by intervals of ill-health. In 1850 the System of Synthetic Philosophy was projected; its First Principles were published in 1862, but it was not until 1896 that the gigantic enterprise was complete.

Spencer was inspired neither by hostility to religion in general, nor to Christianity in particular. The motive of his work was a more honourable one. He felt, with many of his contemporaries, that the foundations of the old religion were no longer secure, and that the old sanctions of morality were already gravely compromised; and he wished to supply a new creed and a new discipline in the place of these. His principal objects were social and ethical. And in this important respect he may be associated with Comte. Both were sociologists and moralists before they were philosophers, which accounts for their overlooking and underestimating various important philosophic difficulties.

A few remarks about Spencer's system are here not out of place. He attempted to reduce experience to a unity by seeking evidence for the existence of a single and universal law. This unifying principle he found in a general law of evolution. He formulated this law in language which is perhaps less obscure than it seems, and which practically amounts to this, that there is a perpetual process going on which reduces disorder to order, undifferentiated sameness to specialised variety.[42]

The First Principles was published before the Origin of Species, and the confirmation which Darwin's work supplied to Spencer's theory must have recommended the latter to the minds of scientifically trained thinkers. Moreover, Spencer sanctioned a hopeful outlook; evolutionary optimism was an attractive and an idealistic, as well as a reasonable philosophy. It demanded the subordination of the individual to society, it urged the necessity of self-discipline and of industry, and pointed (if these conditions were fulfilled) to a brighter future, and to a new humanity. The generous idealism of the following passage is characteristic of Spencer's outlook, and of those who thought—and hoped—with him; it occurs at the end of his Principles of Ethics:

"The highest ambition of the beneficent will be to have a share—even though an utterly inappreciable and unknown share—in 'the making of Man.'... As time goes on, there will be more and more of those whose unselfish end will be the further evolution of Humanity. While contemplating from the heights of thought that far-off life of the race never to be enjoyed by them, but only by a remote posterity, they will feel a calm pleasure in the consciousness of having aided the advance towards it."

Spencer, then, evidently deserves the important place that he occupies in the history of thought. For though he was forced, for lack of those final scientific results which he vainly hoped might soon be forthcoming, to leave some vital gaps in his scheme,[43] he had made an imposing attempt to systematise and unify all human experience. And his attempt to base an idealistic morality upon sure grounds of natural science was valuable and important.

Spencer's Philosophy of Religion.—At the same time, Spencer could not remain satisfied with a mere description of natural phenomena, however complete and comprehensive such description might seem; he desired to offer, besides this, an explanation of these phenomena—how did they come to be, and how do they continue to exist? To provide this explanation, Spencer postulated the existence of an Unknown Power which is at once the origin and the sustaining ground of everything. This power he regarded as lying quite out of range not only of the human senses, but of the human intellect. It was not only unknown but unknowable. This celebrated doctrine of the Unknowable is not the least interesting or important part of Spencer's system, and it is perhaps more germane than any other speculation of his to our present subject, as this terra incognita was allotted by him to religion as its peculiar province. He hoped that the undisputed possession and occupation by religion of this territory might put an end to its perpetual conflict with science, and substitute for this a reasonable, if not cordial, understanding. Science might contentedly appropriate the sphere of the knowable, and leave to religion the undefined and perhaps infinite area of the unknowable; and he hoped this division of labour would be both fruitful and permanent.

The Victorian Agnostics.—Through this doctrine of the Unknowable, Herbert Spencer was the father of that form of belief or disbelief which was pertinently named Agnosticism by the most celebrated of its exponents—Huxley. This combination of Positivism in science with Agnosticism in religion and philosophy, became highly popular in a wide circle in England during the last third of the nineteenth century, especially among the scientifically educated. Leslie Stephen, with the pride of a disciple and the pardonable zeal of a propagandist, claimed for it the distinction of being "the religion of all sensible men."

This austere faith owed much to the qualities of those who preached it. Their wide culture, their power of literary expression,[44] their intellectual vigour, and above all their moral earnestness and social enthusiasm recommended what had otherwise seemed a barren and unpromising creed. The generous humanitarian sympathies of Comte supplied the idealistic elements without which no faith can become popular, and the apparent stability of its scientific basis seemed to those impatient of speculative doubt, a great rock in a desert of shifting sand. This new scientific Humanism had an immense vogue, and its effects upon national life were, on the whole, of a quite healthy character. Occasional lapses into intolerance, no doubt, occurred; but much may be excused in the self-confidence of a new faith, not yet tested by the experiences and the criticisms of years.

Theological Polemics.—The attacks of orthodox apologists upon this new orientation, though carried through with the best intentions, were too often conducted on mistaken lines and certainly on too narrow a front. A particular theory of scriptural inspiration (now widely abandoned), and of the miraculous, seemed to obsess the controversialists. Nor were the Agnostics (it must be confessed) any more alive to the real issues. Hence, to the modern student, an oppressive atmosphere of deadness and sterility seems to brood over these vigorous but superannuated polemics; and hence the complete oblivion into which this literature has fallen. The saying is profoundly true that "nothing so quickly waxes old as apologetics." Even the contributions to the subject by so accomplished a journalist as Huxley—his Essays on Science and Christian Tradition—can only be read by those whom an almost Teutonic industry characterises. Once so eagerly perused and earnestly pondered, the controversial literature of this interesting epoch (which now seems so remote) reposes on the higher shelves of libraries, accumulating the peaceful dust of oblivion. These projectiles have, in fact, done their work, and if they have proved less fatal than was hoped by those who launched them, they were dispatched with good intentions, and their explosion cleared the air.

