Philosophy
To philosophy it appeals. To philosophy it must go. We have seen that the protagonist of monism has no objection to being called a philosopher. We have heard how Huxley lapses at odd moments into idealism. Even Spencer, conceding the Unknowable, concedes much. He does not risk the flight into the rarer regions of philosophic evidence. But in allowing that there is a sphere of possible thought beyond the veil of material phenomena, he goes a long way towards recognising the incomprehensible God of the Church. The question, then, as to science and the bases of faith simply does not exist. It has become, on examination, a question as to the meaning of reality, a philosophical enquiry toto caelo differing in method from the careful observations of science.
But -- there are many different systems of philosophy: how shall we choose between them? There is no subject over which mankind has wrangled more than this: how are we to settle it, or even indicate any lines upon which it may be settled, in an hour's lecture?
Substance
I think if I keep to the spirit of these Westminster Lectures, and advance only positive and constructive statements, I shall best serve the purpose in view. There would be no end to a critical examination of contradictory theories. And in the clearness and evidence of that system, some points of which I shall attempt to place before you, is to be discerned the most ample refutation of the law of substance and kindred high-sounding theories. Perhaps the best point in this system to consider first is substance. There is a very serious confusion attaching to this term at present; and, as I remarked last year, because of that confusion, the idea of substance and the reality corresponding to it in nature are looked at askance. To a certain extent, substance means what matter does. All material things are substances; but it does not necessarily follow that all substances are material. However, for the present purpose we can confine our attention to material substances, since from an adequate examination and logical inference from them we shall reach a definition of substance and an understanding of its nature that will include, if necessary, incorporeal beings. The first things that we observe of any material substance are its phenomena. From an observation of the identity and diversity of phenomena we infer, and thus far we are at one with scientific inferences, that substances differ among themselves. But when we go on to enquire as to the cause of the difference, we leave exact science behind. If we investigate the conditions of any substantial change, we find, as I pointed out at some length in the lecture on The Immortality of the Soul, four causes present. Two of these actually constitute the substance in being: the one, an intrinsic, determinable principle; the other, the intrinsic, determining principle.
Intrinsic, Determining Principle
This, of course, is a philosophical doctrine, not a scientific one. Its evidence, however, is no less than that which supports scientific observation. The one is of the senses, the other of the intellect; but both are of equal value as trustworthy human faculties. Any one who takes the trouble to consider what is known as a substantial change, such as that observed in the electrolysis of water or the burning of coal in a grate, will readily see the truth of the doctrine that asserts a dual principle in material substances. It is the doctrine of Aristotle and the doctrine of Aquinas. Even Leibnitz{1} confessed that he was obliged to turn from the imagination of atoms to substantial forms, so decried to-day; and St Hilaire, after alluding to it, continues: "There is that famous theory of matter and form with which Aristotle was so often reproached, and which will doubtless be criticised more than once again. For myself, I find it simple and true, and it has not even the fault of being obscure; at most, I would say it was subtle, without, however, being in any way sophistic. Matter and form are the logical and 1 Opera, tom. ii., p. 50. real elements of being." 1 Now this is a doctrine of the highest and utmost importance. It is immediately and necessarily inferred from observation. It takes us at once from the phenomenal to the real without any effort, naturally, and, if I may say so, spontaneously: It is one of those great luminous truths obtaining here and now and always; and we can take our stand upon it as upon a broad and strong foundation, in any further investigations of the nature of reality that we have to make.
Of the two principles, that which we call form is obviously the most important. It is the determining and specifying factor in material substances. Without some form, matter could not exist.
Is this Monism?
But, it may be urged: -- " You are professedly trying to show how crude philosophies, such as materialism and monism, are false. You have undertaken to do this by advancing a true positive system. And under other terms and phrases, you have really only stated the position of the monist. Matter, he says, and force are the two sides of the one reality, substance. Your matter and form are his matter and force."
