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Title: Evolution

Author: Frank B. Jevons

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Transcriber's Notes:


Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
   "     "  bold are surrounded by =equal signs=.
   "     "  bold Gothic Fonts are surrounded by +plus signs+.
   "     "  Greek using the Latin Alphabet are surrounded by
            {curly brackets}.

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the catalogue is not listed in the regular Table of Contents. The
Catalogue follows the final Chapter.

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THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY
      EDITED BY J. H. BURN, B.D.




EVOLUTION




  +------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                                                                  |
  |                   THE CHURCHMAN'S LIBRARY                        |
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  |                          EDITED BY                               |
  |                     JOHN HENRY BURN, B.D.                        |
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  |      Brechin.                                                    |
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  |      MACKAY, B.A.                                                |
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  |    A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT. By J. H.         |
  |      SHEPHERD, M.A.                                              |
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  |      Camb.                                                       |
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  |      D.Sc.                                                       |
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  |      Worcester.                                                  |
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  |      D.D., Bishop of Truro.                                      |
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  |      College, London.                                            |
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  |      of Lincoln's Inn.                                           |
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  |    ENGLISH ECCLESIOLOGY. By J. N. COMPER.                        |
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  |    CONFIRMATION. By H. T. KINGDON, D.D., Bishop of               |
  |      Fredericton.                                                |
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  |    INSPIRATION. By Canon BENHAM, D.D.                            |
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  |    MIRACLES. By THOMAS B. STRONG, B.D., Student of Christ        |
  |      Church, Oxford.                                             |
  |                                                                  |
  |    PROVIDENCE AND PRAYER. By V. H. STANTON, D.D., Ely            |
  |      Professor of Divinity, Cambridge.                           |
  |                                                                  |
  |    EVOLUTION. By FRANK B. JEVONS, M.A., D.Litt., Principal of    |
  |      Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham. Crown 8vo, _3s. 6d._        |
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  |                                                                  |
  |    COMPARATIVE RELIGION. By J. A. MACCULLOCK.                    |
  |                                                                  |
  |    ENGLISH ECCLESIASTICAL LAW. By W. DIGBY THURNAM.              |
  |                                                                  |
  +------------------------------------------------------------------+




EVOLUTION


BY
FRANK B. JEVONS, M.A., D.LITT.
PRINCIPAL OF BISHOP HATFIELD'S HALL, DURHAM


METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON
1900




PREFACE


The object of this volume is to raise the question: if we accept the
Theory of Evolution as true in science, how should it modify the thought
and action of a man who wishes to do his best in this world? The
question is necessary because we find that different and inconsistent
conclusions on the point have been reached by men speaking in the name
of science and speaking with authority. These differences are due not to
anything in science, but to certain extra-scientific assumptions. To
test the worth of such assumptions is the work of philosophy; and this
volume is accordingly an essay in philosophy. Science is but organised
common sense. Science and Religion both claim to deal with realities.
The realism of common sense, therefore, the form of philosophy to which
both seem to point, is that which is set forth here.




                                CONTENTS

                                                                PAGE

     I. OPTIMISM                                                   1

    II. ILLUSION                                                  14

   III. PESSIMISM                                                 24

    IV. IDEALISM                                                  38

     V. THE REAL                                                  60

    VI. EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION      72

   VII. NECESSITY                                                100

  VIII. INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE                                    138

    IX. CONSEQUENCES                                             152

     X. THE CHESS-BOARD                                          163

    XI. THE COMMON FAITH OF MANKIND                              184

   XII. PROGRESS                                                 203

  XIII. EVOLUTION AS PURPOSE                                     238

   XIV. CONCLUSION                                               273


  APPENDIX. ON BISHOP BERKELEY'S IDEALISM                        289

  INDEX                                                          297




EVOLUTION




I.

OPTIMISM


Innumerable writers at the end of the nineteenth century have reviewed
the changes which in the last fifty years have come over the civilised
world. The record indeed is admitted on all hands to be marvellous.
Steam, electricity, machinery, and all the practical inventions of
applied science have added enormously to the material wealth, comfort,
and luxury of mankind. Intellectually, the bounds of pure science have
been vastly enlarged; and the blessings of education have been extended
to the poorest members of the community. Philanthropic and religious
activity manifests itself in a thousand different organisations. We are
never tired of repeating, that changes which in the first half of the
century would have been pronounced impossible and incredible, at the end
of the century are accomplished facts.

But amongst all these changes one is almost universally overlooked, and
that the most characteristic, the most remarkable, and the most
important: the face of civilisation has come to be illumined by hope.
Great as is the progress of the last fifty years, we count it as nothing
compared with that which is in store for us. To the discoveries of
science it is felt that no bounds can be set; what a day may bring forth
in the way of the extension of man's control over the forces of Nature,
what secrets of Nature the chemist in his laboratory may light upon at
any moment, no man can surmise, but everyone is confident that things
will be discovered as marvellous to us now as the telegraph and
telephone to our predecessors of the pre-scientific age. In the
treatment of political and social questions the same deep-seated
conviction prevails that progress can and will be made: the conditions
and causes of poverty can be ascertained by patient study, and when
ascertained can be dealt with. The laws of physical health and
cleanliness have not refused to reveal themselves, nor are moral health
and cleanliness without their laws. In fine, if the best energy of the
age is everywhere devoted to the increase of knowledge, the advancement
of morality, and the diffusion of comfort, it is because everywhere
there is hope. In the social as in the individual organism hope raises
the tide of life, increases vitality, and stimulates the system. Hence
this general discharge throughout the nervous system of society,
manifesting itself in the vigour and energy with which all schemes for
improvement are taken up and carried out. That discoveries will be made
and progress effected is as certain as that gold is to be found in a
goldfield; the only practical question is, By whom? Who is to be the
lucky man?

To us who have witnessed the advance which has given rise to this
universal hope, the hope itself seems so reasonable and so justifiable
that we are apt to overlook the fact that it is without parallel in the
history of mankind. Never, of course, has any generation of men imagined
its own lot perfect; all have had their ideals, and all have believed
their ideals to be true. But whereas we place the realisation of our
ideals in the future, all previous generations have placed it in the
past: the Golden Age till now has always been regarded as the
starting-point of man's history, not its goal. All races have looked
back with pride upon a heroic past; all mythologies tell of the better
and brighter lot that was in the beginning man's; all poets sing of the
brave days of old; all fairy tales begin with "once upon a time." The
historians of Greece and Rome discovered no progress in the history of
their countries, but only degeneration from the patriotism and
simplicity of earlier times, or at best a series of changes making its
round like the circle of the year's seasons. The philosophers of Greece
are mainly occupied, when they deal with sociological questions, with
the causes of corruption and decay of constitutions; and, if they frame
ideal constitutions, they intend them to be final; they do not imagine
them to have any possibility of growth. In modern times the same
tendency has been equally manifest. Political revolutions have always
aimed, not at introducing a new, but at restoring an old state of
things: the actors in the French Revolution even dressed and posed as
ancient Greeks and Romans. In philosophy, civilisation, as being
artificial, has been regarded as a degeneration from a "natural" state
of man which was at once primitive and perfect.

In the individual, optimism may be dismissed as a mere mood, or as a
tendency to cheerfulness not based on any rational estimate either of
the future or of the past. But when a whole generation of men, when,
indeed, the whole civilised world, looks to the future, not with
careless levity, but with the calm assurance of confidence in the
progress that is and is to be, we cannot dismiss its optimism offhand.
Astonishing as it is, that the world as it grows older should grow more
hopeful, there are good reasons for the fact.

The child's estimates of distance, magnitude, and importance differ from
those of the adult. The estimates, however, persist in memory, and we
have all discovered, on revisiting familiar scenes of childhood, how
exaggerated our childish estimates were when compared with the actual
facts. It is this exaggeration of memory, this illusion of the mind's
eye, that psychologically is the foundation of the tendency to idealise
the past. To us as children the exploits of our elders were marvellous
in our eyes; and they remain as marvels in the memory, as marvels,
however, which, as all marvels do, belong to the past. The past becomes
the wonderland in which were performed the great deeds, not only of our
fathers' time, but of the old times before them. The past becomes the
poet's treasury, from which he produces things new and old--the
abiding-place of all things good and great and beautiful which are not,
but ought to be, and therefore once were.

To measure progress, as indeed to measure any movement and determine its
rate and direction, some fixed points are necessary. As long, therefore,
as there is no contemporaneous record of events, fixed in writing, there
is no possibility of checking the _laudator temporis acti_ and of
reducing the unconscious exaggerations of his memory to their due
proportions. But even if there were, in the lowest stages of culture the
rate of progress is too slow to be perceptible at the time. In the
beginning man is at the mercy of his environment: it is only when he has
learnt to modify it to his needs that progress begins to move. And by
the time that man has passed from savagery to barbarism, and has
emerged from barbarism to civilisation, the conviction that the present
and the actual are things of naught as compared with the ideal past, is
too intimately inwrought with his religion, his mythology, his
philosophy, and the accepted history of his race and its heroic origin
to allow him to see facts as they are, or to divine the true trend of
human affairs. Further, there is a very practical reason for his looking
with suspicion and not with confidence on social changes. It is only as
the result of a long course of slow evolution that society has attained
to a condition of fairly stable equilibrium. In the beginning society
may be compared to a man hanging on for bare life, with a precarious
foothold, to the face of a sheer cliff: when the least movement may
prove fatal, all movement is dreaded. Thus the characteristic of all
early societies is that they are impeded by "the cake of custom" and
rigid with the immobility of conservatism.

To those who hold that experience mechanically impresses itself upon the
mind and so automatically expresses itself as truth, it must appear
somewhat strange that mankind should have advanced for thousands of
years without knowing that they had progressed; and still more strange
that it was not as an induction from experience, but on _a priori_
grounds that they arrived at the conclusion. Yet so it was. The mere
contemplation of the rise and fall of empires no more suggested the
presence and persistence of a constant tendency to progress than the
mountainous wave which threatens to engulf the ship suggests that the
sea-level is a scientific truth. But when Darwin established his theory
that man was descended from the brute, all was clear: it became certain
_a priori_ that the long history and "pre-history" of man must have been
one of progress and advance. When the descent of man was established,
his ascent came to be studied, and human evolution was seen to be
synonymous with progress. Savages were seen to be the nearest existing
representatives of primitive man, and there was an end to the idea that
the primitive state was perfection. The comparative method, once applied
to the study of mankind, was able to set side by side examples of
savagery, barbarism, and civilisation, which illustrated every step in
the process of the evolution of society, and showed that, though the
forms of society may fluctuate as do the waves of the sea, society
itself is steady in its advance and progressive in its evolution. This
conclusion, which at first was a deduction drawn from the animal descent
of man, has now the independent support of an enormous amount of
evidence. The existence of a Stone Age, palæolithic and neolithic, of a
Bronze Age and an Iron Age, and the succession of those ages in the
order named, are established facts of science. That the culture of nomad
peoples is lower than that of pastoral tribes; that pastoral tribes
advance in culture when they become agricultural; that agriculture,
implying settled habits and fixed homes, leads to the foundation of
cities and the formation of civic life; that the city-states of the
ancient world give way to the nation-states of modern times: are all
accepted facts, bridging the apparent chasm between civilisation and
savagery, and demonstrating the action of the law of continuity in the
evolution of society.

But, it will be observed, all these facts and arguments taken together
only prove what has been--not what will be. They show that from a level
little higher than the brute man has attained to what he is; but is this
enough to guarantee his continuous rise? In other words, have we reached
the real source of that universal hope which, as we have said, is
characteristic of this stage of man's evolution? The bark of man's
destiny hitherto has been wafted by a favouring and a steady gale, and
it is natural enough for the unreflecting to take it for granted that
the wind will always set from the same happy quarter. But the question
will obtrude itself whether we are justified in the presumption.

If man shaped his own course, we might at least say that there was no
reason why he should not continue to steer in the same direction as
hitherto. But the most remarkable lesson that sociology has to teach us
is that the course which he has followed so continuously has not been
of his own steering. As we have already seen, man until this present
generation has uniformly kept his eyes fixed on the quarter from which,
not to which, he has imagined himself to be travelling, and, like a
reluctant emigrant, has lamented the increasing distance between him and
the happy shore from which he sailed. Or, to change the metaphor,
society is an organism. Like all organisms, it starts as a relatively
structureless mass; then, in accordance with the principle of the
division of labour, different functions come to be performed by
different parts; thus special organs are developed for the performance
of special functions; division of labour further implies co-operation of
the various organs and the development of the necessary means of
communication and connection. All this is necessary for that evolution
of society which we call progress; and of all these changes in the
structure of society but few were ever intentionally planned by man. Mr.
Herbert Spencer has familiarised this generation with the idea that the
foreseen consequences of any intended change are insignificant as
compared with the consequences unforeseen and unintended. Hence the
general rule that the structural developments on which the evolution of
society depends are but rarely the result of the coercive and conscious
changes effected by government: in practically all cases they are the
unintended consequences of the spontaneous actions of individuals
aiming at something else and unconsciously promoting the evolution of
society. So, too, the animal organism is made up of living units, each
of which unconsciously performs the part necessary to be played by it,
if the organism is to live; and each unit, unconsciously again, even
modifies the part it plays, in order to promote the changes which
constitute the evolution and the progress of the organism.

We must therefore dismiss the idea that the progress of mankind and the
evolution of society have been planned by man or are due to his design;
and we must recognise the presence in human affairs of some unseen,
impelling power which is continually guiding them to good issues and
shaping them to ends not even rough-hewn by men. This power, it is
evident, must be one not limited in its action to the social organism,
but manifesting itself in animal organisms also, since there also it
produces similar results. That power, we need hardly say, is to be
sought in "the struggle for existence": wherever organisms are in excess
of the means for supporting them, competition for food, for life, must
ensue; and in this case the battle is to the strong, the race to the
fleet. But of course strength is a relative term: what in some
circumstances is a source of strength, in others may be a cause of
weakness; and, generally, the very qualities which in some cases are of
the highest value may in others be useless to their possessor. It is
therefore the creature which possesses the particular kind of
superiority required by the circumstances in which it finds itself,
which is the creature that is likely to fare best, and is most likely to
survive in the struggle for existence. But, further, the circumstances
tend to produce the very superiority which they require: they ruthlessly
reject and condemn to destruction every organism which fails to satisfy
their requirements, thus leaving the field in possession of those
organisms which have the required superiority. The next generation,
therefore, is bred not from chance parents, but from parents which have
been selected, by natural causes and the force of circumstances, as
carefully as by the breeder who wishes to produce a prize animal. Every
successive generation thus must be superior to that which preceded it.
Advance is the very breath of every organism's being, the condition
without which existence is impossible. To the talents which it has,
every being must add other talents, or be cast out into the darkness of
non-existence; whereas to the good and faithful servant who exercises
all the powers entrusted to him even wider rule is given. Neither this
world nor the next is for the idle or for the stupid. The intelligence
must be alert to detect the slightest element of possible superiority,
and the will resolute to work it to the utmost of its worth. Man must be
wise in his generation; and the wise man makes friends even with the
mammon of unrighteousness, and that quickly.

If, then, it is by the perpetual and strenuous exercise of all its
powers that an organism achieves the degree of superiority which is its
contribution to the universal work of progress, it follows that "the
performance of every function is, in a sense, a moral obligation," and
that "the moral man is one whose functions are all discharged in degrees
duly adjusted to the conditions of existence." Here, as elsewhere, the
individual, to exist, must comply with the conditions of existence; and
progress consists in more perfect compliance with the conditions. There
is, however, a difference between the highly evolved organism, man, and
the less complex organisms; between animal and human evolution; between
biological and moral progress. In the case of the lower and simpler
organisms, the creature is prompted simply and safely by its emotions to
the performance of those functions on which its existence and the
evolution of its species depend. But the evolution of man has been so
rapid in its later stages, the social environment which he has himself
created is so different from the circumstances in which he originally
found himself, that his adjustment to his environment has become, so to
speak, much looser, and consequently it is now no longer the case that
actions in themselves pleasant are also necessarily beneficial in their
consequences to the individual and to society. Moral progress,
therefore, will manifest itself in the readjustment of man to his
altered conditions. The consequence of that adjustment, when complete,
will be that actions which are right--that is, are beneficial to the
individual and to society--will always be pleasurable, not only in their
consequences, but also immediately and in themselves. To this ideal,
when all men will delight always in the thing that is right, and when
all have attained to a height of morality now reached only by the few,
man is being slowly but surely urged by the force which is the motive
power of all evolution, the struggle for existence, regulated by the law
which directs all progress, that of the survival of the fittest.

Here, then, we have the reason of the hope that is characteristic of our
generation; here the foundation of the calm confidence with which we
count on the continuance of progress as a thing assured us. It is not
merely that progress has been made in the past, that the gale hitherto
has steadily blown us on a favourable course. We have learnt that it
must of necessity always blow from the same quarter. Man's course is not
dependent on man's fitful will: the wind and waves obey not him, but the
Power which directs all evolution, and "our strength in ages past" is
shown by science to be "our hope in years to come."




II.

ILLUSION


It seems, then, according to the optimistic view set forth in the
previous chapter, that Evolution is necessarily Progress, and progress
is movement in the line of our moral aspirations produced _ad
infinitum_. The changes that are and always have been taking place are
and always have been changes for the better; the forms of existence
which incessantly succeed one another necessarily develop from lower to
higher, from good to better. And this conclusion is not a matter of
religious faith, but of scientific necessity. The only forces and causes
that it presupposes are those which we see and feel at work every day
around us. For the reconstruction of the past history of the earth's
surface, geology only requires to assume the operation during infinite
past time of those agencies which at this moment may be seen to be
slowly changing the face of the earth. The cooling of the earth's
surface follows the same laws, and can be calculated with the same
certainty as the cooling of a red-hot poker. The law of gravitation,
which determines the movements of the heavenly bodies, is equally
exemplified in the fall of an apple to the ground. In fine, the universe
consists of bodies of matter in motion; the movements which occur within
the range of human observation are sufficient to enable us from them to
calculate the paths which they follow when they pass beyond our ken, and
the correctness of our calculations is demonstrated when they reappear
at the time and place predicted. The chemist recovers on one side of his
equation every atom which the other side requires him to account for.
The stars in their courses confirm the calculations of the astronomer.
Matter is in perpetual course of redistribution, and the same
everlasting laws which determine the forms into which it is incessantly
being redistributed necessarily determine that those forms shall
perpetually improve.

This optimistic view of evolution has met with general welcome, but on
very different grounds in different cases. Believers in Divine
Providence have eagerly greeted it as a startling and irresistible
demonstration that their belief in a Providence over-ruling all things
for good was true. No suspicion here was possible that the argument had
been sophisticated by those with whom the wish was father to the
thought. By science the testimony of science could hardly be impeached;
and here was science on independent reasonings of its own, starting from
purely materialistic ground, compelled by the force of its own
arguments to bear witness to the truth which religion had so long
proclaimed on the strength of faith alone. To this generation a sign had
indeed been given.

On the other hand, the optimistic interpretation of evolution was
welcomed with equal ardour by those for whom it removed the last
difficulty they had in believing that there was no God. Hitherto the
deeply rooted desire to believe that, in spite of all appearances to the
contrary, good must triumph ultimately, and right-doing never be
confounded, had seemed to necessitate belief in a righteous God. But now
the necessity for any such assumption was done away with: the perpetual
triumph of the good was a necessary aspect or expression of the
mechanical action of particles of matter upon one another, as much as
the law of gravitation itself, and based on exactly the same kind of
evidence. From this it followed that religious belief was but a passing
phase in the process of evolution, useful enough as long as the real
evidence for our faith in the good was unknown, but destined to dwindle
to a mere rudiment and survival as fast as men become capable of seeing
the truth of the matter, and of realising that religion is superfluous
because it can offer nothing that is not independently assured by
science. At the same time and in the same way the hope of future
blessedness is brought down from the unsubstantial clouds of an
imaginary heaven to the solid ground of a materialistic science, which
never travels beyond the evidence of the senses.

Since, then, minds, which differ otherwise so much, are agreed that the
optimistic interpretation of evolution is the true one, it seems not
unreasonable to ask each how far they are prepared to push their
optimism. We will ask the one side whether the reason why they believe
in the goodness of God really is that, as a matter of fact, they see
that good is incessantly triumphant around them, and triumphant as a
matter of absolute necessity. Surely whether we consider what we daily
see of life, or whether we consider the struggle with evil in our own
souls, it is a mockery to say that good invariably triumphs here and
now; and there must be illusion in the argument that would prove that it
does. Could an argument that is based on the assumption that matter and
motion are the only realities issue in anything but illusion when
extended to spiritual experience?

To the other side we may put the question somewhat differently. It is
agreed that all the many changes which are incessantly taking place in
the universe, and which, added together, constitute what is called the
cosmic process, are incessantly and inevitably working for good, and
themselves are always rising from good to better. But what of the Force,
or Power, or Cause, or Reality which underlies them and of which they
are the manifestation? May we infer that because they are good, it is
good? That if the fruits are good, the tree must be good also? To this
the reply will be that it is the manifestations which we know; they
alone are known to us; they alone can be known to us. That which
underlies them is not manifest; and that which is not manifested to us
obviously cannot be known to us: it is the Unknowable. Obviously,
therefore, it is impossible for us to say whether it is good or not. To
affirm and to deny that it is good would both equally be to profess
knowledge of the unknowable. Religion may profess--and, indeed, all
religions have professed--to possess this inconceivable and impossible
knowledge. But religion is not science.

On this view, then, there are limits to the optimism of evolution: to
apply the term "good" to that which manifests itself as the cosmic
process in evolution is mere illusion. But this raises a further
question: If it is unmeaning to call the Unknowable Reality good, what
precisely is the meaning and value of the term "good" when applied to
those forms in which the Unknowable manifests itself to us?

To begin with, it is clear that if everything has been evolved, then our
moral aspirations also are the products of evolution. It is they,
indeed, that distinguish man from the brute; but even of them the law of
continuity holds good: we can see not only how in man the virtues have
been developed by civilisation, but we can trace the germs of
conscience in that civilised animal the dog, as we can certainly see
maternal affection, devotion, and self-sacrifice in the fiercest of
undomesticated animals. In other words, the struggle for existence is
waged better in co-operation than by individual effort; co-operation
implies the subordination of individual impulse to the interests of the
species or society; and such subordination, taking different forms in
different stages of social development, is what we call virtue.

In the next place, the theory of evolution is built upon the ancient
truth that nothing abideth long in one stay. Matter and motion are in
perpetual course of redistribution, entering into countless
combinations, and assuming innumerable forms, which succeed each other
like the waves of the sea, and like them are no sooner formed than they
are gone. It follows, then, on this showing, that our moral aspirations
are as transitory as other products of evolution. Indeed, as we look
back over the pages of history we can see them always changing before
our eyes--what is approved by savages is disapproved later; the virtues
of the military stage of social development give way to those fostered,
by the industrial organisation of society. In a word, our moral
aspirations, being the outcome of evolution, have neither the permanence
of matter and motion which are everlasting and indestructible, nor the
reality which is the attribute of the Unknowable alone.

If any confirmation of this conclusion were required, it would be found
in the fact that only a living, conscious being can entertain moral
aspirations, or desire the good, or hunger and thirst after
righteousness. And life and consciousness are but transitory phases of
evolution. The earth's crust, the geologic record, testifies to the
former existence of fauna now extinct. The science of heat makes it
certain that the earth must cease to be habitable for any form of life;
and with the extinction of consciousness, good and the desire for good,
right and the striving after right, will be no more: matter and motion,
brute matter and blind forces, knowing nothing of good or evil, will
resume their ancient, desolate domain.

If, pursuing the same train of thought, we ask what meaning the
optimistic evolutionist puts upon the word "good," we shall see that,
according to him, the distinction between good and bad is one that
applies, and can only apply, to certain moments in the process of
evolution, but not to the process as a whole, just as we have already
seen that according to the optimistic evolutionist the distinction does
not apply to the Unknowable Reality of which the process of evolution is
a manifestation. The law of life is laid down to be the struggle for
existence, with the consequent survival of the fittest. In the
struggle, that is good which is struggled for, viz. existence; and that
conduct, in man or brute, is good which conduces to success in the
struggle and enables the organism to maintain its existence. This can
only be done by the adaptation of the organism to its environment, of
the constitution to the conditions. It follows, therefore, that "good"
is a purely relative term: it is only applicable with reference to
organisms, and even in their case only to success and whatever
contributes to success in the struggle for existence. But to the cosmos
before the struggle for life begins, and after life and its struggles
have relapsed into the insentience of unconscious matter, the term
cannot be applied. Matter and motion, which exist before and after
life's appearance, are everlasting and indestructible. Their existence
is assured, and implies no struggle. They are eternal, organic life
compared with them is momentary. The portion, then, of the cosmic
process which can be spoken of as good is infinitesimal compared with
the whole. Save for the brief moment during which organic life exists,
it is as illusory to speak of the cosmic process as good as it is to
apply the term to the Unknowable.

But if so much of our optimistic interpretation of evolution has proved
to be an illusion which consists in the simple fallacy of using the word
"good" in connections in which it has no meaning, can we hope to rescue
the very small fragment that remains? Perhaps we may argue, that since
that is good which conduces to human existence, the whole of the cosmic
process up to now, having paved the way and prepared the earth for man,
must be good. Thus at one stroke we seem to regain half at least of the
territory we have lost. But it is only seeming, once more illusion, for
the cosmic process which has prepared the earth for man's existence has
also prepared it for his destruction: his good, his existence, and his
destruction are equally indifferent to it. This conclusion is confirmed
by the reflection that to regard the cosmic process as giving any
consideration to man would be to ascribe purpose, consciousness, a
knowledge of good and evil, and a preference for good, to the Unknowable
of which the cosmic process is the continuous manifestation.

It is therefore mere illusion to imagine that evolution necessarily
tends to good: it is absolutely indifferent to it. And as we must judge
of the parts by the whole, we must conclude that human evolution follows
the same laws as evolution in general. The steps in human evolution,
like those in evolution at large, are not progress, are not changes
working to a good end, but merely changes. Evolution is not progress,
but mere change, as far as good and evil are concerned, a mere marking
of time, or at most a series of movements in which advance and retreat
cancel each other in the long-run.

At the same time, the evolution theory enables us to see plainly a cause
at work which would inevitably produce in human minds the illusion that
existence is good. Just as any species of animals which found a pleasure
in actions ultimately entailing the destruction of the species would be
condemned to extinction, so too only those varieties of the genus _homo_
could survive in whom the conviction of the goodness and desirability of
existence was strong enough to call forth the activities on which
existence was dependent.

The optimistic interpretation of evolution is based on the "struggle for
life" theory that "existence" sums up the good for which man struggles;
and we have sought to show that the optimism which is based on this
assumption must result in the conclusion that progress is an illusion.
Some readers, however, may hold that mere existence is not the only good
that man is capable of struggling for.




III.

PESSIMISM


"The prospect of attaining untroubled happiness, or of a state which
can, even remotely, deserve the title of perfection, appears to me to be
as misleading an illusion as ever was dangled before the eyes of poor
humanity. And there have been many of them."[1]

The theory which sees in evolution nothing but the redistribution of
matter and motion leads to an optimistic view of things which on
examination proves to be a misleading illusion. From illusion to
pessimism is but a step.

The facts on which the theory of organic evolution is based are two. The
first is that no two individuals of any species are born exactly alike;
and that of two different individuals one must be superior to the other,
_i.e._ better fitted to survive under the conditions then and there
prevailing. The next is that parents transmit their qualities to
offspring; and the superiority of superior parents is thus transmitted
and accumulated from generation to generation. Organic evolution,
therefore, consists in more and more perfect adaptation of the organism
to the environment. And this adaptation is effected by the physical
destruction of those creatures which are weakly and not adapted to cope
with the environment.

According to the theory that evolution is progress, the progress or
evolution of humanity obeys the same laws, is impelled by the same
forces, and follows the same line as the evolution of organisms in
general; and consists accordingly in increasing adaptation to the
environment. Imperfect adaptation manifests itself whenever a man's
impulses or desires move him to perform acts which are immediately or
eventually prejudicial to his own or to society's existence. Adaptation
will be perfect when all acts which are necessary for the existence of
the individual and of the society are pleasant in themselves--when not
only going to the dentist's will be a duty, but the extraction will be a
pleasure desired for its own sake.

Though Mr. Huxley maintained that it was a misleading illusion to lead
people to expect any such state of untroubled happiness, he was far from
denying that progress has been made in the past by man, or from
despairing of further progress in the future. But progress does not,
according to him, consist in adaptation to environment; it is not
effected by means of the struggle for existence; it neither obeys the
same laws, nor is impelled by the same forces, nor follows the same
lines as organic evolution in general. Nor does it consist in the
substitution of personal pleasure for a sense of duty as the motive of
action: on the contrary, it consists in a fuller and fuller recognition
of the claims of others.

The idea that evolution means progress, and by its very nature
necessarily results in perfection, owes much of its popularity to the
fallacious interpretation given to the phrase "survival of the fittest."
In any scientific use of the phrase, "fittest" simply means "fittest to
survive." But in popular usage it is supposed to mean "ideally or
ethically best." But the fittest to survive are not necessarily the
ideally best: they are, scientifically speaking, simply those best
adapted to the circumstances and conditions under which they live. And
the circumstances and conditions, the environment, may or may not be
favourable to the survival of the ethically or æsthetically best: they
may be favourable to the growth of weeds and to the destruction of
beautiful flowers, in which case the cosmic process will wipe out the
beautiful flowers, and the movement of evolution will be æsthetically
retrogressive, not progressive.

Adaptation to environment, therefore, is no indication or test of
progress, or of what is good or right or true or beautiful. Everything
that exists is shown, by the mere fact of its existence, to be adapted
to its environment. If, therefore, such adaptation is evidence that the
thing is ideally satisfactory, it will follow that whatever is, is
right. At the same time, our conception of right and good will be
emptied of all meaning: a "right" or "good" thing will simply mean a
thing which exists. The epithets will simply predicate existence, not a
quality; and consequently we shall have to call the successful villain
and the prosperous traitor good, and their methods right. They have
adapted themselves to their conditions, and have flourished in
consequence.

Adaptation to environment could only mean progress provided that the
environment was uniformly such as to favour the survival of those alone
who were ideally fit to survive. But it is not: instances are not
uncommon in which organisms, having attained to a certain degree of
complexity and heterogeneity of structure, subsequently, as a
consequence of adapting themselves to their environment, lose it and
revert to an earlier stage of development, relatively simple,
homogeneous, and structureless. Such reversion or regressive
metamorphosis is as much a part of the organism's evolution as its
previous progressive metamorphosis; and progress and regress both are
equally the result of adaptation to environment. Further, though
reversion and regress may now be only occasional, it is certain that as
the earth cools down they must become universal: the altered conditions
of temperature, etc., will allow only the lower forms of life to
survive, and will eventually extinguish even them.

As regards organic evolution in general, then, the struggle for
existence and the action of the environment do not necessarily tend to
result in progress. As regards the evolution of man in particular, Mr.
Huxley went further and maintained that they were absolutely inimical to
human progress, which has been effected, not because, but in spite of
them, and is the result not of obeying the cosmic process, but of
defying it.

The qualities which brought success in the struggle for existence to man
as an animal were rapacity, greed, selfishness, and an absolute and
cruel indifference to the wants and sufferings of others. On the
gratification, at all cost to others, of his animal desires, his animal
existence depended: it was the "ape and tiger" within him that made him
victor in the struggle for existence; it was the environment that
imposed this as the condition of success.

The qualities which make man a human being are tenderness, pity, mercy,
compassion, self-sacrifice, and love. It is in their growth--the
"ethical process"--that human progress consists, and not in the
ruthlessness by which the cosmic process effects the evolution of other
organisms. These qualities--human and humane--do not make for success
in the struggle for existence. They are not adapted to the environment
provided by Nature. Their owners were not the fittest to survive, and
consequently paid the penalty--physical destruction--as far as the
cosmic process could exact it. If the struggle for existence and the
action of the environment have not succeeded in keeping man down to the
level of the brute, it is because man has deliberately set himself to
oppose the cosmic process and the blind forces, knowing nothing of right
and wrong, pity or love, by which it effects the evolution of the brute.
The struggle for existence is fatal to the development of the qualities
which are peculiarly characteristic of humanity, and man accordingly has
suspended the struggle for existence. In place of warring with his
fellow-man, he has begun to co-operate with him. He has learnt to some
extent to postpone the gratification of his own wants to the
satisfaction of those of others. He no longer destroys the weakly, the
sick, the helpless, the useless, or even the criminal; and, if the
environment threaten their destruction, he sets to work to alter the
environment. Man no longer seeks to conquer Nature by obeying her: he
studies her forces in order to command them to his will. Adaptation to
environment is the implement by which she shapes human evolution to ends
that are not his ends; he wrests the weapon from her hands, and by
adaptation of the environment undoes her work, fosters the growth of
those qualities which tend towards his ideal, and does away with the
conditions which harbour ignorance and error, selfishness and sin.

Human progress, then, consists in perpetual approximation to the ideals
of charity, love, and self-sacrifice. Life is exhibited as a struggle
against evil, against the ape and tiger within us which we inherit from
our ancestor--the brute. The evil is real, the struggle is hard but
worthy, and not the less worthy because it is not directed to our
personal happiness and gratification. "The practice of self-restraint
and renunciation is not happiness, though it may be something much
better."[2]

Thus far this criticism of life, though stern, is not pessimistic. On
the contrary, in it man seems to have recovered the freedom of action
and the power of independent judgment which, as the mere product of the
cosmic process, he could not enjoy according to the optimistic theory.
If life is a struggle, at any rate man can fight the good fight, if he
will; and he can judge for himself which is the higher, the adaptation
to environment which puts man on a level with the ape and tiger, or the
adaptation of environment which, for the sake of his ideals, sets him in
conflict with the cosmic process.

It is when we proceed to conjecture the issue of the struggle, as thus
stated, that pessimism begins to invade us. However valiantly man may
fight, whatever temporary victories he may gain here or there, his
defeat in the end is inevitable: the same cosmic forces which, working
through him, have won him his trifling victories have preordained his
ultimate destruction. As far as it is possible for science to forecast
the future, it is certain that in the end man will fall a victim to his
environment, and join the other extinct fauna of the earth. With him the
ethical process ceases; with him perish the hopes, the aspirations, and
the ideals for which he strove as being of greater worth than aught that
evolution, the redistribution of matter and motion, could offer or
produce.

If this were all, the picture would be sufficiently gloomy: man alone in
the universe, surrounded by forces which act without regard to good or
evil, without sympathy or heed for right or wrong, indeed, with the
effect of impartially extinguishing both in the end. But it is not all.
As the conditions grow more and more unfavourable to man's existence
upon earth, as the margin of the means of subsistence contracts, and the
presence of universal want increases, the ape and tiger in man will
begin to assert themselves once more. In the face of starvation, the
instinct of self-preservation will become imperious. Once more, as in
the earliest days, man will live by rapacity, cruelty, and selfishness
alone. Before man yields possession of the earth to the brutes, he will
himself revert to brutishness. The puny barriers behind which man has
for a moment sheltered himself from the action of the cosmic process,
and nursed the feeble flame of those aspirations after higher things
which distinguish him from the brute, must inevitably be swept away by
the restless and relentless tide of insentient matter, perpetually
redistributed by aimless motion, which constitutes the cosmic process.

The pity of it is that the process of evolution should require not
merely man's physical destruction, but his moral destruction also; that
the ruin of his body should be preceded by the ruin of his soul; that in
his regressive metamorphosis he should be compelled, by the struggle for
existence and the instinct of self-preservation, to play the traitor to
one after another of his ideals of tenderness, of pity, and of love. The
fittest to survive will be those who are most completely adapted to the
altered environment, who are resolved to succeed in a struggle for
existence in which success can be obtained by brutishness alone. The
least fitted to the new conditions, and the first to perish therefore,
will be those with whom self does not come first. With their destruction
the competition between their less scrupulous survivors will become
fiercer and still more cruel. And this process will be repeated again
and again, each generation transmitting cunning and cruelty intensified
to the next. Our great cities already breed men degraded below the level
of the lowest savages known to us, but even they can give us but little
idea of what the struggle for existence will yet produce from the ruins
of civilisation in the course of the Evolution of Inhumanity.

While proclaiming that "the ethical process is in opposition to the
principle of the cosmic process, and tends to the suppression of the
qualities best fitted for success in that struggle," and that at the
best the ethical process can maintain itself only for a relatively short
time, "until the evolution of our globe shall have entered so far upon
its downward course that the cosmic process resumes its sway; and, once
more, the State of Nature prevails over the surface of our planet," Mr.
Huxley held that our duty lay "not in imitating the cosmic process,
still less in running away from it, but in combating it."[3] "Cosmic
nature is no school of virtue, but the headquarters of the enemy of
ethical nature," and though we know that the enemy's triumph must be
complete, that the defeat of the good cause is preordained, that we and
ours must be annihilated, we must remain at our posts, fighting to the
end without hope.

It seems, then, that man possesses two kinds of knowledge: he knows to
some extent what is, and to some extent he knows what ought to be. And
both kinds of knowledge are equally valid. He judges that a thing is,
and he judges also that a thing ought to be. Both judgments are equally
true, but apparently both are not equally final, for if man judges that
what is, ought not to be, he is impelled to alter what is, so that in
the end the thing that ought to be is also the thing that is. The
judgment of what ought to be, the ideal, is thus proved, or rather made,
to be the finally correct one. On the other hand, if man is defeated in
his attempts to adjust the things that are to his judgment of what they
ought to be, he does not acquiesce in his defeat; he refuses to accept
the result as final; the end of the matter is not there; things are not
what he strove to make them, but they ought to be. What is has nothing
to do with what ought to be. But what ought to be may make a good deal
of difference to what is.

The ethical process, in its conflict with the cosmic process, may not in
the end prove victorious; but that makes no difference to the fact that
it ought to be victorious. It is this deep-seated conviction which made
Mr. Huxley say that we must declare war to the last against cosmic
nature, the headquarters of the enemy of ethical nature. The victory of
the enemy may be certain, but it will none the less be wrong; it may be
permanent, but as long as it lasts it will be wrong. If matter and
motion are eternal and indestructible, morality is equally everlasting
and immutable. Unless this is so, unless the triumph of the cosmic
process is wrong, once and always, why are we called upon to endure
sorrow and pain and suffering rather than submit to it? Our judgment
that it is wrong is as independent of time as is our judgment that
particles of matter gravitate towards one another. We have no reason for
believing that the latter will continue to be true for a longer time
than the former. Indeed, if matter and motion, having achieved their
victory over the ethical process, were then and there to be annihilated,
their victory would continue to be wrong, though they had ceased to be.
Right may triumph or wrong may triumph, but right is right and wrong is
wrong for evermore. It is vain to tell us in the same breath that we
must stake our all upon our moral judgments and that our moral judgments
are not to be relied on. Every impeachment of their validity is an
invitation to us to give up the struggle against the enemy of ethical
nature. And if we are really resolved to fight the good fight and quit
ourselves like men, we thereby affirm that our moral judgments are at
least as valid as our judgments on matters of fact, and that, if our
knowledge of what is is true objectively, our knowledge of what ought to
be has in it at least an equal element of objective truth.

If, then, the cosmic process is real and objective, in so far as it is a
perpetual manifestation of the Unknown Reality which underlies all
things, then the ethical process, having the same reality and
objectivity, is also a manifestation of the Unknowable. The perpetual
redistribution of matter and motion is not the only way in which the
Unknowable manifests itself to men: it also gives a shape to itself in
the form of the highest and purest aspirations of which man is conscious
within himself. It might seem, therefore, at first sight as though a
mere dispassionate consideration of the actual facts of life, quite
apart from any religious presuppositions or presumptions, forced us at
last into the presence of a God, the source and author of all goodness.
But, in the first place, those who hold to the dogma of Agnosticism,
that what underlies things as they are known to us is the Unknowable,
cannot admit that we know or can find out whether the Unknowable is good
or bad. Induction, the logical method to which science owes so many of
its discoveries, and by which we proceed from the known to the unknown,
does not avail us here. No logical method could discover what is not
merely unknown, but absolutely unknowable.

In the next place it is reasonable enough that those who begin by
believing in a Divine Providence should also believe that right will
triumph in the end, if not in the world as it is manifested to us now
and here, in space and time, then in that real world, that kingdom of
heaven, of which this world is but an imperfect manifestation, or to
which it is but a distant and slowly moving approximation. For those,
however, who refuse to assume the reality of a Divine Providence the
case is different. They base themselves on facts of experience: they
observe that to some small extent what ought to be tends to substitute
itself for what is, thanks to the action of man exclusively, and not to
any inherent tendency to good in cosmic nature, but rather in spite of
the resistance to good caused by the necessary action of the mechanical
laws of nature. From their observation of the conditions under which man
has succeeded in modifying what is into what ought to be, they forecast
the extent to which that process may be carried in the future; and their
conclusion is that the process is doomed to eventual failure, is doomed
not merely to cease, but to give way to a process in the opposite
direction, by which what ought to be will be displaced by what ought
not, by which ethical nature will succumb to cosmic nature.

Now, if there be no God, or if being Unknowable He must be eliminated
from our words, thoughts, and deeds as a negligible and useless quantity
for rational purposes, it is a natural enough conclusion that right must
eventually succumb to wrong. It is but a reassertion of the familiar
thesis that without religion morality cannot permanently be maintained.
On this occasion, however, the thesis is advanced not as a piece of
religious prejudice or theological insolence, but as the teaching of
science and the inevitable outcome of evolution.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 44.

[2] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 44.

[3] _Evolution and Ethics_, pp. 31, 45, 83.




IV.

IDEALISM


The bitterness of Pessimism, or rather of the pessimistic interpretation
of evolution sketched in our last chapter, lies in the discovery that
what we value most, what we, in our best moments, prize most highly,
what we hold dearest to us, is a matter of indifference to the cosmos.
That there should be any power greater than that of Right, that all
goodness should in the end for ever be confounded, is incredible in the
same way that the greatest losses in life are incredible in the first
moment of shock in spite of the undeniable facts that show them to be
real. But whereas those losses are but personal, and possibly our
regrets selfish, this loss is more than personal, and the regret not
merely selfish. It is not merely that we personally have held a mistaken
opinion, or that any self-sacrifice--miserably small and unworthy in the
retrospect--that we have made has been made for a losing cause. It is
that apart from our personal share in the matter, which rated at its
true value is as naught, the thing is wrong; it ought not to be. Of that
we are just as certain as that our past life has not been what it ought
to have been, what it might have been. The past is past beyond recall,
but for the future hitherto there has been hope and faith, faith that
what ought to be may be, even for us, hope that it will be so. But now,
in place of hope and faith, we have the scientific certainty that the
future of humanity is devoted to the triumph of the thing that ought not
to be. The only consolation left to us is the inextinguishable, the
unconquerable conviction that right is right even though it should not
prevail. To this conviction we must hold, though the heavens should
fall. To it we must hold, though it bring, as bring it must, according
to Mr. Huxley, sorrow and pain and the renunciation of our own
happiness.

These are hard sayings. But there is a yet harder to be added to them.
Even though it should involve the renunciation of our intellectual
superiority to other people, we must hold to our conviction. If we are
in earnest about our moral convictions, we shall reject any suggestion
that they are not after all really true, even if that suggestion seems
to afford the only way of escaping from the conclusion that faith in
religion has the same basis in reason as faith in science.

In proclaiming our conviction that right is right, we affirm and intend
to affirm that it is so not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of
fact. In the same way, an established scientific truth is not one of
those matters about which reasonable persons, who are competent to
judge, may reasonably hold different opinions: it is not a matter of
opinion, but a matter of fact. Indeed, both kinds of truth, moral truths
and scientific truths, are quite independent of individual and personal
opinion. There are people in whose opinion the earth is flat; but the
earth is not flat, nor can their opinion alter the fact. There was a
time when all the laws of nature were unknown to man or misconceived by
him; but they operated as usual, quite unaffected by his ideas. So there
are people who consider successful roguery ideal, and who would make a
fortune by promoting fraudulent companies, if they could; but honesty
remains a duty, in spite of their ideas. Right is right, even though
there be brutes in human form; and right was right, even when the ape
and tiger ruled in man, and even though they were fine fellows, in their
own opinion. Cruelty and selfishness never were right at any time, and
never will be. The laws of morality, like the laws of science, are
objectively true: they do not vary with the opinions men entertain about
them; the earth, for instance, did not move or cease to move round the
sun according as men imagined Galileo to be right or wrong, nor has
right ceased to be right even when the world has been most depraved.

A moral judgment, then, like a scientific judgment, is objective, not
subjective; it is not the expression of a mere opinion, but the
statement of a fact which has an existence independent of man. If now we
ask what sort of an existence it has, it is clear that what is and what
ought to be have not in all cases the same kind of existence: the thing
which is may sometimes also be the thing that ought to be, but often it
is not. Now, when the latter is the case, when a thing is felt to be a
crying evil, a foul injustice that calls for remedy, in what sense does
the justice exist on which we call to drive out the injustice? The thing
which ought not to be exists, and is in possession. The thing which
ought to be delays its coming. Shall we say, then, that, while that is
so, it exists indeed, but exists as an ideal, as something which we know
ought to be and are resolved shall be? That it must present itself to
some mind or other as an object of desire, and as a possibility capable
of fulfilment, is certain. That it does so present itself to man is what
we mean when we attribute to him the power of moral judgment and moral
action. But when we speak of man's moral judgments as being objectively
true, we imply that they exist not merely in his mind, but also
elsewhere. But ideals can only exist in a mind; judgments can be
pronounced only by a judge. When, therefore, we affirm that in
objectivity and validity our moral judgments are on a par with our
scientific judgments, and that our knowledge of what ought to be is as
real and true as our knowledge of what is, that the existence of ethical
nature, with its demands upon our reason, is a fact as indisputable as
the existence of cosmic nature, we are implicitly affirming also the
existence of a mind, other than human, from whose moral judgments the
laws of morality derive their validity; and as those laws are eternal
and immutable, as right is right always and from eternity to eternity,
so must be the mind in which they are and from which they proceed.