The most effective method of attack would have been to suggest that what was good in the new system was as old as Christianity, and that the rest was disputable science and still more disputable philosophy. The latter half of this task was, as we shall subsequently find, creditably performed by an important school of critical thinkers. But its former half, i.e. the task of proving that what was valuable in the new Humanism, was Christian—might, one would suppose, have been more successfully performed by the official champions of orthodoxy. These might have left science to the scientists, to have left off advertising their own incompetence in that sphere by passages of arms such as took place between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley at the Oxford meeting of the British Association in 1860, which are never very desirable, and always discreditable to the discomfited party.[45]

Illogicality of Naturalistic Idealism.—In point of fact, "the religion of all sensible men" (in spite of its philosophic weakness) was equivalent to Christian stoicism; its social enthusiasm, its humanitarianism, its conscientious truthfulness, were the fruit of a stock grown on Christian soil. Its ethical presuppositions were entirely Christian, nor were they sanctioned (in spite of Herbert Spencer's elaborate apologetic) by the new biology. Nietzsche was a far more legitimate child of Darwinism than was Huxley. Indeed, towards the close of his life, some doubts invaded the mind of the latter, and he was constrained by an intellectual sincerity which does him and his school the highest credit, to utter a word of warning. We refer to his famous Romanes Lecture of 1894.

The thesis of this important utterance was that the field of human interests is a narrow heritage carved out from a hostile environment into which it is destined one day to relapse. It is a cultivated garden with the wilderness all around; created only at the cost of infinite sacrifice and perpetual toil, and preserved only with difficulty. The implacable jungle seeks everywhere to encroach on the borders of the clearing, whose ultimate engulfment can only be postponed, not prevented. Two quotations may suffice:

"Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it."

"The theory of evolution encourages no millennial expectations. If, for millions of years, our globe has taken the upward road, yet, sometime, the summit will be reached, and the downward route will be commenced. The most daring imagination will hardly venture upon the suggestion that the power and intelligence of man can ever arrest the procession of the great year."[46]

Pessimism.—Coming, as it did, at the end of a generation of dogmatic optimism, this pronouncement is symptomatic of a certain disillusionment which had already begun to mar the fair picture of Positivist prophecy. The human race seemed destined to an ambiguous future; the parabola of progress would one day reach its summit, and the fall begin. At last upon our planet the episode of Life would pass, and be neither forgotten nor remembered; the world would sink into the eternal silence, from which for one transitory and insignificant moment, it had awakened.[47]

Nietzsche.—As might have been expected, it was in Germany that the logical conclusions of a naturalistic outlook were drawn. Here, philosophic pessimism had already been introduced by Schopenhauer (1788-1860), and his disciple Nietzsche was not afraid to formulate a scheme of ethics based on the conception of "the survival of the fittest," and equivalent to an apotheosis of barbarism. The virtues of self-assertion, ruthlessness, and pride were to eradicate the vices of abnegation, pity, and humility. Christian morality was a disease; Christianity itself was the appropriate product of the degenerate epoch, and of the loathsome environment that gave it birth. This radical thinker, free from English "compromise," could be satisfied with no morality which was parasitic upon Christianity. He had clearness of vision to see whither the naturalistic road would carry its pious wayfarers. To him the moral idealism of Spencer was moonshine or stupidity—"the milk of pious sentiment."

Significance of Nietzsche.—Nietzsche has come in for a fair share of abuse, but it is only just to say that philosophy stands heavily endebted to this thinker. He was not afraid to draw logical conclusions, and to put questions which more conventional philosophers had preferred should remain in the background.

It is well for a moralist to arise, once in a generation, who will clear his own mind of cant and, without undue respect for the conventions, approach the really fundamental questions in a spirit of sincerity. The extravagant impieties of Nietzsche may have shocked his hearers, but they have cleared the air. He exposed, perhaps with too little finesse, the nakedness of Naturalism, and tore off that mantle of idealism under which it had been masquerading. And he may be said, by so doing, to have written finis at the foot of a chapter in the history of philosophy.

CHAPTER X

REACTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY

Vicissitudes of Idealism.—At the beginning of the last chapter we noticed the early collapse of idealism in Germany. But the prophets of Romanticism, when they were no longer honoured at home, found an hospitable reception elsewhere, and especially in England. Indeed, even before the prestige of idealism had begun to decline in Germany, Englishmen had been introduced to it by the writings and translations of S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) and Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). These two popularisers of German ideas were littérateurs rather than professional philosophers, but for that very reason their vogue and influence were the wider.

Coleridge.—Coleridge was in spirit a genuine Romanticist; being, as were some of the most notable of the German school—e.g., Goethe and Schiller—a poet as well as a philosopher. In his Biographia Literaria he has left behind the story of his intellectual and spiritual development. He acknowledges his debt to Kant, to the Romanticists, and in particular to Schelling, whose "intuitionism" was naturally congenial to him. Coleridge was never able to embody his philosophical creed in any single work; he does not seem to have possessed the necessary power of application. He was unfortunate in being a man of weak character, and his ineffectiveness struck his contemporaries. But in spite of these disadvantages—his sentimentality, the lack of clearness of his thought, his weakness for opium—he certainly exercised an important influence, especially in the realm of theology. His ideas, though vague, were calculated to awaken the speculative habit, and, introduced as they were, to a wide circle, were fruitful and stimulating. English theology had been, in the eighteenth century, of an arid kind, and the English philosophical tradition lacked, for the most part, appreciation of those deeper aspects of reality which had appealed to German thinkers. Coleridge, by introducing German speculation to his countrymen, was able "to free theology of some of its narrowness, and to deepen and enlarge the spiritual outlook of his age."[48]

Thomas Carlyle.—Carlyle was a man of a very different temper, whose attitude towards Coleridge was "half contemptuous, half compassionate." A typically Carlylean characterisation of him may be found in the Life of Sterling:

"He was thought to hold—he alone in England—the key of German and other Transcendentalisms.... A sublime man, who alone in those dark days escaped from black materialisms and revolutionary deluges with God, Freedom, Immortality, still his. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the rising spirits of the young generation he sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma...."