To this I may at once answer by an unqualified denial. The monist's matter, though inseparable from force, is the scholastic substance. His force is a quality belonging necessarily to it. On the other hand, the scholastic matter is non-existent without form and force is a quality deriving in it, or impressed upon it, from without. Let us be clear. The monist and the mechanical philosopher would have silver differ from gold in some such way as a heated bar of iron differs from a cold one. He would explain the difference by saying that the "force" in the similar atomic particles of each metal is differently employed. But since all the force that we know can be reduced to motion, his explanation does not take us very far. If it is motion in structural, atomic matter, why does that motion not pass from one element to another? I lay a sovereign upon a shilling, but the shilling does not therefore catch up the motion of gold atoms and become transformed into gold. There is no reason why it should not -- unless the silver is otherwise different from the gold than merely because of mechanical force.
Atoms from Ether
Or again, if we go back to the structureless ether, how did force evolve the atoms from it? It is no explanation to assert that it did. Either the force was then one side of etheric matter, or it was not. If it was not, where did it come from, and how was it able to create such striking differences -leaving out of consideration the transformation of structureless ether into structural atoms -- in the beings that we know? If it was, how comes it that the entire primordial ether did not all evolve on the same lines, all as one substance, to a dead-level sameness and unity? As a matter of fact, it has not done so. Evolved to, or created in, its present state -the question is really of no interest to theology, since either hypothesis is consistent with faith -- it now presents the most wonderful complexity of detail, the most astonishing and beautiful unity in its diversity.
Monism and Matter and Form
And it is more consistent surely with reason, to begin investigations with what actually does exist, than to commence with an utterly unfounded a priori theory of what ought to have been. Monism does this latter. It presents us with a pretty panorama, and bids us take no notice of the machinery that drives SCIENCE AND FAITH 41
it. It does not start with the actual as we have it now. The theory of hylomorphism does. Monism and mechanical philosophy cannot get behind the a priori principle to which they are pledged. The theory of matter and form takes us at a bound into the very heart of reality.
For this reason alone, monistic philosophy is disreputable. Far better the honest agnosticism of science: far better even a healthy doubt as to the limitations of our natural faculties, than a downright misuse of them. And, above all, far better the necessary inferences from natural, actual observations, than question-begging principles that are utterly devoid of foundation.
Unity in Nature
That there is a great unity of plan running throughout nature, no one need deny. That is an outcome of our appreciation of the world as a whole. The man of no scientific attainments can observe it, not in such detail, possibly, as the man of science, but none the less sufficiently for a reasonable understanding of it. When either instigates an inquiry as to its meaning, when either seeks to get behind the phenomenal diversity, he comes to unity. It is an important question. Whence that unity binding the various phenomena together and making a mental reconstruction of the world possible? The philosopher who is concerned with the causes of beings, points to series after series of related and co-ordinate secondary causes all culminating in a single first cause. In the order of the cosmos, as he re-constructs it in his thought from phenomena, he necessarily perceives an intellectual construction. Man does not make the design he sees in nature. Every inference he makes, transcendental it may be and must be from the very nature of the case, leads him inevitably to a unity in the world that makes the unity in his thought possible. In other words, every act of his intellect in seeking to penetrate the reality of things leads him to God. There is no getting away from the conclusion. To account for things, to make knowledge a possibility, a self-existent infinite intellectual unity is necessary.
God
"Stop," again some one may say, "you are doing again just what you complained of in the monists. You are trying to derive the infinite from the finite. Even Haeckel says that matter and space are eternal and infinite."
But notice: this misunderstanding must be cleared up if we are to have any results. I have endeavoured to disentangle to some extent the threads of science and philosophical speculation already. The monist would be both scientist and philosopher: and, in his attempt to be consistent, he manages to fog the issue considerably. The true philosopher, in his explanation of reality, reaches an infinite being -- true, but an intellectual one. Now, an intellectual being who is self-existent is immaterial. Infinity here is conceivable. The monist's infinite being is matter. That is not conceivable. Neither is infinite space nor time, for space and time are conditions dependent upon matter.