To say that the ideal is real sounds paradoxical. It seems like saying
that to have the idea of a shilling is the same thing as possessing a
shilling. That is a patent absurdity, but no one will maintain that it
is an absurdity to say that we ought to try to be better than we are. On
the contrary, everyone will admit that it is a truth, and a truth of the
highest importance, of greater value and greater significance for our
highest interests than, say, the law of gravitation, or any statement as
to the ways in which matter and motion are redistributed. When the
desire to amend our life is strong upon us, when we are most conscious
of the heavy difference between actual amendment and amendment in idea
alone, then we are most certain of the reality of the moral ideal as a
fact, both of immediate consciousness at the moment and of permanent
significance for us and for all men. To say that our moral convictions
correspond to no real facts is simply to deny to them any validity at
all. To say that the facts to which they correspond are real, but are
purely subjective, being but moods, and often passing moods, of the
individual, is merely to say that our moral convictions are illusions
and right-doing only fancy. Nor do we mend matters if we add that all
men are more or less subject to these moods, that right and wrong are
purely human institutions; for if their value in the individual is
naught, their existence in the multitude does but add to ciphers
ciphers. On the other hand, if the moral ideal is no figment of man's
imagination, if its existence does not come and go with his fitful moral
struggles, then its permanent abode, the centre from which it manifests
itself, must be in some permanent intelligence at the centre of things.

The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution suggests another way of
reaching the same conclusion. That form of Pessimism represents cosmic
nature as indifferent, if not hostile, to ethical nature; the former by
its law of the struggle for existence favours the survival of the
strongest and the most selfish; the latter with its moral laws strives
to suspend the struggle for existence, and to defeat the selfishness
which the former seeks to perpetuate and extend. Human evolution is in
its essence the struggle of man as a moral being against nature as
non-moral or anti-moral; and the curve traced by human evolution is the
resultant of the opposition of the two forces--the microcosm, man, and
the macrocosm, nature. During the first part of its course the line of
human evolution rises, but during the latter part it is doomed to fall;
and the curve will be completed when man, having traversed every stage
of moral degradation, is merged once more in the brute matter to which
originally he owed his being. Against this victory of cosmic nature man,
as a moral being, protests and fights. He protests that it is
wrong--wrong, not because it brings him more pain than pleasure, for
right-doing also may have that result, but wrong without regard to his
feelings, so that any impartial spectator who witnessed the struggle
would condemn and regret the issue. If this is not so, if the
condemnation is the expression merely of human prejudice, then there is
nothing in the defeat of ethical nature or in the victory of its enemy,
cosmic nature, really to regret; the difference between right and wrong
is not an absolute or real distinction, corresponding to real facts, and
the victory of cosmic nature, even if it runs counter to man's
prejudices, is not thereby shown to be really wrong, though man
naturally is under the illusion that it is.

The coarse and immoral piece of vulgarity which condones an act of
wrong-doing on the ground that "it will be all the same a hundred years
hence," is, with an extension of time, as applicable to the race
generally as to the individual in particular. In a million, or a
billion, years hence it will, according to the pessimistic
interpretation of evolution, be all the same: matter and motion will
alone exist, completely indifferent to right and wrong. What does it
matter, then, whether we do right or wrong? Ultimately, it will make no
difference: the distinction between right and wrong is not one of
permanent value, or based on any lasting difference in things. Nor is it
strange that a cause which is based on an illusion should be doomed to
defeat. What is strange is that anyone should invite us to renounce
happiness for such an unmeaning struggle.

The only reply to such loose talk is that it does matter, here and now,
always and to all time, that right should triumph over wrong. It will
not do to say that it matters now, but will not matter hereafter, for,
if it is of no importance then, neither is it of any importance now. But
if right-doing is the most important thing in the world, more important
than happiness, more important to all time even than the perpetual
redistribution of matter and motion, to whom is it important? Not
exclusively, nor even primarily, to ourselves; for the essence of
right-doing is the attempt to put self away and forget it, the yearning
to be lifted above personal considerations and thought of self, the
conviction that whilst it matters all the world to me, to do the right,
the matter does not end with me. The matter is not of merely personal
importance to me, nor important simply because I choose to think it so.
Its value and significance are apprehended--alas! too rarely--by me,
they are not created by me. Its significance and importance are real,
not fictitious; that reality is not created by man, it is not a human
prejudice, but exists independent of man and what he thinks. To matter
and motion, those perpetual manifestations of the Power or Reality which
underlies them, nothing can have any meaning or importance: it is only
to a mind that things can be significant or important. If, then, the
importance of right-doing is real, it is because it really matters to
the Power, which underlies all things, that we should do right; and that
Power must be of the nature of an intelligence, for it is only a mind
which can either apprehend values or assign them. If the microcosm, man,
can pass a valid sentence of condemnation upon the macrocosm, nature, it
is only because and so far as his moral nature places him in direct
communication with the heart of things and gives him knowledge of the
will of that Power on which microcosm and macrocosm alike depend for
their existence. If the distinction between right and wrong is one by
which man can correctly judge between himself and the cosmos, the
distinction and the judgment must proceed from a source superior to
both. If it is not, then the Pessimistic interpretation of evolution
falls to the ground, because it is based on the assumption that its
condemnation of cosmic nature is a correct judgment. Not only does
Pessimism fall, but the element of truth and reality which Pessimism
contains must also be abandoned; if the distinction between right and
wrong is not sufficient for the task put upon it by Pessimism, neither
is it sufficient for us to build our lives on. In fine, either the
ultimate defeat of the ethical process matters, or it does not. If it
does not, why suffer sorrow and pain in the vain endeavour to stave it
off? If it does, then to whom? No longer to man, for he will have joined
the extinct fauna. Therefore to some moral intelligence to whom the
triumph of right is a matter of importance.

From this dilemma the only escape seems to be frankly to admit that a
billion years hence it will be "all the same," but to deny that, because
it will be all the same then, it is a matter of indifference now. This
argument, then, maintains that it will be all the same ultimately, and
that it is an illusion to imagine that when man is extinct it can
possibly matter. Here and now, however, and indeed as long as mankind
continues to exist, right-doing is of the highest conceivable importance
to man, more important even than happiness. But it is only as long as
mankind continues to exist that it can continue to be important: its
importance only exists in man's mind, and perishes with it. To say,
therefore, that the ultimate defeat of the ethical process will, when
established, be regrettable, is only to say that if we, or any other
moral judge, were there to see it, we should feel regret about it; but
we cannot possibly maintain that, because a moral judge would regret it,
if he were there, therefore there will be one there to regret it. Of
course, it is possible that the Unknowable may be a moral intelligence
of this kind, because everything is possible with regard to the
Unknowable. But we can neither affirm nor deny that or anything else
about the Unknowable, for then the Unknowable would cease so far to be
unknowable.

The contention of this argument, then, is that for us men, and (as far
as we have any positive knowledge) for us men alone, the laws of
morality are real, intensely real; but their reality begins with man and
ends with man. To this contention the reply is that as regards their
reality the laws of morality are on exactly the same footing as the laws
of science. Take the theory of evolution for instance: from scientific
observations of what is going on now it infers what has been and what
will be, it reconstructs the past and forecasts the future; it frames
pictures of the globe as it was before man was evolved; it forms
conceptions of the earth as it will be long after man is extinct. These
conceptions and pictures, however, exist only in the mind of man, for
the future does not yet exist and the past has ceased to be. That is to
say, evolution is an inference, or rather a mass of inferences, which
like all inferences exist in the mind, could not have existed before the
mind, and cannot exist when the mind has ceased to be. Science, being
the work of the mind (for we cannot say that it requires no
intelligence), is just man's notion of what has been, is, and will be,
in the same way that morality is man's conception of what ought to be.
If we say that what ought to be will cease and become meaningless when
man is extinct, then we must say the same of what has been, is, and will
be. If the good, the noble, the right, are merely human ideas of what
ought to be, matter and motion are merely human conceptions of what is.
If the reality of the former is only to be found in the human mind, so
is the reality of the latter. If the reality of the one is to cease with
human existence, so must the reality of the other. On the other hand, if
either is to exist when mankind is no more, it is only in some mind that
it can exist. It is only for a person that anything can be right or
good. It is only a person that can see the past summed up or the future
contained in the present. If it is legitimate and logical to infer that
what is will continue to be after man's disappearance from the earth, so
it is to draw the same inference with regard to what ought to be. If
science is true really, and does not merely appear so to man, it must be
true for some mind other than human: by an intelligence alone can truth
be apprehended, or the right approved. But if truth is limited to the
human mind, and ceases with it, then evolution must cease to be true
when men cease to exist. Nay, in that case it cannot claim to be true at
all, or rather does not claim to be true, but only seeming. On the other
hand, if the law of gravity, for instance, was true before man's
appearance, its truth must have dwelt in some mind. If it was not true
then, we have no better reason for believing it to be true now. In fine,
truth and right, what is and what ought to be, must either be dismissed
as mere human imaginings, or be accepted as everlasting facts of an
Eternal Moral Consciousness.

Shall we, then, say that the description which science gives of the
constitution and working of the universe is indeed consistent and
coherent enough with itself, and is a logical deduction from its
premises, but to assert that it expresses or even corresponds to any
reality beyond itself is a statement which we have no right to make? To
take up this position is simply to maintain that science is consistent
and logical, but that we have no reason or right to believe that it is
true. If our accounts are based on imaginary figures, they may be kept
as strictly as you please, but they will never show us our true
position. Indeed, if our premises are incorrect to start with, the more
logical our inferences are, the more certain our conclusions are to be
wrong.

Shall we, then, say that the account which science gives of the cosmic
process is not only consistent and logical, but expresses or corresponds
to a reality? Then in that case the cosmic process, so far as it is
truly expressed by science, is a logical process. But it is only a mind
which can be logical or can go through a logical process. Once more,
therefore, the facts of science as much as the facts of morality imply
that the real is an Intelligence. In fine, the truth of science and the
truth of morality are bound up together and have the same basis. If the
one is valid for facts beyond the range of human observation, so is the
other. If the one implies a consciousness other than human, equally so
does the other.

It may be said that to regard the ruling principle of the cosmos as a
moral agent is to commit the anthropomorphic fallacy. What, then, shall
we say of science, which is engaged in demonstrating that the cosmic
process is always logical? That science simply describes the facts as
they are, and that if they are logical, it is not her fault? Then the
presence of an intelligence other than human is revealed to science in
the facts; and it is false to say that science merely imports her own
intelligence into them. In the same way, the presence of a moral
personality other than our own is revealed to us in the facts of
conscience, and not imported into them by us. The presence of the
Comforter is one of the facts apprehended by the religious
consciousness; it is not merely the religious man's way of interpreting
some other fact. From this conclusion the only way of escape is to say
that anthropomorphism is a fallacy, and that it is a fallacy to which
the human mind, by its very constitution, is always and inevitably
subject. This argument gets rid at one blow of all indications of any
intelligence or morality other than human. But how? Simply by begging
the question, by tacitly taking it for granted that there is no other
personality than human personality. In that case it is obvious, indeed,
that man's perpetual discovery of personal power in the forces of
nature, of more than human wisdom in nature's laws, and of more than
human goodness in the human heart, is and must be fallacious. But only
on the assumption that there is no wisdom in the world but man's, no
love in all the universe but his, can we say that man reads into the
facts a wisdom and a love which are not there. Are we, then, prepared to
say that, in giving us a logical account of the cosmic process, science
has--naturally and necessarily indeed, but none the less
completely--been mistaken? If the scientific account corresponds to the
facts, then the facts behave logically. If it is the anthropomorphic
fallacy to imagine that things can behave logically, then science's
description of the facts must be fallacious.

Perhaps it will be sought to save science by saying that science is
anthropomorphic, but not fallacious. This, however, gives away the whole
case: it is an admission that, in interpreting the cosmic process as a
logical process, science is simply recognising, and rightly recognising,
the logical character of the facts--the anthropomorphic interpretation
happens to be right. But we must note that it is not right because it is
anthropomorphic, but anthropomorphic because it faithfully describes the
facts. Science aims at describing and formulating facts as they are: if
the laws of science are rational, it is because she found reason already
in the facts, and not because she put it there. She does not make the
laws of nature, neither does she dictate the behaviour of facts, nor is
their behaviour merely her way of interpreting facts. Man discovers in
nature wisdom, which is an attribute of personality, not because he
cannot help being anthropomorphic in his views, but because nature is a
manifestation of the power and wisdom of a personality other and greater
than man's. So far, then, is this discovery from creating a presumption
that man makes nature after his own image, that it constitutes a proof
that man is made in the image of that personal will and wisdom which is
expressed in nature as well as manifested in man. In discovering
personality we discover what is fundamentally real in nature, and for
us what is fundamentally real is also our highest ideal.

We have already remarked that paradoxical though it sounds to say that
the ideal is real, the seeming paradox does express a fact--the fact at
once of our consciousness of the difference between what is and what
ought to be, and of our conviction that what ought to be is no mere
illusion. Truth and goodness, wisdom and love, are all at the same time
ideal and real. The truth to which it is the ideal of science to
approximate is no mere chimera. So far as it is truth, it is not merely
man's way of looking at the facts or an interpretation which he puts
upon them: it is a statement of the facts, as accurate and precise as
science can make it. The ideal, being an ideal, will never be fully
attained; but that the truth is there to be found out is proved every
time science reaches a new truth, that is to say, a truth which before
its discovery was indeed not apprehended by man, but certainly was not
therefore either untrue or non-existent. The truth was in the facts; for
what man knows of nature he has learnt from nature, and what he finds
there is not the projection of human wisdom but the revelation of a more
than human wisdom. Man's knowledge is real in proportion as it
approaches the ideal. The ideal is not man's surmise, or vague
conception, or anticipation of what he may hereafter come to know, for
such surmises are always proved to be more or less erroneous. Neither
is it man's conviction that the truth exists, if only he could find it
out. It is actual truth and knowledge which now exist, and, being truth
and knowledge, must exist in some mind, and certainly do not exist in
man's mind. Science, so far as it has approached the ideal, has done so
not by being anthropomorphic, but by ceasing to be anthropomorphic--that
is to say, by casting aside presumptions of what according to man's
notions ought to be or _a priori_ must be, and substituting for such
preconceptions a patient, reverent study of the facts as they are.

To regard the knowledge thus gained as being at once purely human and
the only reality is to say that the evolution of the universe exists
only in the speculation of human thinkers, and consequently that the
world as it was before man existed was created by the speculation of
minds which were not in existence then and which were only subsequently
evolved. How can man have been evolved out of his own speculations? How
can his speculations have existed before he did? Man owes his origin to
the same Power whose wisdom is revealed in nature to science, and
manifested to all in all around us. Of the existence of a Power, not
ourselves, we have evidence in everything that affects us. It is a fact
of consciousness, but it is a fact which from its very nature does not
exist solely in our consciousness. Therein it resembles ideal wisdom or
goodness, which exists in us, so far as our wisdom or goodness is real,
but is far from being exhausted by its partial presence in us.

The ideal in morality, again, is not the mere desire to do good or to be
good, just as the ideal in knowledge is not the mere desire to know the
truth. And if goodness is the object of moral desire, as truth is the
object of intellectual desire, in neither case is the object of desire
purely imaginary, a mere idea or conception of something which might be,
but as a matter of fact is not. We do not desire imaginary pleasures or
imaginary goodness, we want the reality; and to tell us that that
reality exists only in idea, only in our own imagination, is a
misleading half-truth. True, we must have some idea of it, or else we
could not desire it. But neither could we desire it if it were presented
to us as purely imaginary. In other words, the object of moral desire is
apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, as both actual and possible,
as existing simultaneously for us and beyond us. The case is the same
with ideal truth: we could not desire it, unless we had some conception
of it, unless it were to some degree or in some way present to our
consciousness; yet, at the same time, the knowledge which we desire to
have but do not yet possess is certainly, so far as we do not possess
it, beyond our consciousness. It is because we have not got it that we
want it. And the object of desire, what we want, is not imaginary
truth, but real truth; just as in our better moments we want to do not
what we imagine to be right, but what is really right. The Real,
therefore--real truth, real goodness--is apprehended, at the moment of
apprehension, and desired, at the moment of desire, as existing both for
us and beyond us.

The proviso, "at the moment of apprehension, at the moment of desire,"
is important, because it strikes at the root of all forms of subjective
idealism. They all assume that the only thing directly apprehended is
what exists for us; that consequently the supposed existence of any real
thing or person beyond us is a mere inference, and an inference the
truth of which we have no means of checking, because it is a statement
about things of which we have no direct apprehension or knowledge. On
this assumption, therefore, the only things man directly apprehends are
his own states of consciousness, his own sensations, etc. Are we to call
them real or not? If they are not real, his whole life is a dream, his
speculations fancies, and his desires illusions. If they are the only
reality of which he can be certain, then the only truth is that which
man knows, the only good is that which man does, the only world is that
which man thinks, the only God is that which man makes, the magnified,
non-natural shadow of man projected on to the mists of the Unknowable.

It is important, therefore, to insist that the Real--the reality of
existence, of knowledge, of goodness--is not an inference, but a matter
of direct apprehension. It is certain that goodness or knowledge to be
an object of desire must be presented to us in idea; but it is equally
certain that the mere idea is not what we desire. The object of desire
is directly apprehended as in our consciousness and beyond it. The
natural world around us is also directly apprehended as at once in our
consciousness and beyond it: it is presented to our minds, but it is
presented as real.

It is important also to note that the real does not forfeit its reality
to our apprehension when and because it takes up its abode in us:
goodness does not cease to be good because we do it, nor truth cease to
be truth because we know it. It does not follow that because the ideal
cannot be fully realised, it cannot be realised at all. On the contrary,
the conviction that it cannot be completely attained is itself the
guarantee that it can be attained partially. Yet it has been assumed
that if a thing is apprehended by us it cannot be real, that real
knowledge begins just where our knowledge ends, that the further we push
our knowledge forward the further real knowledge recedes from our view.
On this assumption is built the theory of the Unknowable, the theory
that whatever is known to man is a state of man's consciousness; that
states of consciousness are subjective, are merely the appearances of
things, not the things themselves; that the real things, the things
themselves, are unknowable; their appearances alone can be known to man;
therefore the real is for ever unknowable. "The reality existing behind
all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown."[4] Consequently,
inferences about the Real are valueless and futile. By way of
compensation, however, our knowledge of the unreal is, on this theory,
varied and extensive: it includes, for instance, the theory of evolution
and the whole of science.

But the assumption which leads to this strange conclusion is opposed to
the facts. The fact, as we have contended, is that the real in
consciousness is continuous with the real beyond consciousness, and is
apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, as being thus continuous,
and is not reached by any process of inference. The real is not a matter
of inference, but of apprehension. Its existence cannot be deduced from
anything else; it is that from which all conclusions must be deduced. I
cannot prove that a thing is real any more than I can prove that I have
toothache. There is no need.


FOOTNOTES:

[4] HERBERT SPENCER, _First Principles_, ch. iv. § 22, p. 69.




V.

THE REAL


We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting Evolution as a
fact, as all ordinarily educated persons in the present state of
scientific knowledge are practically bound to do. Accepting it as a
fact, we proceeded to inquire what, if anything, it had to tell us about
the moral government of the world; and we found that very different
interpretations were put upon the theory of Evolution by different
authorities. According to one interpretation the process of Evolution
was a continual progress from good to better: good could only give way
to higher good. According to another interpretation goodness was a
transient, evanescent phase in the process of evolution, of no permanent
value: the ethical process was doomed to be defeated by its enemy, the
cosmic process. According to a third interpretation the notion of good
was a pure illusion, necessary indeed, inasmuch as without it there
would be no survival for man in the struggle for existence, but none the
less an illusion.

Much as these interpretations differ from one another as to the moral
significance of the process of evolution, or indeed as to whether
evolution has any moral significance at all, they are agreed upon one
point. They are agreed that it is impossible to draw any inference from
the facts of evolution as to the moral government of the universe. To
affirm its moral government would be to claim knowledge of the
Unknowable, which is an obvious absurdity. It would be to attribute
power, consciousness, wisdom, and goodness to the Real; and the Real is
and must ever be unknown.

This identification of the Real with the Unknowable leads us into the
following ridiculous _impasse_: the vast majority of men look, and must
always look, for guidance and information to science and theology; and
theology is knowledge of the unknowable; science, knowledge of the
unreal. Those who are content with this blind alley may remain in it. We
propose to try to find our way out of it.

If we analyse our perception of any material object, that is to say, of
any object which we perceive by means of the senses, we shall find that
our perception of the object consists of the sensations which we have of
it. To perceive an orange is to see that it is yellow, to feel that it
is round, to smell it, taste it, and so on. These various sensations
together constitute our perception of the orange. Now, the subjective
idealist says that the perception _is_ the orange, and that the orange
is the perception. To the beginner in philosophy that sounds absurd: he
knows that his perception is not the orange, and that the orange is
something more than his perception of it. But when he is asked, "What
more? If the orange is not the perception, what is it?" he does not
generally produce any satisfactory reply; and then he is told that his
notion, that there is anything in the orange except his own perception
or sensations, is obviously not a fact of sensation or a thing directly
observed, but merely a belief or inference of his. On the other hand, he
generally puts a very natural question to his instructor: "If the orange
is merely my perception, what becomes of the orange when I do not
perceive it? Granted that it exists whenever I look at it, what becomes
of it in the intervals when I am not looking at it? Does it exist then,
or does it not?"

To this Bishop Berkeley replies that it does; that it exists then in
exactly the same way as it does now, that is to say, it exists in idea
(_i.e._ perception or sensation); but as it does not exist in my
perception, when I am not looking at it, it must exist in the perception
of some other mind, to which all things at all times are present.

With the fact which forms Berkeley's conclusion I have no quarrel. What
I should like to show is that it does not follow from these premises.

Berkeley's argument is: All men believe, and rightly believe, that the
things they see are permanent. The things they see are ideas
(perceptions, sensations) of a mind. Therefore the permanent world is
the idea of a permanent mind.[5]

But "the things they see" is an ambiguous expression. If by "the things
that I see" is meant "my sensations of sight," then they are not
permanent, for they only last as long as I look at the object, and
consequently any argument based on their supposed permanence falls to
the ground. On the other hand, if "the things that I see" are permanent,
then they are not merely my sensations of sight--in which case
subjective idealism is wrong, and my perception of a thing is not the
whole account of the thing and does not exhaust its reality. The things
which I perceive are not my sensations: they are things of which I have
sensations. In fine, they are apprehended, at the moment of
apprehension, as being both within and without consciousness.

To the question whether a thing exists when I am not looking at it, John
Stuart Mill replies, in effect, that as often as I look at it I shall
see it; that if I were looking I should see it. This is true enough; but
it is no answer to the question. When further pressed, Mill further
replies that, if things do not exist when we do not look, we should
nevertheless necessarily be deluded by the association of ideas into
imagining that they do exist when not looked at. Here, again, it is
perfectly true that, if things are not real, it is a delusion to imagine
they are. But that is no answer to the question. It is, in fact, a
question which the subjective idealist cannot answer. To say "No! Things
out of consciousness are non-existent," is to say that effects of which
the causes are unobserved are effects produced by non-existent causes.
To say "Yes" is to admit that things can exist out of consciousness as
well as in, which is what subjective idealism is there to deny.

We submit, then, that the analysis of experience which subjective
idealism makes is not an exhaustive analysis; and that, when the man of
common sense says that in looking at anything he is aware both of his
sensations of sight and of something more, he is stating the actual
facts as they are given in experience to all of us.

We apprehend a thing as being both our sensations and something more.
When the idealist says that the latter half of this apprehension is a
misapprehension, he rejects an observed fact of experience, not because
he does not find it in his experience, but because it seems to him
impossible that it should be there. He argues that to say we can be
conscious of what is not in our consciousness is to say that we can be
conscious of something of which we are unconscious--a patent nonsense.
He might admit, for the sake of argument, that possibly a thing could
exist both in consciousness and out, and even that we might know that it
so existed. But he cannot admit that a man is conscious of what he is
not conscious of.

He is not required to admit it. He is required to admit that our
perceptions are not the only things of which we are conscious; or, to
put it in other words, that our states of consciousness are not the only
things of which we are conscious. And he is required to admit it simply
and solely on the ground that it is a fact of common observation and
everyday experience. Thus, for instance, we perform actions, and
(usually) we are conscious of performing them. But the action is
something more and other than our consciousness of it. Or is someone
going to maintain that doing and knowing are the same thing? Is anyone
prepared to push the illusion-argument so far as to say that the idea
that we do things is a mere delusion? If it is not a delusion, if it is,
on the contrary, a fact, then our actions are not states of
consciousness, but things of which we are conscious. We apprehend them,
in the very act of apprehension, as realities distinct from the
consciousness which we have of them. And we have the very same guarantee
for their reality as we have for the reality of our perception or
sensations of them, viz. the fact that we are conscious of them.

In the same way, when we push a solid object or feel the impact of a
moving body, we are as conscious of that body as of our muscular
sensations: our sensations make up our perception of the object, but are
not the object. They constitute the state of consciousness, but that
state is not the only thing we are conscious of. The object is
apprehended as being in consciousness and not as merely being our
consciousness of it.

Mr. Herbert Spencer, at least, is quite clear that our states of
consciousness are not the only things of which we are conscious; he
holds even that we are vaguely conscious of that which transcends our
consciousness. Thus, our personality is not a state of consciousness,
yet we are conscious of it, and "its existence is to each a fact above
all others the most certain."[6] And, as for the real, "our firm belief
in objective reality, a belief which metaphysical criticism cannot
shake," is not merely "a positive though vague consciousness of that
which transcends consciousness," but "has the highest validity of
any"[7] of our beliefs.

But though Mr. Spencer admits, or rather insists, that we know _that_
the Real is, he denies that we know _what_ it is. In other words, he
accepts the validity of one half of every act of experience and denies
the validity of the other half. Our analysis of experience has shown us
that we apprehend the real, in the very act of apprehension, as being
both a state of our consciousness and something more than that state. To
say that one half of the apprehension is a misapprehension is to say
that both are invalid. If what is present in consciousness is merely
appearance and not the real thing, then our states are the only things
of which we are conscious, and the existence of anything more is not a
fact of experience and observation--still less can it have the highest
validity of any of our beliefs.

We may be asked, "Granted that the Real is more than a state of our
consciousness, what more is it?" and, if no answer is forthcoming, we
may be told that after all then, it seems, we know _that_ the Real is,
but not _what_ it is. The reply is: So far as the Real is out of
consciousness we may not know what it is; as far as it is in, we do. By
"being conscious of a thing" we mean knowing what the thing is--not
necessarily complete knowledge, but some.

If it be said that, on our own showing, a thing and the knowledge of it
are different, and that consequently however great our knowledge may
become there always remains, and must always remain, something which we
cannot know, because it is _ex hypothesi_, not knowledge, we must reply
that this objection is but a restatement of the inveterate fallacy of
idealism--the fallacy that states of consciousness are the only things
we can be conscious of; that if we know a thing the thing ceases to be
anything but our knowledge of it; that to be conscious of performing an
action is proof that no action is really performed, and that the only
doing is knowing.

We act, and we know that we act. Reality must be accorded to both or
denied to both; it cannot be accorded to one and denied to the other.
Indeed, knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But it is also
something more, just as an action of which we are conscious is something
more than our consciousness of it.

But we are conscious not only of our own actions, but of the reactions
of things on us, and of the interactions of things on one another. We
apprehend all three--action, reaction, and interaction--as real; we know
not only _that_ they are, as being realities, but also _what_ they are
as states of consciousness. As states of consciousness they are
successive sensations or perceptions; as more than states of
consciousness they are power or force.

The study which science makes of the interactions of things on one
another reveals those interactions as conformable to law and happening
in such a way that their occurrence can be logically deduced, and even
foretold, from their laws. In a word, they happen in a way that can be
reasoned out, and they constitute together a logical process. The
reality, the power, the activity which is exhibited in this process is
exhibited therefore as a rational activity, as reason active; and both
the reason and the action are apprehended by us as real, and not as mere
states of our consciousness.

If the scientific account of the universe and the theory of evolution,
so far as they are true, are not mere exercises of the imagination, but
represent events and changes which actually have taken place and are
taking place beyond the range of actual observation, it must be because
they are logical inferences from real events and real changes which are
matters of direct observation. If the observed events have no reality,
we have no ground for believing the unobserved or inferred facts to have
any. Unless the real events follow a logical sequence, our inferences
must be fallacious in proportion as they are logical. We believe the
inferred facts to be real because we believe the observed facts to be
real; and the observed facts are presented to us and apprehended by us
to be not merely our sensations but also realities. On no other ground
can we or do we trust science to guide us in life.

Nor do we trust morality on any other ground. So far as we trust the
impulse to do right, or base any calculations upon it or draw any
inferences from it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of
apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness and something more.
As in the impact of a moving body we apprehend not merely our
sensations, but also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse to
good we apprehend not only our consciousness thereof, but the presence
of a real power, with regard to which we know not only that it is, but
to some extent what it is--a power which would have us do good and be
good.

If material things are but ideas of ours, so the Right and Good may be.
If the latter are mere aspirations and nothing more, the former are mere
sensations and nothing more. But if in things we are conscious of a
power not ourselves, so are we in our consciousness of the Right and
Good: our aspirations are inspirations. We apprehend their reality in
exactly the same way as we apprehend the reality of material things--by
direct observation. And we have exactly the same evidence--the evidence
of immediate consciousness.

"Let no man spoil you with philosophy." The statements that "knowledge
is the only reality," "the only Real is the Unknowable," are
contradictory not only of each other, but of those facts in the common
experience of mankind which afford the only safe foundation for
philosophy as well as for science. Both statements logically imply that
our only knowledge is of the unreal; and from knowledge of the unreal to
the unreality of knowledge is a necessary step. But existence is not
merely knowledge: existence is also action. A thing is that which it
does, and not merely that which it is known to do. Or rather a thing
never does anything: only a person can act. The "action" or "behaviour"
of a thing is only a metaphor.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] See Appendix on Bishop Berkeley's Idealism.

[6] _First Principles_, ch. iii. § 20.

[7] _Ibid._, § 26.




VI.

EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION


Assuming the process of evolution to be a fact, we have inquired what is
the value of that fact, what significance it has for man as a moral
being, anxious to direct his life in accordance with the best lights he
can obtain. In our attempts to draw any inference from the facts of
evolution as to the moral government of the universe, we have always
found ourselves ultimately confronted by the notice--The Real is
Unknowable. Obviously, if "the ultimate of ultimates," the Real Power or
Force, of which all things and beings are manifestations, is unknowable,
we cannot know whether it cares or does not care for what is true or
good. But if the Real is Unknowable, then the knowledge which we do
possess is not knowledge of the real, and consequently all our science
is unreal knowledge; the theory of evolution is a system of delusive
inferences from unreal facts. That, however, is a thing which we could
not believe. Doubtless our knowledge is small compared with our
ignorance. Doubtless there is much which the human mind could not
understand without becoming more than human. Doubtless, also, every
addition to our knowledge involves a readjustment and correction of our
previous inferences; and a considerable addition, such as the theory of
evolution was, causes a considerable change in our conception of the
universe and its laws. But all these admissions cannot compel us to
admit that science is wholly unreal knowledge, or that evolution is an
entirely unreal process. We sought, accordingly, to show that we have
some, if only partial, knowledge of the real, that that knowledge is not
wholly inferential, but that so far as it is inferred it is inferred
from real facts, the reality of which is directly apprehended in the
common experience of mankind.

As a matter of fact, those writers who proclaim the unknowability of the
Real, when they are writing as philosophers, abandon it when they are
engaged in science. When they are working out the theory of evolution,
they take it for granted that the process of evolution is a reality,
that the common experience of mankind is trustworthy to some extent, and
that to that extent the Real is knowable and known. They assure us that,
though the knowledge we have is not knowledge of the Real, it is just
the same for us as if it were--if the Real could enter into our
consciousness, we really should not know the difference. "Thus then we
may resume, with entire confidence, those realistic conceptions which
philosophy at first sight seems to dissipate."[8]

On examination, however, it turns out that the entire confidence which
is thus restored to the reality of material things is not extended to
the reality of those ideals of the good, the beautiful, and the holy
which play their part in the lives of men and in the evolution of
mankind--or not to all of those ideals.

Now, it is scarcely to be hoped that a theory which begins by ignoring
certain facts in the common experience of mankind, or by denying their
reality, can end in a satisfactory explanation of them. Either it will
be consistent and proclaim them to be illusions, or it will be
inconsistent and quietly include them from time to time as it goes
on--in which case the explanation it gives of them will be no
explanation. Thus, for instance, as we have already argued, the
Optimistic interpretation of evolution, professing to exhibit the Ideal
of morality as one of the ultimate consequences of the redistribution of
matter and motion, ends by denying any difference between what is and
what ought to be, and thus reduces the moral ideal to a mere illusion.
The Pessimist, on the other hand, insisting on the reality, and to some
extent the supremacy of the moral ideal, confesses his inability to
explain its validity as being due to evolution: the fact that it has
been evolved does not account for its validity, because the tendency to
evil has been also evolved, but is not, therefore, to be yielded to.

The object of this chapter is to examine the hypothesis that the process
of evolution is nothing but a perpetual redistribution of matter and
motion, and to show that the hypothesis cannot explain, and as a matter
of fact does not explain, all the facts which it is framed to account
for.

The theory of evolution is an attempt--one of many attempts that men
have made--to explain the process by which the totality of things has
come to be what it is. It differs from most other attempts in that it
endeavours to give a scientific explanation of the process, and that
consequently it does not profess to go back to the beginning or to
discover the origin of the process.

The nature of scientific "explanation" is well understood by men of
science (in England, at least), and has been made familiar to the
non-scientific world by John Stuart Mill. An event is scientifically
"explained" when it is shown to be a case of a general law; a law is
"explained" when it is shown to come under some more general law. In
other words, the business of science is to show that the thing under
examination always happens (or tends to happen) under certain
circumstances which science can formulate with more or less exactness.
But _how_ or _why_ the thing should happen thus, science does not
undertake to explain: "what is called explaining one law of nature by
another, is but substituting one mystery for another; and does nothing
to render the general course of nature other than mysterious: we can no
more assign a _why_ for the more extensive laws than for the partial
ones."[9] It is only "minds not habituated to accurate thinking" which
imagine that the laws are the _causes_ of the events which happen in
accordance with them, "that the law of general gravitation, for example,
causes the fall of bodies to the earth."[10] It may be a law of science,
a perfectly true statement, that the phenomenon B always follows the
phenomenon A; but that statement, true as it is, is not the cause of B.
_That_ A is always followed by B is demonstrated by science. _Why_ it
should be followed by B is as mysterious as magic--as mysterious as that
the waving of the magician's wand should be immediately followed by the
rising of a palace from the ground. How the one thing _can_ follow the
other, is no part of science's business to explain.

Science, therefore, is essentially descriptive: with ever-increasing
accuracy it describes things and the order in which they happen.
Evolution, then, as a scientific theory, is also purely descriptive: it
describes the way in which things have come to be what we see them to
be, the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it
is. But when the purely scientific and descriptive part of the work is
done, when science has formulated the order of the events which have led
up to the existing state of the universe, when the process of evolution
has been described, there still remain the questions which science
refused even to try to answer, and there also remain other questions
more vital to science. There arises the question, In what sense is
evolution a real process? do the laws of science exist only in the minds
of men of science? is the process of evolution merely the description
which is given of it (as according to some thinkers a thing is only the
sensations which we have of it), or is it something more?

Obviously the question whether evolution is a real process, whether
there is any reality in science, is one which cannot be answered, either
in the affirmative or in the negative, without some idea of what
"reality" means, of what the "real" is. "What is the meaning of the word
_real_? This is the question which underlies every metaphysical inquiry;
and the neglect of it is the remaining cause of the chronic antagonisms
of metaphysicians."[11] Before we are logically entitled to say that
evolution is a real process, we must answer the question, "What is the
essence, the ultimate reality of things? who or what is the Being that
is manifested in 'all thinking things, all objects of all thought'?"[12]

Now, to these questions, as to the Being and Becoming of the universe,
science has nothing to say. Science does not even afford the materials
for an answer to them, any more than to those other questions as to
_how_ or _why_ things should happen in the way which science describes.
Science describes things, but does not undertake to prove that things
exist. Science is organised common sense, and common sense takes it for
granted that things exist. Having made this assumption, science proceeds
to investigate with scientific exactness the order in which events
succeed one another and co-exist with one another, within the range of
direct observation; and infers that, even when they are beyond the range
of direct observation, they continue to occur in the same order of
sequence and co-existence. But here again science refuses to have
anything to do with any metaphysical questions as to _how_ or _why_
things should thus occur. All sorts of conjectures may be made, and have
been made, to explain why B should follow A, or co-exist with it. But
science is not pledged to any of them. The only thing she undertakes to
show is the fact of the sequence or co-existence; and this she can do
without assuming the truth of any of these conjectures. Indeed, the
progress which science has made is largely due to the fact that she has
steadily declined to have anything to do with such conjectures--having
found out by experience that they simply distract her from her proper
business of observing with the utmost exactness what actually does take
place. It may be that A in some mysterious and wholly inexplicable way
"produces" B, that is to say in technical phraseology, is "the efficient
cause" or "mechanical cause" of B. It may be that the sequence of B upon
A is a volition of the Being which is manifested in all thinking things,
in all objects of all thought. Science cannot prove, and will not even
discuss, either suggestion: she confines herself to the assertion that,
as a matter of careful and exact observation, B does follow A. Whether
we call A an efficient cause or not, matters not to science: call it so
or refuse to call it so, the fact once established by science, that B
follows A, remains. The theory of efficient or mechanical causes is
doubtless of importance, but not to science. If it is proved to be
false, not a single fact of science is shaken.

The mechanical theory may be true or may be false, but in either case it
is a metaphysical theory. If science is descriptive--descriptive of the
uniform succession and co-existence of facts--then science no more
proves the mechanical theory to be true than it proves the volitional
theory to be true. Both are theories as to _why_ facts should succeed
one another in the order described by science; and science does not
undertake to prove the truth of such theories, nor does she wait for
them to be proved or disproved.

Many men of science, however, are also philosophers, and hold, as they
are fully entitled to hold, that the mechanical theory is the true
interpretation of nature. Now, "mechanics is the science of motion; we
can assign as its object: to describe completely and in the simplest
manner the movements which occur in nature."[13] On the mechanical
theory, therefore, "the object of all science is to reduce the phenomena
of nature to forms of motion, and to describe these completely and in
the simplest manner ... the only complete description is that afforded
by a mathematical formula, in which the constants are supplied by
observation. This permits us to calculate those features or phases of
phenomena which are hidden from our observation in space or in
time."[14] This, we need hardly add, is in agreement with Mr. Herbert
Spencer's view of the theory of evolution as a description of the
process of the redistribution of matter and motion.

It seems, then, that according to this particular metaphysical theory,
which maintains the mechanical explanation of nature to be the true one,
the object of all science is to describe (with mathematical accuracy,
where possible) the movements of things in space. But science is
universal; evolution extends to the whole cosmic process. Therefore, the
only things with which science has to do, or which are factors in the
cosmic process, are things moving in space.

As a metaphysical argument this theory seems to us unsatisfactory. It
converts, simply and illegitimately, the proposition sanctioned by
common sense, that material things are real, into the proposition
opposed to common sense, that all real things are material. It assumes,
apparently unconsciously and certainly without proof, that the only
things capable of scientific description are movements in space, the
only laws in the universe mechanical laws.

Historically, material things were the first to be studied and
described with scientific exactness. It is only natural, therefore,
that the methods and assumptions which have been employed with
conspicuous success by the physical sciences should be extended,
tentatively at least, elsewhere. It is equally natural that protests
should be raised, and the extension proclaimed by philosophers to be
illegitimate--"impoverishing faith without enriching knowledge."[15]
"To regard the course of the world as the development of some blind
force which works on according to universal laws, devoid of insight
and freedom, devoid of interest in good and evil, are we to
consider this unjustifiable generalisation of a concept, valid in
its own sphere, as the higher truth?"[16]

It is not, however, likely that science will drop a generalisation,
however "unjustifiable" in metaphysics, if it works in practice. The
question is whether it does work; and that is plainly a question of
fact, not a question of metaphysics. We want to know therefore, first,
whether things moving in space are the only things with which we are
acquainted in common experience; and, next, whether all the changes
which take place within the range of scientific observation are or can
be explained by the laws of mechanics.

It is clear that, if the mechanical theory of science and of evolution
is to be successfully maintained, both these questions must be answered
in the affirmative. It is equally clear that, if we confine ourselves to
the actual facts, both questions must be answered in the negative.

Thoughts, ideas, conceptions, sensations, feelings, emotions are things
of which we have experience at every moment of our waking lives; and
none of them are things which occupy space or move in space. A thought
is not a thing which can be measured by a foot-rule, as things in space
can be; the greatness of an idea is not one which measures so many
yards by so many; a conception has no cubic contents; a toothache cannot
be put in a pair of scales, nor can any process of chemical analysis be
applied to hope or fear. We find ourselves, therefore, in this dilemma:
if the mechanical theory is true, and science can deal only with things
moving in space, then psychology and sociology are not sciences, and
their subject-matter never can be made amenable to scientific treatment.
On the other hand, if psychology is a science, then science deals with
things which do not move in space.

We submit that psychology _is_ a science, that our sensations, emotions,
ideas, etc., can be observed, and can be described scientifically, that
is to say, that their uniform sequences and co-existences can be stated
with accuracy and formulated as laws. We submit further that our
definition of science should be based on facts, and not framed to suit a
metaphysical theory. A satisfactory definition of science must include
all the sciences. The definition put forward in the interests of the
mechanical theory excludes arbitrarily the mental and moral sciences,
and implies that their subject-matter is beyond the power of science to
deal with. The exclusion and the implication are consequent upon the
suggested limitation of science to things moving in space, and are of
the essence of the mechanical theory. Both the exclusion and the
implication are unnecessary if we adhere to the older conception of
science, as it occurs in Mill, which claims for science all phenomena
of which the sequences and co-existences can be observed, described, and
formulated as laws.

What we have said with regard to science applies also of necessity to
Evolution. If Evolution is simply the continual redistribution of matter
and motion, if matter and motion are the only things subject to
evolution, then consciousness and conscience are not subject to
evolution. On the other hand, if they too have had and are having their
evolution, then the redistribution of matter and motion does not sum up
the process of evolution, and is not a correct statement of the process.
If it were an induction drawn from a consideration of all the facts of
evolution, it would cover them all. But it does not: it excludes a large
class of important facts, because their exclusion is demanded in the
interests of a particular metaphysical theory--the mechanical theory. It
implies that the operation of evolution is confined to a limited set of
facts. If the implication is false, then evolution is a bigger thing
than the mere redistribution of matter and motion.

The way in which it is usually attempted to force the mechanical theory
to square with the facts, or rather to cut the facts to fit the theory,
is to point to the connection between the mind and the brain, and to
proclaim the consequent dependence of mind on matter. Now, that there is
a connection between mind and brain is certain. What the connection is
exactly is as yet uncertain. But the fact that two things co-exist, are
connected with one another and vary together, does not prove that the
one thing is the other. On the contrary, it postulates that the two
things, though related, are different. The mechanical theory either
commits the fallacy of mistaking connected things for identical things,
or it fails to prove the very thing necessary for its justification,
viz. that thoughts, emotions, etc., are things occupying space and
moving in space. The chemical and physiological changes which take place
in the brain are movements in space. But it does not follow that the
corresponding pains or ideas float about in the air or move from one
point in space to another.

Further, as a metaphysical theory, this identification of matter with
mind is a double-edged weapon: it cuts both ways: if mind is matter,
matter is mind; if mind is thinking matter, then matter is latent
thought; and thought is consequently exhibited not as being the last
product of evolution, but as a factor in it from the beginning. But this
identity of mind and matter is a purely metaphysical speculation: it is
a conjecture to explain _how_ it is that two phenomena can co-exist in
the way in which they are observed to do. Such conjectures science does
not require: she does not undertake to explain why things are, but to
describe--if possible with mathematical exactness--the order of their
sequence or co-existence. This function science can discharge equally
well whether the changes of consciousness are or are not supposed to be
movements in space. Metaphysicians may argue the point; in the meantime
science is describing and formulating the laws of mind and endeavouring
to correlate the changes of consciousness with the physical changes of
the brain and the nervous system. The mechanical theory neither helps
nor hinders science in her work.

But science does throw some difficulties in the way of the mechanical
theory; or, rather, the facts of science refuse to fit into the theory.
If the stream of consciousness is nothing but a series of physiological
and chemical changes, the laws of the one ought to be identical with the
laws of the other, and both with the laws of mechanics, on the
mechanical theory. But they are not. Those concise descriptions of
mental phenomena which constitute the laws of psychology ought to
coincide with those other concise descriptions of fact which constitute
the laws of chemistry, if the facts described by the two sciences are
the same. But the two sets of laws have, to say the least, more
differences than resemblances.

This brings us to our second point. Our first point was that if the
concise description of evolution, which sums it up as the process by
which matter is continually redistributed in space, is to be proved to
be true, it must be shown that movements in space are the only events
which we know to take place. Our second point is that, unless it can be
shown that mechanical laws are the only laws at work in the universe,
this description of evolution does not find room for the whole working
of the process of evolution.

Whether the only laws in the universe are mechanical laws is primarily a
question of fact; and on the facts, as known to us at present, the
answer to the question is a decided negative. The laws of psychology and
of ethics are neither identical with nor have they been deduced from any
physical laws. As a hypothesis designed to explain the way in which the
world works, the redistribution of matter and motion neither includes
nor accounts for those laws which are of most importance to man.

This appeal to the facts which are actually known is, however, often
conceived to be in reality an appeal to our ignorance: mental laws have
not as yet been shown to be deducible from physical laws, but they may
be. So, too, the fact that no attempt to extend the gravitation formula
from astronomy to any other department of science has yet succeeded, is
no proof that it never will be so extended. Neither, we may remark, does
it constitute any presumption that it will. Are there, then, any other
grounds for presuming that mental law may yet be shown to be merely a
case of some physical law? To some minds there seem to be grounds for
presuming that it not only may, but must. However great our ignorance of
the details of the process of evolution, there are certain broad facts
which are beyond dispute. It is indisputable that there was a period in
the history of the earth when there was no life upon it; that the
elements which constitute living matter are themselves lifeless; that
consciousness is correlated somehow with those organic compounds, the
elements of which are inorganic. These facts together constitute an
irresistible presumption that ultimately mind and matter must obey the
same laws.