"The good man ... gave you the idea of a life that had been full of sufferings ... the deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as inspiration; confused pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; expressive of weakness under possibility of strength.... He spoke as if preaching—preaching earnestly and hopelessly the weightiest things."

Carlyle himself had all the character and industry that Coleridge lacked, and it was another side of German idealism that had appealed to him. The Scotchman was of the same fibre and stock as that other half-Scotchman, Kant. Here was the source from which he had drawn his inspiration. We see in Carlyle the same moral earnestness, the same "toughness" of thought, the same absence of "sentimental moonshine." From Kant, too, he derives a vigorous independence of thought, a religious respect for individuality, a horror of shams and affectation. Kant was a true child of the Reformation, and Carlyle is a genuine disciple.

In a single important respect, however, he differed from (and improved upon) his master. Kant lacked, or at least did not display, the saving grace of humour; in Carlyle this quality looks out from every page—keen, satirical, sometimes bitter, sometimes grotesque; he ridiculed his own generation, its vices, its prejudices, its superstitions.

Sartor Resartus.—For our purpose, Sartor Resartus—that profound and humorous book—is Carlyle's masterpiece: here all the characteristic Kantian doctrines may be found.

The "philosophy of clothes"—which is the quaint title behind which Kantian idealism is made to masquerade—starts from the thought that just as an acquaintance with his clothes will not reveal to us the man, so an acquaintance with phenomena (which is all that science can claim to give us) cannot reveal to us the real ground of existence, which remains an inscrutable mystery. We must "look on clothes till they become transparent," if we could understand reality.

"To the eye of vulgar Logic what is man? An omnivorous biped that wears breeches. To the eye of pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine Apparition."

And so with Nature; to science it is a mechanism, to the understanding heart it is "the living garment of God."

"It is written, the Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time-Vesture of the Eternal.... The whole External Universe and what it holds is but Clothing...."

The visible world is but a symbol of a profound and awful reality; and all Nature's products, in their degree, symbols as well: but of these, man is the highest. "The true Shekinah is Man: where else is the God's Presence manifested, not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?"

This leads up to the essential doctrine of the Kantian system: that man is a creature of two worlds, who has a foot in either; hence in the phenomenal world he can never find satisfaction.

"Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness; it is because there is an infinite in him, which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in jointstock company, to make one Shoeblack Happy? They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two, for the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach...."

"There is in man a Higher than Love of happiness: he can do without happiness and instead thereof find Blessedness! has it not been to preach forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs ... have spoken and suffered; bearing testimony to the God-like that is in man?"

Carlyle's Influence.—In spite of Carlyle's strange literary mannerisms and his grotesquely Germanic phrases, his writings had great attractiveness for those of his contemporaries who felt themselves smothered by the materialism and utilitarianism of early Victorian England. He was able to re-vitalise idealism amongst them. Moreover he appealed strongly to those to whom the Coleridgean speculations were uncongenial. The strongly developed moral element, both in his writings and in his own somewhat stern and austere personality—what Taine called his "puritanism"—appealed strongly to a certain side of English feeling. His countrymen felt that his was a native genius that they could understand. In fact we may say that the influence of Carlyle, especially among the young and generous minded, has been incalculable in extent and invaluable in quality. Spiritual life in England stands under a deep obligation to him.

Romanticism at Oxford.—Englishmen were thus not entire strangers to German idealism, which had possessed its interpreters in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. Not, however, until it had experienced a decline in Germany (a reaction which occupied our attention in the last chapter), did Romanticism become naturalised in England by being adopted in academic circles.

Among the most notable of English idealists was T. H. Green—fellow and tutor of Balliol College, Oxford. In this thinker we have a widely different type of mind from that of either Coleridge or Carlyle. He was a thinker rather than a poet or a prophet, and he belonged to what we have noticed as the intellectualist—i.e. Hegelian—wing of Romanticism.

Green's chief work was his Prolegomena to Ethics (published posthumously in 1883), where arguments, which were familiar to those acquainted with Hegel, presented themselves. Green begins with an analysis of experience, and leads to the conclusion that Nature—if by it we mean "the connected order of experience"—implies "something other than itself, as the condition of its being what it is." And "of that 'something' we are entitled to say, positively, that it is a self-distinguishing consciousness" (section 52).

If these conclusions be valid, the bottom falls out of Naturalism, for if nature "implies something other than itself," it does not stand alone; and that nature does stand alone is the beginning and end of all naturalist theory. And, furthermore, this "something other than itself," which Nature involves, is "a self-distinguishing consciousness"; i.e. something to which we can attribute personality.

Green and Spencer contrasted.—This theory has only to be compared with that of Herbert Spencer for a fundamental difference to declare itself. The two systems do indeed adopt as axiomatic the conception of the uniformity and unity of nature, which works in accordance with a single law. But Spencer saw in that law the expression of a blind force, an unknowable power, of which it would be no more and no less true to say that it was "spiritual" than that it was "material." But for Green the law was the expression of a spiritual principal analogous to our own intelligence—a manifestation (to use theological language) of God.