Imagine infinite Matter
Just imagine for a moment actually infinite matter, or matter infinitely extended in all directions. You cannot imagine it. But suppose infinite you could. Suppose the structureless original from which all things arise was infinite. And now suppose, by the action of whatever cause you please, a vortex-ring, the beginning of a nebula, or, as Anaxagoras said twenty-five hundred years before, a congregating of atoms. Part -- how can you talk of a part of the infinite? -- part of this infinite primeval original condenses. It shrinks. Infinite space is less than it was. But that is a contradiction. There cannot be more or less in infinity. The impossible imagination is also an absurd one. Not so the thought of an infinite immaterial being. The infinite is the boundless. Matter is bounded by its dimensions. There is no large or small, long or short, in the immaterial. There is infinity of existence, power, life, if you will, but not of size. Theology calls God omnipotent, eternal, though not in time, ubiquitous, by application of His power to things that He makes in space.
Neither materialism nor monism can satisfy or give true results here. That is obvious by a comparison of the principles of these systems with a true philosophy. Nor are they satisfactory, nor do they give true results, in other cases.
Human Soul
Take the human soul. We have been told again and again that we cannot make passage from chemistry to consciousness. Yet, to square it with the precious Law of Substance, such a passage must be made. And how is this done? By endowing every atom with consciousness. We know that there are many states, more physical than mental, that are caused directly by sensation. There are others, memory and imagination, for example, that, as far as we know, are closely connected with and depend on material conditions. There is one operation that is not and cannot by its very nature be so connected. That is the operation of the human intellect. It is an immaterial operation; its objects are immaterial concepts; it has even no picture-representation. It may be that we do not often think, in the true sense of the word. That is not to the point. It does not follow that, because we do not actually use it, we do not possess the faculty. As I showed last year, a straightforward and critical examination of the nature of purely intellectual operations, as they actually take place here and now, gives the lie direct to all materialistic theories. The fact that we are capable of forming a concept of "man" or "being" in the abstract is the radical proof of dualism, and, at the same time, of immortality.
Imagination or Fact?
And at this point the tables may be turned upon the opponents. It is well known how imagination is sometimes mistaken for reasoning. Now, it is of the essence of imagination that we should have a picture, or image, of that which we imagine. And it is the essence of thought that we should have no such picture. For instance, we cannot possibly imagine God or the soul. All our pictures are ultimately derived from sense-perceived images, and we can in no conceivable manner form pictures of the immaterial. But we can reason about it, and conclude with absolute certainty that it exists. On the other hand, we can and do form pictures as to . the phenomenal. Monism is a very complete imaginative representation. But we cannot think the phenomenal or the material. Consequently, we may well concede to the monist a very fine panorama of what might conceivably have taken place; but we are obliged to deny flatly that he has gone one step towards solving the real problems of reality. He leaves off just where he began; and after all his tedious explanation and supposition, he is still tangled up inextricably in the meshes of the phenomena that he set out to explain. He has not really thought at all. He has imagined. And further than this, he has not kept to the experimental evidence that is the justification of a correct imagination.
Fatal Consequences
But to return from this digression. I said that, after briefly sketching the nature and method of both faith and science, I should show the disastrous effects of those philosophical doctrines that are advanced against the foundations of the faith. Here again, it would be quite impossible to consider all, and I shall therefore concern myself with those same sweeping objections that we have already considered. We shall have the advantage of having them still fresh in our minds. Moreover, most of the other anti-faith doctrines can be reduced to these: so that in disposing of them, we shall in reality be including a great many more that time forbids our examining in detail.