But this is not the desired conclusion. The conclusion desired is that
mind must obey matter's laws. The fact that mind and matter obey the
same ultimate laws is a different thing, and rather indicates that even
the redistribution of matter and motion requires ultimately some other
explanation than merely mechanical laws afford. To the religious mind it
is quite intelligible that mind and matter should obey the same
laws--God's laws.

It may be said, however, that we have not done full justice to the
presumption raised by the broad facts of evolution. When there was no
life upon the earth, the only laws in operation must have been physical
laws, and consequently the laws of life and consciousness must have been
produced by the laws of matter.

Now, this argument in effect amounts to a denial of any difference
between the mechanical composition and the chemical combination of
bodies. Bodies when mechanically compounded continue to follow the same
laws as they obey when uncompounded, and their conjoint action can be
deduced and foretold from the laws to which they are subject in their
separate state: "Whatever would have happened in consequence of each
cause taken by itself happens when they are together, and we have only
to cast up the results."[17] With chemical combination the case is quite
different: the chemical compound exhibits properties and behaves in ways
which are quite different from the properties and behaviour of its
elements, and could not be foretold from any observation of them. Water,
which is a combination of oxygen and hydrogen, exhibits no trace of the
properties of either. "If this be true of chemical combinations, it is
still more true of those far more complex combinations of elements which
constitute organised bodies, and in which those extraordinary new
uniformities arise, which are called the laws of life. All organised
bodies are composed of parts similar to those composing inorganic
nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state;
but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those
parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which
would be produced by the action of the component substance considered as
mere physical agents.... The tongue, for instance, is, like all other
parts of the animal frame, composed of gelatine, fibrin, and other
products of the chemistry of digestion, but from no knowledge of the
properties of those substances could we ever predict that it could
taste, unless gelatine or fibrin could themselves taste; for no
elementary fact can be in the conclusion which was not in the
premises."[18]

What is thus true of physiology and of those chemical combinations on
which it is based, is true also of sociology and the psychological facts
on which it is based. "When physiological elements are combined, the
combination reveals properties which were not appreciable in the
separate elements. The increasingly complex combination or association
of organic elements may produce an entirely special set of phenomena....
Their combination exhibits something more than the mere sum of their
separate properties. Thus, no knowledge of man as an individual would
enable us to forecast all the institutions which result from the
association of men and which can only manifest themselves in social
life."[19]

It is clear, then, that the mechanical theory of evolution can only
maintain itself by obliterating the distinction between mechanical
juxtaposition and chemical combination. The obstacles which stand in the
way of this obliteration, at the outset, are two. First, the behaviour
of a chemical compound bears no resemblance to the behaviour of its
constituents when separate. Next, the laws of the compound cannot be
deduced or exhibited as consequences of the laws of the separate
elements. To these two objections it may be replied, first, that though
the compound bears no resemblance to its separate constituents, the
character of every aggregate must be determined by that of its component
parts; and, next, that with more knowledge we shall come to see the way
in which the laws of the separate components generate the law of the
whole. Perhaps, by way of illustration, we may employ an analogy. A
number of bricks can be placed on one another to form a cube; a number
of cannon balls will form a pyramidical pile. The aggregate of bricks
resembles in shape the separate bricks; the aggregate of balls does not
resemble a ball in shape. Yet the pyramidical shape of the pile of
cannon balls is as certainly determined by the shape of the separate
balls, as the cubical shape of the heap of bricks is determined by that
of the separate bricks. Now, we do not know the geometrical structure of
chemical atoms; but, on this analogy, it is reasonable to suppose that,
if we did, we should see at once that the structure of a chemical
compound is dependent on, though different from, that of its elements.
So too in sociology, the aggregate, society, is not a human being, but
the character of any given society is determined by the character of its
individual members.

This last illustration, however, brings us to a fresh difficulty in the
way of the mechanical theory. As is observed in the remarks quoted
previously from Monsieur Bernard, the peculiar characteristic of those
more intimate combinations which form the subject-matter of chemistry,
physiology, and sociology is that in them the combining elements reveal
properties which were not perceptible in them previous to their
combination. It may be true that the character of these more intimate
combinations is determined by the properties of their constituents, but
it is by the properties which they reveal when in combination, not by
those which are manifest in them when uncombined. Therein lies the
difference between mechanical compounds and chemical combinations; and
it is that difference which the mechanical theory does not account for.
The more intimate, chemical, physiological, and sociological
combinations take place in virtue of properties which require the
combination to reveal them. In sociology it is not the juxtaposition of
individual men, but their co-operation, which makes a society. In
chemistry, the formation of chemical compounds implies the affinity of
the elements.

It seems, then, that the mechanical theory contains half the truth, but
not the whole truth. The half-truth which it insists on is that in both
mechanical and chemical combinations there is juxtaposition of the
constituent elements. The half of the truth which it overlooks is that
when the elements are juxtaposed in one way they develop or manifest new
qualities, when juxtaposed in the other way they do not. The mechanical
theory asserts that the only factors in evolution are matter and the
force which moves matter about: it takes into account the external
factors, but leaves out the internal force or spontaneity in virtue of
which things in a suitable environment develop new qualities. Doubtless
the juxtaposition of the elements is a condition without which they
would not manifest their new properties: the redistribution of matter
and motion is a condition of evolution, but it does not constitute
evolution. Rather, it is the continual revelation of these new qualities
which constitutes evolution, chemical affinity and all its consequences
in chemistry, spontaneous variation and all its consequences in the
evolution of organic life.

From this point of view it becomes clear why the laws of a chemical
compound neither are nor can be exhibited as consequences of or
deductions from the laws of its separate constituents. The properties
which the law of the compound describes are not the properties which the
separate elements exhibit. The living matter of biology, the active
atoms of chemistry, are not products of the lifeless, inert matter of
mechanics; but are different and higher revelations of the same power
which is manifested in different degrees in all. It is this progressive
manifestation, and not the mere drifting about of bits of matter, which
constitutes evolution. The redistribution of matter and motion may be a
concomitant of evolution, but it is not evolution. "The continuous
adjustment of internal relations to external relations," which Mr.
Herbert Spencer[20] offers as a definition of life, may be a condition
of the maintenance of an organism; but life is and means to each one of
us, and to the humblest thing that breathes, much more than that. Mr.
Spencer's definition of life leaves, for instance, consciousness out, as
of no account in life, and would be equally applicable to many
automatic, self-adjusting machines. The definition constitutes an
admission that life and consciousness cannot be exhibited as a
consequence of the redistribution of matter and motion. They appear at a
certain (or uncertain) point in the process of redistribution, and they
have as concomitants certain further redistributions; but they are
neither the consequence of nor are they identical with that
redistribution; nor can their laws be reduced to mere cases of the laws
of matter and motion.

The doctrine that evolution consists in nothing but movements in space,
amounts to the assertion that we know nothing about things and men
except that they move. In point of fact, we know a good deal more. We
know that men think, and that the movement of thought is not a movement
in space. We know that the vibrations of the ether are movements in
space and that they are also something more: they are known to us also
as sights, sounds, etc. No explanation or concise statement of the
process of evolution can be satisfactory, or even scientific, which
begins by denying the relevance and even the reality of the most
important part of our knowledge. If the "first principles" of evolution
are to be scientific, they must be inductions drawn from observation and
based on some similarity in the phenomena observed, in which case, and
in which case alone, they will apply to both classes of phenomena,
mental and material. If any "principle" is true of one class alone, it
is shown thereby not to be a "first principle": it is not universally
applicable.

This raises the question whether there can be any first principles in
this sense, whether mind and matter are, to some extent, subject to the
same laws; or whether the resemblances which are sometimes drawn are not
merely metaphors more or less expanded. Thus we speak of "weighty"
objections; but will anyone maintain that ideas are subject to, or
exemplify, the law of gravitation? We speak of ideas as "coherent" or
"incoherent"; does anyone suppose that they stick together in the same
way and from the same causes as material objects cohere?

Mr. Herbert Spencer has written a chapter[21] under the title "Society
is an Organism," in which he points out many resemblances between
society and an organism. But Mr. Spencer himself "distinctly
asserts"[22] that the resemblances imply nothing more than that in both
society and organisms there is "a mutual dependence of parts." That is
to say, sociology does not herein "exemplify" some of the laws of
biology, but sociology and biology both exemplify certain laws which
hold good wherever there is a mutual dependence of parts.

Again, Mr. Spencer says[23] that "evolution is definable as a change
from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying
the dissipation of motion and integration of matter"; and, having shown
how and why the homogeneous and the incoherent in the domain of physics
tend to become coherent and heterogeneous, he proceeds to show that
there is a similar process in the evolution of knowledge, and to say
"these mental changes exemplify a law of physical transformations that
are wrought by physical forces."[24] Now it doubtless is a fact that
with intellectual development there goes a more accurate discrimination
of differences at first unnoticed, a readier perception of resemblances
at first undetected, a consequent segregation and classification of
ideas, and a recognition of heterogeneity where homogeneity was at the
first glance supposed to prevail. Doubtless, too, as a result of this
process, there is greater coherency in our ideas. But is all this
anything more than expanded metaphor? If it is something more, how can
these mental changes "exemplify" a law of physics when ideas neither
stick physically to each other nor gravitate to one another like the
particles of the original, homogeneous, nebular mass? If mental and
material phenomena can to some extent obey the same laws, and these laws
are scientific inductions, there must be some resemblance between the
phenomena.

That resemblance cannot be physical or spatial, because mental phenomena
do not occupy space, or possess weight, or exist in three dimensions. As
far as one can see, it consists in two points: both classes of phenomena
(1) are objects of thought and (2) are displays of force or power. This
implies that movements in space are displays of the same force as is
manifested in the non-spatial movements of thought. The force which is
displayed in consciousness as Will appears in space as motion. Both
classes of phenomena, however, are not only displays of force, but also
objects of thought. The reality of a phenomenon of either class
consists in its being the manifestation of Will to or in consciousness.
The reality of the two classes is co-extensive with their similarity,
and is the sole foundation for any true inferences or justifiable
generalisations about them.

If the law of "the instability of the homogeneous" is a first principle,
and is a scientific induction based upon a real similarity between the
mental and material phenomena of which it is offered as an explanation,
it becomes interesting to inquire how far the similarity extends. In the
case of mental evolution the essential feature of the process is that
the mind gradually comes to perceive resemblances and to discriminate
differences which, though they were present all the time, were not at
first appreciable. In other words, the apparently homogeneous was, from
the beginning, really heterogeneous. Now this fact, which is true in the
sphere of mental evolution, finds its exact parallel in the evolution of
the material universe, if the account given above of mechanical
compounds and chemical combinations be true. What appears first in the
process of evolution, and is exemplified by mechanics, is matter
apparently inert. But when the particles of this apparently inert matter
enter into chemical combinations with one another they reveal a fresh
set of properties, quite different from those exhibited by them previous
to their combination; and, when they enter into physiological
relations, they display yet further additional properties. This
progressive manifestation it is, and not the accompanying "dissipation
of motion and integration of matter," which constitutes evolution in the
material world, and finds its exact parallel in mental evolution. In
both cases we have Will manifested as object of thought; and in both
cases we judge most truly of that which is manifested when we judge it
by its most complete manifestation. In both cases the apparent
homogeneity is not the ultimate fact underlying everything, but is only
the first-fruits of that which is yet to come.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] _First Principles_, § 46.

[9] MILL, _Inductive Logic_, bk. iii. ch. xii. p. 549.

[10] _Ibid._

[11] _First Principles_, ch. iii. § 46.

[12] SETH, _Chambers's Encyclopædia_, _s.v._ "Philosophy."

[13] KIRCHOFF, _Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik_, i. p. 1.

[14] MERTZ, _History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century_,
i. pp. 382, 3, note.

[15] LOTZE, _Microcosmus_, E. T., ii. p. 718.

[16] LOTZE, _Microcosmus_, E. T., ii. p. 718.

[17] MILL, _Inductive Logic_, bk. iii. ch. vi.

[18] MILL, _Inductive Logic_, bk. iii. ch. vi.

[19] CLAUDE BERNARD, quoted in _L'Année Sociologique, première
année_.

[20] _Principles of Biology_, v. § 30.

[21] _Principles of Sociology_, vol. i. part ii.

[22] _Ibid._, § 260.

[23] _First Principles_, § 127.

[24] _Ibid._, § 153.




VII.

NECESSITY


We have seen that if material things can alone be treated of by science,
if things which can be seen and handled are alone amenable to the
methods of science, then there can be no science of mind, and no
scientific laws to regulate mental phenomena. In the same way, if the
field of evolution is completely filled by the redistribution of matter
and motion, then there is no room left in the theory of evolution in
which to accommodate the history of ideas or of morals, there is no
evolution of thought or morality, no continuity between higher and lower
in the intellectual development of man and the brute.

We may admit that the methods of mental and moral science, of sociology
and political economy, are not identical with those employed by physics
or chemistry or astronomy. But we cannot admit that the facts which, if
not the proper study of mankind, are at any rate of the greatest
interest to man, are not subject to or part of the process of evolution,
and cannot be reduced to scientific law and order. The methods of the
philosophical sciences may not be the same as those of the exact
sciences; but neither are the methods of chemistry those of
astronomy--just as the instruments of the astronomer are not those of
the chemist. The exactness which is attained by those sciences that can
apply the methods of mathematics to their subject-matter cannot be
rivalled by philology or psychology. But it is not to all the material
sciences that the mathematical methods can be applied: meteorology deals
with matter in motion, but not yet with exactitude. The intangible and
invisible, but none the less real, facts of our mental and moral
experience can be measured to some extent by the statistics and averages
and curves employed by the sociologist, the demographer, and political
economist: the intensity of a desire may be estimated roughly and
relatively by the "effective demand" for its object, the will to live by
the number of suicides.

Again, we may admit that the laws of the exact or material sciences do
not extend to mental science, without thereby forfeiting the right to
subject mental phenomena to scientific investigation and analysis.
Chemistry does not cease to be a science because chemical affinity
cannot be exhibited as a case of the gravitation formula. Need
psychology renounce the claim to be a science because the laws of the
association of ideas cannot be deduced, say, from the laws of motion?

Of course, if science has no other object than to describe with
mathematical accuracy the exact way in which material things move, if no
method is scientific which does not result in such a formula, and if no
generalisation, however true, is scientific which does not formulate
motion in space, then, indeed, it is unscientific to talk of the
evolution of mind and thought, of man and of society.

On the other hand, the movements of material things in space are facts
of which we are aware, phenomena of which we are aware through our
senses; in a word, they are sense-phenomena. We are aware of them as
existing simultaneously and in combination, or as succeeding one upon
another; and no truth, even of the most mathematical and exact of the
sciences, does, or can do, more than express with mathematical exactness
the precise conditions under which these sense-phenomena co-exist or
follow one another, or the precise conditions without which such
co-existence or sequence cannot take place. A mathematical science
dealing with material things states only and always that certain
sense-phenomena occur invariably and uniformly under certain conditions.
The exact sciences move within the limits of the Uniformity of Nature
and the law of Universal Causation; and their subject-matter consists of
sense-phenomena, _i.e._ of things which, as known to science, are
objects of perception to some mind.

But sense-phenomena are not the only mental phenomena of which we are
aware: there are ideas which we do not see or handle, or smell or taste,
but of which we are nevertheless distinctly conscious. Thought has its
movement, ideas have their co-existence and sequences, the association
of ideas has its laws. There is a uniformity of human nature as well as
of external nature; there are conditions under which certain actions are
always performed, and without which they would never be done. Whether
the body of propositions in which these conditions are formulated be
accorded or denied the name of science, matters little. But it is
difficult to see what are the so great differences between these
phenomena and sense-phenomena that make the latter amenable and the
former insusceptible to scientific treatment. Is it that ideas are
invisible? So is weight, yet the gravitation formula is scientific. Is
it that thought is impalpable? So is colour, so is sound--yet there are
optics and acoustics.

Be this as it may, what makes things material susceptible to scientific
treatment is a quality which is not peculiar to them, but which is
shared by them in common with things immaterial: it is that they are
objects of which the mind is immediately aware, phenomena present to
some consciousness, and that they are phenomena which appear in
consciousness as co-existent and successive in certain definite uniform
modes which can be detected by thought and formulated in general
propositions, or laws.

If the theory of evolution comprehends all things, mind and morals as
well as matter and motion; if the law of continuity connects all things
together, immaterial as well as material, in a process which moves
without break or interruption; it is because all things agree in the
fact that they are presented (whether in sense or in idea) to the mind,
and because they are presented in the continuity of consciousness.

But the object of the scientific mind is not to observe and record all
the phenomena presented to it in the continuity of consciousness. On the
contrary, it neglects and rejects many; but always with a purpose, viz.
that of ascertaining and describing, as precisely as possible, the
conditions under which a given co-existence or sequence occurs (and
therefore may be expected to recur) and without which it fails to occur.
In other words, science assumes that everything has a cause, and that in
accordance with the uniformity of nature what has happened once will
happen again in the same circumstances; that a cause will, in the
absence of counteracting causes, produce its effect. Without these
assumptions science cannot treat of any subject: no department of
knowledge can be dealt with scientifically if these assumptions are not
admitted with regard to that department. On the other hand, if by the
aid of these assumptions we are enabled to reduce any set of phenomena
to law and order, our success is of itself sufficient ground for
regarding the assumptions as warrantable and justifiable. For science,
at any rate, the only question is whether as a matter of fact they do
enable us to determine under what conditions given co-existences or
sequences will ensue, or what conditions such a co-existence or sequence
necessarily implies.

With regard to human activity, mental and physical, it is plain matter
of fact that such uniformities of sequence and co-existence not only can
be but are demonstrated to prevail; and the extension of the scientific
principle of cause and effect to the domain of human will and action is
scientifically justified. The comparative sciences which deal with man
and his works and words--archæology, anthropology, philology--are
perpetually engaged in demonstrating, with fresh proofs every day, the
uniformity of human nature: in similar circumstances men have always
behaved in similar ways. To satisfy the same needs, they have
manufactured similar instruments at similar stages of development: flint
arrow-heads from Mexico or Japan resemble those taken from British
barrows; the pottery of early Greece is hard to distinguish from that of
Peru; the purpose of many stone implements of unknown antiquity has been
discovered by a comparison of the use to which similar tools are put by
savages still existing. That man's words, as well as his works, exhibit
law, order, and uniformity in their growth, as well as in their phonetic
decay, is shown by the science of comparative philology. That in the
face of the same problems similar analogies have been used to produce
similar solutions, is revealed by comparative mythology: the
imagination, which might have seemed most free to throw off the trammels
of law and of monotonous uniformity, falls in similar circumstances into
very similar grooves.

If the will of man is not revealed in the things which he makes, in the
words which he speaks, and the thoughts which he thinks, it is difficult
to know where to look for its manifestation. If, on the other hand, it
is manifested in these ways, then, whether it be free or not, it is
clearly uniform in its action; and the extension to it of the law of
causation seems fully justified by the results.

The recognition of the universality of the law of causation must not,
however, be supposed to carry with it any implication that there are no
differences between, say, the organic and inorganic, or that the laws of
the one are identical with or deducible from those of the other; the
association of ideas may be a scientific and established fact, and yet
not obey the same laws as the adhesiveness of material substances. What
unites all things into a continuous, coherent, and systematic cosmos,
into a scientific whole, is first the fact that, whether phenomena in
sense or phenomena in idea, they are all objects of thought; and next
the fact that they all exhibit the universality of causation and the
uniformity of nature.

Whether this uniformity which binds man and nature into one consistent
whole is a uniformity of will or a uniformity of necessity, is quite
another question. It is a metaphysical and not a scientific inquiry; and
the metaphysical answer, whatever it may be, is one for which science
does not and need not pause. So long as nature is granted to be uniform,
it matters not to science whether the uniformity is of necessity or is
freely willed. In either case the sequences or co-existences described
by science will continue, under the circumstances described, to happen
as described.

It is, however, commonly assumed that actions which are uniform are, by
their very uniformity, proved to be necessitated; and that unless what
happens was bound to happen, there can be no uniformity and no science.
Hence on the one hand the recognition of the freedom of the will has
been denounced as fatal to all scientific conceptions of human nature;
while on the other hand the uniformity of human nature and action has
been denied as being inconsistent with the freedom of the will. The one
side has pointed to one set of facts, which prove irresistibly that men
do will the same thing under the same circumstances. The other side has
pointed to the equally undeniable fact of our consciousness of freedom.

The essential feature in our consciousness of freedom is our conviction
that in the present we can do or abstain from doing a contemplated
action, and in the past, though we did the thing, we might have
abstained from it or have done something else. Now, whether this
possibility that what took place might not have taken place is a real
one or only a delusion, matters not to science. If real and true, it is
indeed fatal to one particular metaphysical theory, viz. that every
event which ever occurred was bound to occur and could not have happened
otherwise; but it leaves every truth of science, every one of those
concise descriptions of what takes place under given circumstances,
absolutely intact. The freedom of the will is anathematised in the name
but not in the interests of science.

That becomes clear when we reflect that the laws of science are, and do
not pretend to be more than, hypothetical statements. The gravitation
formula does not state that bodies do as a matter of fact actually fall
at the rate of sixteen feet in the first second, and so on. The
statement, if made, would be untrue: a feather floats much more slowly
to the ground. Still less does the formula affirm that all bodies move
towards each other--and for a very good reason: many bodies are at rest.
The formula makes no definite statement as to what actually does occur:
it merely states what would or will happen under certain circumstances;
and it is doubly or trebly hypothetical. First, it asserts conditionally
that if, and only if, bodies are free to move, they will tend to move
towards each other at the rate of sixteen feet in the first second, and
so on. Next, even if this condition be fulfilled in a particular case,
and a given body is free to move, say, towards the earth, the law of
gravitation does not assert that the body will absolutely, or
unconditionally, or of necessity fall sixteen feet in the first second:
it only affirms that the body tends to move at that rate, and the word
"tends" conveys in its meaning a second hypothesis. What is meant by
saying that a body tends to fall, or tends to move in a straight line,
is simply that the body will fall or move in the direction or at the
rate mentioned, provided that nothing happens to prevent it. The law of
gravitation then, like every other law of science, from the very terms
in which it is stated, contains two hypotheses: _if_ bodies are free to
move, then they _tend_ to move at a certain rate. Further, like every
other law of science, it is based on a third hypothesis, which, as it is
assumed by all scientific laws, is not expressly referred to by any.
That third hypothesis is that nature is uniform: if a body is free to
move it will, in the future as in the past, tend to move at a certain
rate, provided that nature is uniform.

Now, throughout all this, it is obvious that science knows nothing about
"necessity." Indeed, it is obvious that science, by the trebly
hypothetical form of all its laws, has taken particular pains to avoid
prejudging the question whether what happens was bound to happen. As we
have already said, science takes care to frame its statements in such a
way that they are quite independent of metaphysical theory, and will
remain as true within their limits if the theory of necessity prove
erroneous as they will if it turns out to be correct.

Nor can it be said, thus far, that the laws of science lead us to the
theory of necessity as their logical conclusion. It may be true that if
I walk over a precipice I shall fall to the bottom, in accordance with
the law of gravitation. But it does not logically follow that therefore
I must walk over. It may be true that a suspension bridge will fall in
the same way, if the supports be removed; but it does not follow that
they are therefore bound to give way. It may be true that if nature is
uniform certain sequences will happen; but it does not therefore follow
that nature must be uniform. In other words, the theory of necessity, if
true, cannot be based on science, but must rely on some metaphysical
considerations. Science does not undertake to prove even that nature is
uniform, much less that it is uniform of necessity. The opposite theory,
that the uniformity of nature or of human nature is due to the action
of a will freely manifesting itself as uniform, may be considered
superfluous from the scientific point of view. But the theory of
necessity from the same point of view is equally superfluous. As long as
events do happen uniformly, science has all she wants--whether their
uniformity is of will or of necessity is for her quite a superfluous
question. And if science were all that man wanted, these rival
metaphysical theories would be of no interest to him either. But the
persistency of the attempt to extract some support for the metaphysical
theory of necessity out of the facts of science shows that men of
science, being men, must have their metaphysics.

Are there, then, other facts of science, or assumptions essential to
science, which require the metaphysical theory of necessity as their
presupposition or entail it as their natural consequence? Probably the
reply will be that there is one such principle: that of the Universality
of the Law of Causation. The assumption that everything _must_ have a
cause may be on the part of science a pure assumption, and one which,
like the Uniformity of Nature, cannot be proved by science; but it does,
it may be said, assume the existence of a necessity in things.

It does, it may be replied, but whether the necessity which science
assumes is the same as that maintained by the metaphysical theory in
question, may be doubted. The metaphysical theory is that everything
which happens happens of necessity, and could not have happened
otherwise than it did. The assumptions which science makes with regard
to causation are that nothing can happen unless the conditions requisite
to its production are fulfilled, and that when those conditions are
present the result necessarily follows. The question is whether this
scientific necessity is the same as that metaphysical necessity; or, if
they are not the same, whether either is a logical consequence from the
other.

They are not the same: the scientific assumption is hypothetical, the
metaphysical absolute. The former says that things will happen in one
way, if certain conditions are fulfilled, in another if they are not;
the latter that they absolutely must happen in this way, and not in
that; and that it is an illusion to imagine that they can happen
_either_ this way _or_ that. Science allows us the alternative; the
metaphysical theory declares that the alternative is an impossibility or
an illusion. The metaphysical theory may be right, but it is not the
same thing as the scientific assumption. Neither can it be exhibited as
a logical presupposition of or consequence from the scientific
assumption. From a hypothetical "if" you cannot logically get an
absolute "must." It may be a scientific truth that, if an electric spark
is passed through two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, a drop of
water will be formed. But it does not follow that therefore an electric
spark must be passed through them.

It is obvious that the difference between science and metaphysics in the
matter of necessity is that, whereas science cautiously says, "If
certain conditions are fulfilled, certain results will ensue,"
metaphysics boldly says, "The conditions on which the whole future
depends are already absolutely fixed." Once more, this metaphysical
theory may be true; but, if so, it is not from science that it derives
its truth. The transition from the "if" of science to the "must" of
metaphysics is illogical, though not unnatural, and is facilitated by a
certain amount of obscurity, which can be thrown over it by drawing
illustrations from the past. Thus, if an event has already taken place,
we may infer with certainty from the fact of its occurrence that the
conditions necessary to produce it were realised. And as each of those
conditions must have had a cause, we can infer again that the conditions
requisite to produce them were fulfilled. And so we may travel back _ad
infinitum_ along a never-ending chain of cause and effect, always moving
from one fixed and necessitated event to another event equally
necessitated and fixed. Thus the whole past history of the universe may
be exhibited as a necessary sequence of events; and the inference may be
drawn, and for the purposes of the theory of metaphysical necessity must
be drawn, that because the occurrence of an event proves that the
conditions required for its production were realised, therefore they and
they alone were bound to be realised. Yet this is simply our old
familiar _non sequitur_ thrown into the past tense. It is true that if I
walk over a precipice I shall fall, according to the law of gravitation.
But I am not therefore bound to walk over. It is true that the man who
fell over the cliff obeyed the law of gravity. But we cannot infer
either from the law of gravitation or from the fact of his falling that
he was bound to fall. We can infer that the conditions requisite to
produce the fall were present, but we cannot infer from the fall that
they were bound to be present. It may be quite true that they were bound
to be present, but the effect which followed on them cannot be alleged
either as the cause or the proof of such necessity. We must look for the
reason of the necessity--if there be any necessity in the
case--elsewhere. Shall we, then, say that the conditions of the fall
were themselves effects of prior causes, without which they would not
have happened? That again is true, but the fact that Z would not have
happened had not Y preceded, is not in itself any proof that Y was bound
to happen. And so we may travel back _ad infinitum_ along the
never-ending chain of cause and effect without ever finding ourselves in
a position to infer from the law that everything must have a cause,
that this cause was bound to operate rather than that. The occurrence of
Z is no proof that Y was bound to happen, nor is the fact that Y really
happened any proof that its cause X was bound to occur--and so we may
work back to the beginning of the alphabet. The fact that B took place
shows that A actually occurred, but not that A, rather than A>1 or A>2,
was bound to occur. And if A is the beginning, what was the nature of
the necessity (prior to the beginning of things) which determined in
favour of A rather than A>1 or A>2?

We may indeed say, if we like--since no one can prevent us from saying
things without proof or probability--that the mere fact that A happened
shows that it was bound to happen. But then we might just as well have
said it of Z, and saved ourselves the trouble of going through so much
alphabet to get so little result. We might just as well say that as the
explosion or the accident _did_ happen as a matter of fact, it could not
possibly have been prevented: Z was bound to happen under the
circumstances, therefore the circumstances could not have been altered;
only one result was possible under the conditions, therefore no other
conditions were possible.

Or--to go back to the beginning of the alphabet once more--we may say
with science that we are content with the fact that A did happen, or,
since science does not profess to take us back to an absolute beginning
(force and matter being eternal and without beginning), let us say we
may, like science, be content with the fact that K can be shown to have
happened; but whether K, rather than K>1 or K>2, was bound to occur
there is nothing in science to show. If we take up this, the scientific,
attitude, two consequences follow. First, there is nothing in science to
require or countenance the metaphysical theory of necessity. Next, what
is true of K is equally true of L or M or Z. The fact that L or M or Z
occurred proves that the conditions did combine in the way necessary to
produce L or M or Z, not that they were bound to combine in that way and
could not have combined so as to produce L>1 or L>2, or Z>1 or Z>2 or
Z>3.

Perhaps it may be said that the following is the proper way of stating
the case: We have reason for believing that, as a matter of scientific
necessity, if L is at work it can only produce M, and not M>1 or M>2
(the application of a light to a barrel of gunpowder can have only one
result). But L was at work, therefore M alone could result. Quite true,
but that does not show that the light was bound to be applied, or that
the powder might not have been damp. In fine, the moment the conditions
requisite for the explosion are combined, the explosion is necessary, M
is the only possible result; but until then the explosion is not
necessary, and the result may be M>1, or M>2, or M>3. A cause (_i.e._
the conditions combined) can only have one effect; but until it has
that effect it is not the cause, and may never be. Pre-existent causes,
which must inevitably produce predetermined effects, are figments of the
metaphysical imagination. Conditions which may, and, subject to the
trebly hypothetical laws of science, will combine in certain ways are
scientific facts.

In fine, the Uniformity of Nature, in the sense in which Nature is
assumed, both by science and by common sense, to be uniform, simply
amounts to the assumption that under the same conditions the same
consequences will ensue. But this uniformity neither requires nor
entails necessity. The very form chosen by science for the expression of
scientific laws proclaims the fact: "_If_ bodies are free to move,"
"_if_ counteracting causes be absent," "a body _tends_ to move in the
same straight line." Whatever necessity is introduced into the truths of
science thus expressed is obviously imported from without, and is no
part of science. We may, if we choose, read necessity into science, but
there is no warrant in science for doing so. Science is absolutely
without prejudice on this point. If everything that happens happens of
necessity, the gravitation formula will receive no accession to its
truth. If there be no necessity in the case, each and every truth of
science remains valid as long as the same consequences do ensue in the
same circumstances.

Since, then, science observes an armed neutrality in this dispute, and
is concerned only to guard that assumption of the uniformity of nature
which is vital to her existence, we must turn elsewhere for a decision
of the question.

We began this chapter with an expression of our full adhesion to the
view which insists upon the uniformity, not merely of nature, but also
of human nature. We rejected the idea that there is no science of man,
and has been no evolution of mind, as a patent absurdity, and a violent
contradiction of admitted facts. Any theory of evolution and any
definition of science which fails to comprehend human nature is thereby
condemned as inadequate and inaccurate. For those, then, who with us
accept the continuity and uniformity between nature and man there will
be no difficulty in arguing from the one to the other: which of the two
we shall start from will depend mainly upon circumstances, upon which is
the more accessible in any particular inquiry, and which is likely to
afford the best "take-off." In the present case the action of inanimate
objects upon one another can be accounted for on either hypothesis,
_i.e._ that such action is willed by some superior power or that it is
necessitated by some previous action, which is necessitated by some
other previous action, and so on for ever, without ever reaching any
original or originating necessity. Both hypotheses will fit all the
facts of all the physical sciences; both _are_ hypotheses; and science
can do and does do without either one or the other. Nor does our
observation of the observed facts of nature enable us to say, with
regard to any actual fact of this kind, either that it could or that it
could not have happened otherwise than it did. In fine, as long as we
confine ourselves to the subject-matter of the physical sciences, as
long as we start in this case from nature, we cannot find anything to
disturb the equal balance of the two hypotheses, which are two
hypotheses and nothing more. But when we turn from nature to human
nature, when we consult our own experience of our own actions, the case
is notoriously different. Our experience in that case is that of two or
more suggested and possible actions we are free to choose whichever we
will; and our memory of past acts of choice testifies that though we
actually chose one particular course, we might have abstained from it in
favour of some other alternative. Here, too, as in the case of purely
physical causation, the fact that a thing happened is proof conclusive
that, in accordance with the law of universal causation, the conditions
necessary to its occurrence were fulfilled; but it constitutes no proof
or probability that the conditions were bound to be fulfilled. The fact
that we chose to act in a certain way does not in the least convince us
that we were bound to choose that action and that action alone. On the
contrary, our memory is clear and our conviction is certain that our
choice was free. In the physical and the spiritual spheres alike it is
true that, when all the conditions requisite for a given effect are
combined, the result must ensue. And in both spheres it is equally true
that until the conditions are effectively combined no such necessity
exists. In the case of our own actions we are directly and immediately
conscious of the fact that it is our own will which effects this
combination. For us, therefore, who hold, with Professor Huxley, that
the uniformity and continuity of nature with human nature is essential
to any rational and scientific view of the universe and to every
comprehensive theory of evolution, it is natural to interpret physical
by spiritual causation. We know from direct and personal experience of
certain cases of causation that, though a particular effect necessarily
ensued from a certain combination of conditions, the conditions might
have been combined differently and with a different result. There is,
therefore, nothing unreasonable in the inference that with regard to the
events in nature the conditions which produced them might have combined
differently and with different results; and that the determining factor
was a will (not our own) conscious of its own freedom.

Thus far, then, the case stands thus, that in the observed facts of
nature there is nothing to incline the balance in favour either of
Necessity or Free-will; and that if those facts constituted the whole
of our experience we should have no reason to believe the one rather
than the other. But when we turn to the consideration of events of which
we are the cause, we know that our contribution to the sum of conditions
on which the event depends is a free-will offering which we make or
decline to make as we like. That consideration would not in itself be
sufficient to warrant us in inferring a similar absence of necessity in
the combination of the conditions which produce natural events. If, for
instance, we had reason to believe or evidence to show an absolute chasm
between nature and human nature, an impossibility of their being subject
to any common laws or conceptions; or if, like primitive man or the
savage, we had not the accumulated observations of science to
demonstrate the truth of evolution and the law of continuity--then we
should have no reason or little reason, as the case might be, for
interpreting nature's action and human action by one another.

The savage, as is well known, does, without any scientific authority
whatever, assume straight off an entire uniformity of nature with human
nature. He jumps at conclusions: he takes it for granted that everything
which moves has a will of its own, like himself. But though the savage
shares with the savant the impulse to believe in an essential continuity
binding together man and nature, that impulse is about all they have in
common. In the savage it expresses itself in an absolute identification,
entirely ignoring all differences, between the two: the tree or the
river has to be a conscious, rational creature, though its behaviour
bears more difference from than resemblance to that of a human being. In
the savant, the same impulse is trained to fertility by being constantly
subjected to the guidance of observed facts: man as an animal organism
is subject to the same physiological laws as other similar organisms; as
an organic compound, to the same chemical changes; as a body possessing
inertia, to the same physical laws. The savant's belief, however, in the
continuity of nature and human nature is consistent with or rather
implies points of difference between the two; _e.g._ man possesses a
consciousness which the river does not, man is, the river is not, a
conscious cause. Great though these differences be, still they are not
in the eyes of science and from the point of view of evolution great
enough to constitute a breach of continuity, for human actions are with
the growth of science increasingly seen to be part of the uniformity of
nature: the human cause only produces its effect provided that all the
requisite conditions are forthcoming. Indeed, there is a danger, in some
tendencies of modern thought, of ignoring the differences and of
confounding continuity with identity. The distinction between the
animate and the inanimate, which was hardly reached by the savage, is
in danger of being overlooked by the modern materialist--an error which
would be paralleled in religion by a relapse from monotheism into
nature-worship. And as in the pathology of religion there is a constant
tendency to substitute for religious faith a trust in the automatic
efficacy of rites and ceremonies, which is a falling away into mere
magic, so in metaphysic there is a tendency, in the name of science
falsely invoked, to substitute for the actions of agents consciously
free the operation of an automatic and magical necessity. Freedom of the
will is constantly taken, or rather mistaken, both by its supporters and
opponents, to mean the power of acting without a motive, and to imply
that from identically the same combination of conditions one result can
ensue at one time and quite a different one at another; and freedom of
the will in this sense, and with this implication, is rightly rejected
as inconsistent with the uniformity of nature. Freedom, however, means
not the absence of motive, but the presence of more motives than one,
for where there is no alternative there is no freedom, and where there
is an alternative there is a choice between two things. The fact that
conscious action is always action with a motive has nothing in it
repugnant to the uniformity of nature, unless uniformity of nature is
arbitrarily assumed to be identical with necessity. Nor has the
uniformity of nature, _i.e._ the fact that the same action issues from
the same combination of conditions, anything in it inconsistent with the
freedom of the will, unless the occurrence of an event proves that it
was bound to occur. The laws of science--whether physical science or
mental and moral science--are hypothetical statements: if the love of
gain predominates in men, then all the consequences predicted by the
science of Political Economy will ensue. But this proves neither that
the love of gain must nor even that it does prevail. The uniformity
which marks the actions of men as often as this motive prevails is
sufficient for the purposes of science, and is consistent with the
freedom of the will; it does not imply that men act without a motive,
nor that the same conditions produce now one effect and now another.
Until the conditions which are necessary for the production of a
physical event are effectively combined, physical science knows no
necessity to make them combine in that particular way; if they combine
in some other way, and with some other result, that combination will
equally illustrate the truth of science (which says, if A then B, if A>1
then B>1), and the result will equally accord with the uniformity of
nature. The same considerations apply to human nature, and if applied
will be found consistent with the freedom of the will. Until the mind is
made up, _i.e._ so long as there are alternative courses open to it,
the man is free, just in the same way as in physical science, until the
combination of conditions is effected, the result may or may not follow.
If one alternative is adopted one set of consequences will ensue, if
another, another; but whichever is adopted the results will be in
accordance with the uniformity of nature, the law of cause and effect
will not have been violated, the mind will not have acted without a
motive, or under the influence of necessity. In fine, the universality
of the law of causation lies in the fact that, however the conditions
combine, each combination can only produce its peculiar effect; and
whatever effect occurs can be the result only of its appropriate
conditions. To say with the necessitarian that, unless at the beginning
of things the course of events was unalterably fixed once and for ever,
there can be no science, is to deny the universality of the laws of
science, to maintain that they are true only of one particular
succession of events, and would not be true of any other. In point of
fact, however, the laws of science, by their hypothetical form, are
adapted to cope with what is at least as striking as the uniformity of
nature, that is, the diversity of nature: they apply not merely to one,
but to all possible combinations of circumstances. In what way a body
will move depends upon the conditions at work; but Science is not such a
maimed and crippled thing that she refuses to consider its motion until
she has been assured that, of the various conceivable conditions that
might be brought to bear on the body, only one can, as a matter of fact,
be brought to bear. On the contrary, the universality of her laws lies
in the fact that they apply to all possible combinations, not merely to
combination A producing B, but to A>1 producing B>1, A>2 producing B>2,
and so on. The origin of all terrestrial life may be traced back, let us
say, to the fortuitous combination of chemicals which constituted the
first speck of protoplasm; and sundry important consequences can be
shown by science to have flowed from that fortuitous concurrence. The
origin of any particular species may be traced back to the accidental
appearance of a sport or variety which happened to be better adapted to
the environment than the parent forms were.

But, if these accidental and fortuitous occurrences had not taken place,
the subsequent course of things upon earth, though there might have been
no life, would still have been just as much in accordance with the
uniformity (and the diversity) of nature, and equally amenable to
scientific explanation. The theory that the first speck of protoplasm or
the ancestral variety of a species was bound by a metaphysical necessity
to occur just when and where it did, is of no use to science: if A had
not happened, A>1 or A>2 or A>3 would have done, and the resulting B or
B>1 or B>2 or B>3 would have been equally in accordance with the
uniformity of nature and equally explicable by science.

If, then, in the physical world neither science nor the uniformity of
nature requires us to believe in necessity, there is no antecedent
presumption that necessity must be the law of the spiritual world: we
may examine the facts of our own inner experience without prejudice.
What the freedom of the will implies is that the mind has present to it
more alternatives or motives than one, and that they are real
alternatives and real motives, _i.e._ motives which may really in this
particular case influence action, alternatives any one of which may be
adopted in this case. The circumstances or conditions in which a man
makes up his mind are, until he has made up his mind, so to speak, held
in solution, and may be precipitated this way or that at his choice, or
not precipitated at all, unless he chooses. The fact that in the same
circumstances the same result ensues is no argument against the freedom
of the will, if it be remembered that the will is itself one of the
circumstances which contribute to the result, just as the mass of a
body, as well as the force applied to it, helps to determine its
velocity. The statement of the case then becomes this: if all the
circumstances of the case be the same, and the will be the same, the
consequences (_i.e._ the determination of the will) also will be the
same. But the necessitarian position requires the statement that if all
the circumstances be the same, then without any further proviso the will
is determined by the circumstances; or, to put it another way, that the
will does not in any way contribute to the result, which is just as
though we were to say that the mass of a body had nothing to do with its
velocity. But if the will does contribute to the result, _i.e._ to the
determination of itself, it is in part self-determining.

That there must be some circumstances present, if there is to be any
self-determination on the part of the will, we have already admitted;
the freedom of the will implies the presence of more alternatives or
motives than one--and we always have the alternative of acting or
abstaining from action. But this admission only limits the powers of the
will; it does not lessen its liberty. The mind can only choose between
the alternatives offered to it; but as long as it has real alternatives
it is free. That there must be definite circumstances if there is to be
any definite determination of the will is in accordance with the fact
that a cause is not some one individual thing, but a sum of conditions,
every one of which is necessary to the effect, and the absence of any
one of which is enough to prevent the occurrence of the result. It is a
vulgar error to single out some one of the conditions (_e.g._ the force
acting on a body) and dub it the cause, to the neglect of all the other
conditions (_e.g._ the body's mass) which are equally necessary to the
effect. It is the error committed by the necessitarian who calls the
circumstances the cause, in the case of a determination of the will, and
neglects the part played by the will itself.

This point of view illustrates the untenability of another objection to
the freedom of the will, viz. that it implies that under the same
conditions different results can ensue, or, to put it in other words,
that without any change in the conditions either this or that
consequence may issue. Freedom of the will is thus alleged to be
inconsistent with the uniformity of nature, with the law that a cause
must produce its effect. The fallacy here obviously lies in assuming
that, in a modification of the will, the circumstances by themselves
constitute the cause, whereas in point of fact the cause consists of the
sum of the conditions, _i.e._, in this case, of the circumstances and
the will taken in combination. Alter any one of the conditions, and the
effect will be changed--whether the condition which is changed be one of
the circumstances or be the will, matters not. Conversely, if under the
same circumstances a man acts one way one time and another another, the
inference is not that the uniformity of nature has been violated, and
that the same conditions produce different effects, but that one of the
conditions was different; and as _ex hypothesi_ the circumstances
(_i.e._ all the conditions except the will) were in this case the same,
it remains that the condition which was different in this case was the
will.

Really, it is the theory of necessity which violates the uniformity of
nature, for it requires us to believe that provided certain of the
conditions (viz. all the circumstances except the will) are the same,
then the result must be the same, no matter how much the remaining
condition (the will) changes. We may, indeed, evade this conclusion by
simply denying that the will is one of the conditions of its own
modifications, and we may say that the wax contributes nothing to the
form which it takes on when impressed by the seal. The truth is that if
the will or the wax appears in the result, it must have been present and
active as one of the conditions: it contributes to its own
determination, and is in part self-determining.

If it be in accordance with the uniformity of nature and with our
experience of what actually happens, that the circumstances should be
the same and the will different on two different occasions, then the
theory of necessity breaks down: if we can will and act differently
under the same circumstances, we have all the freedom we want. But
if--all the circumstances, save the will, being the same--the resulting
modification or determination of the will is different, then the
difference of result must be due to some difference in the conditions;
all the conditions save one were _ex hypothesi_ the same; the remaining
condition, therefore, viz. the will, must have changed. What caused the
change? Not the circumstances: one attempt to explode a barrel of
gunpowder may resemble another in all the circumstances save one (the
dampness of the powder), but the circumstances which remain the same
(application of the spark, etc.) are not the cause of the difference in
the remaining condition.

If, then, we do as a matter of fact at times under the same
circumstances will different things, and if the circumstances are not
the cause of the change of will, then the will changes itself, _i.e._ is
self-determining, self-modifying. And, as we all know from experience,
it determines itself at the moment of choice, not before. Until all the
conditions requisite for the effect are combined, neither physical nor
mental science requires us to assume that they must combine in this
particular way--that the light must be applied to the powder because an
explosion will take place if it is applied, that the motive of gain must
be adopted because it will be gratified if it is obeyed.

Whether the conditions combine so as to produce A, or so as to produce
B, the uniformity of nature is equally obeyed in either case, the law
that a cause must produce its effect is equally fulfilled, and either
sequence is as amenable to scientific explanation as the other. But
though science and the uniformity of nature both require us to believe
that when the conditions are combined the result will follow, neither
requires us to assume that the combination is fixed before it is
effected. And this is true equally of purely physical events and of
human actions. This truth, in the case of the latter class of actions,
is expressed by the statement that alternative courses of action are
open to the agent, and that they are real alternatives, alternatives
such that any one of them may in this particular instance be followed.
From the point of view of science and of the uniformity of nature, we do
not conceive that there is any difference in this respect between human
actions and physical events: if science is to include both kinds of
sequence and to render a rational account of them, we must assume that
the principles on which conditions combine or fail to combine are the
same in both cases. If physical events and human actions are both
constituents in the process of evolution, there must be a continuity
between them. It follows, therefore, that, in the case of physical
events as well as of human actions, until the conditions are combined in
such a way as to involve one determinate result to the exclusion of all
others, they might combine in other ways with other results--in fine,
that before the combination is effected there are always other
alternatives.