F. H. Bradley.—Undoubtedly the most notable of English Hegelians is F. H. Bradley, whose metaphysical essay, Appearance and Reality, was a work of genuine originality. The book is not of a type to make much appeal outside academic circles, though it is written in an easy and attractive style: its results may seem, to the unsophisticated reader, somewhat too ambiguous. "Ultimate Doubts" is the title of the last chapter, and "It costs us little to find that in the end Reality is inscrutable," is a remark not uncharacteristic of the author. Yet this really profound thinker and acute reasoner played an important part in helping to discredit that negative dogmatism which was so much in vogue during his own lifetime. He pointed out the limits beyond which natural science could not transgress without lapsing into "dogmatic superstition."

"Too often the science of mere Nature, forgetting its own limits and false to its true aims, attempts to speak about first principles. It becomes transcendent, and offers us a dogmatic and uncritical metaphysics" (p. 284).

Though the fault has not always been on the side of the scientists: "Metaphysics itself, by its interference with physical science, has induced that to act, as it thinks, in self-defence, and has led it, in so doing, to become metaphysical. And this interference of metaphysics I would admit and deplore, as the result and the parent of most injurious misunderstanding.... So long as natural science keeps merely to the sphere of phenomena and the laws of their occurrence, metaphysics has no right to a single word of criticism" (p. 285).

This critical handling of the problem of the relations of science and philosophy did much to draw attention to the confusion of thought lying at the base of much popular materialism. It began to be realised that the principles of physical science are only fruitful of good results in the sphere properly belonging to them; and that the uncritical use of these principles results in a hybrid philosophy, which is neither sound science nor rational metaphysics.

A. J. Balfour.—Before Bradley's essay was published, a somewhat similar line of criticism had been developed by Mr. A. J. Balfour in his Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879). Its title sounds unpromising, but the book voiced a demand for a rational philosophy of science which was practically non-existent at that time; and consequently, in the absence of any adequate examination of the principles of science, uncritical dogmatism flourished quite unchallenged. Balfour, elsewhere, indicates the objects with which he wrote the book—to elicit from the disciples of natural science a rationale of their method:

"A full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions on which all science finally rests, has, it seems to me, still to be made. After the critical examination which I desiderate has been thoroughly carried out, it may appear that at the very root of our scientific system of belief lie problems of which no satisfactory solution has yet been devised."[49] Thus Balfour drew attention to the fact that the common-sense philosophy of naturalism rested upon a tacit agreement to overlook certain important problems which are the indispensable preliminaries to any thinking which can be called critical, or lay claim to be regarded as philosophy in the strict sense. That some of these problems seem artificial, and the questions raised by them gratuitous, to the eye of "common sense" is an irrelevant consideration, for "nothing stands more in need of demonstration than the obvious."

Naturalism Checked.—Thus Bradley and Balfour between them, merely by adopting a critical attitude, created an embarrassing situation for naturalism. Between them these writers administered a serious check to that naively uncritical dogmatism which, backed by the prestige of natural science, had sought to impose itself on the world as a new orthodoxy less liberal, in some ways, than the old.

Nor did they stop short at negative criticism, but substituted (according to the idealistic tradition) a spiritual view of reality for the mechanistic materialism that had become so popular. Appearance and Reality is a book of which the trend might seem too obscure, but it ends with a note that is definite enough:

"Outside of spirit there is not, and there cannot be, any reality; and, the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably real," are Bradley's closing words.

As for Balfour, he leads his readers up to a point which he describes as "the threshold of Christian Theology." And having propounded the perplexities in which the "common sense" philosophy (on which naturalism depends) is involved, he says:

"I do not believe that any escape from them (the perplexities) is possible, unless we are prepared to bring to the study of the world the presupposition that it was the work of a rational Being, who made it intelligible, and at the same time made us, in however feeble a fashion, able to understand it."[50]

Revival of Idealism in Germany. Lotze.—We have perhaps dwelt at too great length upon the backwash of the idealistic wave in England, for idealism is not a native philosophy amongst us; possibly, because we are not metaphysically-minded in the same sense as are the purer Teutonic breed. And it is time to pass on to pay a brief tribute to the work of a German philosopher who accepted the mechanical theory in its totality, without sacrificing what we may call the spiritual values of existence.

Hermann Lotze (1817-1881) was inclined to feel that the weakness of Romanticism lay in a tendency to despise or overlook what Kant had called "the fertile bathos of experience." The Romanticists had too often neglected natural science, which, in the shape of naturalistic materialism, had its revenge by destroying them. Büchner was the Nemesis of an idealism which was at once vague and sentimental.

Lotze's "Microcosmos."—Lotze's attitude and method are conspicuous in his well-known work, which took him eight years to complete (1856-1864)—the Microcosmos. After guiding his readers "through the realms of natural phenomena and historical evolution," thus constructing a sufficiently stable basis out of facts—he leads them on to an ideal world composed of what he calls "values."

His position may thus be summarised: The world presents itself to the observer in three aspects—(1) The world of individual "things," which are bewildering and intricate; (2) the laws (i.e., "laws of nature") which the human intellect has discovered among them, thus finding regularity and order; (3) the "values" which the human soul applies to things, and which it is the human task to cultivate.

This world of ideals or values (3) is that for the sake of which the worlds of phenomena and law (1 and 2) exist. These (1 and 2) constitute respectively the material in which, and the forms through which, the world of "values" is to be realised.[51]

Thus phenomena and law are the raw material out of which "values" are created; and these "values" themselves constitute (in the eyes of Lotze) a higher reality. Thus the central doctrine of his system is that the truly Real is what has supreme worth: it is worth that creates reality. The paradoxicality of this may make it difficult to accept; but Lotze is only expressing in his own way the fundamental thesis of all forms of idealism, that "the ideal is the real"; that the world of phenomena is secondary to and dependent upon a "world of spirit," or an "ideal world."