Materialism and Monism
First, then, as to materialism and monism alike. We have seen that these philosophies, if they can with any propriety be designated as philosophies, fall short in their explanation of reality. They explain phenomena in terms of phenomena. In other words, they explain nothing at all. Moreover, they degrade the nature of reason to the level of sensation. No matter even if they admit, as we have seen some of their supporters do admit, the impossibility of getting consciousness out of chemistry, or thought from molecular motion, they must so include thought and consciousness in their system as to make the former function as a kind of glorified sense, differing, if anything, in degree and not in kind from touch, or sight, or hearing: and to relegate the latter to a quite inexplicable position in the totality of the cosmos. The consequences are suicidal: not, be it noticed, that these good people do not, as a matter of fact, use the ordinary processes of thought in framing their false theories; but in that they deny that thought is in reality the immaterial action of an immaterial faculty. Here is a dilemma. Either their thought deals in universal conceptions, frames general propositions, compares subject and predicate in an indivisible -- and therefore spiritual -- act, or it does not do so. If it does act thus, the materialistic or monistic hypothesis is false. If it does not so act, it is impossible to get at reality, and we must, perforce, remain content with phenomena. No theory or hypothesis whatever will have any value.
Agnosticism
This consideration disposes utterly of materialism and monism: but it brings us to agnosticism. It yet remains to be shown how agnosticism is logically disastrous. Now, agnosticism admits the testimony of the senses, and at the same time repudiates the intellectual inferences made from that testimony. That seems reasonable enough, perhaps. It looks like a distrust of speculation based upon the very well known fact that unbridled speculation is often contradictory and "leads painfully nowhither."
Scepticism intolerable
But, omitting the consideration that there are certain intellectual principles that we must admit although they do not come directly under sense - perception -- principles notably observed in mathematics, and certain undisputed principles of metaphysics -- the whole evidential value of sense-perception, which is admitted by agnostics, is absolutely dependent upon the truth of certain metaphysical principles. And consequently, if transcendental truth, or the aptitude and capacity of the mind's arriving at such truth, be denied, the whole evidential value of the senses goes by the board. This is utter scepticism, and intolerable. It needs no refutation. Solvitur ambulando.
"But," it is objected, "agnostics do not cast doubt upon all intellectual truth. They are prepared to admit a great deal of it. Only, they draw the line at such positive inferences as are made with regard to God or the human soul!" Very good. Let us face this objection. It is not a very difficult one to dispose of. By an absolutely necessary and unconquerable impulse of our nature we are obliged to recognise the existence of substances around us. I take a slip of blue litmus paper, and dip it in an acid solution. The red litmus paper which I draw out of the solution is absolutely the same piece of paper that I immersed in it. I immediately infer a change of quality in the litmus paper, as far as the absorption and reflection of light waves is concerned. I also necessarily infer the identity of the substance and its reality. A consideration of the phenomena necessitates it. From phenomena we reach reality.
Necessary Inferences
Just so from the phenomena of our intellect we infer its existence, reality, and immaterial nature. The phenomena necessitate the inference. In the same way, and with the same validity, from the observed phenomena of being, we infer God. As Professor Flint pertinently remarks: "Whoever refuses to see God should logically refuse to see matter behind phenomena." All these inferences are of equal importance; and, though here I know I may be inviting contradiction -- my assertion cannot, however, be disproved -- I should unhesitatingly assert that these three necessary inferences -- substance, soul, and God -- are of exactly the same value, neither greater nor less, as the intellectual evidence of the principle of contradiction, or the sensible evidence of phenomena, or the conciousness of our own existence. And I substantiate this assertion by the truth that these necessary inferences, and sense-perception, and self-consciousness, are all the results of natural activities in man. The inferences may be more difficult to perceive than the self-evident principle. No sane man would deny the principle of contradiction, yet sense-evidence may, to the unreflecting mind, be more cogent. We must trust all our healthy and normal faculties or none of them. Thus the alternatives to an impossible agnosticism are, on the one hand, the confession of a dualism involving God and the soul, or, on the other, an intolerable and absolute scepticism which will not work out in practice and is irrational in theory. Which of the three merits the appellation of true rationalism, which is truly reasonable, I leave my hearers to decide.
True Science coming back
These, then, are some of the logically disastrous effects of anti-religious theories.