At this point it becomes necessary to take into account the diversity as
well as the uniformity of nature--in this case a diversity which will
lead us to a higher uniformity. To the human agent alternative courses
of action are open in the sense that he is conscious of their
possibility and that after deliberation he adopts one or other of them.
With purely physical phenomena and material things the case is
different: they may be combined in this way _or_ in that; the
alternative is indeed open, so long as the combination is not effected,
but it is not open to them nor is it adopted, when adopted, by them. It
is adopted for them. In some cases by man. In all cases by that by which
alone alternative courses of action can be contemplated and adopted--a
conscious will. The course and form which man imparts to material
things--to his implements or his works of art--make them so far the
expression of his will; for the rest they are equally an expression of
will, though of a will not his.

For those at the present day who unfeignedly accept the general
principles of evolution and philosophise from them, a dualistic
philosophy is impossible. They cannot hold that matter is subject to
evolution and that mind is not; and the continuity of the process of
evolution forbids us to suppose that there is any real discontinuity
between that which appears at one stage as matter and at another as
mind. There is no discontinuity if material things (_i.e._ the things of
which we have sense-perception, but which differ from our sensations in
being permanent) are on the one side the permanent expressions of Will
and on the other are the transient impressions made on us in the shape
of sense-phenomena.

What is true thus of the content of evolution, of that which is in
process of evolution, is true also of the law of the process. We cannot
suppose that it extends only to matter--that the behaviour of matter is
susceptible of a rational explanation and the behaviour of mind is not.
The continuity of the process excludes the possibility of a dual
control: either the power which manifests itself in all things is
intelligent throughout or it is not. If there is no reason in the
behaviour of things, but only necessity, then those human actions and
conceptions which man considers to be the result of his reason are
really the result of unintelligent necessity.

It is the latter hypothesis which is expressed by the necessitarian
theory. The ordinary belief of mankind--a belief which it is impossible
to resist at the moment when you are making up your mind whether you
will do this or not--is that you _can_ do the thing or not, that the
alternatives are real and the motives such that either of them may be
acted on. The necessitarian hypothesis is that the alternatives are not
real, that even before you have made up your mind there is only one
alternative which you can follow--the other courses are only apparent
alternatives, because you cannot choose or act on any of them; the
other motives are not real motives, because by a necessity dating from
the beginning of things they cannot possibly influence you on this
occasion. Your action is as automatic as that of a piano which responds
to the touch. The difference is that you think about the stimulus
received and the piano does not. Consequently the piano makes no
mistakes; you make two. You think of various possible consequences of
the stimulus--which are all impossible--and you imagine that the one
which you choose is the consequence of your intelligent choice, whereas
it is the automatic outcome of that iron law of necessity which binds
together the whole process of evolution.

It will be readily understood that a hypothesis of this kind, which is
apparently in violent conflict with the plainest facts of our daily
personal experience, and gives the lie to that consciousness of freedom
which we all possess, would not be held in theory--it cannot be acted on
in practice--unless it appeared to be the consequence of some
well-established facts. It is, of course, held by its supporters to be a
logical consequence from the uniformity of nature and the law of
universal causation, and to be a necessary pre-supposition if we are to
give any scientific account of human nature and its evolution. If, as we
have argued at length in this chapter, that is not the case, if the law
of universal causation only requires that a thing cannot take place
unless the requisite conditions combine--and not that conditions, which
did or may combine, were or are bound to combine--the question still
remains, what if any value the hypothesis has on its own intrinsic
merits.

In the first place it is a hypothesis which can never either be proved
or disproved. The hypothesis is that our supposed consciousness of
freedom is an illusion, that if we imagine we are free to choose what we
will do, or that we could in the past have chosen otherwise than we did,
we are deceived. The hypothesis is not based on any facts of
consciousness: it is a suggestion that consciousness may be deceptive.
It may: there is no means of proving or disproving the suggestion, for
any reply must proceed from one consciousness to another, both of which
are suspected by the maker of the suggestion to be not wholly
trustworthy. We cannot ask him to concede to us, in order that we may
convince him by argument, the very point which is in dispute.

In the next place, the hypothesis of necessity does formally account for
all the facts which it is designed to explain: it accounts for the whole
process of evolution. If everything that happens does so because it
must, then the mere occurrence of any step in the process carries its
own explanation with it: the mere fact that it occurred shows that it
was bound to occur. If we ask, "Why was it bound to occur?" the answer
is, "Because it was." Various intermediate reasons may be
interpolated--because everything must have a cause, and every cause
must have its effect--but if we ask, "Why must everything have a cause?
why must every cause produce its effect?" the ultimate answer is always,
"It must because it must." If we ask, "What proof is there that it
must?" there is none. As we have already said, the hypothesis is one
which does not admit either of proof or disproof.

The case is much the same with the opposite theory of freedom. Formally,
the hypothesis that the whole process of evolution is throughout the
expression of self-determining will is adequate to account for all the
facts. But it is a hypothesis which can be neither proved nor disproved
if the testimony of consciousness to our freedom may not be accepted. We
cannot prove that the testimony of consciousness is true or to be
trusted in this or any other matter. We take it on faith. The questions
arise, therefore, Is it reasonable to take anything on faith? and if so,
what? and why?




VIII.

INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE


The theory of Design is singularly tenacious of existence, as many
errors and all truths are. Science still speaks of "organs," that is of
"tools" ({_organa_}), and of organs as performing "functions"; for
the fact remains that organs are the instruments by means of which the
organism acts, and that they have each their appropriate work to do,
their function to perform, though science may decline to draw the
inference that the instruments were designed to perform the work they
do.

The Argument from Design was a comparatively simple affair as long as
the organism and the environment were assumed to have been separately
created: you had only to show how marvellously and perfectly they fitted
one another when brought together, and it followed that they must have
been designed to fit--to say they only chanced to fit was obviously
absurd. But when science discovered that organism and environment were
not thus independent of one another, the marvel vanished: if the
environment shaped the organism, or the organism modified the
environment to suit itself, no wonder that they fitted one another. It
ceases to be remarkable that rivers should always flow by great cities,
when we reflect that men selected sites near rivers. And chance seemed
to have been established by Evolution where Design once reigned; for, if
the only forms of life which can flourish in a given spot are those
which are suited to the place, all we can say is that, if one form is
fit to survive, it will; and if it is not, some other will. Whatever
form survives will do so, not because it was designed to do so, but
because it happened to be suited to its surroundings. In fine, organisms
and their organs are what they are because circumstances and their past
history have made them so: they have been evolved, not designed.

A little reflection, however, is enough to show that the Argument from
Design is not completely excluded by evolution: things in general are
what circumstances and their past history have made them; but were not
those very circumstances designed to evolve what they did? Nay, are we
not compelled to assume that they were so designed, if we believe in a
Designer?

If, however, we ask Natural Science to discuss these questions with us,
she declines the invitation on the ground that it is not her business to
do so: her business is to find out in what way, not with what purpose,
animal life has come to assume the various forms in which we know it;
and she can do this, her business, quite well--indeed better--without
discussing such questions. If it were proved that the history of animal
life upon this earth had been intended from the beginning to follow the
lines on which it has actually developed, not one of the problems which
Natural Science has yet to solve would be brought a whit nearer
solution; nor would she be any the better off, if it were proved that
there was no design. She therefore very properly declines to discuss the
question: there may be a Design and a Designer, or there may not; she
does not know; if it is the business of science to answer the question,
it must be of some other science, not of Natural Science.

So too Physical Science, when asked whether the laws of motion and
matter were not designed to produce the effects which they actually do
cause, replies that they may or may not, but that the law of
gravitation, for instance, is equally true for her purposes, whether
bodies were or were not designed to fall to the earth at the rate of
sixteen feet in the first second, and so on. It may be the business of
some other science to answer such questions: it is not the business of
Physical Science.

And so the inquirer may go the round of the whole family of Sciences. It
is an extraordinarily industrious family. It has an enormous amount of
work to do: it has to feed, clothe, and generally provide for all
mankind. And it can only carry on at all by a very careful division of
labour: each science has her allotted task, and can only get the day's
work done in the day by strictly confining herself to that task. Each
science has her own questions to answer, and can only succeed in doing
so by refusing to listen to any others.

The inquirer may think it strange that, in all this vast and active
organisation for answering questions, no provision should be made for
answering what seem to him to be some of the most important questions of
all; and if he has been brought up really to believe in science, he will
think it too strange to be true; he will persist with his questions, and
will be eventually rewarded for his faith by discovering that there is a
science which undertakes to answer them--Theology. But he will also
discover that Theology is not very cordially esteemed by her sister
sciences--not that they are jealous of her because she has the
presumption to profess to answer questions which they acknowledge to be
too high for them, but because there are grave suspicions as to her
legitimacy: it is doubted whether she is a Science at all. She is, they
are afraid it must be admitted, untruthful, immoral, and certainly
altogether unscientific: she says what she cannot prove, and says she
believes it. But they know she only pretends to believe it: they, of
course, do not believe anything on insufficient evidence; what
hypocrisy, then, to pretend that anyone can really believe anything
except what is proved by scientific methods! They are thankful to say
that they have no "faith." However, she may improve; she is certainly
very backward; still, she may grow up into a common-sense science like
her sisters; and then she will give up the foolish idea that she can
answer questions which they cannot.

And now what truth is there in the picture thus drawn?

If there be a God, there is no other fact in the world of such awful or
such blessed import to man. Religion is based on faith that there is a
God. To tell the religious mind that there is no scientific proof of the
existence of God is to tell it nothing new. Those were not the terms on
which we took up our faith--that we should have scientific proof of
everything before we did anything. On the contrary, religion begins
when, and only when, a man begins "to walk humbly with his God," to know
that he knows nothing except that his soul cleaves to God and humbly
trusts in Him. We do not bargain so much belief, and no more, for so
much proof: we give "ourselves, our souls and bodies." The gift is free.
The soul shrinks from saying even that it has proof of God's existence;
it only knows it hopes and longs for Him. "Faith is the assurance of
things hoped for," and the strength of our assurance is as the strength
of our hope. But scientific proof is not the thing hoped for: it is not
what is desired when the soul is conscious of but one thing, that it
thirsteth, like the hart after the water-brooks, for the living God. The
humble confession of our illimitable ignorance is the foundation of our
faith and will ever be its sure refuge, its inexpugnable stronghold. It
is only when, being ignorant, we are tempted to deny our ignorance, that
trouble begins. We drop the substance for the shadow when we believe not
in God, but in some proof of God.

To the man of science all this talk about faith appears mere folly,
sheer unreason, a morbid wallowing in ignorance from pure love of
ignorance; and there are others who, whilst admitting that proof is not
what is wanted by some minds, yet are aware, from their own sad
experience, that other minds yearn for it, and can know no peace without
it. And if we ask what kind of proof it is that they require, the answer
is plain: it is the same kind as science insists on. Then let us go to
the man of science and wait at his door: he at any rate is not ignorant,
and we, if ignorant, at least are willing to learn. That he should
rather look down upon us is only what might be expected in a man who by
sheer force of reason has discovered the sole source of truth and built
up the whole fabric of science. Certainly, when he has taken us over his
palace and shown us its marvels--the balances he uses to weigh the sun,
the plates with which he photographs invisible stars, the
cinematographic pictures of the earth's past history, his forecasts of
the future of the solar system--we are not merely willing but eager to
learn how it is all done. And when we come to know him, we find that in
spite of the marvels, all of his own making, by which he is surrounded,
he is not puffed up, as he might have been: indeed he is, he assures us,
only an ordinary man. "Scientific investigation is not, as many people
seem to suppose, some kind of modern black art."[25] It is simply plain,
ordinary common sense, consistently applied; and, above all,
persistently declining to accept anything without sufficient evidence.
In ordinary life, says the man of science, we do not swallow any
statement that anybody chooses to make--we ask for some evidence; and if
science waxes every day, and religion wanes, it is merely because
science has made it the rule of her being never to believe anything
without sufficient evidence, and religion has not.

Naturally, then, we wish to know what is "sufficient evidence" in the
eyes of science, since everything, we are told, depends on that. The
reply is brief: whatever is based on the Uniformity of Nature has
sufficient evidence. If we are inclined to be puzzled by the "Uniformity
of Nature," we are soon reassured; it is literally the most ordinary
thing in the world, there is no difficulty about it. Man is born into a
world in which changes are unceasingly taking place. Some things change
even as the clouds shift--every second, and in a way patent to all
beholders. Others change imperceptibly and with great slowness, as
_e.g._ the level of the dry land or the shape of the coast-line. But all
things change, {_panta rei_}. Nothing abideth long in one stay. It
is these changes which bring all things good to man, and also all things
ill. If, then, man is to survive, he must learn to evade the latter
changes, which threaten to crush him, and he must be there in time to
profit by the former. Such was the problem presented to primitive man,
and such it still is for every one of us to-day: the successful man is
the one who is beforehand with the world, and, if he is beforehand it is
because he has learned to read the signs of the times and the seasons.
In a word, he has learned to recognise that changes are not always mere
chances, that some changes are uniformly preceded by certain others, and
may consequently be foreseen. In the beginning the changes that man can
forecast are few indeed: his prevision is no greater than the brute's.
The child does not foresee that fire will burn; he learns by experience.
And whatever man can forecast, he has learned it all by experience. It
is a slow way of learning, it has taken man thousands upon thousands of
years to learn what he knows now; still he has learned to know the
causes of countless things, to control the causes and to anticipate the
effects of many. But more important, more valuable than all his
experience and all his knowledge of what produces what, of what
uniformly precedes or follows what, is the final and comprehensive truth
which at last he reaches, that nothing happens arbitrarily, that
everything in nature is uniform. That, the Uniformity of Nature, is the
great truth in which all others are summed up: to its establishment have
gone the labours of all past generations of mankind, to its support the
whole experience of the race contributes. It is the truth of truths, the
test of truth: whatsoever is established on it shall not be shaken,
whatever contravenes it shall not endure.

The Uniformity of Nature is the base not only of all science, but of
every act of reason in the most commonplace affairs of ordinary life;
and, though you may not know it, you assume it every moment. Why are you
sure that the sun will rise to-morrow? Because Nature is uniform. Why do
you know that fire will burn? Because Nature is uniform. Why that all
men are mortal? Why that a cause will always produce its effect? Because
of the Uniformity of Nature. For each and all of these beliefs the
evidence is sufficient; it is the Uniformity of Nature. How different,
says the man of science, is the procedure of science, that is of common
sense, from the unscientific methods of theology! Why do we believe that
the earth will bring forth her kindly fruits in due season? Because it
is God's will? That is a hypothesis; it may be true or it may not; it
cannot be proved or disproved; there is no evidence against it, but
there is no evidence for it. Very different is the answer of science and
common sense: it is that the earth will produce crops in accordance with
certain natural causes, mechanical and chemical. That also is a
hypothesis which may or may not be true. Yes, but it is one for which
there is some evidence--the Uniformity of Nature. In the same way, if
anyone were to say that the result of the next general election depended
not on the electors but on the planets, we should decline to believe
him, because there is no evidence to show that the planets have anything
to do with it, and there is good evidence for believing that the votes
of the electors have. In fine, the teaching of science is: demand
sufficient evidence for everything, and always remember that by
sufficient evidence is meant the Uniformity of Nature.

This sounds so simple and so convincing that we are tempted to try it.
But first let us make sure that we have learned our lesson properly. In
the course of long ages mankind has slowly accumulated enough experience
to warrant the confident belief that Nature is uniform. Now, primitive
man was of course a savage, and knew nothing of the Uniformity of
Nature; he therefore could not have had sufficient evidence for
believing anything in his experience. But it is on the accumulation of
such experiences--every one of which we must reject because they were
not based on the Uniformity of Nature--that our belief in the Uniformity
of Nature is supposed to rest. In other words, it is based on them and
they were based on nothing. This result of acting strictly up to the
principle of not suffering anything to pass without sufficient evidence
seems somewhat discouraging, until the man of science comes to our
rescue and reminds us that just as we, without knowing it, have acted
all our lives on the tacit assumption that Nature is uniform, so did
primitive man; and that consequently there really was sufficient
evidence and scientific proof for the savage's experiences, though of
course he could not have framed it in words; and so, the bases of the
Uniformity of Nature are really quite sound. But even now we are not
altogether out of our difficulties, for granted that the savage, like
ourselves, tacitly assumed Nature to be uniform, was there sufficient
evidence for the assumption? and if so, what was the evidence? It could
not be the Uniformity of Nature, because that is just the question; and,
if it was anything else, it was not sufficient evidence.

It really seems rather difficult to get sufficient evidence for the
axiom, viz. the Uniformity of Nature, on which the whole of science is
built. And yet we must have sufficient evidence for it, or else we shall
have to conclude that Science has no more logical foundation than
Religion.

But once more the man of science comes to our assistance and explains
that in the beginning, before the Uniformity of Nature is proved, it is
only probable that what has once happened will happen again in similar
circumstances, and at first perhaps not very probable; but when wider
and wider experience still shows that what has once happened does
actually happen again under the same circumstances, the Uniformity of
Nature becomes more and more probable, until at last, if not actually
proved, it is still the most probable hypothesis that we possess or can
possess: "our highest and surest generalisations remain on the level of
justifiable expectations; that is, very high probabilities."[26]

Now, with all respect to logicians like John Stuart Mill, and men of
science like Huxley, we must point out that this begs the whole
question. If we assume that Nature is uniform, then it is probable that
what has often happened will happen again. But if we do not assume that
Nature is uniform, then the repeated occurrence of a thing does not make
it in the least probable that it will occur again. To assume without
proof that Nature is uniform is to ask us to accept a statement without
evidence, which, if we have learnt the lesson of science, we can hardly
do. On the other hand, if we begin with the admission that Nature may or
may not be uniform, but that, to begin with, we no more know whether it
will actually prove to be uniform than we know whether a penny, when we
are about to toss it, will fall head or tail; then, according to the
mathematical theory of probability, it matters not how many times you
toss the penny, the chances next throw are exactly the same as they were
at the first throw--it matters not how many times Nature has proved
uniform in the past, she is no more likely to prove uniform to-morrow
than she was on the first of days. If it is really an open question at
the beginning whether Nature is or is not uniform, it remains an open
question to the end. The man of science need not admit that it is an
open question, if he does not want to do so; but if he does admit it,
then let him stick to it throughout; and let him reflect that if he
begins by admitting it and ends by denying it, he has but gradually
retracted his own free admission, and unconsciously been betrayed into
denying what he began by admitting to be true.

The fact of the matter is that the axioms of science--the Uniformity
of Nature and the Law of Universal Causation--not only are not
proved by what experience we have had of them, but "cannot be proved
by any amount of experience."[27] Not only can they not be proved by
any amount of experience, they are incapable of being demonstrated
at all: "they are neither self-evident nor are they, strictly
speaking, demonstrable."[28] If, then, they are not and cannot be
proved either by experience or in any other way, on what does the
man of science ground his belief in them? On Faith. "The ground of
every one of our actions, and the validity of all our reasonings,
rest upon the great act of faith, which leads us to take the
experience of the past as a safe guide in our dealings with the
present and the future."[29]


FOOTNOTES:

[25] HUXLEY, _Darwiniana_, p. 361.

[26] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 205.

[27] HUXLEY, _Evolution and Ethics_, p. 121.

[28] HUXLEY, _Method and Results_, p. 61.

[29] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 243.




IX.

CONSEQUENCES


In the last chapter, impressed by the doctrine that there is no "source
of truth save that which is reached by the patient application of
scientific methods,"[30] we patiently applied those methods to the
foundation of science itself; and we were rewarded by the discovery that
scientific, like religious, truth has its source in Faith. But the end
of our difficulties is not yet.

A man may put his faith in science, if he will, "but let him not delude
himself with the notion that his faith is evidence of the objective
reality of that in which he trusts."[31] About that we feel no
difficulty: faith begins not merely with ignorance, but with the frank
confession that we know we are ignorant, but we wish to believe, in
spite of the absence of evidence. There is no evidence to show that
Nature is uniform or science true, but we do not mind that: we are quite
determined to believe, evidence or no evidence. That is easy enough for
us, who are not scientific; but "scientific men get an awkward
habit--no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit--of
believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way
of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as
illogical, but as immoral."[32] This is, if not awkward, at least
puzzling, since science is based on a belief in the Uniformity of
Nature, for which there is no evidence.

"It is, we are told, the special peculiarity of the devil that he was a
liar from the beginning. If we set out in life with pretending to know
that which we do not know; with professing to accept for proof evidence
which we are well aware is inadequate; with wilfully shutting our eyes
and our ears to facts which militate against this or that comfortable
hypothesis; we are assuredly doing our best to deserve the same
character."[33] That also is puzzling. Science sets out in life with
assuming, by a "great act of faith," that Nature is uniform. She is well
aware that the evidence for this assumption is inadequate, that no
amount of experience could prove it; but, if she is to start at all, she
must make the assumption, so she proceeds to act as though it were
proved, as though she knew what she does not know. These are facts; and
we take it for granted that no one will wilfully shut his eyes and his
ears to them, even if he has some comfortable hypothesis against which
they seem to militate.

Again, belief in science is based not on any ground of reason, but upon
"the great act of faith" which leads the man of science to assent to it.
It is therefore again puzzling to learn that "assent without rational
ground for belief is to the man of science merely an immoral pretence,"
and that "scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one
unpardonable sin."[34]

But the reader has probably already correctly divined the solution of
these puzzles: the passages quoted above are not intended to apply to
science. The blind faith which is illogical, immoral, a pretence and a
lie, is, of course, not faith in science, but some other kind, which may
therefore be dismissed; and we may start once again with the happy
feeling that there is one kind of faith at least which is logical,
moral, and real and true.

It is, then, quite honest and logical to have faith sometimes; and,
without evidence, to believe some things, _e.g._ the Uniformity of
Nature. Here, however, some readers may interpose with the objection
that the man of science has not proved that _his_ faith is logical and
moral, and real and true--he has simply assumed it. Quite true; but that
_is_ his faith and we must respect it, as we respect any man who holds
fast to what he honestly believes to be the real truth. We do not
imagine he could believe it if he thought it a pretence or a lie. And we
do not call upon him to prove it before we believe him--still less to
prove it before he believes it himself.

It is, therefore, we repeat, quite reasonable to believe in the
Uniformity of Nature without evidence. The reluctance that is genuinely
felt by many minds to take up this position is probably due to a feeling
that if we may believe in one thing without evidence, then anyone may
believe in anything he likes. And it would not be quite fair to make the
rejoinder, What does that matter to you, as long as you are free to
believe what you think right? The tendency to dogmatise, and to be
intolerant of opinions not our own, is, indeed, strong enough in all of
us to make us stand somewhat in dismay of a line of argument which seems
to indicate not merely that other people have a right to differ from our
opinions, but may quite conceivably be right in so differing. Still,
this tendency does not wholly account for our reluctance. That
reluctance has, in part at least, a nobler origin than narrow-mindedness
and the ignorance which knows not that it is ignorance. It does matter
to us what our fellow-men believe. Still more does it matter how and why
they choose their beliefs.

The reluctance to admit that it is permissible to believe without
evidence even in a truth so undisputed as the Uniformity of Nature, is
also in part due to yet another cause. It is felt that to admit belief
without regard to evidence is to invite intellectual anarchy, and to
leave mankind the helpless prey of ignorance, error, and superstition.
Hence, in many candid souls, a lamentable feeling of distraction and
hopelessness: to abandon their old faith, even if it has no evidence, is
almost more than they can bear; to retain it, knowing that it has no
evidence, is to open the floodgates of a saturnalia of unreason by which
the foundations of civilisation would be swept away. Hence, too, the
zeal with which other minds call for the destruction of every belief,
but especially religious belief, not based on evidence, and with which
they denounce faith as the one unpardonable sin.

But the error into which both classes of mind fall is a simple one. It
consists in imagining that if we take one thing on faith, because there
is no evidence, therefore we may believe anything, even if the evidence
is conclusive against it--that if we once accept faith, we must for ever
abjure reason. The error has been clearly exposed by Professor Huxley,
who, after pointing out that reason--ratiocination--is based on faith,
says, "But it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily entitled to
dispense with ratiocination because ratiocination cannot dispense with
faith as a starting-point; and that because we are often obliged, by the
pressure of events, to act on very bad evidence, it does not follow
that it is proper to act on such evidence when the pressure is
absent."[35]

It seems, then, a piece of alarmist exaggeration to say that if we admit
one thing, _e.g._ the Uniformity of Nature, without evidence, we forfeit
the right ever again to ask for evidence for any other statement: on the
contrary, whenever evidence can be got, we must get it and abide by it.
But this only shows that no disastrous consequences will necessarily
ensue, if we frankly admit what in any case is the fact, viz. that there
is no evidence for the postulate on which all science is built. You will
not have committed high treason against the best interests of mankind by
acting, in this case, on the principle that a man may sometimes believe
a thing on evidence which, he is well aware, is insufficient, or on no
evidence at all. On the other hand, in another case, to act on the
principle might be, if not high treason, at least mischievous.

It seems, then, first, that there are some things which a man may
believe without evidence, and some which he may not; and, next, that he
may not believe things the consequences of which would be disastrous or
mischievous. But now what of the things not mischievous or disastrous?
On what principle are we to choose amongst them? Let us once more follow
our guide, the man of science, and ask him on what principle he elected
to believe that Nature was uniform, rather than that she was not. I
imagine it was once more on the ground of the consequences: grant that
Nature is uniform, and then all the marvellous discoveries, the
revelations of the past and prophecies of the future, which science has
made, become things that we can reasonably believe in. Refuse to
believe, withhold your faith, and then you have no reason to believe
anything whatever, thought and action alike are paralysed. It is between
these consequences that we have to choose. Our choice is an act of will;
and it is on our will that our beliefs and our actions depend.

In science, then, we are offered the alternatives: either believe
without evidence that Nature is uniform, or renounce all that science
has to give. We want to be scientific, so we choose the former. We
believe (in science) because we want to believe, not because we have any
evidence. To say that we may yield to the impulse to have faith, without
being unscientific, is to understate the case: we cannot be scientific
without faith.

In logic, whether inductive or deductive, the case is the same. We must
either believe without evidence in the axioms on which reason is based,
or forego reason altogether. We want to be reasonable, so we choose to
accept the axioms. But our choice is not the least evidence or proof
that they are true. We believe they are true, because we wish to
believe that they are true. There is no reason except there first be
faith.

With morality the case is not otherwise. We believe in the principles of
morality, not because we can prove them, or bring evidence to show that
a man ought to do what is right, but because we wish to believe, and
because we have faith in the right. There is no morality except first
there be faith.

We are nothing, know nothing, can do nothing without faith. And it is
not in the dead past, which is what we mean by "evidence," but in the
living future that faith has its well-springs. It is because we wish to
do right henceforth that we put our faith in right-doing. It is not the
ghosts of our misdeeds, rising from the charnel-house of the past in
evidence against us, that give us good hope of the future--it is faith,
not built on evidence, on a past that cannot be altered, but on hope, on
the future, on what shall be as we will it.

The future is uncertain. But that is no reason why you should be. There
is no evidence that we shall succeed, that logic can be trusted, or that
science is true. But fortunately it is possible to be certain without
evidence. In commenting on the text "Faith is the assurance of things
hoped for, the proving of things unseen," Professor Huxley says, "I
fancy we shall not be far from the mark if we take the writer to have
had in his mind the profound psychological truth, that men constantly
feel certain about things for which they strongly hope, but have no
evidence, in the legal or logical sense of the word; and he calls this
feeling 'faith.'"[36] It is a profound psychological truth, and by the
aid of the theory of evolution we may understand why it is so
deep-seated in the mental and moral constitution of man. Primitive man
can have had no extensive "evidence" of any kind to go upon in
regulating the conduct of his daily life; and in all probability
exercised but little power of criticism in judging the value of what
evidence he had. At the same time, if he was to survive at all in the
struggle for existence, he had to act and to act promptly. Fortunately
for him it was possible to feel certain about things for which there was
no evidence, _i.e._ to have faith. And he survived in consequence--in
virtue of the law of the survival of the faithful, a law whose operation
is possibly not confined to this world.

On the theory of evolution, again, man's wants must have aided him in
the struggle for existence; and no evolutionist will doubt that the
desire to be rational and to do that which is right has assisted man in
his upward struggle. The victory has remained with those who have been
contented to feel certain about things for which they had no evidence,
and to act on faith. It is those who hesitate to do right until
sacrifice of self is proved to be reasonable, who lose their chance,
and consequently have been and are being, though slowly, weeded out.
Those who have yielded to their inner impulse to believe, without
evidence, have evidently been the better fitted to their environment,
and the more in harmony with the ruling principle of the cosmos and its
evolution.

Thus far in this chapter there has been no explicit mention of religious
faith. We began with the fact that faith is indispensable to science as
its starting-point. We do not wish to end with the suggestion that
scientific faith can or ought to be stretched so as to make religious
faith its logical or necessary consequence. On the contrary, the man who
by a great act of faith accepts the Uniformity of Nature without
evidence, and then resolves never to accept another statement without
evidence, is quite safe: no one can make him believe in religion as long
as he holds to his resolve--or in morality either. There is no
evidence--and therefore he cannot believe--that a man ought to do what
is right. If he does ever depart from his resolve as regards morality,
it will be because in his heart--with its reasons which his reason knows
not of--he wants to do right, not because there is any evidence.

In most men the impulse to believe expends but does not exhaust itself
in reason and morality. There is also the religious belief that all that
happens to us is due to a Will not our own, in which we can trust and
to which we can give our lives. For this belief there is no more
evidence than there is for science: if a man will receive it, he must
believe in it as he believes in science, that is, without evidence. If a
man will receive it, he may, on the same condition as he believes in
morality or science, viz. that he wants it. Any other condition is of
his own making and is an act of his own will: if he says that he fain
would believe, but cannot without evidence, that is a condition of his
own making, imposed upon him by his own will--what science and morality
both require cannot be immoral or unscientific, and they each require
belief without evidence in order that they may exist at all. What logic
postulates can hardly be illogical. It can be no necessary law of reason
to check the impulse which gives to reason its initial impetus. We
believe that science is true for no other reason than that we wish it to
be true; and for every man, with regard to religion, the question is,
does he wish it to be true? if it lay with him to decide, would he have
it true? if he would, then it does lie with him to decide: let him be
assured it is true. If he would not, let him ask his own heart, Why? Why
does he wish there were no God?


FOOTNOTES:

[30] HUXLEY, _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 233.

[31] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 245.

[32] HUXLEY, _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, p. 65.

[33] HUXLEY, _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 54.

[34] HUXLEY, _Method and Results_, p. 40.

[35] _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 243.

[36] _Science and Christian Tradition_, p. 244.




X.

THE CHESS-BOARD


We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting evolution as a
fact, and by asking the question: Granted that it is a fact, what
follows? What does it mean for me? What light does it throw on the
meaning of life?

The answers that we may give to these questions together constitute a
philosophy of evolution, which is carefully to be distinguished from
evolution as a scientific theory. As a scientific theory evolution is an
account, as exact as science can make it, of what actually did happen in
the past, of the precise process by which things have come to be what
they are. When this knowledge has been gained, we may ask the question,
What value has this knowledge for the practical purposes of life? And
the answer will be a contribution to philosophy, but it will not be one
of the things described by science as having happened in the past, will
not be part of the knowledge from which it is itself inferred, nor, if
it is a false inference, will it have any right to masquerade as science
and say that we must accept it as true or else deny the truth of
science. Indeed, we found that two answers to the question, two
philosophies of evolution, the Optimistic and the Pessimistic, have been
formulated, which being contradictory cannot both be true, though both
may be false.

The Optimistic theory, that evolution is progress, only established its
conclusion, that the process of evolution is necessarily from good to
better, by means of arguments which denied the distinction between good
and bad, and implied that our moral convictions were illusions.

The Pessimistic theory, on the other hand, assumed the reality of our
moral ideals, but was forced by its adoption of the theory of Necessity
to conclude that it is an illusion to imagine those ideals can be
finally realised.

Both philosophies in theory profess to make no assumptions, to take
nothing on faith, and to base themselves on nothing but what we actually
know to be facts. In practice each of them does unconsciously base
itself on faith and does tacitly make certain assumptions. But as the
assumptions made are not precisely the same in both cases, they reach
two very different conclusions--Optimism and Pessimism. Again, if each
philosophy treats as illusions certain facts--the freedom of the will
and the reality of moral distinctions--which the common sense and common
consciousness of mankind hold to be real, it is because each philosophy
arbitrarily rejects certain of the assumptions which common sense
makes, certain articles of the common faith of mankind. Consequently,
when we find that each philosophy is inconsistent with itself, and ends
by implying that what it assumed to be real is in fact an illusion, we
are led to suspect that its assumptions may not have been adequate or
well-considered, its faith not great enough to remove mountains or
explain the world.

The conception of a "positive" philosophy--that is, a philosophy which
confines itself to positive facts, and which is "agnostic" in the sense
that it does not profess to know what it knows it does not know--is
borrowed from science. It is an attempt to carry the methods of science
into the domain of philosophy, to substitute science for philosophy. The
attempt is made under the impression that science does not profess to
know what it knows it does not know, _i.e._ makes no assumptions and
takes nothing on faith. That impression, however, is, as we have argued
in the last chapter but one, a false impression: the Uniformity of
Nature is a pure--and rational--assumption. If, therefore, a philosophy
confined itself strictly within the bounds of science, it would not be
strictly positive or agnostic: it would still make some assumptions,
even if only those made by science, and would still, even if it confined
itself to the positive facts of science, be taking something on faith. A
sound philosophy is one, not that makes no assumptions, but which seeks
to find out what assumptions are made by any department of knowledge or
practice--science, art, evolution, morality, religion--and how far those
assumptions will carry us. The bane of philosophy is not making
assumptions--all thought does--but is thinking you have made none.

Common sense assumes that the testimony of consciousness, so far as it
can be verified by consciousness, can be trusted as evidence of the
reality of that which is presented to it. Positive or agnostic
philosophies, whether of the optimistic or the pessimistic type, on the
principle of making no assumptions, reject this one, either on the
ground that the Real is Unknowable (which is itself an assumption as
incapable of proof or disproof as the assumption that the Real is
Knowable) or on the ground that we only know our states of
consciousness, and cannot know whether there is or is not any reality
beyond them (which again is simply an assumption that consciousness as
evidence of a reality beyond itself is not to be trusted).

Now, granted that common sense makes an assumption here, as it assuredly
does, it is one such as can only be rejected by making a
counter-assumption: to refuse to trust consciousness as evidence of a
reality beyond itself is to make the assumption that it is not
trustworthy--which may or may not be true, but is just as much an
assumption as the supposition of its trustworthiness is. The positive
and agnostic philosophies, therefore, do not succeed in avoiding
assumptions in this matter: they only tacitly add another to that which
they have already unconsciously made by assuming that Nature is uniform.

If, now, they adhered to these assumptions, we might proceed to ask what
conclusions they deduced from them. We should not, indeed, expect their
conclusions to be the same as those reached by persons starting from the
opposite hypothesis, viz. that consciousness is trustworthy. And we
should not agree that they were superior to those reached by the common
sense and drawn from the common faith of mankind. We should only admit
that they were different, because drawn from different premises. The
argument that the teaching of a philosophy which makes no assumptions
must be superior to one that does, is an argument which, whatever its
value, we should have to set aside in this case, on the ground that the
agnostic philosophies are not so ignorant as they modestly profess to
be: they do know something--they know that Nature is uniform, and that
consciousness as evidence of reality is not to be trusted--or they
assume they know.

But the positive philosophies do not adhere to their assumptions. Few
philosophers do. The optimistic evolutionist takes back his remark
about the untrustworthiness of consciousness, so far as material things
are concerned: matter and motion at any rate are real, and consciousness
is good evidence, as good as can be got, of their reality. The
pessimistic evolutionist also repents him, as far as our moral
convictions are concerned: they are fundamentally real; our
consciousness of the moral ideal is our best evidence for it.

On the other hand, both the optimistic and the pessimistic evolutionist
adhere with perfect consistency to their rejection of the evidence given
by consciousness to the freedom of the will. But here, too, the
assumption of common sense cannot be rejected without a
counter-assumption: if it is a pure assumption to say that things could
have happened otherwise than they did, it is equally mere assumption to
say they could not.

Finally, there is one other assumption made by the common faith of
mankind and rejected by positive philosophies. It is that the world,
_i.e._ everything of which man's consciousness is aware and to the
reality of which his consciousness is evidence, is the expression of
self-determining will, human and superhuman, manifesting itself
directly to his consciousness. This assumption, too, has its
counter-assumption--that there is no self-determining will, human or
superhuman--and to reject the one assumption is to accept the other.
To say that you do not know whether a man's word may be trusted or
not is literally agnosticism, and may be the only rational attitude
to assume, _e.g._ if the man is an absolute stranger, as most
witnesses in court are to the judge who tries the case. But on the
ground of your ignorance to refuse to pay any attention to his
evidence when given is to abandon your agnosticism--if a judge
directs the jury to disregard the evidence of the witness, the
presumption is that he assumes it to be false. So, too, if we
disregard the evidence of consciousness on this or any other point,
we do not thereby succeed in avoiding assumptions, we only assume
that consciousness is not trustworthy.[37]

The idea that in philosophy it is possible permanently to maintain an
agnostic attitude with regard to the trustworthiness of consciousness is
the outcome of a conscientious attempt to apply scientific methods to
the solution of philosophic problems. Science does not find it necessary
to assume either that there is or that there is not a God: on either
assumption it is certain that bodies tend towards each other at the
rates specified in the gravitation-formula. Philosophy must be made
scientific. Therefore philosophy must carefully avoid making either
assumption. Why, the very reason why science has progressed and
philosophy never moves is that science builds only on demonstrated fact,
philosophy only on undemonstrable assumptions. Proof, and therefore
truth, is impossible if you start from assumptions which never can be
proved to be either true or untrue.

The truth is that it is possible to maintain the agnostic attitude, and
to avoid making assumptions, just so long as we do not need to form an
opinion or take action on the matter which the assumption affects.

If my interests, practical or speculative, are not affected by a certain
trial now proceeding in the law courts, I can avoid making any
assumption as to the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of a witness's
evidence. I do not know whether he is trustworthy or not, and I can
refuse to make any assumption whatever on the subject--there is no
reason why I should. But the moment circumstances call on me to form an
opinion, I find myself beginning to make one assumption or the other, or
perhaps at first one and then the other, though I am just as ignorant
whether he really is trustworthy or not as I was when I refused to make
any assumptions; I know no more about his previous career or his
antecedent credibility than I did before he entered the box.

So, too, the truth is not that science makes no assumptions, but that
she makes no assumptions except those which are necessary for her
purposes. The man of science assumes--and it is pure assumption--that he
can trust the evidence of his consciousness as to the reality of the
chemicals he experiments on, the plants he classifies, or the stars he
observes. He assumes that they are real. He also assumes without proof
that what has produced a certain effect once will produce it again in
the same circumstances, that if a thing has occurred the conditions
essential to its occurrence must also have occurred--in fine, that
Nature is uniform. But so long as he is engaged exclusively in
scientific work, in finding out what actually does happen or has
happened in Nature, he need make no assumptions as to whether a certain
witness is trustworthy or not, or whether there is a God or not: he can
maintain a perfectly agnostic attitude on both questions. He can say, if
he chooses, "God or no God, two and two make four"; or, to put it more
precisely, whether the evidence which consciousness gives in spiritual
experience to the reality of a God can or cannot be trusted, I do trust
the evidence which consciousness gives in sense-experience to the
reality of material things; whether the assumption that every event is
the expression of self-determining will is true or not, at any rate I
believe in the assumption that Nature is uniform.

And if man had nothing to do but investigate the actual course of
Nature, and had nothing else to form an opinion about except whether
this phenomenon is followed by that, it would be possible permanently to
avoid making any assumptions save those required by science. But man has
(let us suppose) to know, not only what does happen, but what ought to
happen, and to decide what shall happen. The ordinary man, in making
those forecasts of the future which he must make for the ordinary
business of daily life, assumes, quite unconsciously, that Nature is
uniform and that material things are real. In deciding what he ought to
do and what he will do, he assumes, without knowing that he is making
any assumptions at all, that his moral ideals are real, that his will is
free to choose this course or that, and that the God with whom he
communes in his heart is real.

Let us now take the question raised by agnosticism as to these
assumptions, which constitute a large part of the common faith of
mankind. The question is not whether these assumptions are right: the
agnostic declines to discuss that question; he does not know whether
they are right or wrong, he has no means of deciding, they are too high
for him. The question is whether the agnostic himself succeeds in
making, as well as endeavouring to make, no assumptions on these points.
We have already argued he fails: he succeeds, not in making no
assumptions, but only in making the counter-assumptions to those assumed
by common sense.

This, let us hasten to add, does not at all amount to saying that his
counter-assumptions are wrong: it only amounts to saying that he cannot
form a resolution to steal or not to steal, to lie or not to lie,
without (consciously or unconsciously) making some assumption as to the
reality of the moral ideal.

But there is little need of argument to show that agnostic philosophy
fails to avoid making assumptions, _i.e._ fails in practice to be
agnostic. Professor Huxley admitted that the Uniformity of Nature was an
assumption; he assumed that our moral ideals were real; he took it for
granted that the will was not free. We need only point out that the
attempt to carry on philosophy and explain the universe on purely
scientific principles breaks down: science makes no assumption about the
reality of our moral and æsthetic ideals; philosophy, even an agnostic
philosophy, finds it necessary to assume the reality of both. Even if
philosophy could be made scientific, it would not get rid of unprovable
assumptions: it would still be based upon those made by science. And the
excellence of philosophy, or of any explanation of the universe,
consists, not in agnosticism, not in making no assumptions, but in
making the right ones.

Science, as we have said, makes no assumptions save those which are
necessary for her purpose, which is to ascertain and describe what
actually takes place in Nature. Conversely, it is vain to imagine
that from those assumptions anything can be deduced except
conclusions of the kind which they are framed to cover, viz.
conclusions as to what actually does take place. To say, therefore,
that all knowledge--philosophy and religion--must become scientific
before it can be regarded as trustworthy is simply to say that
nothing can be regarded as true, except what is deduced from the
assumptions of science: conclusions drawn from any other assumptions
have no scientific truth. The assumptions of science are constructed
only to lead to conclusions as to what is: we can therefore have no
scientific, _i.e._ no real, knowledge of what ought to be. With the
assumptions she makes, Science can only describe the way in which
things happen; why they should so happen it is therefore impossible
to know. The idea that all things are the expression of
self-determining will is not one of the assumptions of science; no
conclusions from it, therefore, can be considered valid.

Without staying to consider why the unproved and unprovable assumptions
of science are so superior to all others as to be set up as the sole
source of truth, the only fount of genuine knowledge, let us consider
what sort of a picture of the universe they give us. Perhaps a simile
will best help us.

Let us imagine a game of chess in course of being played by invisible
players in presence of a scientific philosopher who knows nothing about
the game--or who assumes that he knows nothing--except what his senses
tell him.

What he sees will be simply material chess-men moving in space. He may
either consider them to be merely sense-phenomena, merely affections or
modifications of his sense of sight and touch, or he may consider them
to be real, material things. In either case he makes an assumption. The
latter assumption leaves it quite an open question whether the reality
is something insentient or is the expression of conscious will. The
former precludes the question, _i.e._ assumes that there is neither
conscious will nor insentient matter behind them.

But in neither assumption is there anything to prevent the philosopher
in question from studying the movements of the chess-men and the way in
which at every move or moment they are redistributed. At first their
movements would probably be rather bewildering; but in course of time he
would note, we may assume, that Black never moved unless White had
previously moved, and that any movement of White was followed by one on
the part of Black. He might therefore be tempted to lay it down as a
rule that Black never moved unless White moved first--that an effect
never occurred without a cause; and that a movement of White was always
followed by a move on the part of Black--that a cause was always
followed by its effect. But if he yielded to this temptation he would be
making an assumption, for--inasmuch as he professes to know nothing to
begin with--he does not _know_ that the pieces always will move in this
way; he only knows (assuming that memory is not a mere delusion, as it
may be, for anything he knows) that they have moved thus, not that they
always will move thus. He may, however, assume that they will continue
to move in that way. But with every fresh assumption he becomes less and
less of an agnostic. He may, indeed, if he likes, further assume, not
only that the pieces will move in this way, but that they must. This
assumption does not, indeed, seem necessary; for if we know (or assume
that we know) that they will follow this course, it seems superfluous to
say that they must.

It seems well, therefore, to try to see on what principle we are to make
our assumptions. It is an ancient rule, and one followed by science, to
make as few as possible--that is to say, the fewest that will suffice
for the purpose in hand. If, therefore, the purpose of our study of the
chess-board is merely to find out how and according to what rules the
pieces actually do move, have moved, and will move, it seems sufficient
to assume that they will move as they have done, not that they must.
If, on the other hand, we want to know why they move in the way that we
assume them to move, then the assumption that they do so because they
must is certainly in form legitimate, though it may or may not be the
right one in fact.

Some people refuse to discuss such questions as "Why this universe?"
"What is the reason of this unintelligible world?" on the ground that
they cannot be answered except by making assumptions which cannot be
proved.

But is that really a good reason for refusing? If it is, then none of
the questions which science exists to answer can be discussed, for they
also can only be answered by assuming, without proof or possibility of
proof, that Nature is uniform, that the chess-men will continue to move
as they have done.

Be this as it may, our philosopher, if he assumes that the course of
Nature is not only uniform, but necessary, is making an assumption which
is not required for the purposes of science, though it may be for his
philosophy. It is, as we have said, quite legitimate for him to make the
assumption for philosophical purposes, and to adhere to its logical
consequences. But in the interests of clearness of thought it should be
recognised that those consequences flow from it, and not from any of the
assumptions necessary for the purposes of science. He will be able to
show on this assumption that there is nothing in the history of the
universe, or in the facts of science, to countenance the idea that the
universe is the expression of self-determining will. We only wish to
point out that this conclusion, even if true, is not an inference from
the facts of science, but from the initial assumption that nothing which
takes place in Nature is the result of free will.

To say, "Science does not find it necessary to assume the existence of
self-determining will, neither therefore will I assume it," is true, but
is only half the truth. Science does not find it necessary to assume the
non-existence of self-determining will. But the philosopher who explains
the facts of Nature on the hypothesis that they happen of necessity,
does assume that self-determining will is non-existent. It is therefore
quite natural that the history of the universe and the facts of science,
interpreted in this way, should lend no countenance to the opposite
theory.