Lotze himself in the introduction to the Microcosmos, expresses what is at once the foundation and the kernel of his system: he says it is his purpose to show "how absolutely universal is the extent, and at the same time how completely subordinate the significance, of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world." (E.T., p. xvi.)

Mechanism is universal, because it is the raw material, so to speak, out of which reality is to be made. That reality can be expressed in terms of mechanism is true, just as a poem can be described as a scrap of paper scratched upon with a pen; but this reduction of reality to its lowest terms, ends by emptying reality of content. Mechanism is a universal feature, but it is a subordinate feature, of reality. Nature requires, if we are to arrive at the truth about it, not only to be described and analysed, but also interpreted in the light of the idea of value or worth.

Lotze and Theology.—Lotze's theories exercised an important influence upon the development in Germany and elsewhere of a type of theology known as Ritschlianism. Albrecht Ritschl, a disciple of Lotze, attempted to dissociate religion from metaphysics, and to base it upon "judgments of value." Christian dogma, for instance, is an attempt to express, in philosophical terms, the unique value to humanity of the moral and religious consciousness of Christ. So far as a dogma is faithful to that central idea, and makes a genuine attempt to express it, so far—and so far only—is it true.

This type of theology, uniting itself with certain philosophical tendencies which will engage our attention later, became the basis of what was known as the Modernist movement in the Roman Catholic Church.

Conclusions.—Thus in the nineteenth century, in England (and indeed on the continent also) the idealistic attitude, though it sometimes might seem compromised, was never submerged; in spite of the materialistic outlook of an age only too preoccupied with scientific discovery and commercial expansion.

CHAPTER XI

SOME RECENT TENDENCIES IN PHILOSOPHY

The Philosophy of Science.—In the last chapter we heard A. J. Balfour complaining of the absence of "a full and systematic attempt, first to enumerate, and then to justify, the presuppositions on which all science finally rests." And Mr. F. H. Bradley also drew attention to the absence of any critical philosophy of science in England. The need was for scientific standpoints to be investigated de novo; and the process had, as a matter of fact, already been begun on the Continent.

Mach.—Ernst Mach, Professor of Physics at Prague, and subsequently Professor of Physics at Vienna (thus combining the roles of scientist and metaphysician—always a highly instructive and fruitful combination) had as early as 1863 laid it down as the task of science to give "an economic presentation of the facts." By which phrase he meant that science takes account only of the salient features of phenomena, selecting only those which seem strictly serviceable to its own purpose.

Science "Abstract" or "Selective."—Mathematical science (which is the "pure" science par excellence) deals not—as is generally supposed—with "things," but with certain selected aspects of things. For example, for purposes of arithmetic, every leaf on a tree is an "unit" (i.e. all are "identical"); but, in point of fact, there exist no two leaves that are alike, as Leibniz, long ago, pointed out. Again, for geometrical purposes two fields may be regarded as of like area; but no two fields are, or ever have been, so.

Thus mathematics—where scientific method is seen at its purest—proceeds by deliberately disregarding individuality; it regards the differences between individuals as non-essential, and irrelevant to its purpose.

Economy of Thought.—And mathematical science is justified in acting in this way. This method, highly abstract as it is—in fact, just because it is highly abstract—leads to invaluable results. It's justification is that it is economical of thought; disregarding all irrelevant considerations, it is able, by using a short-cut, to reach its goal. Did the mathematician have to take into consideration all the manifold and complex aspects of each concrete "thing" (whether it be leaf, or field, or lever, or what not) with which he deals, he would never be able to cut his way through the jungle. His method of abstraction carries him at once to his goal.

Mach on the "Mechanical View."—Mach's criticism of the mechanical view of nature proceeded upon similar lines. He termed that view "analogical," by which he meant that mechanical "laws of nature" serve us as formal patterns to which the processes of nature may (for convenience sake) be represented as conforming. A clear account, though not a complete account, of all physical processes may be given in terms of mechanical "law."

And in fact it remains a question, Mach observed, "whether the mechanical view of things, instead of being the profoundest, is not in point of fact, the shallowest of all."[52]

Science not Invalid but Incomplete.—This line of criticism of scientific method—i.e. that it deals with abstractions and analogies rather than with things, for the sake of economy and convenience of thought—does not deprive science of validity, but only invalidates that superficial dogmatism which had crept into so many investigations. A critical estimate of scientific methods makes it evident how much and how little we have the right to expect from them. They will enable us to give a simple description of phenomena as they are seen when reduced to their simplest terms of matter and motion; but of ultimate and final causes they will tell us nothing.

"The system of conceptions by which the exact sciences try to describe the phenomena of nature ... is symbolic, a kind of shorthand, unconsciously invented and perfected for the sake of convenience and for practical use ... the leading principle is that of Economy of Thought" (Merz, Vol. III, p. 579).

Boutroux.—This criticism of the mechanical method of dealing with reality was seconded by Boutroux's criticism of the principle of Natural Law. Émile Boutroux (1845-1918)—Professor at the Sorbonne—in two important treatises, examines with great minuteness this aspect of the scientific method. In the earlier of these works, The Contingency of the Laws of Nature (1879) he suggests that these laws only give, so to speak, the habits which things display. They constitute, as it were, "the bed in which the stream of occurrence flows, which the stream itself had hollowed out, although its course has come to be determined by this bed" (Höffding, Modern Philosophers, p. 101).