They recoil upon themselves and lead to an utter bankruptcy of all knowledge. Indeed, there are signs that true men of science are coming back from their wanderings in this trackless and arid waste of denial and doubt.
Sir Oliver Lodge
Sir Oliver Lodge, in an article published in 1904,{2} acknowledged that "agnosticism is the pioneer work of a nobler science and a nobler interpretation of religion." I suppose he means natural, or inferential, religion, since most, if not all, of the scientific tilting against "the faith" has been, as anyone who has read Huxley, or Tyndal, or Haeckel, will recognise, against forms of faith unknown to the Catholic. But he goes on: "Men must learn to doubt before they learn the desire to know, and it is only the misery of agnosticism which will drive them into other fields of enquiry, fields which some of us think may lead men from faith to knowledge."
"Science," he has again,' "is accused of stealing Christ from religion; but science may yet give back to the Churches a more wonderful Christ than they have yet apprehended."
Sir Oliver Lodge is a philosopher as well as a scientist. In his "science" he embraces those transcendental inferences he so often employs. His reference to "the Churches" shows the conception of Christ against which science, and often rightly, tilts. Certainly it would be difficult to offer any substitute greater than the Christ of Catholics. But this is theology, and need not be pursued here.
Conclusion
I have come to the end of my topic: but there is one point you will allow me to touch upon as a sort of appendix. I shall put it in the form of a simple question and answer. Has the brilliant re-discovery of the atomic theory, or the molecular hypothesis, 1 Pall Mall Magazine, Jan. 1904, p. 101. or the perhaps still more brilliant theory of evolution, or the vortex-ring or nebular hypothesis, or even the sheer crudities of a "scientific monism," altered in any way our true knowledge of the nature, the essential nature, of reality?
Common Sense
I think no one who pretends to any adequate grasp of the meaning and scope of the problem will assert that any one of these theories has in any way advanced our insight into the nature of reality. Then, if this is true, we may rank Bacon and Newton{3} and Faraday, nay more, Cicero and Aristotle as well, with Dawson and Clerk-Maxwell,{4} Kelvin and Rayleigh,{5} as perceiving behind the science with which they were severally acquainted the true philosophical explanation of the nature of reality. And we may go even further than this. We may include in that rank every educated and thoughtful man, scientist or not, since both question and answer are beyond the pale of science, though not beyond the grasp of reason. As Lord Rayleigh well says:{6} "The higher mysteries of being, if penetrable at all by the human intellect, require other weapons than those of calculation and experiment."
Since such is the case, the issue may be taken to a very much broader plane than that circumscribed by the limitations of exact science. It may well be asked if all the great theologians, from St Paul to Aquinas, and on to this twentieth century, have been utterly at sea. We may well question if the great philosophers have been employing their keenlytrained reason wrongly. And to that little, and, I believe, now steadily decreasing, band of scientific explorers who have tried to import the instruments of their science into the territory of philosophy, we may practically oppose the whole world of action and of thought. Science has not, and never will have, the monopoly of knowledge. The real questions will ever lie beyond its grasp. The reproach of Job is as applicable to the Eliphazes and Baldads and Sophars of modern science as it was merited by his councillors. "Are you then men alone, and shall wisdom die with you?"
Realising the true nature of the problem in its proper light, we shall let our natural faculties have their proper play, and we shall trust them. And in the richness of the intellectual results they will bring us, we shall perceive a true, logical, and certain natural religion, upon which, once the absolute possibility of revelation is shown to be an historical fact, supernatural faith may build securely and certainly, safe from any attacks of reason: for reason, after all, is the truest and most trusted ally of the faith.
{1} Physique d 'Aristote, p. xxviii.
{2} Pall Mall Magazine, Jan. 1904, p. 97.
{3} Cf Principia Schol. Gen.
{4} Lecture Brit. Assoc Bradford, 1873.
{5} Brit. Assoc., Presidential Address, 1884.
{6} Ibid.