The history of the universe may also be interpreted as a manifestation
of the Divine will, the process of evolution as a progressive
revelation; and if any be tempted to say with a sigh, "Ah! but it all
requires us to believe that there is a God, to begin with," let them
reflect that the other interpretation cannot even begin without the
assumption that there is no God.

But to return to our chess-men. A closer study of the game would
reveal--in addition to the invariable sequence of Black, White,
Black--the fact that the various pieces had various properties and moved
in various ways, some only one square at a time, some the whole length
of the board; some diagonally, some parallel to the sides of the board.
Further, our philosopher would observe that each piece when it moved
tended to move according to its own laws: in the absence of
counteracting causes, _e.g._ unless some other piece blocked the way, a
bishop tended to move diagonally the whole length of the board. As a man
of science, he would state these observed uniformities in the
hypothetical form rightly adopted by science: if a castle moves it tends
to move in such and such a way. Thus eventually he would be able to
foretell, whenever any piece began to move, what direction it tended, in
the absence of counteracting causes, to take. He might not, indeed, be
able to say beforehand which of White's pieces would move in reply to
Black, but his knowledge of the game would eventually become so
scientific that he would be prepared for most contingencies, _i.e._ be
able to say approximately where any piece would move if it did move.
That knowledge could be attained without making any assumption as to
whether free-will or necessity was the motive force expressed in the
game; and it would be equally valid whichever of the two assumptions he
chose to make. His science would have nothing to hope or fear from
either assumption.

With regard to matter and motion, he would note that a piece might be
removed and deposited by the side of the board, but was never destroyed,
and he would infer that matter is indestructible and could never have
been created. As for motion, the condition, the only invariable and
necessary condition, of movement is previous movement, Black must move
before White can: the only condition of change in the distribution of
the pieces on the board would be some previous change. If the suggestion
were made to him that possibly the real condition of all movement and
every change was the purpose of an unseen agent, and that real knowledge
was impossible without some idea of that purpose, he might as a man of
science decline to accept the suggestion. The object of science is not
to conjecture why things happen, or with what purpose, but to describe
positively the way in which they actually do happen, or perhaps merely
to describe the motions of material things in space. It does not matter
with what purpose a shot or a mine is fired, or even whether with any or
none: the results are just the same, if it is fired in just the same
way. Science neither assumes nor denies the existence of purpose,
because neither the assumption nor its rejection would in the least help
her to discover the things that she wants to know. But are the things
she wants to know the only things worth knowing? Every man is entitled
to answer that question for himself. Are they the only things that can
be known? They are the only things that can be known--on her
assumptions. Just as the world can only be explained scientifically on
the assumptions of science, so it can only be interpreted morally or
religiously on the assumptions made by religion and morality. The only
end that could be subserved by assuming a Divine purpose would be at
most to enable us in some slight degree to argue what the purpose of
some things might be--and that is of no interest or value to science.
She declines to look for a final cause: her business is with efficient
and mechanical causes.

The suggestion, then, that the chess-men may be moved with a purpose is
not rejected, but is set aside as useless for a scientific comprehension
of the game. Invisible agents--and we are all invisible, though our
bodies are not--moving the chess-men with a purpose, or cross-purposes,
are hypotheses valueless for science, which aims only at positive facts,
the laws according to which the pieces actually do move. By the aid of
these laws our philosopher might succeed in reconstructing the past
history of the game which he was watching. From the positions occupied
by the pieces now he might infer the positions from which they came (or
think he could), and so back, step by step, until he reached the order
in which the pieces are arranged at the beginning of a game. When he
reviewed the knowledge thus obtained he would see in the process of the
game a certain evolution from the relatively simple movements of the
pawns which began the game to the highly complex movements of the queen.
Then, whatever the order in which the pieces happened to be brought out
and their qualities developed in the particular game he was watching, he
might argue on the theory of necessity that that was the only order in
which those properties could have been evolved. On the principle that
efficient and mechanical causes were sufficient to provide a scientific
explanation of the game it would follow that the higher powers
manifested by castles and queens, the latest pieces to come out into the
game, were caused by the previous action and movements of the less
highly developed pawns--that life and consciousness are due to material
causes. The idea that the movements of queens and pawns alike were due
to the will of an unseen agent acting with purpose is, as we have said,
a suggestion quite valueless to science, because any conclusions it
might lead to would not be scientific knowledge. If we assumed the
existence of purpose, and even could conjecture dimly its nature, we
still should have made no addition to those positive facts which are the
only things that science is concerned to establish: it would be neither
more nor less true than before that bishops move diagonally, pawns one
square at a time, gravitating bodies at the rate of sixteen feet in the
first second, and so on. It would be neither more nor less true than
before that pawns actually were the first pieces to move in the game,
that lifeless matter preceded the evolution of organisms. Above all, it
would be neither more nor less true than before that the conclusions of
science are the only conclusions that a rational man will accept.


FOOTNOTES:

[37] To say that my consciousness offers no such evidence is, if
true, irrelevant. We are concerned with the consciousness of mankind
generally. In astronomy the personal equation is allowed for; and in
science generally the observations of one _savant_ are subject to
confirmation or correction by others.




XI.

THE COMMON FAITH OF MANKIND


It is an article of the common faith of mankind that consciousness is
good and trustworthy evidence of the reality of that of which we are
conscious. It is also characteristic of that common faith to believe in
the trustworthiness of the Power which manifests itself in that of which
we are conscious. The man of science shares in the common faith of
mankind up to a certain point: he accepts the testimony of consciousness
to the reality of material things, and he believes that the Power which
manifests itself in them can be trusted to behave when it is (in time or
space) beyond the range of his observation in exactly the same way as it
does within. But to walk in the common faith further than this point is
unscientific. It is rational to trust the evidence of consciousness when
it testifies to the reality of material things, but not when it
testifies to the reality of our moral ideals, or the freedom of the will
or the reality of God. It is scientific to trust the Power which
manifests itself in consciousness to behave with the same uniformity in
the future as it has done in the past, and rational to formulate our
science and stake our material interests on that uniformity. But it is
not rational or scientific to trust that Power to will freely the good
of all things, or to trust our lives to that will.

The reason of this sharp division between science and faith is the
mistaken idea that science involves no faith and is a body of knowledge
built up without any assumption. But even if we got the man of science
to admit that science would be impossible if things were not real and
Nature not uniform, it would still be open to him to say that he
considered any other assumptions unnecessary; and there is a way in
which he could prove them to be unnecessary. He might show that they
were no assumptions at all, but logical consequences from established
scientific facts. That was in effect the object aimed at, as far as our
moral ideals are concerned, by the optimistic philosophy of evolution.

For the optimistic philosopher, then, who refuses to begin by taking the
difference between right and wrong on faith, the problem is, granted the
reality of material things and the uniformity of Nature, to show that
the moral law is simply one particular case of the uniformity of Nature.

The means by which this demonstration is supposed to be effected is the
law of the survival of the fittest. It is shown that the law of organic
life is the survival of the fittest, and that survival is the
consequence of adaptation to environment. These two laws are of course
uniformities of Nature. It follows, then, that there must be a constant
tendency on the part of the environment to secure better and better
results in the way of organic life, for it only permits the survival of
the fittest and the increasingly fittest. Man is an organism, and man's
good therefore consists in his adapting himself to his environment. Thus
the laws of morality are shown to be but one special case of a certain
uniformity of Nature, viz. the law of adaptation to environment, which
applies to all organisms and not merely to man's.

The argument, however, is in the first place circular: "fittest to
survive" simply means "best adapted to the environment." Doubtless the
best adapted to the environment are best adapted to the environment, but
it does not in the least follow that they are therefore morally or
æsthetically best. There is, therefore, no such constant tendency on the
part of the environment to secure moral progress as is required by the
Optimistic Evolutionist.

In the next place, on its own showing, the argument ends by proving that
morality--what ought to be--is nothing more or less than what is. And
though that is exactly what the optimist undertook to show--and exactly
what is undertaken by every one who engages to show that faith is
unnecessary in morality because the laws of morality can be deduced
from the facts of science--still it may be doubted whether the
conclusion "whatever is, is right" is exactly either a law of morality
or a uniformity of Nature.

The question at issue between science and faith is, as we have said, not
whether it is possible to gain trustworthy knowledge of the world
without faith, without making assumptions, for science itself is built
on faith in the reality of things and the uniformity of Nature, but
whether the assumptions of science are the only assumptions that we need
make. One way of proving that they need not be assumed would be to show
that they can be proved by science. But that way failure lies, as is
shown by the optimist's ill-success. But there is yet another way of
cutting down the common faith of mankind to the narrower creed of
science, and that is to show that the remaining articles of faith, the
assumptions not necessary to science, are inconsistent with science.
That is the method adopted by the Pessimistic Evolutionist. He does,
indeed, go further with the common faith than the optimist did.
Impressed by the failure of the optimist to exhibit the laws of morality
as the mere outcome of the laws of Nature, and the reality of our moral
ideals as derived from the reality of material things, he accepts the
common faith of mankind in the law of morality as being just as rational
as his and their faith in the uniformity of Nature. But having taken
this one step, having adopted this additional article of faith on
faith, he refuses to go any further. He accepts without evidence the
assumption that there are certain things which we ought to do, just as
he accepts without evidence the assumption that Nature is uniform. But
he refuses to accept the assumption that will is free, because that is
opposed to the evidence. He admits that we ought to choose certain
things, but denies that we can choose them; and his forecast of the
future is in accordance with the premises from which it is inferred. It
is a pessimistic picture of man being steadily driven to do the things
that he ought not, ending with the triumph of what must be over what
ought to be, of physical necessity over the morally right.

The object of science is to discover what we ought to believe, to
substitute reasoned knowledge for ignorant conjecture; and the
fundamental faith of science is that we ought not to believe anything
that is contrary to the uniformity of Nature. Nothing ought to shake our
faith in that article of our creed: no amount of evidence will convince
a really scientific man, a true believer in the faith, that any alleged
violation of the uniformity of Nature can be real. No amount of evidence
would be sufficient, for instance, to warrant the belief in miracles.
Either the alleged violation is only apparent, and will, with further
knowledge, turn out to be a fresh instance of the truth that Nature is
uniform; or else the evidence will prove on examination to be
untrustworthy. To admit that any evidence could suffice for such a
purpose would be to admit that the uniformity of Nature is not the
fundamental reality in the world of science, or the ultimate base of our
knowledge of what does actually take place in Nature.

A little reflection is enough to show that this is an entirely
self-consistent line to take up. No amount of evidence can shake what is
itself built on no evidence. If the belief in the uniformity of Nature
depended on evidence in its favour, then evidence against it might
overthrow it. But, as it rests on faith, it is superior to evidence.

Now, what is true and self-consistent in the case of science in its own
sphere is equally so in the case of morality. It is the common belief of
mankind that we can, and are able to, choose what is right; and just as
no amount of evidence will convince a really scientific mind that a
violation of the uniformity of Nature is possible, so there is no
evidence which will convince a really moral man that he could not have
done right when he did do what was wrong. "We ought, therefore we can,"
does not exactly express the facts. Rather, it is the other way: we can
love, be merciful, tender, compassionate, therefore we ought. Liberty
itself is a law to the free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of
Him "whose service is perfect freedom."

The pessimist, then, who thinks, by producing evidence, to show that
what ought to be cannot be, is adopting in morality a form of argument
which in science, when it is a question of miracles, he condemns as
inherently vicious and illogical. Further, the evidence which he does
produce is not altogether above suspicion. It takes the form of the
statement that the uniformity of Nature is a uniformity of necessity and
not of a will freely purposing a good end by means of a voluntary
uniformity.

If that statement could be proved to be a logical consequence from the
facts of science, then it would indeed be proved that one article in the
common creed of mankind was inconsistent with the rest. But, as we have
argued already, it is not implied either in the admitted uniformity of
Nature or in any of the facts deducible from it. To revert to the simile
of the chess-board, it is as though one should say that because Black
could not have moved his knight unless White had moved his pawn,
therefore White was bound to move the pawn.

We cannot, therefore, consider that the pessimist has succeeded in
showing that the articles of the common faith which he accepts require
in their logical consequences the rejection of the rest. In saying that
man ought to choose the right, but has no choice between right and
wrong, he is not formulating a consequence of the facts of science, he
is simply assuming without evidence the existence of a universal
necessity of which the changes in Nature and the actions of man are but
the varying though inevitable expression--an assumption which
invalidates morality without adding to the truth of science.

There are those whose belief in demonology furnishes them with a reason
and an excuse for the misdeeds of man. The belief in necessity exhibits
demonology as a doctrine of science: man would fain do right, but the
uniformity, which is the necessity, of Nature allows him no choice. It
is Nature, the environment, which is the abode and headquarters of
necessity, the enemy of the ethical process, the arch-demon of
scientific demonology. And the proof that he exists is that he must.
What must be, must be, because it must.

The attempt to render morality scientific ends in a result fatal to
morality; and the reason seems clear. It is that science is not
morality, nor are the principles of science those of morality. Science
is knowledge, morality is action. Knowledge, to be knowledge, has to
presuppose that Nature is uniform and that the things it deals with are
real. So, too, action, to be moral, requires the belief that our moral
ideals are real and that we are free to choose between good and evil.
The optimist who would have us believe that science includes all the
remaining articles of the common faith, and the pessimist who argues
that it excludes them, alike fall into the error of imagining that
science, the knowledge of what is, is the whole of knowledge, and that
the assumptions which are required in order to describe what is will
enable us to do and to know what ought to be. Science, which is a true
description of part of our experience, becomes a misleading half-truth
when it is offered as an exhaustive account of the whole. If, knowing
the rules of chess and having a record of the moves in a solitary (and
unfinished) game, we refused to inquire why the pieces moved, on the
ground that if we succeeded in the inquiry we should have made no
addition to our knowledge of the way in which the pieces do move, we
should never understand the game. But we should be nearer the truth than
if we assumed that a piece caused its own movements or those of the
other pieces; and that will or purpose was quite incompatible with the
uniformity of their movements.

The fact is that we have to play the game--we are not merely
spectators--and as a matter of fact, also, men do assume that they can
freely choose what moves they will make and that there are certain moves
which they ought to make. The assumptions which they make, not exactly
for the sake of playing the game, but in the act of playing it, are
neither included in the assumptions of science nor excluded by them. To
play the game at all, it is necessary to have some knowledge (or to act
as though we had some knowledge) of how the pieces move, to know that
bishops move diagonally, that bodies tend to gravitate at a certain
rate. Man cannot indeed act or make the slightest movement without
deflecting or starting some of the processes of Nature and of his own
psychological mechanism: it is through them that he operates, and by
means of them that he plays the game. In the beginning he has but little
knowledge of what the consequences will be if he touches this or that
spring of the mechanism. Yet the knowledge is necessary for him, if he
is to play the game as he ought, _i.e._ to attain the moral ideals of
which he is more or less (less at first) conscious. In acquiring this
knowledge he uses his faculty of abstraction, that is his power of
concentrating his attention on one aspect of a thing or problem, to the
exclusion of the rest, in order to gain a clearer knowledge of it by
giving it his undivided and undistracted attention. Thus, in order to
understand how the mechanism of Nature or human nature actually does
act, he concentrates his attention on the working of that mechanism in
the abstract, _i.e._ wholly apart from the fact that it is at times
started, at times interrupted, or redirected for the sake of realising
(or thwarting) his ideals. The knowledge thus gained is science, and is,
according to the agnostic, the optimist, and the pessimist, the only
knowledge that man can have.

But it is clear that man can and does reflect, not only on the way in
which the mechanism acts, but also on the use to which he puts it and
the relation of that use to his ideals. These reflections may add
nothing to his science, to his knowledge that rooks when moved must be
moved parallel to the sides of the board, but they do add to his
knowledge of the game. In fine, man gains a more important part of that
knowledge by or in playing the game than he does by studying the rules.
The rules acquaint him with the resources which are at his disposal, the
capacities of the various pieces and the powers of the various forces of
Nature or human nature. But it would be absurd to pass this off as a
complete knowledge of the game. We may, by playing the game, add only to
our knowledge of how the game ought to be played, of how the mechanism
of Nature and human nature ought to be used, and not add to our
knowledge of the fact that if and when the mechanism is set agoing it
acts in the way described by science. But the one kind of knowledge,
though not science, is just as true as the other, on the same terms,
viz. if you accept the assumptions presupposed by it.

Science, then, is from the very terms of its constitution abstract,
_i.e._ essentially incomplete. The very terms on which alone science is
possible are that it shall study one aspect only of Nature, the
mechanical, and shall ascertain what conclusions follow if we confine
our attention to the mechanical factors and neglect certain other
factors--the freedom of the will, final causes, and the moral and
æsthetic ideals--which, though voluntarily neglected for the moment, are
yet known to be important factors in the game of life as it is played by
us. As often as we act, however, we set those factors, temporarily
neglected by science, in action; and there is no reason why, when we
have acted, we should not reflect upon our action, disengage the
assumptions which are presupposed by our actions, and then reconsider
the world and life in the light of the assumptions on which our actions
and the actions of all men are based, viz. the freedom of the will and
the reality of our ideals. Thus viewed, the world becomes the scene and
life the opportunity of using the forces of Nature and our own
psychological mechanism for the purpose of achieving the ideal.

But free-will and the moral ideal are not the only factors in the world
as it is presented to the common consciousness, or in life as it is
carried on by humanity, which are neglected by science, and which have
to be restored by subsequent reflection, if we wish to see life true and
see it whole. Science declines to entertain the question why things
happen, or whether there is any purpose in events; and moral faith only
guarantees that there is that which man ought to do, and that he is free
to do it. But science, in neglecting the action of final causes, omits
a factor which not only must be replaced before we can have any adequate
understanding of the part which man plays in the world, but which, by
the testimony of the common consciousness of mankind, manifests itself
in the phenomena of Nature.

The description which science gives of the sequences and co-existences
of material and physical phenomena is consistent with itself, and is all
that is required by the assumptions of science. It is only when we
reflect upon the further assumptions which we make, or rather act upon
as moral agents, that we find science inadequate or--if it professes to
be the whole account of the world and man--misleading. And it is only by
restoring those factors for which our moral consciousness is the
evidence that we can remedy the defect or correct the error. The attempt
made by the optimist to dispense with the testimony of consciousness to
the reality of the moral law, and the attempt of the pessimist to
dispense with the freedom of the will, were both failures.

In the same way, both the scientific and the moral interpretation of the
world are judged by the religious consciousness to be abstract, and are
seen, when viewed in the light of its presuppositions, to be inadequate,
if not misleading. The inadequacy of the moral assumptions which are
made by the common consciousness of mankind is manifest, when we
reflect that while those assumptions serve to decide the question--left
open by science--as to the "Why?" of human actions, they do not decide
the same question as to the events of Nature, but leave it open as it
was left by science, whether final or mechanical causation is the
ultimate explanation of Nature.

The problem what we are to do and to think in life and of life is
one which for its solution requires that the whole of our experience
should be taken into account: if it is to account for the sum total
of the facts of which we are conscious, it must take for its basis
the totality of those facts and nothing less extensive. It is true
that the very vastness of the field to be surveyed--the whole of the
common consciousness of mankind--makes a division of labour
necessary, and compels us to concentrate ourselves at different
times on different aspects of it, and to treat each of the phases of
our experience--religious, moral, and scientific experience--for the
moment as though it alone existed. But it is equally true that this
isolation of first one phase and then the other is merely a
temporary device, designed and adopted for a purpose; and that that
purpose is to enable us ultimately to bring the whole of our
experience to bear on the problem of what to do and to think.

Legitimate as it is, when we are working at the details of the problem,
to distinguish the moral consciousness from the scientific, and the
religious consciousness from the moral, it is necessary to bear in mind
that these distinctions are merely abstractions. In thought we may and
do so distinguish, but in fact and experience consciousness is a unity.
The same man who is conscious of sense-phenomena is also conscious of
moral obligation: the "I" which is conscious of moral experience is the
same "I" that is conscious of spiritual experience.

Further, the evidence which we have for the three kinds of
experience--scientific, moral, and spiritual--is the same: it is the
evidence of consciousness--the only evidence that we can have of
anything. That witness, if discredited at all, is discredited for all in
all. If discredited, it must be by its own testimony, for we have no
other witness which can give evidence against it. But we hope that it is
true: the man of science is so certain of its truth, in the department
in which he is most familiar with it and has the best right to speak of
it, that he lays it down as a rule that there simply can be no evidence
of an exception to the uniformity of Nature. The moralist is equally
certain that no exception to the law of moral obligation is possible;
the religious mind that there can be none to the universality of the
Divine love. To the unity of consciousness corresponds the unity of our
faith in its trustworthiness. Scientific and moral faith are not
different from religious faith; they are but phases of the same. The
common faith of mankind is not a synthesis formed artificially by adding
the three together; on the contrary, the three are artificially
distinguished by thought--they do not correspond to fact, but are
abstractions from the facts, and are formed by the suppression of facts.

The religious consciousness is itself abstract; and as an abstraction,
_i.e._ if taken to be the whole of what we know and feel and do, is
capable of leading to false conclusions: no religious belief can stand
permanently which runs counter to the facts of science or the moral
faith of mankind. No amount of spiritual experience will add to our
knowledge of chemistry or physics, or be valid evidence against any
truth of science. It may serve to prevent the premature acceptance of
something too hastily put forward as a scientific fact, in the same way
that science may overthrow a belief erroneously supposed to be
religious.

But though the religious consciousness is an abstraction, in the same
sense that the scientific and moral consciousness are abstractions, each
is valid in its own sphere; and the whole evidence of consciousness in
all its three phases must be taken together, if we are to elicit any
universal principles of thought and action, any unity in our experience,
any purpose in evolution. From this point of view we shall expect to
find a unity of experience corresponding to the unity of consciousness,
and to discover that there is a fundamental identity underlying the
apparent diversity in that reality of which in consciousness we are
aware. What gives this unity to experience is the permanence which we
attribute to the real, in whatever way the real is apprehended: the
real, whether apprehended in sense-experience or in moral conviction or
in spiritual experience, is characterised by permanence, as
distinguished from the passing feelings with which we view it and from
the transient experience we have of it. The reality of the things of
which we are aware through our senses is conceived as something
permanent, and is implied to be so conceived by all theories of
evolution which wish to be taken seriously. The permanence of moral
obligation is not conceived by those who are genuinely convinced of its
reality to vary or to come and go with the flickering gleams of our
moral resolutions. Nor when spiritual light is withdrawn from our hearts
is it supposed, by those who believe it to be the light of God's
countenance, to be quenched for the time.

The fundamental identity of the real throughout its diversity is what is
postulated by science when it explains the process of evolution by means
of the law of continuity. It is equally postulated by the moral
philosopher who claims objective validity for the moral law on the
ground that it is the same for all rational minds. It is the faith of
the religious mind which not only feels the Divine love in its own
heart, and finds it every time it obeys the conscience, but also divines
it in the uniformity of Nature and throughout the process of evolution.

The identity of the real does not lie in the mere fact that we are
conscious of it. The real things of which we are conscious have, indeed,
as one feature common to them all, the fact that we are conscious of
them. But the identity of the real is not created by nor a mere
expression of the unity of our consciousness. It is not the
understanding which makes Nature--save in the purely psychological way
in which apperception does; on the contrary, the things of which we are
conscious in sense-perception are given as independent of us, though
sense-phenomena are obviously not. In the same way, the reality of the
moral law is conceived, in the very act by which we recognise it as
binding on us, to be something independent of us; nor is God's love
towards us dependent on our merits, or existent only when we recognise
it.

If, then, we are to gather up the permanence, the identity, and the
independence of the real into the unity of a single principle, if we are
to interpret the law of continuity in the light of the whole of our
experience, we must look to the Divine will. In it we shall find the
reality which is progressively revealed in the law of continuity; in it
we shall find the permanence and the independence without which reality
has no meaning; in it the changeless and eternal identity of Him whose
property it is ever to have mercy and always to be the same. Then,
perhaps, we may extend the principle of scientific method so as to
include the whole of our experience and to make the whole of our
knowledge truly scientific; for to the uniformity of Nature and of human
nature we shall add the uniformity of the Divine nature, or, rather, we
shall see in the former the expression of the latter. But it is not the
agnostic who will thus enlarge the bounds of science, or open a page of
knowledge rich with the spoils of faith.




XII.

PROGRESS


The artificial nature of the abstraction which distinguishes the
scientific from the moral and the religious consciousness, as well as
the impossibility of simultaneously exercising faith and repressing it,
is plainly exhibited in the optimistic interpretation of evolution. The
premises from which it starts are faith in the uniformity of Nature and
belief in the reality of material things. The conclusions which it
reaches constitute a _non sequitur_ if they are supposed to follow from
the avowed premises, and only command assent when we tacitly assume
certain moral and religious presuppositions which, if not avowed in the
optimist's argument, are instinctively supplied by the moral and
religious consciousness of the optimist's disciples. That the process of
evolution on the whole has been and will be a process of progress
follows logically enough from the optimist's avowed premises, if by
progress we mean the survival of those best fitted to survive--that is,
if we empty the notion of progress of all moral meaning. But as the
conclusion that evolution is progress is the conclusion which is
necessary for the justification of the common faith of mankind, the
illogical nature of the optimist's process of inference is apt to be
overlooked in consideration of the satisfactory termination of his
argument.

It is, however, necessary, in the interests of clearness of thought as
well as of the moral and religious consciousness, that the conception of
progress thus thoughtlessly emptied of meaning by the optimist should
have its context restored. This service--a service essential as a
preliminary to every theory of evolution--was rendered by one in whom
the moral consciousness spoke with force--Professor Huxley. To him is
due the demonstration that adaptation to environment, so far from being
the cause of progress, counteracts it; so far from being man's ideal, it
is that which resists the realisation of his ideals. Progress is
effected, according to Professor Huxley, not by adaptation to but
adaptation of the environment, and consists in approximating to the
ideals of art and morality--which ideals are not accounted for, as
ideals, by the fact that they are the outcome of evolution, because evil
has been evolved as well as good. Why approximation to the ideal of
religion--love of God as well as of one's neighbour--should not
contribute to progress does not appear. If, however, we add it, and also
add the ideal of science, viz. truth, then progress will be the
continuous approximation to the ideals of truth, beauty, goodness, and
holiness; and human evolution, so far as evolution is progress, will be
the progressive revelation of the ideal in and to man.

Two things are implied in this conception of evolution: the first is
that evolution may or may not in any given case be progress; the next
that we have a means of judging, a canon whereby to determine, whether
evolution is progress. Both points are illustrated by the argument of
Professor Huxley, who uses the moral ideals as a test whereby to judge
the process of evolution, and decides that evolution has been
progressive in the past and will be regressive in the future. Strange to
say, the reason why Professor Huxley maintains that evolution will be
regressive is exactly the same reason that leads Mr. Herbert Spencer to
maintain that it will be progressive. It is that the law of evolution is
Necessity, that evolution is the outcome of mechanical causes. But in
effect both arguments lead logically to the same conclusion, for the
progress which is the outcome of Mr. Spencer's argument is not progress
in the moral or any other sense of the word. In fine, progress is
eventually impossible if evolution is due to mechanical causes; progress
is conceivable only if we interpret the process of evolution
teleologically and as expressing the operation of a final cause.
Science, as such, declines to inquire whether there is any purpose in
evolution, and leaves it an open question. The moral consciousness
affirms only that the process of evolution ought to make for good. The
religious consciousness alone is in a position to say that its spiritual
experience requires us to affirm that evolution, in accordance with the
uniformity of the Divine nature, will be, in years to come as in ages
past, a continuous movement towards the realisation of all that in its
best moments the human heart holds most dear.

The argument that evolution _must_ be progress commits logical suicide,
for in the very act of proving its conclusion it proves that progress is
not progress. We are therefore left to face the fact that progress is
only a possibility; and that amounts to saying that regress also is
possible. What is implied therein will become clear if we return to the
question of the nature of progress.

Progress is not the survival of the fittest to survive, but of the
æsthetically or ethically fittest; not adaptation to the environment,
but approximation to the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness. Those
ideals are manifested in man, but not equally in all men; and the words
and works of those men on whom they are most clearly impressed and by
whom they are most faithfully expressed become the canon whereby we
judge whether any tendency in art or morality is progressive or
retrogressive. We cannot all make beautiful things or do heroic deeds,
but we can all appreciate them when made or done. To appreciate them,
however, is to judge that they do come nearer to the ideal than anything
else of the kind which we have yet known. Thus the ultimate court of
appeal for each one of us is not the ideal as manifested by man, but the
ideal as revealed to each of us. True it is that, until we saw that
particular work of art or that particular instance of love, we had no
idea what beauty or love could be. But that makes no difference to the
fact that we feel for ourselves how much nearer it comes to the ideal
than anything we had any idea of before. It may henceforth be the
standard by which we shall measure other things, but in adopting it we
measure it ourselves, and measure it not by itself, but in relation to
the ideal. And what shall we say of the artist himself? By what does he
measure the work of his predecessors and judge that it is not the best
that can yet be done, if he does not measure it by the ideal which is
revealed more perfectly to him than to them?

But the perfect work of art or love, when done, becomes not merely the
canon by which to test progress; it becomes itself the cause of
progress, both because of its more perfect revelation of the ideal and
because of the emulation which it arouses in others to go and do
likewise. They likewise strive after the ideal and labour for its sake:
it is the final cause of their endeavours, the purpose of their
attempts; and were there no such final cause there would be no progress.
The ideal is a principle both of thought and action, the test of
knowledge and the source of progress. Truth is the ideal of science:
approximation to truth is that for which the man of science labours and
that in which he conceives that scientific progress lies. The
gravitation formula not only expresses a wide-reaching truth, but has
acted as an incentive to many attempts to extend it to the domain of
chemistry, and serves as an ideal yet to be rivalled in other branches
of science. But science and progress in science are alike impossible, if
consciousness and experience be discredited, or if the ideal of science
be not real, _i.e._ if the laws of science have not the permanence, the
independence, and the self-identity which are the attributes of the
real, but are as transient as the minds that discovered them, exist only
when thought of by man, and are not really the same at different times.
But if these ideals, whether of truth, beauty, or goodness, are thus
real, then they are "our" ideals only in the sense that we are aware of
them and adopt them, not in the sense that we make them; they are ours
because they are present in the common consciousness of mankind, but not
in the sense that they are created by that consciousness. They are
revealed to man before they are manifested by man.

Professor Huxley's definition of progress cuts at the root of two
misconceptions as to its nature, which, though mutually inconsistent,
are both widely spread. One is that the latest products of time, simply
because they are the latest, are superior to all that has preceded. The
other is that to know the origins of a thing will best enable us to
assign its value. The tendency of the one is to result in the idea that
because a thing has been evolved it must be superior; of the other to
lead to the conclusion that because a thing has been evolved out of
certain elements it cannot be superior to them. The truth is that the
mere fact that a thing has been evolved--be it an institution, a mode of
life, or a disease--does not in itself prove either that the thing is or
is not an advance on that out of which it was evolved. Regressive
metamorphosis, degeneration, pathological developments--physiological,
mental, moral, and religious--are all processes of evolution, but are
not progress. A society in its decay, or an art in its decline, is
evolved out of a previous healthier state or more flourishing period,
but is not because later therefore better. Nor, on the other hand, does
it follow, because the earliest manifestations of a tendency are the
lowest, and can be shown by the theory of evolution to be so, that no
progress has been made in the process of evolution. The artistic impulse
in its earliest manifestations, in children and in savages, is rude
enough; but it would be absurd to say, therefore, that art in its
perfection has no more value than in its origins, that the Hermes of
Praxiteles is on a level with a misshapen idol from the South Sea
islands.

If the continuity of evolution does not warrant us in assigning the same
value, æsthetic or moral, to all the links, highest and lowest, in the
chain, still less does it authorise or require us to deny all value to
the lowest. On the contrary, we should rather see in the lowest what it
has of the highest, than look in the highest for the lowest we can find.
We should beware lest in reducing everything to its lowest terms we
prove to have been seeking simply to bring it to our own level, when at
the cost of a little more generosity we might have raised ourselves
somewhat nearer to the ideal prefigured even in the lowest stage of the
evolution of love, of beauty, of piety or of goodness. Indeed, as a mere
matter of logic, it is impossible to state the nature of a cause
accurately, quite apart from any question of estimating its value, until
or unless we know the effect which it produces. It is not only that we
may underrate or entirely overlook the importance of a thing, so long as
we are ignorant that it is a factor largely influencing some result in
which we are interested; but, until we know what effects it is capable
of producing, we do not know what the thing is. We could not be said to
have knowledge of a drug if we did not know what its effects were. Nor
is that knowledge to be acquired by analysing the causes which produce
the drug. It is not from the mechanical causes which give rise to a
thing that we can learn what a thing is: no amount of knowledge of the
properties of hydrogen and oxygen would enable us to predict _a priori_
the nature of the compound which is formed when electricity is passed
through two molecules of the former and one of the latter; nor is the
least light thrown upon the properties of water by our knowledge of its
constituent elements: on the other hand, our knowledge of them is
materially and serviceably increased when we learn what they are capable
of producing in combination. We learn most truly what a thing is from
observing what it becomes, what use it subserves, what end it answers,
what purpose it fulfils--in a word, when we know not its mechanical but
its final cause. In biology, knowledge of an organ means knowledge of
its function--that is, of its purpose; and evolutional biology also
teaches that function is the cause of the organ.

It is by observing what a thing becomes that we learn the part it may
hereafter play in the general scheme of things, and come to know its
real nature, and estimate it at its real value. Thus our estimate of the
value of such an institution as "taboo" goes up, and our knowledge of it
is increased, when we recognise in it one of the early manifestations of
the sense of moral obligation on its negative side. Again, in tracing
the evolution of religion it is impossible to know which of the various
rites and ceremonies, practised by a savage tribe in its dealings with
the supernatural, are religious and which non-religious, without taking
into consideration the question, What do such customs tend to develop
into? Until we know that, and until we can say whether what is evolved
out of them is religious or non-religious--a question which we cannot
answer unless we know what religion is--we cannot be said to understand
the nature of the savage rites that we are studying. But it is not from
the origins of art, religion, or morality that we shall gain the answer
to the question what art, morality, or religion is; for the question
must be answered before we can recognise the origins when we see them,
and can only be answered by reference to the ideal, which is the test
and final cause not only of progress, but of the real.

The ideal is a principle both of thought and of action. As a principle
of thought it is the test by which we determine whether any given
movement is progressive or regressive, and whether any given thing is
what it appears or is alleged to be. As a principle of action it is that
for which we strive, the purpose with which we act, the cause of any
progress that we make. If we are not prepared to maintain that
everything which takes place is an advance upon what preceded, we
require some test whereby to distinguish what is progress from what is
not, and we admit that progress is a possibility which may or may not be
realised, and it becomes of interest to inquire on what conditions its
realisation depends.

If, as Professor Huxley maintains, the test of progress is approximation
to the ideal, then one condition of progress is that man shall be
conscious, to whatever extent is necessary for the purpose, of the
ideal, shall feel that the ideal of love, tenderness, compassion,
justice, truth, beauty, etc., is a thing for him to strive for, an end
for him to attain. To the chosen few--the great artists, the moral or
religious reformer--a sense of the ideal is dealt in a larger measure
than to the rest of men. By the chosen few it is manifested to the many.
But it does not become the cause of progress, unless it leavens the
mass, unless they too are inspired by it to do better and be better. In
a word, when, or if, ever the ideal has been manifested in its fulness,
it is not a fresh revelation which is necessary for progress, but fresh
conviction in us and renewed determination. Indeed, so long as we do not
act up to the light that we have, even an imperfect revelation of the
ideal may serve for imperfect beings.

So far, then, as the genius in art or science, or the reformer in
religion or morals, is the cause of the progress that is made by his
school, his disciples, and them that follow after, it is clear that he
is the cause and not the product of evolution. It is his works or words
which inspire his followers with a fresh sense of the reality of the
ideal and a fresh resolve to devote their lives to the pursuit of art or
the service of science. But it is only because his perfect work is felt
by them, judging for themselves, to realise the ideal that it has this
effect on them; and they could not judge it to approach the ideal more
closely than anything known to them before, unless they had some
surmise, however vague, of the ideal, with which to compare this work,
perfect as it seems to them. It is not necessary to suppose that this
vague surmise existed, or if it existed that it was attended to,
previously: it may have been first called into existence or into notice
by the contemplation of the master's work, but its presence, however
evoked, is attested by the judgment that his work does come nearest to
the ideal. The manifestation of the masterpiece may be the occasion of
this fresh revelation of the ideal, but the revelation must be made if
the work is to be judged highest and is to inspire the disciple.

It is, however, one thing to have an ideal, and another to live up to
it. "To scorn delights and live laborious days" in the search for truth
or in single-minded devotion to the cause of art requires some will.
Granted that the ideal has been revealed, either to the disciple on the
occasion of another's teaching or directly as to the master, for
progress there is further required will. It requires an act of will to
prefer the ideal, with its laborious days, and to scorn delights; and it
requires many acts of will to make any progress. Yet the will to believe
and the will to act are the same will. We may, if we choose, define
belief as the readiness to act, and take action as the test of belief:
if a man in a hurry makes a short cut, _i.e._ goes straight from one
point to another rather than round a corner, his action is proof that he
believes that a straight line is the shortest distance between two
points. From this point of view we may regard the many acts of will
which are necessary to progress, _i.e._ movement in the direction of the
ideal, as so many reaffirmations of the original act of will by which we
affirmed our belief that the ideal was the goal of progress; and if our
object is to show that the behaviour of man, so far as he pursues the
ideal, can be exhibited as a logical and rational behaviour, we are
justified in thus demonstrating that our renewed resolutions to realise
the ideal are but the logical consequences of our original will to
believe in the ideal as the proper goal of action. Our belief in the
ideal is thus shown to be the principle from which our subsequent acts
of will can be logically deduced, just as Nature's uniformity can be
shown to be the principle from which the conclusions of science
logically flow.

But it may be doubted whether this logical order of ideas is the
chronological order of events. As a matter of fact, we go through a
number of struggles and temptations long before we reflect, if ever we
do reflect, upon them in such a way as to see what is the general
principle logically implied by our repeated if intermittent resistance
to temptation, just as a child acts in a way that for its logical
justification would require a formal recognition of the uniformity of
Nature, though the infant of two years, or less, does not formulate that
principle as a condition precedent of crying for its food or its nurse.
Chronologically, then, the will to act seems to precede the will to
believe in the uniformity of Nature, and in the case of most human
beings is never followed by any fully conscious formulation of the
principle on which we act as an abstract principle in which to believe.
That fact, however, does not in the least detract from the value which
the formulation of the abstract principle has: when formulated it
becomes in the hands of science as Ithuriel's spear for the detection of
lingering superstitions and confusions of thought--

          "for no falsehood can endure
    Touch of celestial temper, but returns
    Of force to its own likeness."

At touch of the question, "Does it contradict the uniformity of Nature?"
error is seen for what it is, and is exploded sooner thus than in any
other way.

The ideal of truth, then, with its "celestial temper," is logically
implicit in the earliest acts of will, but chronologically is developed
in consciousness later, if indeed and when it reaches that later stage
of its evolution from the potential to the actual. The ideals of
morality and religion, again, though equally implicit in the acts of
will which form their earliest manifestation, are, as a rule, both in
the individual and the race, more slowly evolved from the particulars in
which they are immersed. The period of their gestation is longer, and
results in the birth of a higher organism.

Thus, when we reach the age of reflection, whenever it may come, we wake
up to find that we have been acting as though we had beliefs, when, as
in our infancy, we could have had no beliefs, and as though we willed
our actions, at a time when we can scarcely be said to have had any will
in the matter. For years we have been acting as we should have done
supposing that we had believed certain things and had willed our action
accordingly. When we wake up to this state of things the question is,
Are we bound to go on in this way? are we bound now to believe as well
as to act as though we believed in God, morality, and Nature's
uniformity? Does the fact that our physiological and psychological
mechanism has been started--perhaps by Nature's cosmic forces, perhaps
by the social environment, certainly not by us--to run in certain
grooves, prove either that we ought or that we must continue to run the
particular organism we are in charge of on the same lines? The agnostic
and the atheist exercise their freedom of will to say No. They claim the
right and exercise the power of free choice. The agnostic, further, is
fully aware that in choosing to believe the uniformity of Nature his
choice is not determined by evidence--it is "a great act of faith," no
amount of evidence could justify it, the only evidence anyone can bring
to justify his belief in the general abstract principle is the fact that
he does believe it in every concrete, particular instance. In a word, he
believes it because he chooses to believe it--and that is exactly what
is meant by the dictum, which he finds it so hard to understand, that
his will is self-determining.

When it comes to the question of morality and religion, the agnostic
again exercises his freedom of choice: he wills to believe in the former
and not in the latter--the evidence for and against either being equally
_nil_. It is not, therefore, the evidence which determines his choice;
and he shows that it is not his previous history, not the momentum which
his psychological mechanism gained during the period when he had no
conscious or no self-conscious control over it, which determines his
choice, for in the first place he denies that it ought or must influence
him, and next he shows that it does not, by willing differently in the
case of the two principles. In both cases his will is equally
self-determining, though his will is to believe in the moral principle
or ideal and not to believe in the religious.

If we wish either to define progress or to make it, we must choose,
arbitrarily or otherwise, some particular goal and say, definitely and
decidedly, any movement which being continued in the same straight line
leads to that goal is progress, every other movement is regress, being
necessarily away from the goal. If we choose, by a great act of faith or
otherwise, to say the ideal is the goal, then we have therein a
principle both of belief and action: we have a standard by which to test
everything offered for judgment, a general principle to apply to every
particular case; and we have an object to aim at, a principle to carry
out in every act of our lives, an ideal to strive for. But whether we
choose the ideal as the goal or something else, our choice is the free
act of a self-determining will. Progress, on the human side, is--as
indeed is regress--the expression of the free will of human beings,
whose choice, though free, is limited to the alternatives offered to
them. Those alternatives reduce themselves ultimately to aiming at the
ideal or at something else.

What, then, of the environment, of the cosmos, in which man finds
himself, in which he has to act and may act so as to advance or not to
advance towards the ideal? To begin with, we may distinguish between
those forces in the cosmos which man can to some extent control, and
those over which he has no control. The former, from this point of view,
the point of view of action, are means whereby man secures his ends: his
regulation of them effects that adaptation _of_ the environment which,
according to Professor Huxley, is essential to ethical progress. Now, as
a matter of observed fact, no one doubts that the advance which
civilised man has made in controlling the forces of Nature is due to
science and to civilised man's devotion to the scientific ideal of
truth. Even the savage made what little progress he did make in this
direction by acting fitfully and unconsciously, or at the most
semi-consciously, on the principle of the uniformity of Nature: the
savage was faithful in little things to the scientific ideal--which was
revealed to him but dimly--the _savant_ is fully conscious of the
principle on which he acts, walks in its light, and strives by example
and precept to save his fellow-men from relapsing into the darkness of
error and superstition. It is not merely because of the material
advantages, the comforts and luxuries, which science indirectly secures
to mankind, that the man of science devotes himself to the scientific
ideal and seeks to make it universal: it is for the sacred cause of
truth. In a word, what at first sight presents itself merely as a
principle of the scientific reason, proves, in the conception of those
who have spent their lives in endeavouring to seek the scientific ideal
and to ensue it, to be a manifestation of the moral reason, to be not
merely in harmony with the moral ideal, but to have been its harbinger,
making the way straight for it. Belief which implies a violation of the
uniformity of Nature is denounced not because it violates a scientific
principle, but because it is immoral, a pretence, and a lie. The final
cause of science is thus made out to be to subserve the moral ideal, to
secure that adaptation of the environment without which ethical progress
is impossible. The labour of adapting his environment would have for man
as a rational being no sufficient reason if it did not tend to realise
his moral ideal. Man may use his science and the power of adapting his
environment for other than moral ends; but such use is not, according to
this view, progress. In other words, it is not science or the scientific
ideal alone which enables us to lay down the line of progress, but
science and morality together: one point cannot give us our direction,
but the line which connects two points may.

Thus far, then, by taking the environment into consideration, we seem to
have introduced no new factor into our conception of progress. It seems
that when I wake up from childhood's slumber I find myself surrounded by
men who believe that they can do certain things--make rain, send
telegraphic messages, etc.; and I am told that if certain
assumptions--that there is a God, that Nature is uniform, etc.--be
true, then it will be well for me to behave in a certain way. But what
if the assumptions be not true? My elders tell me that experience--in
the individual, in the race, enlarged by science and the theory of
evolution--shows it is quite safe to assume that they are true, at any
rate as a provisional hypothesis. Of course, if the future is going to
resemble the past, then experience of the past is a good guide to the
future: but that is just the question, _is_ the future going to resemble
the past? In other words, what attitude am I to assume towards my
environment, the cosmos? Am I to assume that it will work, and for
countless ages has worked, in such a way as to make it possible for me,
with some co-operation on my part, to do things which my elders tell me
are desirable and which I feel for myself I should rather like to do?

If I assume that the cosmic power does work thus, in such a way that I
can know the truth and do the right, and love the Power that gives me
the chance and makes it possible, even for me, so to do, I am only
exercising the will to believe in that principle which is logically
implied by every act of the scientific or moral life.

It is the common faith of mankind that experience may be trusted; and it
is the common experience of mankind that progress is approximation to
the ideals of truth, of goodness, and of love. It is not the common
experience of mankind that all men or all peoples approximate equally
to those ideals. The measure of progress is to be found in the clearness
and consistency with which men have carried out in science the principle
of the uniformity of Nature, in their dealings with their fellow-men the
principles of morality, in their dealings with the supernatural the
principle of love.

Science, and especially the theory of evolution, has enormously extended
our inferential experience, but it has done so only by accepting the
common faith that experience may be trusted, that is to say, that the
environment, the cosmos, is trustworthy within our experience of it.
When, then, the optimist alleges that the process of evolution has been,
on the whole, a course of progress, he is but showing that the common
faith in the trustworthiness of the reality in which we move and have
our being justifies itself. But he does not show us, nor does science
show us, why the real, the cosmos, is trustworthy: he ends by showing
that it is trustworthy because he began, like all of us, by trusting it.
He is quite right: it is the only way in which to demonstrate that
either science, or morality, or religion is trustworthy--by giving our
faith, to start with. Only when we are satisfied as to the fact can we
profitably inquire the reason; and the reason is to be found only in the
nature of the real, as revealed to us in the sum total of our
experience, scientific, moral, and religious. But the will to believe
that experience and to trust the real which it reveals, is free: if a
man will not accept it as trustworthy, there is for him no reason why.