In his Natural Law in Science and Philosophy (1895), Boutroux lays it down that the laws of nature, as science describes them, may indeed represent, but are by no means identical with, the laws of nature as they really are. The laws of science are true, not absolutely but relatively, i.e. are not elements in, but symbols of, reality. The notion that everything is "determined" (i.e. the opposite of "contingent"), though absolutely indispensable to the mechanical theory, is nevertheless a way of looking at things rather than a faithful picture of reality—a way in which we see things rather than the way things exist in themselves.

As Boutroux himself puts it in his final chapter: "That which we call the 'laws of nature' is the sum total of the methods we have discovered for adapting things to the mind, and subjecting them to be moulded by the will."

Results.—Here we have Boutroux approaching very closely to the standpoint of Mach; indeed the theories of the two men are complementary to one another. For Mach, the mechanical view is a way of looking at things, distinctly useful for understanding and using them—an "economy of thought." For Boutroux, the determinist view is also a way of looking at things that is useful for the same purposes.

Thus the interpretation of reality in terms of mathematics and "unalterable law," is artificial; an abstract way of thinking which deals not with reality itself but with certain deliberately selected aspects of it.

Rise of a New Philosophy.—This examination of the principles of natural science was the beginning of what afterwards proved to be a revolution in thought. What had been more or less negative criticism in Mach and Boutroux, became the basis of a new philosophy in the hands of William James and Bergson. The names, and even the ideas, of these two original thinkers are familiar far outside strictly philosophical circles, and it will almost be possible to presume upon a certain acquaintance with them on the part of our readers.

William James.—James himself, like Mach, was led to philosophy by the road of scientific investigation. He was a psychologist, and it is as the author of his Principles of Psychology that his name will be remembered. This work is notable as containing the first complete application of the Darwinian theory to the evolution of mind. Mental action is there represented as a capacity developed by the organism to enable it to deal with its environment. As an exponent of James puts it:

"The mind, like an antenna, feels its way for the organism. It gropes about, advances and recoils, making many random efforts and many failures; always urged into taking the initiative and doomed to success or failure in some hour of trial."[53]

The corollary which attaches to propositions of this kind is that knowledge in all its varieties and developments arises from practical needs. And the mind (here is an echo of Mach) selects those aspects of reality which concern it, and out of that selected material makes up a new (mental) world of its own. Which world is far from being a "picture" of reality, but which is "symbolic" of it (here is another memory of Mach).[54]

This view obviously cuts the ground from under dogmatic materialism. The world which that philosophy regards as reality, is, to the critical eye, a collection of abstractions, a mental creation arising out of the practical needs of life.

Henri Bergson.—This line of criticism, that of the evolutionary psychologist, opened up by James, has been carried to extreme lengths by the French philosopher Bergson. "Dig to the very roots of nature and of mind" is his advice. He begins by asking, How, as a matter of history, has human intellect developed? He then, and then only, proceeds to put the question (which uncritical thinkers always put first), What can the intellect do for us?

His theory of the origin of intellect is the same as that of William James. Life (through the evolutionary process) has produced it. But the conclusion that he draws from this hypothesis is that the intellect, being itself a product of life, or a form of life, cannot understand the whole of life. This thesis is elaborated with a wealth of illustration and erudition, both scientific and philosophic, and with a literary grace and charm possible only for a Frenchman, in the famous work Évolution Créatrice (1907).

Bergson's Advance on Mach and James.—Those thinkers who had made a serious attempt at a philosophy of science, had demonstrated that the "mechanical view" of nature was a mental abstraction, and not a complete representation of reality. Such is the debt of philosophy to the researches of Mach, Boutroux, James, and others who worked along their lines.

But it remained for Bergson to demonstrate that the mechanical view was the inevitable product of the mental processes which we describe by the word "intellect."

The path which led Bergson to this goal will have to be briefly indicated by us.

Characteristics of the Intellect.—What is the "intellect," to which we look in vain for any complete explanation of existence? This is the preliminary question.

Our intellect is, as James had taught, a faculty developed by the evolutionary process in our species to enable it to deal with its material environment. And Bergson was the first to point out that as a consequence of its having been developed for this particular purpose (i.e., dealing with a material environment), intellect is "never quite at its ease, never entirely at home, except when it is working upon inert matter." If it has to deal with "living" matter, it "treats it as inert, without troubling about the life that animated it."

Such is the first characteristic of the intellect: it feels at home in dealing with dead matter, and living matter it prefers to treat "as inert."

Another characteristic of intellect is that, just as it treats the living as if it were non-living, so it prefers to treat the mobile as though it were motionless. Motion is a thing which the intellect simply cannot grasp; it has to treat it artificially, and represent a process which in reality is continuous and indivisible, as discontinuous and divisible—a succession of points, out of which no magic can conjure motion. Philosophy became aware of this as soon as it opened its eyes. Hence the paradox of Zeno, that Achilles will never overtake the tortoise, if the latter once gets a start. For if space and time are infinitely divisible (as intellect holds them to be), by the time Achilles has reached the tortoise's starting point, the tortoise has already got ahead of that starting point, and so on ad infinitum; the interval between them being endlessly diminished, but never disappearing.

Zeno's paradox arises because of an innate fault in the "intellectual" method of dealing with motion; a method which Bergson calls "cinematographical," because it regards a single movement as a succession of infinitely small motions. That method is hopeless; and if we expect to understand motion by its means,

"You will always experience the disappointment of the child, who tries, by clapping its hands together to crush the smoke. The movement slips through the interval, because every attempt to reconstitute change out of states implies the absurd proposition that movement is made up of immobilities."[55]

So that the intellect is best fitted to deal, not with living and moving, but with dead and motionless matter. Of the latter it can form a clear idea; but in dealing with the former, it finds itself at a loss; it has to abstract the life and the motion from what lives or moves, and what it cannot grasp, it must treat as non-existent.