The case is different with the man who does accept the testimony of
consciousness as evidence of the reality to which it testifies. For him
the one reality is Will, and the ideals of science, morality, and
religion are the expressions of that Will. In accepting them as the
principles of thought and action he does not learn what is the purpose
of evolution, the final cause of the cosmos: he chooses to believe that,
by so accepting them and by striving to realise the ideal, he is
fulfilling the Divine Will and contributing his share to the realisation
of the rational purpose to which, he assumes, the process of evolution
is tending.

But in so doing he does not renounce his freedom: his resolution to
believe is an exercise of his free will, an act, "a great act," of
faith. If carried into effect in his daily life, his resolution, daily
renewed and ever free, may in the end become a daily act of love, and
then he will understand the reason why the cosmos, or the cosmic power,
is trustworthy. Only love of man could have given man, as his ideals, to
know the truth and do the right. Only if man's ideals are so given is
the cosmos trustworthy--if it is trustworthy. If it is not, then there
is no truth to know, no right to do, no inference can be drawn from the
past to the future, for the past, even of a minute ago, may be a
delusion.

But though the will to believe that the cosmos is untrustworthy cannot
in practice be carried out in all its logical (or illogical)
conclusions, it can be and is acted on intermittently, and such action
is regress. So far as it is carried out, it is the negation of progress;
if it could be carried out completely and by all men, there would be an
end of progress; science, morality, and religion would be extinguished;
evil would triumph over good. The history of evolution shows that, as a
matter of fact, such unfaith in the reality of our ideals has been only
intermittent; for the course of evolution has been, on the whole,
progress. Individual experience shows that there comes a point, soon or
late, at which the will, acting freely, refuses to go further with its
rejection of morality: there are some things which even a bad man will
not do--however oddly they may seem chosen. In theory, in philosophy,
there is a point at which the will refuses to go further with its
rejection of the common reason, in which all men share: there are some
things which even the sceptic refuses to disbelieve, _e.g._ those which
are necessary to his conviction that nothing can be believed.

These considerations may serve to confirm us in the belief that progress
has been the law of evolution in the past and will increasingly be in
the future. They should so confirm us, for they do but carry out, as
far as history, individual experience, and imagination can take us, our
fundamental faith in the reality of those ideals that are revealed in
consciousness to all of us. Belief in the possibility of progress at all
carries with it, as its logical postulate, faith in the wisdom and
goodness of God. But if wisdom and goodness are the source of all
reality, and if the final purpose of evolution is the realisation of the
ideal--viz. love of truth, of our fellow-beings, and of God--what are we
to say of evil? Is it not real? It is real, in the same sense that our
pleasures and pains are real, but not in the same sense that the ideal
is real. The real things which our sense-experience reveals to us are
real in the sense that they are permanent, independent of us, and
self-identical. The same characteristics attach to the realities
revealed to us in our moral and spiritual experience. The laws of
morality and the goodness of God do not come and go with our fleeting
recognitions of them; they are permanent, independent of us, and are
ever the same: God's goodness faileth never. The uniformity of Nature is
but one expression of the uniformity of the Divine love for man: it is
that which makes it possible for man to know the truth and survive in
the struggle for existence. But evil is not independent of us men: it
exists only so far as we will it to exist. It is not permanent: it comes
and goes with our passing acts of will. It is not self-identical, but
tends to self-destruction. It is the will to believe nothing, and
therefore, as action involves belief, the will to do nothing--that is,
to revert to the condition of mere inert matter, as matter is conceived
by the materialist to exist.

But though evil be illusive, though it is the fool who says in his own
heart, "There is no God," or "Tush! He will not see it," the illusion is
voluntary. It is we who deceive or sophisticate ourselves, when we will
to believe that this act is not really wrong, or that our peculiar
circumstances constitute a special, a highly special exception, on this
occasion only, to the rules for ordinary occasions and ordinary men. And
though the illusion is subjective, _i.e._ is not generally shared by the
onlookers, and is consciously subjective (for we avoid onlookers,
because they would spoil the illusion), nevertheless, subjective though
it be, it is a fact in your particular subjective history, and a damning
fact. If the evil that you will is confined in its range to your will,
and if its existence can only be recreated by a fresh act of will in you
or another, that is an argument to show that there is mercy in the
scheme of things, but it does not prove that you incur no responsibility
in offering yourself or another the example and the opportunity of doing
wrong. We are not, and, if the will be free, we cannot be responsible
for what others do; but we are responsible for what we do--for evil, if
it be evil; for good, if we----but there is no pressing need to
consider that contingency.

The question underlying the previous paragraph is that of our social
environment and its effects. We are apt to forget that _we_ are the
social environment. If we bear the fact in mind, we shall perhaps be
less inclined to seek the origin of all our misdeeds outside ourselves:
we cannot shift the burden of our own wrong-doing on to the shoulders of
society by any process which does not bring back at least an equivalent
burden. The fact is that neither can we cause others, nor can others
cause us to do evil. What we can do is to supply them with an
opportunity, which, but for our action, would not indeed have existed,
but which also, so far from necessitating evil action on their part, may
by their free will be made the occasion for a victory over wrong. The
fact, however, that they alone are responsible for their evil-doing
prevents us from taking any credit for their good deeds. It is for our
own acts of will that we are responsible, and it is by willing evil that
we become evil. We create evil, consciously, by every wrong act of will
that we perform, and then we talk of the origin of evil as a mystery, so
thoroughly do we sophisticate ourselves! Why should there be evil? Why,
indeed? There is no reason, no rational answer can be given, because
evil is irrational--it is the will to reject the common reason or
common sense or faith of mankind, in this detail or that. It is the
arbitrary element, self-will, and if it could be eliminated we should
have a uniformity of human nature and of human love corresponding to the
uniformity of the Divine. Progress is the process of its elimination.

If we turn from the human to the pre-human period of evolution, the
first immediate fact which strikes us is that there has been throughout
the animal kingdom an evolution of mind, which has resulted in providing
man with the psychological apparatus necessary for conceiving, and, to
some extent, realising the ideal. When we reached the age of reflection,
we woke up to find that our psychological mechanism had been running for
some years in certain grooves. We now find that its direction can be
traced back by evolution to the beginnings of animal consciousness. If,
however, we believe that the evolution of mind, animal and human, has
been a process of progress, we do so not on the ground that mind has
been evolved, but that its evolution has been in the direction of those
ideals, approximation to which is believed by us to be progress.
Similarly, if the pre-animal period of the earth's evolution is shown by
science to have resulted in fitting the earth to be the home of animal
life, we judge that evolution to have been progress, not because it
prepared the world eventually for man, but because it is seen to have
been part of the process by which the ideal is in course of realisation,
by which the Divine purpose is in the course of being fulfilled.

The only value that we can assign to the pre-human period of evolution
is that which attaches to it as a means to an end; but though we believe
that by striving after the ideals revealed to us we are labouring
towards that end, and though everything that makes for the ideal
contributes to the end, yet we do not know the Divine purpose, and we
cannot say in what manifold other ways the pre-human period may have
subserved that purpose. It is sufficient if we can trace the steps by
which this one portion, the only portion known to us, of the whole
design has been carried forward. This reflection is one which it is
necessary to bear in mind when considering the alleged wastefulness of
the process of evolution and the price at which progress has been
purchased.

The theory of evolution, as a purely scientific theory, _i.e._ as an
objective statement of what actually has taken place on the earth in the
past, shows that the various species of animals which have survived
were--so long as they did survive--the only species which could survive
under the conditions which then prevailed; given the conditions, their
survival was necessary and inevitable. There the scientific explanation
of the matter ends: having shown the causes which produced the effect
in question, science has explained everything that it undertook to
explain. Had the conditions been different, the present state of the
world, doubtless, would have been different; but being what they were
they produced that which is, and there is an end of the matter--as far
as it is a matter for scientific investigation.

What we are to think of the survivors--whether we are to admire them;
whether we are to consider their survival an advance and an improvement;
whether anything has been gained by their survival, and, if so, from
what point of view the gain is a gain--are questions which science
excludes, because, however answered, they do not affect the scientific
fact that these species did survive, and, under the conditions, alone
could survive.

But we all take it for granted and as self-evident that man is not only
better adapted, under existing conditions, to survive and flourish at
the cost and to the extinction of other species, but that he is better
than the brute, that his survival is an advance, that his is a higher
type, and that his existence realises a higher ideal than that of the
brutes. We believe this not merely because we are men, and as such rate
our own comforts, our own interests, our own skins as the most important
things known to us, for there are things for which men sacrifice their
own interests and for which they have laid down their lives. It is
precisely because there are things more important than our own material
and animal existence, and because they are or may be realised by man and
not by the animals, by the ideal man and not by the brute man, that we
consider him to be worth more than many sparrows--though they too have
their value in His eyes--and man's existence to be of a higher type than
theirs.

Thus, then, when science--which, if it is truly scientific, makes no
distinction of value, moral or spiritual, between man and the
sparrow--has explained that a given species which did survive was the
only species that could have survived under the conditions, there still
remains the problem, for those to whom it is a problem, Why should the
species which was bound to survive also happen to be a species of a
higher type? Why have the survivors always happened to be both better
adapted to survive and better adapted to further the ideal which the
course of evolution reveals with increasing clearness?

In fine, science explains only a part, not the whole of the effect of
evolution. It concentrates its attention on one part or aspect of the
effect, on the survival of the fittest, and explains very simply and
satisfactorily that the environment kills off the creatures which are
not fit to cope with it, while the fittest to contend with it survive.
The fact that the survivors not only are best adapted to the
environment, but are also best adapted to bring the whole creation one
step nearer to those distant ideals in expectation of which it groaneth
and travaileth, is that part of the effect which science, for scientific
purposes, rightly ignores. Science does not undertake to estimate the
value of the effect produced, or even to consider whether when produced
it has any value.

But when the question is raised as to the cost at which the process of
evolution is carried on, it becomes necessary to bring into the account
the value of the result attained or to be attained. Possibly, creation
that groaned in her travail may rejoice that a man-child has been born.
But so much depends on what her child grows into. And he has free will.
We have the power now and here to dash her expectations to the ground.

The value of a thing to me is exactly what I am prepared to give or do
for it. I have no other way of estimating the value of the ideals for
which creation has laboured in the past, than by asking myself how far I
am prepared to go for the love of truth, of fellow-beings, and of God.
If I am prepared to give everything, and then count myself the gainer,
then indeed I may know that the cost of evolution has not been greater
than the value of the ideal: I know the highest price, and I know the
feelings of those who pay it. And they are the only persons who can
judge the value of the article, for they are the only people who get it.
The fact, however, that they do get it, that they get it in full, and
every man according to the measure with which he metes it, contains the
answer to our question. What is true now was true of earlier generations
and earlier men: the value of the ideal to every man was exactly what he
gave for it. It is the realisation of the ideal by me that is my reward,
though my object may be its realisation by others. But it is absurd to
say that their gain is my loss, or that their progress has been made at
my expense.

These considerations apply only of course to those men who have
sacrificed themselves for the sake of progress and the love of their
fellow-man. Most men, however, do not sacrifice themselves much; and
therefore they can hardly be brought out as martyrs to the cause of
progress, as the millions who have perished by the wayside in the march
of evolution.

It is not until we introduce the element of material progress that it
becomes possible to maintain with any plausibility that there is a
divergency of interests between the contributors to it, or that they who
sowed have been sacrificed to us who reap. It is when we compare the
shivering savage with our sheltered civilisation, primitive man's
struggle for existence with civilised man's enjoyment of existence, that
we begin to be anxious about the cost of evolution--that is to say, that
our little faith in the value of the ideal begins to torment us. In our
unreadiness to sacrifice ourselves we forget that it is possible for
civilised man also to make sacrifices--perhaps the greater because he
has the more to forego--and that the savage has his tribal traditions,
embodying his ideal of a good man, to live up to; his tribal customs,
which he may violate with self-reproach, or fulfil with satisfaction;
his conceptions of the truth about man's relations to the past, the
world, and the supernatural. The savage also has his ideal, which he
sets above his pleasure, and for which he faces pain in many a cruel
rite. Shall we say that its realisation is no reward to him? or that in
realising it he does not as faithfully contribute his mite to the
fulfilment of the Divine purpose as we? We make too much of our
superiority. We make, also, too little of the savage's enjoyment of
existence. Take the lowest savages known to us, the native tribes of
Central Australia, and turn to the most recent and the best accounts of
their manner of life; and it is certain that their existence is enjoyed
by them. Is ours without exception enjoyed by us?

If it is easy to be led by sentimentalism into mistakes about what our
fellow-man thinks of the question whether life is worth living, it is
still easier to be misled with regard to our fellow-creatures lower in
the scale. Here all is conjecture, and it is on this uncertain ground
that rests the charge brought against Nature of waste and cruelty. There
is the cruelty with which, in order to secure the survival of the few
and fittest, the environment kills off the many who are unfit--an
argument of great force, if the survivors were immortal. There is the
waste of bringing into life thousands of creatures unfit, and therefore
doomed to a speedy extinction. But death is the common lot; and as for
waste and failure, if the short-lived creatures fulfil their purpose,
they are not failures; and if their purpose is by competition to force
the development of the potentially fit, then they fulfil their purpose.
A man may be entered for a race for no other purpose than to force the
pace. As for happiness, wild animals, to judge by their usual fit
condition and by the evidence of sportsmen, do enjoy existence. But
they, at any rate, have no ideals--whatever the savage may have. Yet it
is conceivable that the bird that builds its nest finds some
satisfaction in doing so, and that the animal that lays down her life to
save her young ones has some sense of love. What is revealed as the
ideal in man may be inchoately manifested as instinct in the undeveloped
consciousness of the animal. If so, then the animal's life has
independent value and is not merely valuable as a means to a distant
future end.

To sum up: science declines to take the teleological view of Nature, or
to admit final causes or ends. To speak, therefore, of survival in the
struggle for existence as an end, may be excellent sense, but it is
unscientific: it implies an assumption of a kind about which science is
agnostic. If we do, however, make this one deviation from agnosticism,
we have then no difficulty in showing that evolution is a failure, for
its end is survival, and we all die; and there is no compensation, or,
if there is, posterity gets it, not we--an aggravation of the original
injustice.

If survival in the struggle for existence is the only end that we
personally recognise in the conduct of our own lives, we are quite
consistent in judging it to be the only end of other lives, and in
condemning the Universe, for then there is neither goodness nor any
wisdom in it.

On the other hand, our faith in that wisdom and goodness is not genuine
so long as we are prepared to stake only our arguments on it, and not
our lives.




XIII.

EVOLUTION AS PURPOSE


Evolution, as a scientific theory, is a description of the process by
which the totality of things has come to be what it is. The method
employed is that of science, and proceeds upon the assumption of the
uniformity of Nature and the universality of the law of causation. The
existence of a thing is proof that the conditions necessary to produce
it preceded it. Thus from what is we infer with certainty what has been:
the occurrence of Z is proof that Y preceded, and so from Y we can infer
X, and so on, to the beginning of the alphabet. Eventually, that is, we
are carried back, in theory at least, to an initial arrangement of
things which not only gave birth to the actual order of evolution, but
was such that no other order of events could have followed from it. Were
it possible, in fact, to get back to this original collocation of causes
and to formulate it, the formula would explain the universe as it is and
has been, the totality of things.

Unfortunately the formula, though it would explain everything else,
would not explain itself, and would therefore, so far, fail to explain
anything. Or, to put it in other words, though certain causes,
collocated in the proper way, would, on this view of evolution, explain
everything which ensued from that collocation, we should still want to
know why the causes were collocated in that particular way rather than
in any other. To say that that collocation was not the outcome of a
previous collocation is really to say that there was originally no
antecedent necessity why this or any other order of evolution should
take place at all; that Z hangs on Y, Y on X ... and A on nothing at
all; that the formula which is to render all things intelligible is
itself unmeaning. Or, if we say that things had no beginning--matter and
force being indestructible--then there is no initial collocation, that
is to say, no formula, even in theory, to explain all things: we cannot
even imagine the process of evolution to be intelligible.

The latter seems to be preferred by science as the final result of
scientific knowledge: the object of science is to demonstrate, not why,
but that things happen in a certain way; and it is admitted, or rather
insisted upon, _e.g._ by J. S. Mill, that if scientific knowledge were
carried to its utmost conceivable or inconceivable perfection, the
question why anything should happen or does happen would remain as great
a mystery as ever, and must remain so, for the simple reason that it is
a question which science does not even put, much less attempt to
answer. Nevertheless, it is said, science does prove what she undertakes
to show, viz. that things do happen in certain ways, which ways when
formulated appear as laws of science. That, however, is not strictly the
case if science, in order to prove her conclusions, has to postulate
that each and every state of things is the outcome of some antecedent
necessity. Ultimately the postulate proves untrue; for there can have
been no necessity antecedent to the initial arrangement of things. And
if the postulate be untrue, the conclusions based on it cannot be
accepted as certain. If we cannot tell whether it be true or not,
neither can we tell whether science be true or not. If it is
unintelligible, no wonder that things, as explained by it, are
mysterious.

But let us waive these theoretical objections. Does Science, as a matter
of fact, prove that things do happen in the ways she describes? In
justice to her, let us remember that she does not undertake to do even
that. Her laws only state the way in which things tend to happen, not
the way in which they actually do happen; only what would happen if
there were no counteracting causes and if certain conditions, which do
not prevail, did prevail--not what does really happen in the world as we
know it. Herein the scientific reason behaves in exactly the same way as
the moral or religious reason. Science no more alleges that all bodies
in motion do move for ever in the same straight line, at the same rate,
than the moral reason alleges that all men always do what is right or
that they always do God's will. The allegation is that the tendency
exists and can be discerned by those qualified to form an opinion on the
matter. That there is friction retarding the movement, and that there
are obstacles diverting it, is admitted; and, though the admission does
not affect the truth (in one way) of the laws of science, it does allow
that they convey no exact or faithful picture of what actually happens
in the world as it is.

But if the laws of science do not explain what happens--even in the
limited sense of scientific explanation--they are the indispensable
preliminary to that explanation. If they do not represent the world as
it is, they supply the means by which we may hereafter produce the
picture. They are ideals not in the sense that science hopes to show
eventually that feathers only appear to float leisurely to the ground,
and are really all the time falling sixteen feet in a second, but in the
sense that starting from the gravitation formula we could show that
every feather's fall is as rationally comprehensible as the gravitation
formula itself. They are not the ultimate truth, the final reality, or
Science's supreme ideal. They are shadows cast by the scientific ideal
before its coming; they are the principles by which science must
proceed, if she is to make the world of things intelligible. So, too,
the reality of the moral ideal does not imply that, in refusing to make
sacrifices for others, I only appear to be selfish, and shall be found
in the end really to have been actuated all the time by some high moral
principle. What is implied is that only by the acceptance of the moral
ideal can the world of men be moralised. From the same point of view it
seems hopeless to try to make out that atheism, though not in
appearance, will be found in reality to have been a manifestation of
religion. It is by accepting, not by denying the religious ideal or
doubting its existence, that the ideal of religion is achieved.

Now, in the theory of evolution we have the attempt made to effect this
transition from the abstractions of science to the concrete facts, to
show that the world as presented to sense is as intelligible and
rationally comprehensible as the laws of science themselves, and that
the hypothetical statements of science were but preliminary, though
necessary preliminaries, to a categorical statement of actual facts. In
evolution, as indeed in all the historical sciences, we abandon the
elasticity and the uncertainty of conditional conceptions for the
rigidity and certainty of accomplished fact. We no longer deal with what
may happen if given conditions are realised, but with what has been, and
therefore is subject to no "ifs." We start from the certainty of what
is, and thus we argue back positively to what must have been.

There is, however, one precaution which must be observed, and without
which the whole of the system just described is as uncertain and
conditional as the rest of science. Before we can argue from what is to
what has been, we must first know for certain what is. Before we can
conclude that a patient has been healed by faith or cured miraculously
of an incurable complaint, we must first have medical evidence to show
that he had the disease. Or, to take a better and closer illustration
from medicine, it is premature to assign a cause for a patient's
condition before his condition has been diagnosed; and physicians who
differ in their diagnosis will naturally differ as to the causes in the
patient's past history which are responsible for his state.

If, then, the evolutionist is to attain accuracy in his description of
the process by which the totality of things has come to be what it is,
he must first know what it is. Before we can trace the evolution of
morality, for instance, we must make up our minds as to what it is. If
we regard it as an illusion, we shall hold that it is subject to the
same laws as other illusions, and we shall have no difficulty in showing
that its evolution was a necessary consequence of those laws. Or, again,
if we hold that religion is mere foolery or hysteria, we shall
naturally infer a very different process for its evolution than if we
feel it to be a permanent manifestation of the common consciousness in
the same sense that morality is. A distinguished German mythologist,
starting from the former diagnosis, has no difficulty in evolving
primitive religion out of primitive drunkenness.

In fine, if we regard "what is" as giving the data by which we are to
determine what has been, it is clear that to understand what has been we
must properly appreciate what is. This is in accordance with the
conclusion which we have reached previously that it is only by studying
its effects that we can properly understand a cause. To judge a thing
properly we must know the effects it is capable of producing: to know
what a thing is we must observe what it becomes or what it is capable of
becoming at its best. We cannot judge the value of the moral character
or the moral ideal fairly if we take a low specimen to go by; nor if we
knew nothing more of morality than what we could observe of its
rudiments in the higher animals, should we know much about it. It is by
its highest manifestations that we most correctly judge either morality
or art, and it is only through them that we can be properly said even to
understand what either art or morality is. So, too, taking the religious
ideal as love of God and man, we must judge religion not by its
imperfect manifestations in imperfect beings, but by its perfect
revelation and realisation in Christ.

The case is not otherwise with science or evolution itself. From
primitive times man has always used his knowledge (however imperfect) of
what is as the basis of speculations as to what has been. It would,
however, be absurd to take the puerile and barbarous cosmogonies of the
savage as adequate expressions of the scientific ideal, or to imagine
that it is from them that we can judge what science is. It is no less
unreasonable to judge the theory of evolution by its present, passing
phase. In the first place, there are facts in its history which show
that it naturally started with a partial and one-sided view of the
facts. In the next place, we must judge it not by what it may be at its
worst, but by what it is capable of becoming at its best; and it is by
the latter that we must decide what evolution truly is, not by the
former.

At its worst the theory of evolution may require us to believe that the
whole process of evolution is essentially irrational--being the outcome
of unintelligent forces operating on reasonless matter--and that the
theory of evolution, accordingly, if faithful to the facts, is as
irrational as they; or, if rational, is a misleading account of the real
universe in which we live and move and have our being.

On the other hand, the theory at its best may require us to believe that
it reveals a universe run on rational principles, a real world perfectly
intelligible to perfect reason, and partially intelligible even to
beings who share but partially in the Divine reason that animates the
whole.

Both theories, however, base themselves upon what is, and profess that
their conclusions follow logically from it. If, then, they differ in
their conclusions it is because they differ in their diagnosis of what
is. Both admit the existence of faith; but one regards faith as a fact
in the pathology of human reason, the other regards it as the normal
mode of our common reason's operation. The latter, therefore, requires
to postulate causes which will account for the correctness of the common
faith of mankind; the latter, causes which have resulted in the common
illusion of mankind.

It seems, then, that even in evolution we do not escape after all from
the indeterminate and conditional knowledge, which science offers, to
the absolute certainty of accomplished fact. Every theory of the past
history of the world is just as conditional, just as much dependent on
an "if," as the hypothetical laws of science, for any such theory is
dependent on the view it takes of what is, and is correct only if that
view is correct.

The theories of evolution which we have called the Optimistic and the
Pessimistic interpretations of evolution are avowedly based on the
assumption that a large part of the common faith of mankind is a mental
or moral disease. According to Mr. Herbert Spencer the faith that we can
know what is real is an illusion: the Real is the Unknowable. According
to Professor Huxley the common faith in the freedom of the will is an
illusion: necessity is the law of the uniformity both of Nature and of
human nature. In thus declining to accept the testimony of the moral and
religious consciousness as evidence of what is, both philosophers were
influenced by the belief that it is science alone which is capable of
ascertaining and demonstrating what is and what actually does happen.
This belief, however, we have ventured to suggest, overlooks two facts.
One is that the abstract sciences do not even profess to state what
actually does happen: they simply affirm that, if the conditions stated
in their various laws are the only conditions operative, the only result
will be that stated by the particular law in question. Thus science does
not concern itself with what is or does happen, but solely with what
would be or would happen under certain (usually impossible) conditions.
The other point overlooked is that the historical or comparative
sciences are also only hypothetically true. All that their laws
undertake to demonstrate is that, if certain consequences constitute the
whole of an observed effect, then the only conditions antecedently
operative were those stated in the law. Here too, then, science does not
even claim to prove what is or demonstrate what does happen, but assumes
that we know it or find it out, in some way with which science does not
concern itself. If we do know and can know what is, science can tell us
what were the conditions that produced it.

The question, then, that we have to put to any theory of evolution--that
is, to any theory which professes to state the process by which the
totality of things has come to be what it is--is, "Does it account for
that totality? do the causes which it assumes to have been at work
account for all that is?" Now, _a priori_ it was not to be expected that
evolution would in its infancy, and it is still young, succeed in
accounting for all things; and there were special reasons in the
circumstances under which it first took its modern scientific shape
which necessarily limited its earliest attempts to grasp the totality of
things. It would, however, be absurd to judge the principle by the first
attempt to apply it, and to condemn it because it has not done in a
moment what with time it assuredly will succeed in effecting. At the
same time, it can only effect that wider success by refusing to
stereotype its first errors and by declining to bind itself to the dogma
that what it has succeeded in explaining is all that there is to
explain, or that that alone is or happens which its present assumptions
or laws are capable of accounting for. There lies the danger which
threatens to check the further development of the theory of
evolution--in the dogmatism which pretends to set aside common sense and
the common reason, and arrogates to itself the sole right of saying what
is; and succeeds in doing so by the simple but circular argument that
that alone is or happens which can be accounted for by the laws that
regulate the movements of things in space or that follow from the
struggle for animal existence.

Historically, the theory of evolution in its first manifestation was an
extension to the historical sciences generally of a purely biological
conception, that of the origin of species as a consequence of the
struggle for existence. It was found that much else in the manifold of
what is, many other differences between related things, besides the
differences which mark off one species of animals from another, might be
accounted for, historically, by the theory that those differences were
but the sum and the accumulation of an infinite number of small
modifications which had given the thing an advantage over its rivals in
the struggle for existence. Strictly speaking, all that this remarkable
and wide-reaching discovery implied as a matter of logic was that
between animals and things not animal there existed an analogy or
resemblance, in virtue of which it was logical to argue from things
animal to things not animal just so far as the resemblance between them
went, but not further. Very naturally, however, it happened that with
this originally biological conception all its biological implications
were taken over, and it was (and is) argued not merely that there are
great and fruitful resemblances between, say, society and an animal
organism, but that societies are animal organisms. In fine, sociology
was treated as a department of biology. The fallacy that science
demonstrates what is, and that what science does not account for has no
real existence, thus made its appearance simultaneously with the birth
of the evolution theory. The resemblances between the evolution of the
social organism and of animal organisms could be accounted for by the
biological theory of the struggle for existence; the differences,
therefore, must be denied or laboriously explained away. With the growth
of sociology, however, it is becoming apparent that the evolution of
society has laws, some of which do indeed coincide with those of animal
evolution, but others of which are peculiar to sociology in the same
sense as the laws of chemistry are distinct from those of physics.
Sociology is accordingly revolting from its bondage to biology: the
plain fact that society is not an animal is beginning to make itself
felt. The resemblances between the organisation of society and that of
an animal are freely admitted, but the differences are beginning to
claim consideration also; and the sound doctrine is beginning to assert
itself that by experience alone, experience of what is, and not by any
_a priori_ dogmatism as to what in the name of science must be, can we
tell how far the resemblances extend as a matter of fact and where the
differences begin. That the evolution theory must be the gainer by thus
admitting the facts instead of denying their existence is clear; if
sociology is not a branch of biology, and yet the two sciences have
certain laws in common, a great step is at once taken towards
demonstrating the existence of certain general principles of evolution
which are higher than the laws of either, or perhaps than of any,
particular science.

The tendency of the scientific theories prevailing for the moment to
deny the existence of what they cannot, for the moment, account for, is
exemplified in another way by the theory of the survival of the fittest.
It was shown by Darwin that, granted the tendency to variation in
animals, the struggle for existence was enough in its results--as he had
the genius to discern them--to account for the origin of species. The
struggle for existence is a fact, and thus animal evolution was based on
what is, on positive fact. To apply the same process of argument to
human and social evolution was perfectly scientific and legitimate. What
is neither scientific nor legitimate is to maintain, explicitly or
implicitly, that the totality of human activity is engaged and
exhausted in the struggle for existence. Self-preservation is
undoubtedly a powerful instinct, but it is not the only instinct even of
animals, and is not always the most powerful in man--or in the brute.
That there are resemblances between man and his fellow-creatures, the
brutes, and that so far as those resemblances extend, man and the
animals have been, and are, subject to the same laws of evolutions, are
facts which may be heartily admitted, but which neither authorise us to
deny the existence of specifically human peculiarities, nor warrant us
in trying to deduce the differences from a law which applies only to the
resemblances. If the evolution theory is to state the process by which
the totality of things has come to be what it is, it must begin by
facing the whole of the facts--in this case by admitting that not only
have the fittest to survive survived, as is natural in a struggle for
existence, but that progress, æsthetic, ethical, and religious, has been
made.

The denial of this fact may either be open and avowed, as, for instance,
when the reality of the religious ideal is formally denounced; or it may
be tacit and implied, as, for instance, when moral progress is defined
as adaptation to environment, _i.e._ as not progress at all, or when the
freedom of the will is denied, _i.e._ when approximation to the ethical
ideal is maintained to be a thing not under our control. Tacit or
avowed, this denial proceeds upon the fallacy that the laws of science,
as understood and formulated at any particular moment, are the sole
test and constitute our only knowledge of what is. But the interests
both of the common sense of mankind and that specially organised form of
common sense which we know as science require a protest against that
fallacy: it is opposed to the principle on which scientific knowledge
rests, and it would be fatal, if acted upon, to all further development
of that knowledge.

The principle upon which science rests is that its laws are capable of
verification, and that they are verified when and if they are confirmed
by experience. The final appeal of science is to the evidence of
consciousness, the only evidence of what is that we possess: the only
evidence of the truth and accuracy with which an eclipse has been
calculated is the evidence of our senses that the eclipse does take
place and is visible in the place and at the time predicted. If a
hypothesis predicts results which as a matter of observation do not take
place, the hypothesis is judged so far inaccurate or inadequate: what is
over-rides our preconceived opinions, even if they be the hypotheses of
science, as to what ought to be or will be. It is the ever-open appeal
to the final court of fact, of what is, that condemns false assumptions,
guarantees the truth of science, and safeguards the freedom of
scientific inquiry. To allow any group of men, however eminent, or any
body of science, however sound, to deprive us of this right of appeal
and bid us disbelieve in the evidence of our own senses, if it
contradicts their theories, would be to submit to the tyranny of
dogmatism, and to be faithless to the cause of truth.

Fortunately, though the unconscious and therefore ill-considered
metaphysics of some men of science have tended in the direction of
scientific dogmatism, the practice of science has been in the opposite
direction. In practice science has owed much of her progress to the
study of "residual phenomena." Phenomena which the laws of science for
the moment could not account for have not been denounced as illusions,
or ruled out of court as non-existent or beneath the notice of science:
they have been accepted as facts, as part of the totality of things
which it is the ambition of science to account for; and, accepted as
such, they have led, it may be, to the discovery of a new planet or a
new element, but always to the discovery of fresh truths, which never
would have enriched the page of science had science refused to take
cognisance of facts the laws of which it had not at the time discovered.

In demanding, then, that any theory which professes to account for the
totality of things should recognise the fact of ethical and æsthetic
progress, and that all progress is willed and purposed, we are seeking
not to cramp science but to enlarge its bounds, not to introduce a new
scientific method, but to extend the application of existing methods,
and to carry out the principle on which the truth of science and the
freedom of scientific inquiry are based. The laws which enable the
physicist to explain the mechanical action and reaction of things do not
suffice to explain the reactions studied by the chemist. The laws of
chemistry are inadequate for the purposes of the biologist. It is but an
extension of the same principle when the student of the anthropological
sciences finds it necessary to assume, or rather discovers, that the
laws of animal existence do not wholly account for everything that man
does; and it is to these sciences that we must look for the next
important and fruitful modification of the general theory of evolution.
It is to them, dealing as they do with the highest product of evolution,
that we must look for the truest interpretation of evolution. On the
principle that to understand what a thing is we must not reduce it to
its lowest terms, but look at it in its highest manifestation, we must
judge the evolution process by its highest phase, by all that it is
capable of, and not by the least we can, by scientific abstraction,
leave in it. And the sciences which, merely to maintain their scientific
existence, have a vital interest in insisting on the reality of will and
purpose as causes which have influenced the direction of the evolution
process are the sciences which deal with man.

Those who find it easy to believe that a society is an animal, like
those who proclaim that the real is unknowable, but that our knowledge
of it is just as good as if it were not unknowable, will have little
difficulty in believing that men's actions are not influenced by their
purposes; and both will probably subscribe to the doctrine that, first,
approximation to the ideal is an unintended result of the brute struggle
for mere animal existence; and, next, the purpose which appears to mark
the evolution process and to be the cause of progress is semblance only,
a mere illusion. Against the first article of this doctrine the final
and decisive appeal is and always must be to experience. It makes a
general statement with regard to particular facts of experience: like
every other statement made in the form of a scientific law, it affirms
that a certain proposition will be found, when tested by experience, to
be true of every one of a certain class of facts in our experience. It
is therefore competent for every man, who chooses to consult his
experience, to decide for himself whether the statement is true. In the
present case, it is for every man, who has struggled with temptation and
has achieved any progress, to say whether he gained the victory without
an effort of will, without any desire for better things, without any
purpose or resolution to try once more, without any intention not to
yield the next time. Are "secret commissions" in trade refused, when
refused, unintentionally? or is their refusal due solely to the blind
instinct of self-preservation in the struggle for commercial existence?
If reform is effected, will it be effected by those who declare that the
severity of the struggle for existence makes reform impossible? or by
those in whom the ideal of honesty has some operative force and who
purpose approximation to that ideal? When the conviction is expressed
that public opinion alone will be able to check this form of dishonesty,
what is that but an appeal to the common sense and common faith that
there are other things which man can will and purpose besides success in
the struggle for existence?

The doctrine that the universe presents the mere semblance of purpose,
that Nature mimics purpose, having none, is shared by materialistic
systems in common with all those which consider that the only
explanation that can be rendered of any given state of things is the
assumption that it is the issue of some antecedent necessity which
produced it. As we have already argued, the assumption of necessity as
the ultimate explanation of things breaks down when we come to consider
the beginning of the universe. If we assume an absolute beginning, then
there can have been no necessity antecedent to that, and the beginning
of things is left without explanation. On the other hand, to say that
there never was any beginning is to admit that there never was any
original necessity why things should follow the course of evolution
which they have pursued--the initial collocation of causes was due to
chance, was a purely fortuitous concurrence of atoms. When it is
remarked that this is a strange assumption, that really, if the whole
evolution process had been designed to reach the stage in which we know
it and to attain the ideal which we surmise it to be capable of, the
primeval atoms could not have been arranged better for the purpose, the
reply is that the appearance of purpose is a delusion: true, as a matter
of chance, the chances are millions to one against a fortuitous
concurrence of atoms producing the evolution process that has taken
place, but then the chances were just as great, neither more nor less,
against any other of the millions of evolution processes that might have
been evolved. We know the one that has taken place, and it is marvellous
in our eyes that precisely this and no other should have occurred; but
the wonder vanishes when we reflect that, had any other occurred, we
should have been equally convinced, and equally erroneously convinced,
that it could not have been produced by chance. The initial arrangement
of things was, as it happened, such as to produce our evolution process:
things might have chanced differently at the beginning; if they had, a
different evolution process would have taken place, that is all. But it
would still have looked like purpose, and would still have been due to
chance.

But would it? The whole question is whether the initial collocation was
due to chance or to purpose. To say that there might have been many
other collocations proves nothing: an Almighty Power could collocate
things in any of an infinite number of ways. To argue that every
possible collocation, and therefore the one that produced our evolution
process, must be due to chance, is simply to beg the question: the very
thing we want to know is whether this or any other process could be due
to chance. The argument that any and every other process would equally
testify to purpose and equally imply design, seems rather to indicate
that no conceivable evolution process could conceivably be due to
chance.

Next, the necessitarian argument lays it down that the marvel of
evolution vanishes when we reflect that if things had been different at
the beginning, the results would have been different. But they were not.
And the fact that they were not is just the marvel which the
necessitarian does not even explain away: in order to diminish the
probability of purpose, he postulates countless possible alternatives to
the original arrangement of atoms, and then he is embarrassed with the
difficulty of getting rid of them. Why was this particular collocation
determined on rather than one of the countless alternatives? To say it
was chance may be true; but we want to know what reason there is for
believing it to be true. If there is none, then neither is there any
reason for believing the purpose that makes the evolution process to be
an illusion.

But let us grant it was chance: chance, as everyone knows, is merely a
name for our ignorance as to the real cause; so that to say it was due
to chance is to say that, for anything we know to the contrary, the
original concurrence of atoms may have been due to purpose. In a word,
there is, on the theory of chance, no reason to believe that purpose
either is or is not an illusion.

It may, however, be said that not only do we not know, but that we
cannot know, whether it is an illusion or not. In reply we may either
admit that all our knowledge--scientific, moral, and religious--is based
not on knowledge, but on faith; or we may ask on what grounds this
alleged impossibility is based. If we put that question, we shall find
that the grounds are not altogether cogent. It is alleged to be equally
impossible for the human mind to conceive either the existence or the
non-existence of a necessity antecedent to the absolute beginning of
things: therefore, in face of this inherent incapacity of the human
mind, the truth about the beginning of things is unknowable and
inconceivable. But, we venture to suggest, this alleged incapacity of
the human mind rests on a false antithesis: it rests on the assumption
that whatever phase of the evolution process we regard as the initial
arrangement must either have been determined by some prior phase (in
which case it was not initial) or not determined at all. But as a mere
matter of logic, there remains the possibility that it may have been
self-determined; and, as regards the evidence of experience, we are
familiar with a cause which operates every day and which is
self-determined, viz. the free will. There is, therefore, no such
inherent incapacity in the human mind as is alleged; and the only
inconceivability is that which is inherent in the theory of antecedent
necessity, and not in the facts themselves. It is simply incorrect to
say that if things cannot be explained by the theory of antecedent
necessity, they are not capable of being explained at all. If the
evolution process had been designed to follow the course it has
followed, the initial arrangement of things could not have been better
adapted to produce the result; and, as adaptation of means to end is the
mark of intelligence, it is neither inconceivable nor irrational to
suppose that purpose was immanent in things from the beginning.

But as it is scientific to argue from the known to the unknown, or from
the better known to the less known; and as to know fully what a thing is
we must know what it is capable of becoming or producing, let us pass
from the pre-animal to the animal stage of evolution. It is the more
necessary to do this because it was Darwin's theory of the origin of
species which impressed upon the modern mind the idea that Nature mimics
purpose, having none. Man, with the purpose of breeding a certain type
of animal, selects those animals to breed from which possess, in the
most marked degree, the characteristics which he wishes to develop in
the offspring. But, as Darwin demonstrated, Nature, or the environment,
by killing off those creatures which did not possess (or least
possessed) the qualities necessary to ensure survival, "selects" animals
of a certain type to breed from. Thus "natural selection" produces its
results in the same way as human selection does; and presents every
appearance of purpose, though the environment which produced the results
could have had no intentions or purpose at all. But just as man does not
create the animals which he first selects to breed from, so the
environment does not create those sports or varieties which it selects
to breed from: if they did not exist, neither man nor Nature could breed
from them--no results, purposed or unpurposed, could be got from them.

If now we inquire about these sports, we are told science is content
with the fact that they undeniably occur: wherever there are animals
there are varieties in their offspring. That those which are adapted to
survive will survive, and those which are not will not, is a
self-evident, indeed an identical, proposition. It is; and it gives away
the whole case against purpose, for it admits that some varieties are
originally adapted to survive, that without them neither man nor the
environment would have anything to begin on or work on, and that though
man and Nature may develop, they do not create the original adaptation.
They do but promote, by conscious or unconscious action, the purpose
immanent in the sport. Of all the numerous, successive, imperceptible
increments by which what was originally a sport is raised to a distinct
species, not one is created by man or by the environment: all are the
"gratuitous offerings" of the organism, manifestations of the organism's
spontaneity, revelations of its latent capacities, fulfilments of the
purpose immanent in it from the beginning.

If it be said that the survival of any or every given species was a
matter of chance, because other sports would have developed into other
species, if the environment had been different, the reply again is, But
it was not; and, on the theory of necessity, could not be. The fact that
both conditions--the organism's spontaneity and the environment's
selective agency--were requisite to the production of the new species,
and that both conditions were forthcoming, tells rather in favour of
purpose than against it. The fact that this particular combination of
conditions was effected, rather than any other, is on exactly the same
footing as the initial concurrence of atoms: if the latter cannot be
ascribed to any necessity antecedent to it, neither can the former; the
reason of the combination is to be sought in the self-determining cause
immanent in the conditions. The fact, if it be a fact, that countless
other combinations were possible, and this alone was chosen, shows that
the will immanent in the evolution process is free will.

In fine, Darwin has shown that the action of the environment is exactly
what it would have been had it been designed for the purpose of
selecting certain sports for development. All that is further necessary
in order to show that this apparent purpose is an illusion, is to prove
that the environment was not designed to act as it does. Pending the
production of that proof, the argument remains incomplete.

The larger part of the process of evolution is known to us only from the
outside: we observe its effects in the animal world and in inorganic
nature, but its inner workings we have to reach by inference. One part
of the evolution process, however, we know from the inside--that part
which is carried on through us. We are some of the innumerable channels
through which the motive force of the process is transmitted; and the
knowledge which its transmission through us gives us is more intimate
and direct than that which we get from observing the external effects it
produces elsewhere. The evolution of society, for instance, is a part of
the general process of evolution, and is a process which is carried on
through us and expresses the resultant of the totality of our
sentiments and actions towards one another. What light, then, if any, is
thrown by sociology on the general question of purpose?

Mr. Herbert Spencer has familiarised us with the lesson that in politics
and social experiments it is the unforeseen and unintended results of
legislation which are far the most important, and that the industrial
organisation of the country, or we may now say of the world, is not the
fulfilment of any design preconceived by any governmental agency, but
the unintended result of innumerable actions on the part of men who
never dreamed that their action would have any such outcome. The reason
of this is to be sought in the fact that society is an organism and that
its growth follows the same laws as those which regulate the structural
development of an amoeba or a rhizopod. Thus, both society and the
animal organism must be fed. To be fed, both must appropriate nutriment
from the environment. That nutriment must be taken up and must be
distributed to all parts of the organism, social or animal, if all parts
are to be fed--and all must be fed, because all are mutually dependent,
and to neglect one would disorganise the whole. Channels of
communication must be established between all parts, in order that food
may be conveyed from the organ which took it from the environment to the
organs which require it for support. What marks the process of
evolution in both cases is the increasing division of labour and the
increasing interdependence of the parts on one another. The animal
organism, like the social organism, is made up of a multitude of living
units, each one of which is continually adjusting itself to the
requirements of all the rest. The increasing complexity in the structure
of an animal organism is possible only because the living units of one
part take upon themselves new functions, or devote themselves
exclusively to one function, in order to benefit the units of a distant
part. If they purposed or were purposed to produce that result, they
could not behave differently or better. But this appearance of purpose
is mere semblance: the minute cells of an animal organism have no
intention of producing even a rhizopod or an amoeba. The explanation
of this mimicry of purpose lies in the fact of the mutual
interdependence of the parts: no change can take place in one organ of
society or of the animal without being transmitted through the whole,
just as you cannot remove one of the undermost of a cartload of bricks
without more or less disturbing all the rest. But what is true of the
bricks or of the units of the animal organism is true of the units of
the social organism: what we discover in their action and reaction on
one another is the operation, not of voluntary purpose, but of
invariable laws of cause and effect.

According to this argument, then, the living units of the animal
organism resemble in their action those of the social organism
sufficiently to warrant us in arguing from the one to the other, and in
concluding that there is purpose in the action of neither. But it is
obvious that, if the resemblance is great enough to justify us in
arguing from the animal to the social organism, it also opens the way
for the argument to travel the return journey, from the social organism
to the animal, and to reach the conclusion that there is purpose in
both. Let us therefore consider what each of these two opposite
conclusions requires us to believe.

On the one hand, before accepting the argument that there is no purpose
in the action of the social organism because there is none in that of
the animal, we must prove that there is none in that of the animal. But
that, as we have already urged, is exactly what has not been proved: the
utmost that science claims to prove is that the units of the animal
organism do behave in a certain way. That way is exactly the way in
which they would behave if they were designed to do so; and science
leaves it, so far, a perfectly open question whether they were or were
not so designed. The argument, therefore, that there is no purpose in
the action of the social organism, because none in the animal, breaks
down at the threshold. Yet it is on the unproved and unprovable
assertion that the appearance of purpose in the animal organism cannot
possibly be due to design, and must therefore be a delusion, that we
are expected to deny the evidence of our own experience and
consciousness and to believe that we, the units of the social organism,
have no purpose in the daily acts by which we extend trade or discharge
our social functions.

Thus the surmise that Nature mimics purpose, having none, is a
conjecture which, so far as it is applied to the pre-human stages of the
evolution process, simply plays upon our ignorance; and which, when
applied to that part of the evolution process which is carried on
through us, we know to be absurd. On the other hand, if there is such
similarity between the laws of the one part of the process and the laws
of the other part, it must be as allowable to argue from the part and
the laws which we do know to the part and the laws that we do not know,
as it is to explain the known by what is confessedly unknown. In other
words, if the evolution of the social organism is known to be due to
purpose, then it is a reasonable inference that animal evolution, which,
we are told, follows the same line and laws, is due also to purpose--and
if not to any purpose entertained by the cells of the animal organism,
then to that of a Will of which their action is the expression.

It is, however, maintained that the continuous social changes which
constitute the evolution of society, so far from being the result of the
purpose of any individual or of any government, are frequently the very
opposite of what was intended by the authors of the changes, and always
are notoriously beyond our power to forecast. But the fact that my plans
are modified or diverted by my successors or by my coadjutors does not
prove that there was no purpose in my plans, or that there was none in
the modifications introduced by my successors. And the total result of
our united action and purposes may be something different from what any
of us individually intended and yet express a common purpose, which is
shown by the result to have been more or less present to all of us. A
cathedral begun in the Norman style may have taken generations to build
and may end in Gothic; and it will express the ideas common to the
several builders, in much the same way that a composite photograph
reproduces most distinctly the features in which all the persons
photographed coincide, and other features more or less distinctly
according to the extent to which they are shared in common by the
different subjects. Or, to express the effect of the successive actions
of succeeding generations, we may borrow an illustration from the game
of chess. It is possible for five players to play, taking it in turns to
move, so that every player makes one move out of five, and plays
alternately for White and Black. The result, with good players, is a
brilliant and well-developed game, which is not the game as purposed or
intended by any one of the five players, but as continually modified
and improved by each every time that he took it up. When, then, we
reflect how many players in the game of life there are even in a small
society, we can well understand that, though each has his own way of
serving the common purpose, none can forecast the result.

Perhaps it will be said that the chess-players have a common purpose,
and the players in life's game have none. The reply is that science
assumes they have; science assumes that they play to win in the struggle
for existence; and only on the assumption that men have common purposes
is it possible to frame any scientific account of their actions. The
science of Political Economy assumes that it is a common purpose of men
to acquire wealth, and that their actions are determined by that
purpose. It then goes on to show that if that is their purpose, then the
conditions under which it can be and is effected are of a certain kind,
_e.g._ men must buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market. It
is not necessary to assume, nor does Political Economy assume, that man
can only purpose to acquire wealth, or that he must under all
circumstances do so. In the same way it is wholly unscientific in
sociology to assume that success in the struggle for existence is either
a thing that man must aim at, or the only thing that he can aim at: the
soldier dies for his country, the martyr for his faith. The
institutions of a nation--legal, political, social, and
religious--express the predominant purposes for which successive
generations of the community have laboured; and the evolution of mankind
is the history of the various degrees of success with which men have
realised the ideals which they have purposed to attain. The successive
reforms by which progress has been effected have all been purposed, and
have all been purposed by men who believed, rightly or wrongly, that in
so doing they were serving God and their fellow-men, and that the ideals
of truth, justice, equality, fraternity, love, compassion, and mercy
express God's will and the Divine purpose.

If, then, the outcome of the pre-human period of evolution has been, as
a matter of fact, and amongst other things, such as to prepare the earth
for man's habitation and to provide him with a mechanism, physiological
and psychological, such that he can use it, if he will, to promote what
he considers to be progress and advance, it is not unreasonable for him
to regard past phases of evolution as so many steps leading to the
realisation of the ideals which he cherishes, in his best moments, as
his highest purposes. The continuity of evolution and the unity of its
process authorise or even compel him to use that part of the process
which is carried on through him as a means to interpret the rest. As, in
the game of chess played by five players, each player inherits from his
predecessor the game as it stands, and carries on, with improvements or
modifications, the scheme which he inherits, so in life each player in
turn becomes conscious of the ideals which he too may, or may not, as he
wills, carry one step nearer to their goal. It is in the continuity with
which these ideals are transmitted through one consciousness after
another that the continuity of human evolution consists. We are, or may
be if we choose, particles in the medium by which a purpose not our own
(save inasmuch as we choose to make it so) is carried onwards to its
destination. The medium through which progress has travelled in the past
is Nature; the medium through which it is now travelling is human
nature. By us the ideal, as it is transmitted through our consciousness,
is recognised as implying the presence in us of a purpose higher than
our own. Whether in the medium of Nature there is any dim consciousness
of the progress towards which the changes in Nature conspire, we know
not. But the uniformity of Nature and human nature requires us to see in
those natural changes the operation of the same power travelling in the
same direction as it does through us. In its passage through us it is
made known to us as the object of our highest aspirations; the ideal of
purity, of holiness, and love; the God for whom the human heart,
mistakenly or not, has always sought, and never sought in vain.




XIV.

CONCLUSION


The Pessimistic interpretation of evolution has taught us the lesson
that, if we start without belief in the Divine government of the world,
study of the process of evolution will not lead us to discern any Divine
purpose in the process. Belief in religion cannot begin without faith in
God to start with, just as belief in science or in morality is based not
on evidence, but on faith. The question remains whether with faith we
can believe that the process of evolution is a revelation of Divine
love, and whether man's environment has been evolved in such a way as to
promote in him that love of his fellow-man and God which is the
religious ideal.

If we look at the structure of society, we see it is based on the fact
that man has certain needs--of food, shelter, and clothing, etc.--which
can be satisfied more effectually by co-operation and division of labour
than by isolated, individual action. The man who earns his own living
does so by rendering services for which he is paid: he cannot benefit
himself without benefiting others to some extent. That is the law under
which he lives, a law not of his own making, nor always to his own
liking, but a law inherent in the nature of things, and part of the
purpose, if purpose there be, in the scheme of things. As a free agent,
man may co-operate with his fellows and take his share of the divided
labour, or not, as he wills; but those peoples which have carried the
principles of co-operation and organisation furthest have fared best.
They have availed themselves of the opportunity offered them, and have
survived. The failure of the rest to do likewise has not impeded the
fulfilment of the Divine purpose that men should help one another. On
the contrary, those who decline to help one another voluntarily place
themselves at a disadvantage in the struggle for existence, and are
slowly, but surely, crowded out by those who fulfil the Divine purpose
less unsatisfactorily, and in consequence tend to inherit the earth.

We have already seen that when a man reaches years of discretion he
finds that the physiological and psychological mechanism of which he is
now in possession, and for the management of which he is henceforth
responsible, has a tendency to run in certain grooves: he has, as a
child, been taught and has inherited an aptitude to think and act in
certain ways. The same remark applies to the social organism. Before or
when the individual awakes to the fact that he is a member of a society,
he has already been or is the child of parents to whom he renders
obedience, and between whom and himself there exist relations of
affection. The evolution of man as a purely animal organism has been
such that he begins life with a prolonged period of helpless infancy.
Unlike the lower animals, which very soon after birth are capable of
providing for themselves, he is for years dependent on others. His
prolonged infancy is a prolonged period of plasticity, during which he
is moulded into a member, first of a family and then and thereby into a
member of society. All the higher animals give their offspring some
education, an education as good as they received themselves: in the
human race alone do parents give their children a better education than
they got themselves. It is, however, not the rising generation alone who
benefit by the long period of dependence and plasticity which
characterises childhood. It is, of course, true that labour expended on
the perfecting of tools and machinery is peculiarly productive, inasmuch
as the increased efficiency of the instrument more than repays the
greater outlay. But as the workman who produces the tool becomes in
consequence of his labour a more skilled mechanic, so the education
given by the parent to the child is an education not only of the child,
but of the parent, and makes both better fitted to be members of
society. It not only secures that subordination of the younger men to
the elder, which is necessary for the stability of society and the
permanence of the tribe, but it also tempers power with responsibility,
responsibility not to some external authority, but to the higher
principle within the man.

Thus even in the earliest stage of society the anti-social forces of
selfishness and the passions do not operate _in vacuo_ and with nothing
to impede them. Society at the very beginning is no _tabula rasa_: the
field is already largely occupied, and the direction of social evolution
already largely determined, by that affection between parents and
children without which neither society as a whole nor the individual as
a unit could come into being or continue to exist. It is an
unwarrantable libel, even on savage society, to say that in it the ape
and tiger predominate in man: the lowest forms of society survive only
so far as there exists more humanity than brutality in the dealings of
their members with one another. It is a false philosophy of evolution,
not a true acquaintance with the facts of anthropology, which rashly
assumes that the morally lowest must have been the only primitive
elements in the evolution of humanity. The evil and the good in man have
existed side by side from the beginning; unselfish affection, as well as
selfish desires, has always been part of the equipment of human nature,
though the evolution of the former may be a longer and more difficult
process, both in the individual and the race, than the evolution of the
latter.

In the race moral progress may be expected with much more confidence
than it can in the case of the individual. The mere existence of a
society, however simple in structure, is of itself proof that the
anti-social forces of selfishness and passion are in it less strong than
the instincts of neighbourliness and mutual help. Of competing societies
those eventually triumph which are least weakened by internal
dissension--that is to say, those societies tend to thrive and extend
most of which the members are most ready to subordinate their private
ends to the public good. Ultimately it is only by the development of
this type of individual character that a society can achieve success;
and it is this type of character that the competition between nations
develops. But essential as it is to the survival of a society, it is by
no means so essential to the survival of the individual in his struggle
for existence against other individuals. If, then, society were simply a
collection of warring atoms, or if the individual's whole activity were
expended in struggling with his neighbour and trying to elbow him out,
the type of character essential to the survival of society could never
be developed, and society itself could neither come into being nor
continue to be. The fact is that men not only compete, but co-operate:
society is, and from the beginning has been, an organisation requiring
from each of its parts some subordination to the interests of the
whole.

As the organisation of society grows more complex, the individual
becomes less and less capable of existing independently of society,
society becomes more and more independent of the services of any
individual member, and both these facts tend to foster the social and
weaken the anti-social forces in man. Increasing division and
subdivision of labour specialises the function of each member of the
community more and more, and so deprives him of the general aptitude for
doing all kinds of work which is essential to every man who is, as for
instance in a new colony, thrown largely on his own resources. Thus the
solitary existence which might be just possible for the outcast from a
savage tribe becomes a practical impossibility for the average member of
any community that has risen above that stage of social evolution. At
the same time the point is reached when no one man is indispensable to
the community. Society is made up of units so similar to one another
that any one can be replaced by some other, and, as a matter of fact,
the place of everyone is at death filled by some successor.

The theory of a social contract, as a historical or prehistorical event
in the development of any community, has long been rightly discredited:
at no time did a number of men, living solitary lives, have a public
meeting and formally contract to live together on certain conditions and
for certain ends. Man has been a gregarious, if not social, animal from
the beginning. Nevertheless, man has certain needs, desires, and ends
which can only be satisfied by means of social organisation, and which
are quite as potent in holding society together as if, instead of being
tacitly at work, they had been proclaimed aloud in a formal social
contract. If through any disease the social organism obstructs, or fails
to assist in realising, those ends, the dissatisfaction of the
individual and the danger to the state are just as great as if a formal
contract had been violated: the disappointment of the normal and
reasonable expectations of the members of the community is substantially
injustice, and is not altogether erroneously stated to be a violation of
the common and tacit understanding on which society is in fact if not
formally established. Co-operation in labour does imply some sort of
engagement, expressed or understood, that the joint product shall be
divided more or less fairly between the joint producers. Unfairness in
the distribution of social benefits may be of slow growth, but must
eventually result in undisguised resentment--appeal is made openly and
consciously to justice, which henceforth becomes the ideal of a section
at least of the community, and is recognised as a condition without
which a healthy social existence is impossible.

It is thus a monstrous perversion of the plain facts to represent the
struggle for existence as having been the sole or the main factor in
social evolution: every member of a community is born into an
atmosphere of co-operation and maintains his existence by the
co-operation of others. If he must labour to live, he cannot labour for
himself without at the same time rendering service to others; the very
same conditions which make him desire justice for himself constrain him
to maintain justice for the community at large. The social environment
is, and has always been, such as to lead man in the paths of justice and
to train him for the service of his fellow-man. The units which
constitute the social environment are men, beings whose physical,
mental, and moral structure is the result of a long process of evolution
stretching back to beyond the beginnings of life upon this earth, a
process which, assuming it to have had purpose, was designed to include
in its effects a creature capable of justice and of love.

The full development of the sentiment of justice has been the work of
many centuries. At first, when the community is small and nomad, the
idea that a stranger has a right to justice is incomprehensible. Even
when with the growth of civilisation provision is made for according
foreign merchants and others some protection from the law, the idea that
the stranger has the same right to justice as the citizen is neither
admitted by law nor entertained as a speculation. Indeed, the law,
modest though it be, may be in advance of public opinion and of the
practice of officials--witness the extortions practised by Roman
governors on the Roman provinces. Eventually, however, public opinion
outstrips the law and pronounces that even the colour of a man's skin
cannot bar his claims to justice, and that the inhabitants of a country,
though they be aborigines, have some rights in it. Finally comes
philosophy and pronounces justice, absolute and stern, the one thing
needful, the one and only duty which it is within the sphere and
function of government to maintain.

Unfortunately for the philosophy which maintains this view, it happens
that, just when the authority of justice is admitted by the conscience
of civilisation to be paramount, justice as an ideal is recognised to be
neither capable of realisation nor absolutely desirable. It is obvious
that in the best-regulated even of free communities the amount of
justice which can be secured by the action of the law and the
intervention of the State falls very far short of the ideal; and the
multiplication of laws and State inquisitors, which would be necessary
if every form of injustice and wrong-doing were to be punished by the
State, would be a remedy, if indeed it were a remedy, worse than the
disease. It is impossible to pretend to believe that wealth is
distributed according to merit in any existing community, or that any
governmental system, even if designed solely with that end in view,
could ever determine what a man's merits were, or what his reward should
be. Nor is the ill distribution of wealth the only factor of injustice,
though it is the only factor with which the State could make pretence to
deal: sickness and sorrow, grief and pain--nay, the very capacity for
suffering and for joy--are dealt to different men in very different
measure. It is plain matter of fact that earthly goods and pleasures are
not distributed according to merit; and it is just when man's conquest
of Nature has become most complete, when society is no longer struggling
for a bare subsistence, when the demand for justice is most fully and
unreservedly admitted, that the impossibility of meeting the demand and
the danger of failing to meet it become most manifest. The poverty which
accompanies progress may in one generation be less than it was in the
previous generation, but the extremes of poverty and wealth grow daily
wider apart, and the number of those who are poor increases in a growing
population much more rapidly than the number of the rich. The danger
which this rent in the social fabric threatens to the whole structure of
society may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. The mere justice of
individualism which has hitherto sufficed to hold society together,
suffices now no longer. The justice which limits itself to the
fulfilment of those actions to the non-performance of which a legal
penalty is attached, is not the one and only thing needful, nor does its
force remedy the numerous cases of undeserved misfortune and suffering
which the working of our social and industrial system entails. What
heals the suffering and saves it from becoming a festering sore that
might prove fatal to society, is that love of man for his fellow-man,
which is manifested to the poor by the rich to some extent, but chiefly
by the poor. The State can only prescribe and enforce external acts of
justice; and the external acts which it prescribes are not the bond
which holds or can hold society together. The State, in its attempts to
modify society through the individual, is as clumsy as the breeder or
the gardener in dealing with animals and plants, and must fain be
content if it can modify some of the more prominent external
characteristics. Nature is much more searching, and, if slower, much
more thorough: the real nature of her work, the true character of the
force on which she has made the cohesion of society to depend, becomes
obvious at the time when the insufficiency of mere justice for the
purpose becomes apparent. Imperfect though man's obedience has been to
the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," it is to
his obedience that society owes its maintenance.

As a matter of fact, then, strict justice is not and cannot be realised
in this world. Even the forces of the social environment which are, to
a large extent, under man's own control are not and cannot be so
directed by him as to secure rewards and punishments in exact proportion
to merit and demerit; while the action of those natural forces which
distribute fortune and misfortune, pain and the susceptibility to pain,
pleasure and the capacity of enjoyment, is still less under his control
and, as far as we can see, is still less proportionate to desert. The
fields of the unjust benefit as much as those of the just by the rain
from heaven; the labourers who enter the vineyard of civilisation at a
late hour receive as great a reward as their predecessors who bore the
heat and burden of the day, or even greater; when a tower in our social
fabric falls, it is not the guilty who are alone or even specially
involved in its ruin. From the time of Theognis, at least, men have
inquired with despair how the gods could expect worship when they
suffered these things to be; and as long as we look upon life as though
we were detached spectators, with no care for it save a disinterested
desire to see justice done, it is easy for us to declaim upon the
absolute indifference of the cosmic process to man and his deserts. But
this detached attitude is purely artificial, and we could not make even
the semblance of long maintaining it, did we not unconsciously glide
into the more natural, but less warrantable, position of tacitly
assuming that our own personal lot would be improved if strict justice
were done. But is not our resentment against the injustice of the world
partly premature and somewhat shallow and short-sighted? Are we sure we
want strict justice? Are we so anxious to have our merits weighed? are
they so imposing? Can we pray that we may be rewarded after our
iniquities? If society could by some supernatural power deal strict
justice to all its members, who _would_, who _could_ live in it? As a
matter of fact--to say it once more--it is not by law alone that society
lives, but by love, by the long-patient love of father or mother, of
wife or husband, of friend or neighbour, which every one of us has
accepted and none has fully requited. Our very hospitals are open to all
who need them, to those whose suffering is due to their own negligence,
or even crime, and not merely to those whose pain is undeserved. A
palpable injustice, worthy of the cosmic process itself! And what
excuse, if justice, absolute and relentless, be our highest and
worthiest aspiration, can there be for appropriating the reward of
honest toil to the often fruitless task of offering to those, who have
by their own vice sunk into the depths, one last chance of life and of
redemption? The mercy which falleth, like the gentle rain from heaven,
alike upon the unjust and the just, must be judged by the same standard
that we apply to the cosmic process. We may, like the elder brother of
the prodigal son, refuse to see anything in man or Nature but a world
given up to gross injustice--persons so superior as to stand in no need
of forgiveness and no fear of judgment are able doubtless to judge the
world and their fellow-man. But the prodigal himself may, perchance,
better understand some of the workings of his father's heart, and trust
he sees in the apparent injustice of Nature more instances of that mercy
which would not have showed itself to him had justice measured love.

It seems, then, that the "ethical process" and the "cosmic process" are
not so absolutely opposed to one another as Professor Huxley endeavoured
to make out. Both at times act with a calm disregard of justice. In the
one case we know that it is a higher principle which takes the place of
justice; and it is a reasonable conjecture that the ethical process,
which is one outcome or manifestation of the cosmic process, does but
reproduce, in this case as in others, the action of the cosmic force
which operates through the heart of man as well as through the rest of
the universe. It is at any rate inconsistent to condemn the cosmos for
exhibiting that quality of mercy which we rank highest amongst the
attributes of man: if we take credit to our fellow-men for that quality,
in fairness let us give the cosmos the same credit when it displays the
same quality. If, as we assume in this chapter, there is purpose in
evolution, let us admit that there is some presumption that it is a
purpose of love and of mercy.

As it is by faith in science that men of science succeed in solving
problems which, for a time, seem beyond the powers of science to deal
with, so it is on faith in religion that the religious explanation of
the universe depends for its slow but sure extension. With that faith we
may succeed in seeing, to some slight extent, that the unequal
distribution of pain, as well as of earthly prosperity, is not
incompatible with a Divine purpose in evolution. For that faith we must
believe that the suffering and sorrow from which none of us is exempt
are not evil, unless we choose to make them so, but opportunities for
good. Indeed, without that faith we seem forced upon the same
conclusion: the man who devotes himself, his soul, his life to the
relief of the needy and the suffering cannot make earthly prosperity his
chief good, though, as Professor Huxley has said, he may attain
something much better. But if we hold that there is something better
than earthly prosperity, can we consistently declaim against sickness
and sorrow as the worst of evils, or indict a universe because they are
not unknown in it? The Stoicism which lent Professor Huxley the strength
to teach that man must to the end declare defiance and resistance to the
cosmos--resistance unavailing and defiance doomed to certain failure in
the end--might also have taught him that the evil which he calls on us
to war against is not in the cosmos; that the enemy of the ethical
process has his headquarters not in Nature, but in the heart of man.
Pain and sorrow are evil to the sufferer who allows them to make him
selfish, and to the spectator who chooses to be callous to his
suffering. If our volitions do count for something in the course of
things, if we are so far free that we can, in response to Professor
Huxley's call, doggedly and repeatedly resist the cosmic process, then
it is of our own free will, also, that we do evil when the opportunity
of good is offered us. Yet we charge the evil upon the cosmos.

{_hô phopoi, oion  dhê ny theous brotoi aitihoôntai
hex êmheôn ghar phasi khak' hemmenai· oi dê kai autoi
sphêsin atasthalhiêsin yphermoron halge' hechousin._}




APPENDIX

ON BISHOP BERKELEY'S IDEALISM


When one asserts that a writer is wrong in one of the arguments which he
uses, it is well to begin by making sure that he really does use the
argument in question. For this purpose it is useful to quote the
passages in which the writer uses the argument, and such passages, for
my own satisfaction, I will speedily cite from Bishop Berkeley. But
first, in order that the reader may know that the interpretation which I
put on these extracts is not one peculiar to myself, but is in harmony
with the general tenor of Berkeley's metaphysical writings, I will quote
from Professor Fraser, who, in his preface to the _Dialogues between
Hylas and Philonous_, states Berkeley's argument to be as follows: "As
the common reason of men, tested by their actions, demands the
_permanence_ of sensible things, even though they are not permanently
present to the senses of any one embodied mind, it follows that the very
existence of the things of sense (apart from any 'marks of design' in
their collocations) implies the permanent existence of Supreme Mind, by
whom all real objects are perpetually conceived, and in whom their
orderly appearances, disappearances, and reappearances in finite minds
may be said to exist potentially."

And now for Berkeley's own words, (1) In the _Second Dialogue between
Hylas and Philonous_ (p. 304 of Professor Fraser's edition), he says,
"To me it is evident that sensible things cannot exist otherwise than in
a mind or spirit. Whence I conclude, not that they have no real
existence, but that, seeing they depend not on my thought, and have an
existence distinct from being perceived by me, _there must be some other
mind wherein they exist_. As sure, therefore, as the sensible world
really exists, so sure is there an infinite omnipresent Spirit, who
contains and supports it."

(2) In the _Third Dialogue_ (p. 325 of Professor Fraser's edition) we
have: "_Hyl._ Supposing you were annihilated, cannot you conceive it
possible that things perceivable by sense may still exist?--_Phil._ I
can; but then it must be in another mind. When I deny sensible things an
existence out of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all
minds. Now, it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind;
since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is
therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals
between the times of my perceiving them: as likewise they did before my
birth, and would do after my supposed annihilation. And, as the same is
true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily
follows there is an _omnipresent Eternal Mind_, which knows and
comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view."

(3) The independent, real existence of things is affirmed with emphasis
in the _Second Dialogue_ (_ibid._, p. 307): "It is evident that the
things I perceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist unless it
be in a mind. Nor is it less plain that these ideas or things by me
perceived, either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of
my mind; since I know myself not to be their author, it being out of my
power to determine at pleasure what particular ideas I shall be
affected with upon opening my eyes or ears. They must therefore exist in
some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited to me. The
things, I say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them
which you will. But how can any idea or sensation exist in, or be
produced by, anything but a mind or spirit?"

(4) Finally, in _The Principles of Human Knowledge_, § 90, in explaining
the two senses of "external": "The things perceived by sense may be
termed _external_, with regard to their origin--in that they are not
generated from within by the mind itself, but imprinted by a Spirit
distinct from that which perceives them. Sensible objects may likewise
be said to be 'without the mind' in another sense, namely when they
exist in some other mind; thus when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may
still exist, but it must be in another mind."

Berkeley's argument in brief, therefore, is that we believe things to be
permanent, and must therefore believe in a permanent, Divine mind in
which they may exist. The question which I wish to raise is as to this
permanence of things; for, if things are not permanent, they cannot
testify to the permanence of the Divine mind. I will begin my
questionings with the concluding words of the last-quoted passage: "when
I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in
another mind." The expression "the things I saw" would seem to be
ambiguous. Are the things I saw the sensations of sight which I had, or
are they something different? If they are my sensations, they certainly
do not exist when my eyes are closed--things are not permanent. If the
things I see are something different from my sensations of sight, then
the common-sense Realist would seem to be right, and Berkeley's
Idealism must be given up. Let us examine each alternative.

It looks, at first, as though Berkeley himself would say that the things
I saw are identical with my sensations of sight: in the third passage
quoted above he says, "the things I perceive are my own ideas ... the
things, I say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them
which you will." Let us, therefore, see the consequences of adhering
strictly to this interpretation of the ambiguous phrase. It will follow
in the first place that, unless I can see with my eyes shut, the things
I see are not permanent, but do cease to exist when I close my eyes.
Next, my sensations cannot exist in somebody else's mind--the fact that
you can see the object when your eyes are open does not enable me to see
it with my eyes closed. On the other hand, of course, it does not follow
that because my eyes are closed nobody else can see anything--only, this
does not make my sensations permanent, or prove that they can exist in
someone else's mind. In fine, if "the things I saw" are the sensations
of sight that I had, then Berkeley's argument from the permanent
existence of "things" to their existence in a permanent mind breaks down
doubly; for, first, my sensations plainly are not permanent; and,
second, my sensations cannot exist in another mind, permanent or
otherwise.

At this point it is necessary to note that "existence" has been used in
this connection in a double sense: actual existence has been
distinguished from potential. It is on this distinction that Mill bases
his definition of matter as "the permanent possibility of sensation";
but the distinction is derived from Berkeley, who has, as usual, given
the most lucid explanation. In his _MS. Common Place Book_ (quoted in
Fraser, i. 325, n. 9), Berkeley says, "Bodies, taken for powers, do
exist when not perceived; but this existence is not actual. When I say a
_power_ exists, no more is meant than that _if_, in the light, I open my
eyes, and look that way, I shall see the body." Thus far Mill will go
with Berkeley; and thus far both are open to the reproach of not giving
a plain answer to a plain question. The plain question of common sense
to the Idealist is: Do things exist when unperceived? Does the furniture
of my room exist when nobody is in the room to perceive it? To which the
Idealist replies that if I go into the room I shall see the
furniture--which is perfectly true, but is no answer to the question.
There is, indeed, no particular reason why Mill should not plainly
answer "No," if it were not for fear of giving a shock to the man of
common sense who cannot readily comprehend how it is that the coal in
his grate has come to be consumed if the process of combustion has been
suspended in his absence. But with Berkeley the case is different: for
him the permanence of things and the common-sense belief in that
permanence have a value as furnishing an additional argument in favour
of a Supreme Mind. But he too evades rather than meets the plain
question of the plain man: "Do things exist when no one is conscious of
them?" His reply is, "Yes, for the Divine Mind is conscious of
them"--which again is true, but is not an answer to the question.

However, the point of immediate interest for our present purpose is to
ascertain whether the conception of "potential" existence can lend to
things that permanence which according to Berkeley necessitates the
assumption of a permanent mind. Now, by the potential existence of a
body or thing no more is meant than that _if_ I open my eyes and look in
the right direction, I shall see the thing; and the things I see are my
sensations, ideas, call them what you will. But that I can see with my
eyes shut is beyond possibility of proof--it certainly is not proved by
the fact that I can see with my eyes open; and neither is it proved by
the fact that other people see things when my eyes are closed. In fine,
if the things I see are my sensations, then things cannot have a
permanent existence; and no inference as to the permanence of the Divine
Mind can be drawn.

We are driven, therefore, to suppose that the things I see are
different, partially or wholly, from my sensations. And this supposition
seems to be implied by various passages in Berkeley. For instance, he
says (i. p. 307), "the things I perceive are my own ideas ... the
things, I say, immediately perceived are ideas or sensations, call them
which you will," where he seems to distinguish what is _immediately_
perceived (_i.e._ sensations) from something else. And a few lines
before he seems to be inclined to admit the existence of something else
than my sensations, for he says "ideas or things by me perceived, either
themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind."

The permanence of things is undoubtedly an inference. We find by
experience that effects which are produced by causes acting before our
very eyes are at other times produced by their causes in our absence:
the fire burns in my absence as well as in my presence. Obviously,
therefore, the thing which produces its effects when I have no
sensations of it must be different from those sensations; and it must be
an existing thing, otherwise its effects will be effects produced by a
non-existent cause. To say that the unobserved cause in these cases is a
possibility of sensation does not mend matters. A possible sensation is
a sensation which, as a matter of fact, does not exist and never did. It
is a piece of pure imagination; and consequently on this theory the
whole past history of the universe is imaginary. Neither are matters
mended by denying that there are such things as "causes," and affirming
that we only know "invariable and unconditional antecedents." How can a
possible sensation, that is, an event which did not take place, precede
one which does take place? How can an imagination of my mind have
preceded the existence of my mind?

Perhaps it may be said that if Mill's Psychological Theory of Mind and
Matter is not satisfactory, neither is the theory of the direct
apprehension of reality wholly consistent with itself. It affirms the
direct apprehension of reality, yet on examination the direct
apprehension turns out to be an inference. Thus: things must have an
existence different from our sensations because they produce their
effects, and therefore exist, in our absence.

The reply is simple. Unless we believed the effects, which we do
perceive, to be real things, we should not infer the causes, which we do
not perceive, to be real either. Common sense believes that things
_continue_ to exist when we turn our eyes away: their existence beyond
the range of observation is an inference from their existence in our
observation. Their inferred permanence is deduced from their observed
independence.




INDEX


A

Abstraction: 193, 198, 199, 203, 242, 255

Action: 65, 68, 70

Adaptation: 21, 25-30, 186, 204, 206, 219, 221, 252 (_see_ Environment)

Agnosticism: 36, 165-76, 202, 218, 237

Anthropomorphism: 51, 52, 55

Ape and tiger, The: 28, 30, 31, 40, 276

Appearance: 67, 266 (_see_ Purpose)

Apprehension: 57, 58, 63-70, 295

Approximation to the ideal: 206, 208, 213, 222, 229, 252, 256 (_see_
    Ideals, Progress, Purpose)

Art, Artist: 207, 209, 244

Assumption: 164-180, 185, 187, 188, 191-6, 221, 222


B

Becoming: 78

Being: 78

Belief: 215, 221 (_see_ Will to believe)

Berkeley, Bp.: 62, 63, 289-95

Bernard, Claude: 90

Biology: 94, 96, 249-51


C

Causation, Law of: 106 (_see_ Universal causation)

Causes: 79, 117, 181, 194, 196, 197, 208-10, 224, 244

Chance: 258, 259, 260

Chemical combination: 89, 90, 92, 98

Chemistry: 86, 94

Chess: 163-83, 268

Common consciousness of mankind: 164, 196, 197, 208, 244

Common experience of mankind: 74

Common faith of mankind: 165-72, 184-202, 204, 222, 223, 229, 246, 247

Common sense: 78, 81, 164-8, 173, 229, 249, 253, 289

Comparative method: 7
  --Sciences: 105

Conscience: 52, 84

Consciousness: 63-5, 70, 84, 166, 182, 198, 201, 253 (_see_ States of
    consciousness)

Continuity, The law of: 18, 104, 121, 133, 200, 201, 271

Cosmic process: 17, 21, 22, 26, 28-30, 32-5, 51, 53, 60, 81, 222, 224,
    284-6, 288 (cf. Ethical process)


D

Darwin: 7, 261

Demonology: 191

Design: 138, 140, 264, 267

Diversity of Nature: 125, 126, 132, 133 (cf. Uniformity of Nature)

Divine Providence: 36, 37 (_see_ Purpose, Divine)


E

Environment: 25, 28, 219, 221, 222, 232, 252, 263 (_see_ Adaptation),
    (social) 228, 280

Ethical process, The: 28, 31, 33-5, 47, 48, 60, 191, 219, 221, 286, 287
    (cf. Cosmic process)

Ethics: 87

Evidence: 138-62, 188, 189, 190, 191, 198, 199, 218, 253

Evil: 226, 227, 228, 287, 288

Existence, Actual and potential: 292, 293

Experience: 6, 64, 67, 145, 146, 153, 192, 197, 198, 202, 222, 223, 251,
    253, 256, 261
  --(spiritual): 199, 206, 226

Explanation: 75, 126, 241 (_see also_ Science)


F

Faith: 14, 16, 39, 81, 142, 143, 151-65, 185, 186, 187, 198, 203-37,
    246, 247, 273

Faith of science: 188, 198, 287

First principles: 94

Fraser, Professor: 289

Freedom: 108, 120-37, 168, 179, 184-96, 218, 224, 227, 247, 252, 261
    (cf. Necessity, Will)

French Revolution: 4


G

Golden Age: 3


H

Happiness: 24, 30

Homogeneous, Instability of: 98

Human nature (_see_ Uniformity)

Huxley, Professor: 24, 28, 30, 33, 39, 120, 144, 149-59, 173, 204, 205,
    208, 213, 219, 247, 286-8


I

Idealism: 38-59
  --(subjective): 57, 62, 63, 64, 289-95

Ideals: 30-2, 34, 41, 54, 74, 164-84, 194, 195, 204-36, 241-73, 280
    (_see_ Moral ideal, Truth)

Identity: 201

Illusion: 17, 22, 23-5, 44, 45, 47, 57, 60, 65, 74, 112, 136, 164, 165,
    227, 243, 246, 247, 256, 260

Independence: 201

Inhumanity: 33

Instinct: 236

Interaction: 68


K

Kirchoff: 80

Knowledge: 70, 96


L

Life: 88, 94, 182

Lotze: 82


M

Materialism: 17

Matter and Mind: 85, 88, 94, 133, 134
  (psychological theory of), 295

Matter and Motion: 15, 17, 19-21, 32, 35, 36-49, 100, 140, 168, 180
  --The redistribution of: 72-99

Mechanical composition: 89, 92, 98

Mechanical theory, The: 79-93, 181, 182, 205, 209, 211

Mertz, Dr.: 80

Metaphysics: 79, 82, 83, 84, 107-13, 123, 254 (cf. Philosophy)

Mill, J. S.: 63, 75, 76, 84, 89, 90, 149, 239, 292, 293, 295

Mind: 84
  --(_see_ Matter)

Miracles: 188, 190

Moral consciousness: 50, 198, 204, 206

Moral ideal: 43, 184, 185, 191, 193, 205, 221, 242, 244 (_see_ Ideals)

Moral judgment: 41

Moral laws: 43, 48, 196, 200, 201, 226

Moral obligation: 189, 198, 200, 209

Morality: 19, 34, 49, 50, 56, 69, 74, 159, 161, 162, 181, 186, 191, 218,
    221, 223, 225, 243, 244

Mythology: 3


N

Nature: 53
  --Cosmic: 37
  --Ethical: 33, 37
  --Laws of: 76
  --Uniformity of: 102-35, 144-50, 152, 161, 165-77, 187, 202, 215, 220,
    226, 272

Necessity: 17, 100-137, 164, 178, 179, 182, 190, 191, 240, 247, 259,
    260, 263
  --Metaphysical: 112, 113, 116, 126, 257
  --Scientific: 112 (_see also_ Freedom, Will)


O

Object (of desire): 56, 58
  --(material): 61, 70, 74, 81, 100, 102, 103, 171-5, 184-203

Objective truth: 35, 41, 200

Obligation, Moral: 12

Optimism: 1-13, 15-18, 20, 21, 30, 74, 164-8, 185-203, 223, 247

Organism, Animal: 10, 11, 12
  --Social: 10, 266, 267, 268 (_see_ Society)

Origin: 209, 212


P

Perception: 61, 62, 65 (_see_ Sensations)

Permanence: 63, 200, 289, 291-5

Personality: 52, 53, 66

Pessimism: 24-37, 39, 43-7, 74, 164, 168, 187-96, 247, 273

Philosophy: 70, 74, 81, 163-70, 173, 174, 177, 225, 276

Political economy: 124, 270

Positive philosophy: 165, 168

Physiology: 90

Pre-history: 7

Primitive man: 7

Progress: 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 22, 23, 25-8, 30, 78, 164, 203-37, 222, 252,
    254, 256, 270 (_see_ Approximation, Ideals)

Psychology: 83, 86, 87, 100

Purpose: 180, 181, 182, 192, 199, 209, 211, 212, 224, 226, 238-72, 280
  --Divine: 181, 230, 235, 270
  --Semblance of: 257, 266, 268


R

Reaction: 68

Reality, The Real: 17, 20, 35, 46-58, 60-71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 98, 165,
    166, 171, 172, 173, 175, 184, 200, 201, 212, 214, 223, 226, 247, 295

Religion: 16, 18, 123, 142, 144, 148, 161, 162, 174, 181, 218, 223, 242,
    243, 244, 273

Religious consciousness: 52, 196, 198, 199, 206

Retrogression: 26, 27, 32, 205, 206, 209, 219, 225

Revelation: 93, 94, 207, 213, 214, 245, 246
  --Progressive, 178, 204, 208


S

Science: the base of optimism, 15
  --not religion, 18
  --is man's notion of what happens, 49
  --and reality, 50-2, 59, 61, 72, 73
  --finds reason, does not make it, 53, 68, 69
  --ideal of, 54, 55, 220-2
  --based on experience, 70, 223, 253
  --purely descriptive, 75-80, 192
  --imperfectly descriptive, 241
  --mechanical theory of, 79-85
  --assumptions of, 103-5, 169-83, 196
  --describes sequences and co-existences, 105-8
  --and necessity, 110, 113-18, 125, 126, 132
  --and theory of design, 138-42, 267
  --and faith, 143-62, 185, 223
  --and positivism, 165
  --is abstract, 194-6, 242
  --incomplete as explanation, 232, 238-40
  --laws of, 48, 108, 124, 240, 241, 242, 252

Self-determination: 128, 130, 131, 137, 171, 174, 178, 218, 261, 264

Self-will: 229

Sensations: 57, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 291, 292, 294 (_see_
    Perception)

Sense-phenomena: 102, 103, 107, 134, 175, 198, 201

Seth, Professor: 78

Social contract: 278

Society (an organism): 9, 96, 250, 256, 265 (_see_ Organism)

Sociology: 8, 83, 90, 92, 96, 250, 251, 265

Space: 82, 85, 87, 94, 97, 102 (_see_ Matter and motion)

Spencer, Mr. H.: 9, 59, 66, 74, 77, 80, 94, 96, 205, 247, 265

States of consciousness: 57, 58, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 166 (_see_
    Consciousness)

Struggle for existence: 10, 11, 13, 20, 25, 28, 29, 160, 249, 250, 251,
    257, 270, 274, 276, 279

Survival of the fittest: 13, 20, 26, 32, 185, 186, 203, 230, 231, 232,
    236, 237, 251
  --of the faithful: 160


T

Teleology: 205, 236 (_see_ Causes, Purpose)

Theology: 141, 146

Things: _see_ Objects

Truth: 40, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 208, 217, 220 (_see also_ Ideals)


U

Unfaith: 225

Uniformity of the Divine Nature: 202, 206, 229

Uniformity of human nature: 103, 105, 107, 118, 121, 202, 229, 272

Uniformity of Nature (_see_ Nature)
  --of necessity: 107, 111
  --of will: 107, 111

Universal causation: 102, 107, 111, 119, 125, 135, 150 (_see_ Causation,
    Causes)

Unknowable, The: 18, 20-2, 35, 36, 37, 48, 57, 58, 61, 70, 72, 166, 247

Unreal, The: 70


V

Value: 233, 244


W

Waste: 235

Will: 97-9, 111-34, 158, 161, 162, 168, 172, 175, 182, 188, 190, 192,
    201, 215-25, 255, 261, 264, 268 (cf. Freedom, Necessity)

Will to believe: 216, 222


PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
PRINTERS

       *       *       *       *       *




                           A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS
                           AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF
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     .     .     .     .     .

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REGNUM DEI. THE BAMPTON LECTURES OF
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THE AGAPE AND THE EUCHARIST. By J. F.
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+Oxford Commentaries+

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THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES: With
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ON THE LOVE OF GOD. By ST. FRANCIS DE
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XXIII. THE HUMAN BOY.                     EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

 XXIV. THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO.   ANTHONY HOPE.

  XXV. BY STROKE OF SWORD.                ANDREW BALFOUR.

 XXVI. KITTY ALONE.                       S. BARING GOULD.
                                                      [_October._


+Methuen's Sixpenny Library+

_A New Series of Copyright Books._

THE CONQUEST OF LONDON.    DOROTHEA GERARD.

A VOYAGE OF CONSOLATION.   SARA J. DUNCAN.

THE MUTABLE MANY.          ROBERT BARR.




                          A CATALOGUE OF
                         MESSRS. METHUEN'S
                           PUBLICATIONS




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BELLES LETTRES, ANTHOLOGIES, ETC.


=R. L. Stevenson.= VAILIMA LETTERS. By
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=Edward FitzGerald.= THE RUBAIYAT OF
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+Methuen's Standard Library+

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+The Works of Shakespeare+

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THE EARLY POEMS OF ALFRED, LORD
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ILLUSTRATED AND GIFT BOOKS


=Tennyson.= THE EARLY POEMS OF ALFRED,
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=Phil May.= THE PHIL MAY ALBUM. _4to.
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=Edmund Selous.= TOMMY SMITH'S ANIMALS.
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=S. Baring Gould.= THE CROCK OF GOLD.
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        'Twelve delightful fairy tales.'--_Punch._

=M. L. Gwynn.= A BIRTHDAY BOOK.
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=John Bunyan.= THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.
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  With 39 Illustrations by R. ANNING
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=F. D. Bedford.= NURSERY RHYMES. With
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=S. Baring Gould.= A BOOK OF FAIRY TALES
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=S. Baring Gould.= OLD ENGLISH FAIRY
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=H. C. Beeching.= A BOOK OF CHRISTMAS
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  and Illustrated by WALTER CRANE. _Cr.
  8vo. gilt top. 3s. 6d._




HISTORY


=Flinders Petrie.= A HISTORY OF EGYPT,
  FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE
  PRESENT DAY. Edited by W. M. FLINDERS
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  _Fully Illustrated. In Six Volumes.
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    VOL. I. PREHISTORIC TIMES TO XVITH DYNASTY. W. M. F.
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    VOL. II. THE XVIITH AND XVIIITH DYNASTIES. W. M. F.
      Petrie. _Third Edition._

    VOL. IV. THE EGYPT OF THE PTOLEMIES. J. P. Mahaffy.

    VOL. V. ROMAN EGYPT. J. G. Milne.

    VOL. VI. EGYPT IN THE MIDDLE AGES. STANLEY LANE-POOLE.

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          and his school cannot but promote sound and
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          the English literature of
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=Flinders Petrie.= RELIGION AND
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  FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L., LL.D. Fully
  Illustrated. _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._

        'The lectures will afford a fund of valuable
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=Flinders Petrie.= SYRIA AND EGYPT,
  FROM THE TELL EL AMARNA TABLETS. By
  W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L., LL.D.
  _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._

        'A marvellous record. The addition made to our
          knowledge is nothing short of
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=Flinders Petrie.= EGYPTIAN TALES.
  Edited by W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE.
  Illustrated by TRISTRAM ELLIS. _In
  Two Volumes. Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d. each._

        'Invaluable as a picture of life in Palestine and
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=Flinders Petrie.= EGYPTIAN DECORATIVE
  ART. By W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE. With
  120 Illustrations. _Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'In these lectures he displays rare skill in
          elucidating the development of decorative art
          in Egypt.'--_Times._

=C. W. Oman.= A HISTORY OF THE ART OF
  WAR. Vol. II.: The Middle Ages, from
  the Fourth to the Fourteenth Century.
  By C. W. OMAN, M.A., Fellow of All
  Souls', Oxford. Illustrated. _Demy
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=S. Baring Gould.= THE TRAGEDY OF THE
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=F. W. Maitland.= CANON LAW IN ENGLAND.
  By F. W. MAITLAND, LL.D., Downing
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=John Hackett.= A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
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  15s. net._

        A work which brings together all that is known on
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=E. L. Taunton.= A HISTORY OF THE
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        'A history of permanent value, which covers
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=H. de B. Gibbins.= INDUSTRY IN
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=H. E. Egerton.= A HISTORY OF BRITISH
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=T. M. Taylor.= A CONSTITUTIONAL AND
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  7s. 6d._

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          will be stimulating to the student of Roman
          history.'--_Athenæum._

=J. Wells.= A SHORT HISTORY OF ROME. By
  J. WELLS, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
  Wadham Coll., Oxford. _Third
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    VOL. I. 1250-1409.--Guelphs and Ghibellines.

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=O'Grady.= THE STORY OF IRELAND. By
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+Byzantine Texts+

Edited by J. B. BURY, M.A., Litt.D.