Bergson's Anti-Intellectualism.—A penetrating remark of James' will help us, at this point, to understand the significance for philosophy of these new theories.

"In spite of sceptics and empiricists, in spite of Protagoras, Hume, and James Mill, rationalism has never been seriously questioned, for its sharpest critics have always had a tender place for it in their hearts, and have obeyed some of its mandates. They have not been consistent, they have played fast and loose with the enemy, and Bergson alone has been radical."[56]

Bergson's philosophy is, in fact, a reaction against intellectualism or rationalism; by which is meant the theory that pure reason is competent by its nature to give a complete and exhaustive account of reality.

But according to Bergson, intellect, which is a faculty developed to enable men to subdue and turn to advantage their material environment, and which is, as it were, "fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter," will not reveal the true meaning and nature of existence; it gives us "a translation of life in terms of inertia," and can do no more.

This criticism of the intellect (if it be sound), though it does not invalidate the work of that faculty in its own proper sphere, necessarily involves its discredit as a key to the unlocking of the final mysteries of life and of being. These things lie outside its province. "Whether it wants to treat of the life of the body, or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigour, the stiffness, and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use."[57]

Intellect and Instinct.—Since intellect, by its methods, has induced men to turn their backs on reality, and to look on abstractions instead, the only hope of reaching reality is through an entire change of method and direction. There is, according to Bergson, a non-intellectual variety of knowledge, which (from his point of view) it was a kind of original sin ever to depart from; an original sin which has vitiated all our philosophic thinking from the days of Plato.

This variety of knowledge is more original and fundamental than any which the processes of the intellect, vitiated as these are by certain inherent perversions, can give us. Intellect cannot correct itself; we must call in the aid of some other faculty if we would understand reality.

Bergson finds this faculty in what he calls "instinct." According to him, consciousness has developed in two divergent directions—instinct and intellect; and the difference between these is not one of intensity or degree, but of kind.[58]

They are two divergent developments of the same original consciousness, of which common origin they both retain traces, for they are not entirely dissimilar, nor is either of them ever found in a pure state.

Intellect is characteristic of man. Instinct is most highly developed among certain insects, notably the hymenopterae (i.e., bees and ants).[59]

Blindness of Intellect.—And the difficulty of the philosophical problem for man arises from the anomalies of his own constitution (as interpreted by Bergson in the light of his theory of instinct and intellect). As he puts it:

"There are things that Intelligence (or intellect) alone is able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them." (Creative Evolution, p. 159).

"If the consciousness which slumbers in instinct were to wake up ... if we knew how to question it, and if it knew how to reply, it would deliver to our keeping the most intimate secrets of life."

Thus Bergson regards it as impossible that intellect should ever supply us with the complete truth about reality; there are things, e.g. life itself—which altogether elude its grasp.

Intuition.—The situation, however, is not entirely hopeless. Man possesses some measure of instinct, which, when it has "become disinterested, self-conscious, and capable of reflecting upon its object," Bergson calls intuition. By means of this faculty, man is able, darkly perhaps but not ineffectually, to grope his way towards an understanding of reality.

Characteristics of the New Philosophy.—Just as the criticisms of Cusanus and others freed thought from an incubus which seemed likely to prevent its further development, so the movement initiated by Mach and culminating (for the present) in Bergson, has done much to discredit "a certain new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle."[60]

Mechanical determinism was characteristic of much nineteenth-century thought in Europe, not only amongst materialists, but also, in certain cases, amongst idealists as well. Against this aspect of contemporary philosophy, the work of James and Bergson has been a revolt. "Indeterminism," i.e. a belief in the reality of freedom and spontaneity, is an essential part of their system. Their indeterminism is indeed the necessary and logical accompaniment of their anti-intellectualism. For determinism is "a fabrication of the intellect," a device which makes reality more manageable, more amenable to logic, more easily systematised. Freedom, like life and motion, eludes the categories of the intellect.

The Mechanical View Assailed.—Such are the lines upon which the new criticism of the mechanical view (the most radical criticism it has had to meet since Kant) proceeds. That view, and the idea of predetermined human action which it involves, is an inevitable product of an intellect naturally incapable of understanding freedom and spontaneity. These, as they destroy its scheme of thought, it casts out as an illusion. "Incorrigibly presumptuous," it insists on interpreting freedom by means of those notions which suit inert matter alone, and therefore always perceives it as necessity. So that all life, far from being subjected to mechanical necessity, as had seemed the inevitable conclusion of naturalistic philosophy, was spontaneity (so to speak) materialised and embodied:

"All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity ... is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death."[61]

We have indeed travelled a long way from the austere abstractions of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The new evolutionism is very different from the old. It substitutes for "mechanism" another conception—that of "dynamism," according to which the process of evolution is something undetermined and impredictable—"creative," in fact. The world of organic life is embodied "creative activity," and what this "creative activity" is, we ourselves experience every time we act freely.

Pluralism.—The philosophy of Bergson is a reaction against the mechanical evolutionism (i.e. naturalism) of the nineteenth century. Closely allied with it is another movement of thought, known as pluralism. This, too, is a reaction, not so much against naturalism, as against certain forms of idealism.

Idealism, it will be remembered, seeks to interpret reality in terms of mind or spirit. And it does this in certain cases—notably in the case of F. H. Bradley—by regarding all phenomena as forms or aspects of the one absolute mind or spirit.

This has seemed to many thinkers a philosophy too abstract and too remote from the world of experience. Hence the question arose whether it might not be possible to interpret nature in terms of mind without being compelled to take refuge in the abstractions of "absolutism." And pluralism is an attempt to solve the problem.

Leibniz Revived.—Leibniz' system of "monads," the nature of which will hardly have been forgotten, has been the model to which philosophers have looked in constructing their new system. And the "Monadology" may be taken as the type to which all modern attempts to construct a "pluralistic" philosophy more or less conform.

The essence of "pluralism"—whether Leibnizian or other—lies in the proposition that there exists an indefinite variety of beings, some higher, some lower than ourselves. The pluralist agrees with the idealist in declaring that the essence of reality is spirit, but differs from him in declining to allow independent spirits to be absorbed by an "all-devouring Absolute."

Pluralism and Theism.—William James himself, in a work A Pluralistic Universe (1909) outlined a philosophy of spirit radically opposed to "Absolute Idealism," which he subjects to a good deal of criticism. Another important work, written from a similar point of view, is Professor James Ward's Pluralism and Theism (1911).[62]

With regard to modern pluralism, the notable features are two. In the first place, it is a philosophy of personality, which it regards as the most fundamental form of reality; and also, that it is theistic in a sense peculiar to itself. It believes in a God who may be termed the supreme monad, i.e. the head of a system of monads; but whose power may be said, in certain respects, to be limited. And indeed some such position seems to be the logical conclusion that follows from the premises with which pluralists start, and also (we may add) from the facts of experience.[63]

Pluralists unite in affirming that their God is (what they deny the idealistic Absolute to be) the God of the religious consciousness. James elaborates this thesis with his usual resourcefulness and skill. The controversy, however, is one into which it does not seem necessary for us to enter. Pluralism and idealism are or may be both definitely spiritual philosophies, and perhaps they appeal to different types of mind. We, at any rate, shall not undertake to judge between them. Both alike are preferable to dogmatic naturalism.

CHAPTER XII

SOME RECENT TENDENCIES IN SCIENCE

Scientific Method.—In the last chapter, attention was drawn to some important attempts to supply science with a sound philosophy of method, i.e. to give a critical account of those processes, logical and otherwise, which issue in what is called "scientific knowledge."

The general results of these attempts was to re-enforce the validity of sound scientific method within its own sphere. But, at the same time, it was felt likely to prove an unreliable guide elsewhere.

The New Physics.—Meanwhile, while the logic of science was being scrutinised by philosophers, scientific research was itself going steadily forward, and fresh discoveries of a highly important nature were coming to light. In the sphere of physical science, more especially, revolutions of Copernican proportions quietly took place.

The whole subject of physics is of a highly technical nature, quite unsuitable for discussion here, and, indeed, entirely beyond the range of the present writer.

To indicate the nature of the discoveries which were made, however, involves few technicalities: though the method by which these were demonstrated and established must remain obscure to all but mathematical specialists.

Collapse of the Atomic Theory.—Dalton's theory of atoms was described in a previous chapter. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance attached by materialists, ever since Lucretius, to the conception of indivisible and indestructible atoms. It was regarded as integral to materialism, and never was the prestige of this theory higher than during the nineteenth century, which "will go down in scientific history as the era of the atomic theory of matter."

Towards the close of the century, the theory collapsed. Atoms were found to be neither indivisible nor indestructible; and the process of the breaking up of the atom has actually been observed.

As is very generally known, it is in the case of a particular element, radium, that this phenomenon occurs. That substance, wherever it occurs, is undergoing a continual process of disintegration; radium atoms are continually breaking up into more elementary bodies.

Were it not for the fact that radium itself is the product of the disintegration of another element, it would be impossible to account for its survival. It continually evaporates (the life of radium is only 2500 years) but it is as continually renewed by the infinitely slower disintegration of uranium.

Electrons.—The particles into which the radium atom disintegrates are known as electrons. And according to the new theory of matter, not only radium atoms, but the atoms of all the other elements (hitherto regarded as irreducible) are composed of electrons, differently grouped. The radium atom is infinitely more unstable than the atoms of the other elements; but it is possible to conceive of the disintegration of these also. They are all alike composed of the same elementary particles—different compounds of the same primitive substance.

Matter a form of Electricity.—And the most remarkable part of the new theory is that these primitive particles of which material atoms are composed, are themselves the units which constitute what we call "electricity." Thus matter and electricity are now expressed in common terms—they are regarded as different manifestations of the same substance. And of the two conceptions—matter and electricity—it is the latter that is the more simple and fundamental. As a high authority puts it:

"Whereas through the greater part of the nineteenth century, 'matter' was the concept which was looked upon as fundamental in physical science, and of which there was a curious accidental property called electricity, it now appears that electricity must be more fundamental than matter, in the sense that our more elementary matter must now be conceived as a manifestation of extremely complex electrical phenomena."[64]

As to whether the electrons themselves, in their turn, are irreducible units, there may be room for doubt. According to Professor J. Larmor the electron is "a nucleus of intrinsic strain in the ether."[65] If this view be sound, matter may be regarded as a manifestation of the ether; "a persistent strain-form flitting through an universal sea of ether." As to the nature of the ether, that is a subject of speculation among physicists. It is variously described as an "elastic fluid," and as "a fairly close packed conglomerate of minute grains in continual oscillation."[66] It may indeed be said that modern physical theories have succeeded in reducing matter, which seems comparatively knowable, to a substance of which little is known and, therefore, of which much can be postulated; it can be called sub-natural, or super-natural, according to taste.