ZACHARIAH OF MITYLENE. Translated into
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EVAGRIUS. Edited by Professor LÉON
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THE HISTORY OF PSELLUS. By C. SATHAS.
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BIOGRAPHY


=R. L. Stevenson.= THE LETTERS OF
  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON TO HIS FAMILY
  AND FRIENDS. Selected and Edited,
  with Notes and Introductions, by
  SIDNEY COLVIN. _Fourth and Cheaper
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LIBRARY EDITION. _Demy 8vo. 2 vols. 25s.
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=J. G. Millais.= THE LIFE AND LETTERS
  OF SIR JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS,
  President of the Royal Academy. By
  his Son, J. G. MILLAIS. With 319
  Illustrations, of which 9 are in
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        'This splendid work.'--_World._

        'Of such absorbing interest is it, of such
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=S. Baring Gould.= THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON
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          personal history from the days of his early
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          interment.'--_Daily Telegraph._

=W. A. Bettesworth.= THE WALKERS OF
  SOUTHGATE: Being the Chronicles of a
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  BETTESWORTH. Illustrated. _Demy 8vo.
  7s. 6d._

        'A most engaging contribution to cricket
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=G. S. Layard.= THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN
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  Portraits. _Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d._

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        'Mr. Layard may be congratulated on having
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=Stanley Lane-Poole.= THE LIFE OF SIR
  HARRY PARKES. By STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
  _A New and Cheaper Edition._ With
  Maps and Portrait. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=Helen C. Wetmore.= THE LAST OF THE
  GREAT SCOUTS ('Buffalo Bill'). By his
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        'The stirring adventures of Buffalo Bill's career
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=Constance Bache.= BROTHER MUSICIANS.
  Reminiscences of Edward and Walter
  Bache. By CONSTANCE BACHE. With
  Sixteen Illustrations. _Crown 8vo.
  6s. net._

=P. H. Colomb.= MEMOIRS OF ADMIRAL SIR
  A. COOPER KEY. By Admiral P. H.
  COLOMB. With a Portrait. _Demy 8vo.
  16s._

=C. Cooper King.= THE STORY OF THE
  BRITISH ARMY. By Colonel COOPER KING.
  Illustrated. _Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d._

        'An authoritative and accurate story of England's
          military progress.'--_Daily Mail._

=R. Southey.= ENGLISH SEAMEN (Howard,
  Clifford, Hawkins, Drake, Cavendish).
  By ROBERT SOUTHEY. Edited, with an
  Introduction, by DAVID HANNAY.
  _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A brave, inspiriting book.'--_Black and White._

=W. Clark Russell.= THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL
  LORD COLLINGWOOD. By W. CLARK
  RUSSELL. With Illustrations by F.
  BRANGWYN. _Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'A book which we should like to see in the hands
          of every boy in the country.'--_St. James's
          Gazette._

=Morris Fuller.= THE LIFE AND WRITINGS
  OF JOHN DAVENANT, D.D. (1571-1641),
  Bishop of Salisbury. By MORRIS
  FULLER, B.D. _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

=J. M. Rigg.= ST. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY:
  A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGION.
  By J. M. RIGG. _Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d._

=F. W. Joyce.= THE LIFE OF SIR FREDERICK
  GORE OUSELEY. By F. W. JOYCE, M.A.
  _7s. 6d._

=W. G. Collingwood.= THE LIFE OF JOHN
  RUSKIN. By W. G. COLLINGWOOD, M.A.
  With Portraits, and 13 Drawings by Mr.
  Ruskin. _Second Edition. 2 vols. 8vo.
  32s. Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

=C. Waldstein.= JOHN RUSKIN. By CHARLES
  WALDSTEIN, M.A. With a Photogravure
  Portrait. _Post 8vo. 5s._

=A. M. F. Darmesteter.= THE LIFE OF
  ERNEST RENAN. By MADAME DARMESTETER.
  With Portrait. _Second Edition. Cr.
  8vo. 6s._

=W. H. Hutton.= THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS
  MORE. By W. H. HUTTON, M.A. With
  Portraits. _Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
  5s._

        'The book lays good claim to high rank among our
          biographies. It is excellently, even lovingly,
          written.'--_Scotsman._

=S. Baring Gould.= THE VICAR OF
  MORWENSTOW: A Biography. By S. BARING
  GOULD, M.A. A new and Revised
  Edition. With Portrait. _Crown 8vo.
  3s. 6d._

        A completely new edition of the well known
          biography of R. S. Hawker.




TRAVEL, ADVENTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY


=Sven Hedin.= THROUGH ASIA. By SVEN
  HEDIN, Gold Medallist of the Royal
  Geographical Society. With 300
  Illustrations from Sketches and
  Photographs by the Author, and Maps.
  _2 vols. Royal 8vo. 20s. net._

        'One of the greatest books of the kind issued
          during the century. It is impossible to give an
          adequate idea of the richness of the contents
          of this book, nor of its abounding attractions
          as a story of travel unsurpassed in
          geographical and human interest. Much of it is
          a revelation. Altogether the work is one which
          in solidity, novelty, and interest must take a
          first rank among publications of its
          class.'--_Times._

=F. H. Skrine and E. D. Ross.= THE
  HEART OF ASIA. By F. H. SKRINE and E.
  D. ROSS. With Maps and many
  Illustrations by VERESTCHAGIN. _Large
  Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d. net._

        'This volume will form a landmark in our
          knowledge of Central Asia.... Illuminating and
          convincing.'--_Times._

=R. E. Peary.= NORTHWARD OVER THE GREAT
  ICE. By R. E. PEARY, Gold Medallist
  of the Royal Geographical Society.
  With over 800 Illustrations. _2 vols.
  Royal 8vo. 32s. net._

        'His book will take its place among the permanent
          literature of Arctic exploration.'--_Times._

=T. H. Holdich.= THE INDIAN BORDERLAND:
  being a Personal Record of Twenty
  Years. By Sir T. H. HOLDICH, K.C.I.E.
  Illustrated. _Demy 8vo. 15s. net._

        'Probably the most important work on frontier
          topography that has lately been presented to
          the general public.'--_Literature._

        'Interesting and inspiriting from cover to cover,
          it will assuredly take its place as the
          classical on the history of the Indian
          frontier.'--_Pilot._

        'A work that should long remain the standard
          authority.'--_Daily Chronicle._

=A. B. Wylde.= MODERN ABYSSINIA. By A.
  B. WYLDE. With a Map and a Portrait.
  _Demy 8vo. 15s. net._

        'The most valuable contribution that has yet been
          made to our knowledge of
          Abyssinia.'--_Manchester Guardian._

        'A book which will rank among the very best of
          African works.'--_Daily Chronicle._

        'A repertory of information on every branch of the
          subject.'--_Literature._

=Alex. Hosie.= MANCHURIA. By ALEXANDER
  HOSIE. With Illustrations and a Map.
  _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net._

        A complete account of this important province by
          the highest living authority on the subject.

        'This book is especially useful at the present
          moment when the future of the country appears
          uncertain.'--_Times._

=E. A. FitzGerald.= THE HIGHEST ANDES.
  By E. A. FITZGERALD. With 2 Maps, 51
  Illustrations, 13 of which are in
  Photogravure, and a Panorama. _Royal
  8vo, 30s. net._ Also a Small Edition
  on Hand-made Paper, limited to 50
  Copies, _4to, £5, 5s._

        'The record of the first ascent of the highest
          mountain yet conquered by mortal man. A volume
          which will continue to be the classic book of
          travel on this region of the Andes.'--_Daily
          Chronicle._

=F. W. Christian.= THE CAROLINE
  ISLANDS. By F. W. CHRISTIAN. With
  many Illustrations and Maps. _Demy
  8vo. 12s. 6d. net._

        'A real contribution to our knowledge of the
          peoples and islands of Micronesia, as well as
          fascinating as a narrative of travels and
          adventure.'--_Scotsman._

=H. H. Johnston.= BRITISH CENTRAL
  AFRICA. By Sir H. H. JOHNSTON, K.C.B.
  With nearly Two Hundred
  Illustrations, and Six Maps. _Second
  Edition. Crown 4to. 18s. net._

        'A fascinating book, written with equal skill and
          charm--the work at once of a literary artist
          and of a man of action who is singularly wise,
          brave, and experienced. It abounds in admirable
          sketches.'--_Westminster Gazette._

=L. Decle.= THREE YEARS IN SAVAGE
  AFRICA. By LIONEL DECLE. With 100
  Illustrations and 5 Maps. _Second
  Edition. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net._

=A. Hulme Beaman.= TWENTY YEARS IN THE
  NEAR EAST. By A. HULME BEAMAN. _Demy
  8vo._ With Portrait. _10s. 6d._

=Henri of Orleans.= FROM TONKIN TO
  INDIA. By PRINCE HENRI OF ORLEANS.
  Translated by HAMLEY BENT, M.A. With
  100 Illustrations and a Map. _Cr. 4to,
  gilt top. 25s._

=Chester Holcombe.= THE REAL CHINESE
  QUESTION. By CHESTER HOLCOMBE. _Crown
  8vo. 6s._

        'It is an important addition to the materials
          before the public for forming an opinion on a
          most difficult and pressing problem.'--_Times._

        'It is this practical "note" in the book, coupled
          with the fairness, moderation, and sincerity of
          the author, that gives it, in our opinion, the
          highest place among books published in recent
          years on the Chinese question.'--_Manchester
          Guardian._

=J. W. Robertson-Scott.= THE PEOPLE OF
  CHINA. By J. W. ROBERTSON-SCOTT. With
  a Map. _Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'A vivid impression ... This excellent, brightly
          written epitome.'--_Daily News._

        'Excellently well done.... Enthralling.'--_Weekly
          Dispatch._

=S. L. Hinde.= THE FALL OF THE CONGO
  ARABS. By S. L. HINDE. With Plans,
  etc. _Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d._

=A. St. H. Gibbons.= EXPLORATION AND
  HUNTING IN CENTRAL AFRICA. By Major A.
  ST. H. GIBBONS. With full-page
  Illustrations by C. WHYMPER, and Maps.
  _Demy 8vo. 15s._

=A. H. Norway.= NAPLES: PAST AND
  PRESENT. By A. H. NORWAY, Author of
  'Highways and Byways in Devon and
  Cornwall.' With 40 Illustrations by A.
  G. FERARD. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        In this book Mr. Norway gives not only a highly
          interesting description of modern Naples, but a
          historical account of its antiquities and
          traditions.

=S. Baring Gould.= DARTMOOR: A
  Descriptive and Historical Sketch. By
  S. BARING GOULD. With Plans and
  Numerous Illustrations. _Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'A most delightful guide, companion, and
          instructor.'--_Scotsman._

        'Informed with close personal
          knowledge.'--_Saturday Review._

=S. Baring Gould.= THE BOOK OF THE
  WEST. By S. BARING GOULD. With
  numerous Illustrations. _Two
  volumes._ Vol. I. Devon. _Second
  Edition._ Vol. II. Cornwall. _Crown
  8vo. 6s. each_.

        'Bracing as the air of Dartmoor, the legend weird
          as twilight over Dozmare Pool, they give us a
          very good idea of this enchanting and beautiful
          district.'--_Guardian._

=S. Baring Gould.= A BOOK OF BRITTANY.
  By S. BARING GOULD. With numerous
  Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        Uniform in scope and size with Mr. Baring Gould's
          well-known books on Devon, Cornwall, and
          Dartmoor.

=S. Baring Gould.= THE DESERTS OF
  SOUTHERN FRANCE. By S. BARING GOULD.
  _2 vols. Demy 8vo. 32s._

=J. F. Fraser.= ROUND THE WORLD ON A
  WHEEL. By JOHN FOSTER FRASER. With 100
  Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A classic of cycling, graphic and
          witty.'--_Yorkshire Post._

=R. L. Jefferson.= A NEW RIDE TO KHIVA.
  By R. L. JEFFERSON. Illustrated.
  _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=J. K. Trotter.= THE NIGER SOURCES. By
  Colonel J. K. TROTTER, R.A. With a Map
  and Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 5s._

=W. Crooke.= THE NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES
  OF INDIA: THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND
  ADMINISTRATION. By W. CROOKE. With
  Maps and Illustrations. _Demy 8vo.
  10s. 6d._

=A. Boisragon.= THE BENIN MASSACRE. By
  CAPTAIN BOISRAGON. _Second Edition.
  Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d._

=H. S. Cowper.= THE HILL OF THE GRACES:
  OR, THE GREAT STONE TEMPLES OF
  TRIPOLI. By H. S. COWPER, F.S.A. With
  Maps, Plans, and 75 Illustrations.
  _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

=W. B. Worsfold.= SOUTH AFRICA. By W. B.
  WORSFOLD, M.A. With a Map. _Second
  Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'A monumental work compressed into a very
          moderate compass.'--_World._

=Katherine and Gilbert Macquoid.= IN
  PARIS. By KATHERINE and GILBERT
  MACQUOID. Illustrated by THOMAS R.
  MACQUOID, R.I. With 2 maps. _Crown
  8vo. 1s._

        'A useful little guide, judiciously supplied with
          information.'--_Athenæum._

=A. H. Keane.= THE BOER STATES: A
  History and Description of the
  Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
  By A. H. KEANE, M.A. With Map. _Crown
  8vo. 6s._




NAVAL AND MILITARY


=F. H. E. Cunliffe.= THE HISTORY OF THE
  BOER WAR. By F. H. E. CUNLIFFE,
  Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford.
  With many Illustrations, Plans, and
  Portraits. _In 2 vols. Vol. I., 15s._

        'The excellence of the work is double; for the
          narrative is vivid and temperate, and the
          illustrations form a picture gallery of the war
          which is not likely to be rivalled.... An ideal
          gift book.'--_Academy._

=G. S. Robertson.= CHITRAL: The Story
  of a Minor Siege. By Sir G. S.
  ROBERTSON, K.C.S.I. With numerous
  Illustrations, Map and Plans. _Second
  Edition. Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

        'A book which the Elizabethans would have thought
          wonderful. More thrilling, more piquant, and
          more human than any novel.'--_Newcastle
          Chronicle._

        'As fascinating as Sir Walter Scott's best
          fiction.'--_Daily Telegraph._

=R. S. S. Baden-Powell.= THE DOWNFALL
  OF PREMPEH. A Diary of Life in
  Ashanti, 1895. By Maj.-Gen.
  BADEN-POWELL. With 21 Illustrations
  and a Map. _Third Edition. Large
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

=R. S. S. Baden-Powell.= THE MATABELE
  CAMPAIGN, 1896. By Maj.-Gen.
  BADEN-POWELL. With nearly 100
  Illustrations. _Fourth and Cheaper
  Edition. Large Crown 8vo. 6s._

=J. B. Atkins.= THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH.
  By JOHN BLACK ATKINS. With 16 Plans
  and Illustrations. _Third Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

=H. W. Nevinson.= LADYSMITH: The Diary
  of a Siege. By H. W. NEVINSON. With 16
  Illustrations and a Plan. _Second
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

=Barclay Lloyd.= A THOUSAND MILES WITH
  THE C.I.V. By Captain BARCLAY LLOYD.
  With an Introduction by Colonel
  MACKINNON, and a Portrait and Map.
  _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=Filson Young.= THE RELIEF OF MAFEKING.
  By FILSON YOUNG. With Maps and
  Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=J. Angus Hamilton.= THE SIEGE OF
  MAFEKING. By J. ANGUS HAMILTON. With
  many Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A thrilling story.'--_Observer._

=H. F. Prevost Battersby.= IN THE WEB
  OF A WAR. By H. F. PREVOST BATTERSBY.
  With Plans, and Portrait of the
  Author. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'The pathos, the comedy, the majesty of war are
          all in these pages.'--_Daily Mail._

=Howard C. Hillegas.= WITH THE BOER
  FORCES. By HOWARD C. HILLEGAS. With
  24 Illustrations. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A most interesting book. It has many and great
          merits.'--_Athenæum._

        'Has extreme interest and scarcely less
          value.'--_Pall Mall Gazette._

=H. C. J. Biss.= THE RELIEF OF KUMASI.
  By Captain H. C. J. BISS. With Maps
  and Illustrations. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Pleasantly written and highly interesting. The
          illustrations are admirable.'--_Queen._

        'We should say it will remain the standard work on
          its very interesting subject.'--_Globe._

=E. H. Alderson.= WITH THE MOUNTED
  INFANTRY AND THE MASHONALAND FIELD
  FORCE, 1896. By Lieut.-Colonel
  ALDERSON. With numerous Illustrations
  and Plans. _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

=Seymour Vandeleur.= CAMPAIGNING ON THE
  UPPER NILE AND NIGER. By Lieut.
  SEYMOUR VANDELEUR. With an
  Introduction by Sir G. GOLDIE,
  K.C.M.G. With 4 Maps, Illustrations,
  and Plans. _Large Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d._

=Lord Fincastle.= A FRONTIER CAMPAIGN.
  By Viscount FINCASTLE, V.C., and
  Lieut. P. C. ELLIOTT-LOCKHART. With a
  Map and 16 Illustrations. _Second
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

=E. N. Bennett.= THE DOWNFALL OF THE
  DERVISHES: A Sketch of the Sudan
  Campaign of 1898. By E. N. BENNETT,
  Fellow of Hertford College. With a
  Photogravure Portrait of Lord
  Kitchener. _Third Edition. Crown 8vo.
  3s. 6d._

=W. Kinnaird Rose.= WITH THE GREEKS IN
  THESSALY. By W. KINNAIRD ROSE. With
  Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=G. W. Steevens.= NAVAL POLICY: By G. W.
  STEEVENS. _Demy 8vo. 6s._

=D. Hannay.= A SHORT HISTORY OF THE
  ROYAL NAVY, FROM EARLY TIMES TO THE
  PRESENT DAY. By DAVID HANNAY.
  Illustrated. _2 Vols. Demy 8vo. 7s.
  6d. each._ Vol. I., 1200-1688.

        'We read it from cover to cover at a sitting, and
          those who go to it for a lively and brisk
          picture of the past, with all its faults and
          its grandeur, will not be disappointed. The
          historian is endowed with literary skill and
          style.'--_Standard._

=E. L. S. Horsburgh.= WATERLOO: A
  Narrative and Criticism. By E. L. S.
  HORSBURGH, M.A. With Plans. _Second
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 5s._

        'A brilliant essay--simple, sound, and
          thorough.'--_Daily Chronicle._

=H. B. George.= BATTLES OF ENGLISH
  HISTORY. By H. B. GEORGE, M.A.,
  Fellow of New College, Oxford. With
  numerous Plans. _Third Edition. Cr.
  8vo. 6s._

        'Mr. George has undertaken a very useful
          task--that of making military affairs
          intelligible and instructive to non-military
          readers--and has executed it with a large
          measure of success.'--_Times._




GENERAL LITERATURE


=S. Baring Gould.= OLD COUNTRY LIFE. By
  S. BARING GOULD. With Sixty-seven
  Illustrations. _Large Cr. 8vo. Fifth
  Edition. 6s._

        '"Old Country Life," as healthy wholesome
          reading, full of breezy life and movement, full
          of quaint stories vigorously told, will not be
          excelled by any book to be published throughout
          the year. Sound, hearty, and English to the
          core.'--_World._

=S. Baring Gould.= AN OLD ENGLISH HOME.
  By S. BARING GOULD. With numerous
  Plans and Illustrations. _Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'The chapters are delightfully fresh, very
          informing, and lightened by many a good story.
          A delightful fireside companion.'--_St. James's
          Gazette._

=S. Baring Gould.= HISTORIC ODDITIES
  AND STRANGE EVENTS. By S. BARING
  GOULD. _Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

=S. Baring Gould.= FREAKS OF FANATICISM.
  By S. BARING GOULD. _Third Edition.
  Cr. 8vo. 6s._

=S. Baring Gould.= A GARLAND OF COUNTRY
  SONG: English Folk Songs with their
  Traditional Melodies. Collected and
  arranged by S. BARING GOULD and H. F.
  SHEPPARD. _Demy 4to. 6s._

=S. Baring Gould.= SONGS OF THE WEST:
  Traditional Ballads and Songs of the
  West of England, with their Melodies.
  Collected by S. BARING GOULD, M.A.,
  and H. F. SHEPPARD, M.A. In 4 Parts.
  _Parts I., II., III., 3s. each. Part
  IV., 5s. In one Vol., French morocco,
  15s._

        'A rich collection of humour, pathos, grace, and
          poetic fancy.'--_Saturday Review._

=S. Baring Gould.= YORKSHIRE ODDITIES
  AND STRANGE EVENTS. By S. BARING
  GOULD. _Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

=S. Baring Gould.= STRANGE SURVIVALS AND
  SUPERSTITIONS. By S. BARING GOULD.
  _Cr. 8vo. Second Edition. 6s._

=Marie Corelli.= THE PASSING OF THE
  GREAT QUEEN: A Tribute to the Noble
  Life of Victoria Regina. By MARIE
  CORELLI. _Small 4to. 1s._

=Cotton Minchin.= OLD HARROW DAYS. By J.
  G. COTTON MINCHIN. _Cr. 8vo. Second
  Edition. 5s._

=W. E. Gladstone.= THE SPEECHES OF THE
  RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. Edited
  by A. W. HUTTON, M.A., and H. J.
  COHEN, M.A. With Portraits. _Demy 8vo.
  Vols. IX. and X., 12s. 6d. each._

=M. N. Oxford.= A HANDBOOK OF NURSING.
  By M. N. OXFORD, of Guy's Hospital.
  _Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'The most useful work of the kind that we have
          seen. A most valuable and practical
          manual.'--_Manchester Guardian._

=E. V. Zenker.= ANARCHISM. By E. V.
  ZENKER. _Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d._

=Emily Lawless.= A GARDEN DIARY. By the
  Hon. EMILY LAWLESS. _Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d.
  net._

=S. J. Duncan.= ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE
  LATCH. By SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN (Mrs.
  COTES). Author of 'A Voyage of
  Consolation.' _Second Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

=W. Williamson.= THE BRITISH GARDENER.
  By W. WILLIAMSON. Illustrated. _Demy
  8vo. 10s. 6d._

=Arnold White.= EFFICIENCY AND EMPIRE.
  By ARNOLD WHITE. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Stimulating and entertaining throughout, it
          deserves the attention of every patriotic
          Englishman.'--_Daily Mail._

        'A notable book.'--_Literature._

        'A book of sound work, deep thought, and a sincere
          endeavour to rouse the British to a knowledge of
          the value of their Empire.'--_Bookman._

        'A more vigorous work has not been written for
          many years.'--_Review of the Week._

=A. Silva White.= THE EXPANSION OF
  EGYPT: A Political and Historical
  Survey. By A. SILVA WHITE. With four
  Special Maps. _Demy 8vo. 15s. net._

        'This is emphatically the best account of Egypt
          as it is under English control that has been
          published for many years.'--_Spectator._

=Chas. Richardson.= THE ENGLISH TURF.
  By CHARLES RICHARDSON. With numerous
  Illustrations and Plans. _Demy 8vo.
  15s._

        'As a record of horses and courses, this work is
          a valuable addition to the literature of the
          Turf. It is crammed with sound information, and
          with reflections and suggestions that are born
          of a thorough knowledge of the
          subject.'--_Scotsman._

        'A book which is sure to find many readers;
          written with consummate knowledge and in an
          easy, agreeable style.'--_Daily Chronicle._

        'From its sensible introduction to its very
          complex index, this is about the best book that
          we are likely for some time to see upon the
          subject with which it deals.'--_Athenæum._

=Philip Trevor.= THE LIGHTER SIDE OF
  CRICKET. By Captain PHILIP TREVOR
  (DUX). _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        A highly interesting volume, dealing with such
          subjects as county cricket, village cricket,
          cricket for boys and girls, literary cricket,
          and various other subjects which do not require
          a severe and technical treatment.

        'A wholly entertaining book.'--_Glasgow Herald._

        'The most welcome book on our national game
          published for years.'--_Country Gentleman._

=Peter Beckford.= THOUGHTS ON HUNTING.
  By PETER BECKFORD. Edited by J. OTHO
  PAGET, and Illustrated by G. H.
  JALLAND. _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

        'Beckford's "Thoughts on Hunting" has long been a
          classic with sportsmen, and the present edition
          will go far to make it a favourite with lovers
          of literature.'--_Speaker._

=E. B. Michell.= THE ART AND PRACTICE
  OF HAWKING. By E. B. MICHELL. With 3
  Photogravures by G. E. LODGE, and
  other illustrations. _Demy 8vo. 10s.
  6d._

        'No book is more full and authoritative than this
          handsome treatise.'--_Morning Leader._

=H. G. Hutchinson.= THE GOLFING
  PILGRIM. By HORACE G. HUTCHINSON.
  _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Without this book the golfer's library will be
          incomplete.'--_Pall Mall Gazette._

=J. Wells.= OXFORD AND OXFORD LIFE. By
  Members of the University. Edited by
  J. WELLS, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
  Wadham College. _Third Edition. Cr.
  8vo. 3s. 6d._

=C. G. Robertson.= VOCES ACADEMICÆ. By
  C. GRANT ROBERTSON, M.A., Fellow of
  All Souls', Oxford. With a
  Frontispiece. _Pott 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'Decidedly clever and amusing.'--_Athenæum._

=Rosemary Cotes.= DANTE'S GARDEN. By
  ROSEMARY COTES. With a Frontispiece.
  _Second Edition. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
  Leather, 3s. 6d. net._

        'A charming collection of legends of the flowers
          mentioned by Dante.'--_Academy._

=Clifford Harrison.= READING AND
  READERS. By CLIFFORD HARRISON. _Fcp.
  8vo. 2s. 6d._

        'An extremely sensible little book.'--_Manchester
          Guardian._

=L. Whibley.= GREEK OLIGARCHIES: THEIR
  ORGANISATION AND CHARACTER. By L.
  WHIBLEY, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke
  College, Cambridge. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=L. L. Price.= ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND
  PRACTICE. By L. L. PRICE, M.A., Fellow
  of Oriel College, Oxford. _Crown 8vo.
  6s._

=J. S. Shedlock.= THE PIANOFORTE SONATA:
  Its Origin and Development. By J. S.
  SHEDLOCK. _Crown 8vo. 5s._

        'This work should be in the possession of every
          musician and amateur. A concise and lucid
          history and a very valuable work for
          reference.'--_Athenæum._

=A. Hulme Beaman.= PONS ASINORUM; OR, A
  GUIDE TO BRIDGE. By A. HULME BEAMAN.
  _Second Edition. Fcap 8vo. 2s._

        A practical guide, with many specimen games, to
          the new game of Bridge.

=E. M. Bowden.= THE EXAMPLE OF BUDDHA:
  Being Quotations from Buddhist
  Literature for each Day in the Year.
  Compiled by E. M. BOWDEN. _Third
  Edition. 16mo. 2s. 6d._

=F. Ware.= EDUCATIONAL REFORM. By FABIAN
  WARE, M.A. _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._

=Sidney Peel.= PRACTICAL LICENSING
  REFORM. By the Hon. SIDNEY PEEL, late
  Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and
  Secretary to the Royal Commission on
  the Licensing Laws. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 1s. 6d._




PHILOSOPHY


=L. T. Hobhouse.= THE THEORY OF
  KNOWLEDGE. By L. T. HOBHOUSE, Fellow
  of C.C.C., Oxford. _Demy 8vo. 21s._

        'The most important contribution to English
          philosophy since the publication of Mr.
          Bradley's "Appearance and Reality."'--_Glasgow
          Herald._

=W. H. Fairbrother.= THE PHILOSOPHY OF
  T. H. GREEN. By W. H. FAIRBROTHER,
  M.A. _Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 3s.
  6d._

        'In every way an admirable book.'--_Glasgow
          Herald._

=F. W. Bussell.= THE SCHOOL OF PLATO.
  By F. W. BUSSELL, D.D., Fellow of
  Brasenose College, Oxford. _Demy 8vo.
  10s. 6d._

=F. S. Granger.= THE WORSHIP OF THE
  ROMANS. By F. S. GRANGER, M.A.,
  Litt.D. _Crown 8vo. 6s._




SCIENCE


=E. H. Colbeck.= DISEASES OF THE HEART.
  By E. H. COLBECK, M.D. With numerous
  Illustrations. _Demy 8vo. 12s._

=W. C. C. Pakes.= THE SCIENCE OF
  HYGIENE. By W. C. C. PAKES. With
  numerous Illustrations. _Demy 8vo.
  15s._

        'A thoroughgoing working text-book of its
          subject, practical and
          well-stocked.'--_Scotsman._

=A. T. Hare.= THE CONSTRUCTION OF LARGE
  INDUCTION COILS. By A. T. HARE, M.A.
  With numerous Diagrams. _Demy 8vo.
  6s._

=J. E. Marr.= THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF
  SCENERY. By J. E. MARR, F.R.S., Fellow
  of St. John's College, Cambridge.
  Illustrated. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A volume, moderate in size and readable in
          style, which will be acceptable alike to the
          student of geology and geography, and to the
          tourist.'--_Athenæum._

=J. Ritzema Bos.= AGRICULTURAL ZOOLOGY.
  By Dr. J. RITZEMA BOS. Translated by
  J. R. AINSWORTH DAVIS, M.A. With an
  Introduction by ELEANOR A. ORMEROD,
  F.E.S. With 155 Illustrations. _Crown
  8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'The illustrations are exceedingly good, whilst
          the information conveyed is
          invaluable.'--_Country Gentleman._

=Ed. von Freudenreich.= DAIRY
  BACTERIOLOGY. A Short Manual for the
  Use of Students. By Dr. ED. VON
  FREUDENREICH, Translated by J. R.
  AINSWORTH DAVIS, M.A. _Second
  Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._

=Chalmers Mitchell.= OUTLINES OF
  BIOLOGY. By P. CHALMERS MITCHELL, M.A.
  _Illustrated. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        A text-book designed to cover the new Schedule
          issued by the Royal College of Physicians and
          Surgeons.

=George Massee.= A MONOGRAPH OF THE
  MYXOGASTRES. By GEORGE MASSEE. With
  12 Coloured Plates. _Royal 8vo. 18s.
  net._

        'A work much in advance of any book in the
          language treating of this group of organisms.
          Indispensable to every student of the
          Myxogastres.'--_Nature._

=C. Stephenson and F. Suddards.=
  ORNAMENTAL DESIGN FOR WOVEN FABRICS.
  By C. STEPHENSON, of the Technical
  College, Bradford, and F. SUDDARDS,
  of the Yorkshire College, Leeds. With
  65 full-page plates. _Demy 8vo.
  Second Edition. 7s. 6d._

        'The book is very ably done, displaying an
          intimate knowledge of principles, good taste,
          and the faculty of clear
          exposition.'--_Yorkshire Post._

=C. C. Channer and M. E. Roberts.=
  LACE-MAKING IN THE MIDLANDS, PAST AND
  PRESENT. By C. C. CHANNER and M. E.
  ROBERTS. With 16 full-page
  Illustrations. _Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d._

        'An interesting book, illustrated by fascinating
          photographs.'--_Speaker._




THEOLOGY


=W. R. Inge.= CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM. The
  Bampton Lectures for 1899. By W. R.
  INGE, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of
  Hertford College, Oxford. _Demy 8vo.
  12s. 6d. net._

        'It is fully worthy of the best traditions
          connected with the Bampton
          Lectureship.'--_Record._

=Lady Julian of Norwich.= REVELATIONS
  OF DIVINE LOVE. By the LADY JULIAN of
  Norwich. Edited by GRACE WARRACK.
  _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        A partially modernised version, from the MS. in
          the British Museum of a book which Dr.
          Dalgairns terms 'One of the most remarkable
          books of the Middle Ages.' Mr. Inge in his
          Bampton Lectures on Christian Mysticism calls
          it 'The beautiful but little known
          _Revelations_.'

=R. M. Benson.= THE WAY OF HOLINESS: a
  Devotional Commentary on the 119th
  Psalm. By R. M. BENSON, M.A., of the
  Cowley Mission, Oxford. _Crown 8vo.
  5s._

        'His facility is delightful, and his very sound
          and accurate theological sense saves him from
          many of the obvious dangers of such a gift.
          Give him a word or a number and at once there
          springs forth a fertile stream of thought,
          never commonplace, usually both deep and fresh.
          For devotional purposes we think this book most
          valuable. Readers will find a great wealth of
          thought if they use the book simply as a help
          to meditation.'--_Guardian._

=Jacob Behmen.= THE SUPERSENSUAL LIFE.
  By JACOB BEHMEN. Edited by BERNARD
  HOLLAND. _Fcap 8vo. 3s. 6d._

=S. R. Driver.= SERMONS ON SUBJECTS
  CONNECTED WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT. By
  S. R. DRIVER, D.D., Canon of Christ
  Church, Regius Professor of Hebrew in
  the University of Oxford. _Cr. 8vo.
  6s._

        'A welcome companion to the author's famous
          "Introduction."'--_Guardian._

=T. K. Cheyne.= FOUNDERS OF OLD
  TESTAMENT CRITICISM. By T. K. CHEYNE,
  D.D., Oriel Professor at Oxford.
  _Large Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d._

        A historical sketch of O. T. Criticism.

=Walter Lock.= ST. PAUL, THE
  MASTER-BUILDER. By WALTER LOCK, D.D.,
  Warden of Keble College. _Crown 8vo.
  3s. 6d._

        'The essence of the Pauline teaching is condensed
          into little more than a hundred pages, yet no
          point of importance is
          overlooked.'--_Guardian._

=F. S. Granger.= THE SOUL OF A
  CHRISTIAN. By F. S. GRANGER, M.A.,
  Litt.D. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        A book dealing with the evolution of the
          religious life and experiences.

        'A remarkable book.'--_Glasgow Herald._

        'Both a scholarly and thoughtful
          book.'--_Scotsman._

=H. Rashdall.= DOCTRINE AND
  DEVELOPMENT. By HASTINGS RASHDALL,
  M.A., Fellow and Tutor of New
  College, Oxford. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._

=H. H. Henson.= APOSTOLIC CHRISTIANITY:
  As Illustrated by the Epistles of St.
  Paul to the Corinthians. By H. H.
  HENSON, M.A., Fellow of All Souls',
  Oxford, Canon of Westminster. _Cr.
  8vo. 6s._

=H. H. Henson.= DISCIPLINE AND LAW. By
  H. HENSLEY HENSON, M.A., Fellow of All
  Souls', Oxford. _Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d._

=H. H. Henson.= LIGHT AND LEAVEN:
  HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL SERMONS. By H.
  H. HENSON, M.A. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=J. Houghton Kennedy.= ST. PAUL'S SECOND
  AND THIRD EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS.
  With Introduction, Dissertations, and
  Notes, by JAMES HOUGHTON KENNEDY,
  D.D., Assistant Lecturer in Divinity
  in the University of Dublin. _Crown
  8vo. 6s._

=Bennett and Adeney.= A BIBLICAL
  INTRODUCTION. By W. H. BENNETT, M.A.,
  and W. F. ADENEY, M.A. _Crown 8vo. 7s.
  6d._

        'It makes available to the ordinary reader the
          best scholarship of the day in the field of
          Biblical introduction. We know of no book which
          comes into competition with it.'--_Manchester
          Guardian._

=W. H. Bennett.= A PRIMER OF THE BIBLE.
  By W. H. BENNETT. _Second Edition.
  Cr. 8vo. 2s. 6d._

        'The work of an honest, fearless, and sound
          critic, and an excellent guide in a small
          compass to the books of the
          Bible.'--_Manchester Guardian._

=C. F. G. Masterman.= TENNYSON AS A
  RELIGIOUS TEACHER. By C. F. G.
  MASTERMAN. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A thoughtful and penetrating appreciation, full
          of interest and suggestion.'--_World._

=William Harrison.= CLOVELLY SERMONS.
  By WILLIAM HARRISON, M.A., late
  Rector of Clovelly. With a Preface by
  'LUCAS MALET.' _Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d._

=Cecilia Robinson.= THE MINISTRY OF
  DEACONESSES. By Deaconess CECILIA
  ROBINSON. With an Introduction by the
  Lord Bishop of Winchester. _Cr. 8vo.
  3s. 6d._

        'A learned and interesting book.'--_Scotsman._

=E. B. Layard.= RELIGION IN BOYHOOD.
  Notes on the Religious Training of
  Boys. By E. B. LAYARD, M.A. _18mo.
  1s._

=T. Herbert Bindley.= THE OECUMENICAL
  DOCUMENTS OF THE FAITH. Edited with
  Introductions and Notes by T. HERBERT
  BINDLEY, B.D., Merton College, Oxford.
  _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        A historical account of the Creeds.

=H. M. Barron.= TEXTS FOR SERMONS ON
  VARIOUS OCCASIONS AND SUBJECTS.
  Compiled and Arranged by H. M.
  BARRON, B.A., of Wadham College,
  Oxford, with a Preface by Canon SCOTT
  HOLLAND. _Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._

=W. Yorke Fausset.= THE DE CATECHIZANDIS
  RUDIBUS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Edited, with
  Introduction, Notes, etc., by W. YORKE
  FAUSSET, M.A. _Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d._

=J. H. Burn.= THE SOUL'S PILGRIMAGE:
  Devotional Readings from the published
  and unpublished writings of GEORGE
  BODY, D.D. Selected and arranged by J.
  H. BURN, B.D. _Pott 8vo. 2s. 6d._

=F. Weston.= THE HOLY SACRIFICE. By F.
  WESTON, M.A., Curate of St. Matthew's,
  Westminster. _Pott 8vo. 6d. net._

=À Kempis.= THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. By
  THOMAS À KEMPIS. With an Introduction
  by DEAN FARRAR. Illustrated by C. M.
  GERE. _Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s.
  6d. Padded morocco, 5s._

        'Amongst all the innumerable English editions of
          the "Imitation," there can have been few which
          were prettier than this one, printed in strong
          and handsome type, with all the glory of red
          initials.'--_Glasgow Herald._

=J. Keble.= THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. By JOHN
  KEBLE. With an Introduction and Notes
  by W. LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble
  College. Illustrated by R. ANNING
  BELL. _Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3s.
  6d. Padded morocco. 5s._

        'The present edition is annotated with all the
          care and insight to be expected from Mr.
          Lock.'--_Guardian._


+Oxford Commentaries+

General Editor, WALTER LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble College, Dean.
Ireland's Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford.

THE BOOK OF JOB. Edited, with
  Introduction and Notes, by E. C. S.
  GIBSON, D.D., Vicar of Leeds. _Demy
  8vo. 6s._

        'The publishers are to be congratulated on the
          start the series has made.'--_Times._

        'Dr. Gibson's work is worthy of a high degree of
          appreciation. To the busy worker and the
          intelligent student the commentary will be a
          real boon; and it will, if we are not mistaken,
          be much in demand. The Introduction is almost a
          model of concise, straightforward, prefatory
          remarks on the subject treated.'--_Athenæum._


+Handbooks of Theology+

General Editor, A. ROBERTSON, D.D., Principal of King's College,
London.

THE XXXIX. ARTICLES OF THE CHURCH OF
  ENGLAND. Edited with an Introduction
  by E. C. S. GIBSON, D.D., Vicar of
  Leeds, late Principal of Wells
  Theological College. _Second and
  Cheaper Edition in One Volume. Demy
  8vo. 12s. 6d._

        'We welcome with the utmost satisfaction a new,
          cheaper, and more convenient edition of Dr.
          Gibson's book. It was greatly wanted. Dr.
          Gibson has given theological students just what
          they want, and we should like to think that it
          was in the hands of every candidate for
          orders.'--_Guardian._

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF
  RELIGION. By F. B. JEVONS, M.A.,
  Litt.D., Principal of Bishop
  Hatfield's Hall. _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

        'The merit of this book lies in the penetration,
          the singular acuteness and force of the
          author's judgment. He is at once critical and
          luminous, at once just and suggestive. A
          comprehensive and thorough book.'--_Birmingham
          Post._

THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION. By R.
  L. OTTLEY, M.A., late fellow of
  Magdalen College, Oxon., and
  Principal of Pusey House. _In Two
  Volumes. Demy 8vo. 15s._

        'A clear and remarkably full account of the main
          currents of speculation. Scholarly precision
          ... genuine tolerance ... intense interest in
          his subject--are Mr. Ottley's
          merits.'--_Guardian._

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF THE
  CREEDS. By A. E. BURN, B.D.,
  Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of
  Lichfield. _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

        'This book may be expected to hold its place as
          an authority on its subject.'--_Spectator._

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND
  AND AMERICA. By ALFRED CALDECOTT,
  D.D., _Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d._

        'Singularly well-informed, comprehensive, and
          fair.'--_Glasgow Herald._

        'A lucid and informative account, which certainly
          deserves a place in every philosophical
          library.'--_Scotsman._


+The Churchman's Library+

General Editor, J. H. BURN, B.D., Examining Chaplain to the Bishop
of Aberdeen.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANITY.
  By W. E. COLLINS, M.A. With Map. _Cr.
  8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'An excellent example of thorough and fresh
          historical work.'--_Guardian._

SOME NEW TESTAMENT PROBLEMS. By ARTHUR
  WRIGHT, M.A., Fellow of Queen's
  College, Cambridge. _Crown 8vo, 6s._

        'Real students will revel in these reverent,
          acute, and pregnant essays in Biblical
          scholarship.'--_Great Thoughts._

THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN HERE AND
  HEREAFTER. By CANON WINTERBOTHAM,
  M.A., B.Sc., LL.B. _Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'A most able book at once exceedingly thoughtful
          and richly suggestive.'--_Glasgow Herald._

THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE PRAYER BOOK: Its
  Literary and Liturgical Aspects. By
  J. DOWDEN, D.D., Lord Bishop of
  Edinburgh. _Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'Scholarly and interesting,'--_Manchester
          Guardian._

EVOLUTION. By F. B. JEVONS, M.A.,
  Litt.D., Principal of Hatfield Hall,
  Durham. _Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'A well-written book, full of sound thinking
          happily expressed.'--_Manchester Guardian._


+The Churchman's Bible+

General Editor, J. H. BURN, B.D.

Messrs. METHUEN are issuing a series of expositions upon most of the
books of the Bible. The volumes will be practical and devotional, and
the text of the authorised version is explained in sections, which will
correspond as far as possible with the Church Lectionary.

THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE
  GALATIANS. Explained by A. W.
  ROBINSON, Vicar of All Hallows,
  Barking. _Fcap. 8vo. 1s. 6d. net._

        'The most attractive, sensible, and instructive
          manual for people at large, which we have ever
          seen.'--_Church Gazette._

ECCLESIASTES. Explained by A. W.
  STREANE, D.D. _Fcap. 8vo. 1s. 6d.
  net._

        'Scholarly, suggestive, and particularly
          interesting.'--_Bookman._

THE EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE
  PHILIPPIANS. Explained by C. R. D.
  BIGGS, B.D. _Fcap. 8vo. 1s. 6d. net._

        'Mr. Biggs' work is very thorough, and he has
          managed to compress a good deal of information
          into a limited space.'--_Guardian._

THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. Edited by H.
  W. FULFORD, M.A. _Fcap. 8vo. 1s. 6d.
  net._


+The Library of Devotion+

_Pott 8vo, cloth, 2s.; leather, 2s. 6d. net._

    'This series is excellent.'--THE BISHOP OF LONDON.
    'Very delightful.'--THE BISHOP OF BATH AND WELLS.
    'Well worth the attention of the Clergy.'--THE BISHOP OF
        LICHFIELD.
    'The new "Library of Devotion" is excellent.'--THE BISHOP OF
        PETERBOROUGH.
    'Charming.'--_Record._ 'Delightful.'--_Church Bells._

THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Newly
  Translated, with an Introduction and
  Notes, by C. BIGG, D.D., late Student
  of Christ Church. _Third Edition._

        'The translation is an excellent piece of
          English, and the introduction is a masterly
          exposition. We augur well of a series which
          begins so satisfactorily.'--_Times._

THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. By JOHN KEBLE. With
  Introduction and Notes by WALTER
  LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble College,
  Ireland Professor at Oxford.

THE IMITATION OF CHRIST. A Revised
  Translation, with an Introduction, by
  C. BIGG, D.D., late Student of Christ
  Church. _Second Edition._

        A practically new translation of this book, which
          the reader has, almost for the first time,
          exactly in the shape in which it left the hands
          of the author.

A BOOK OF DEVOTIONS. By J. W.
  STANBRIDGE, B.D., Rector of Bainton,
  Canon of York, and sometime Fellow of
  St. John's College, Oxford.

        'It is probably the best book of its kind. It
          deserves high commendation.'--_Church Gazette._

LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By JOHN KEBLE.
  Edited, with Introduction and Notes,
  by WALTER LOCK, D.D., Warden of Keble
  College, Oxford.

        'This sweet and fragrant book has never been
          published more attractively.'--_Academy._

A SERIOUS CALL TO A DEVOUT AND HOLY
  LIFE. By WILLIAM LAW. Edited, with an
  Introduction, by C. BIGG, D.D., late
  Student of Christ Church.

        This is a reprint, word for word and line for
          line, of the _Editio Princeps_.

THE TEMPLE. By GEORGE HERBERT. Edited,
  with an Introduction and Notes, by E.
  C. S. GIBSON, D.D., Vicar of Leeds.

        This edition contains Walton's Life of Herbert,
          and the text is that of the first edition.

A GUIDE TO ETERNITY. By Cardinal BONA.
  Edited, with an Introduction and
  Notes, by J. W. STANBRIDGE, B.D.,
  late Fellow of St. John's College,
  Oxford.

THE PSALMS OF DAVID. With an
  Introduction and Notes by B. W.
  RANDOLPH, D.D., Principal of the
  Theological College, Ely.

        A devotional and practical edition of the Prayer
          Book version of the Psalms.

LYRA APOSTOLICA. With an Introduction
  by Canon SCOTT HOLLAND, and Notes by
  H. C. BEECHING, M.A.

THE INNER WAY. Being Thirty-six Sermons
  for Festivals by JOHN TAULER. Edited,
  with an Introduction, by A. W. HUTTON,
  M.A.


+Leaders of Religion+

Edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A. With Portraits, _Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d._

A series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious
life and thought of all ages and countries.

The following are ready--

CARDINAL NEWMAN. By R. H. HUTTON.

JOHN WESLEY. By J. H. OVERTON, M.A.

BISHOP WILBERFORCE. By G. W. DANIELL,
  M.A.

CARDINAL MANNING. By A. W. HUTTON, M.A.

CHARLES SIMEON. By H. C. G. MOULE, D.D.

JOHN KEBLE. By WALTER LOCK, D.D.

THOMAS CHALMERS. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.

LANCELOT ANDREWES. By R. L. OTTLEY, M.A.

AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY. By E. L. CUTTS,
  D.D.

WILLIAM LAUD. By W. H. HUTTON, M.A.

JOHN KNOX. By F. MACCUNN.

JOHN HOWE. By R. F. HORTON, D.D.

BISHOP KEN. By F. A. CLARKE, M.A.

GEORGE FOX, THE QUAKER. By T. HODGKIN,
  D.C.L.

JOHN DONNE. By AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.

THOMAS CRANMER. By A. J. MASON.

BISHOP LATIMER. By R. M. CARLYLE and A.
  J. CARLYLE, M.A.

Other volumes will be announced in due course.




FICTION


=Marie Corelli's Novels=

_Crown 8vo. 6s. each._

A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. _Twenty-Second
  Edition._

VENDETTA. _Seventeenth Edition._

THELMA. _Twenty-Fifth Edition._

ARDATH: THE STORY OF A DEAD SELF.
  _Thirteenth Edition._

THE SOUL OF LILITH. _Tenth Edition._

WORMWOOD. _Eleventh Edition._

BARABBAS: A DREAM OF THE WORLD'S
  TRAGEDY. _Thirty-sixth Edition._

        'The tender reverence of the treatment and the
          imaginative beauty of the writing have
          reconciled us to the daring of the conception,
          and the conviction is forced on us that even so
          exalted a subject cannot be made too familiar
          to us, provided it be presented in the true
          spirit of Christian faith. The amplifications
          of the Scripture narrative are often conceived
          with high poetic insight, and this "Dream of
          the World's Tragedy" is a lofty and not
          inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax of
          the inspired narrative.'--_Dublin Review._

THE SORROWS OF SATAN. _Forty-Fourth
  Edition._

        'A very powerful piece of work.... The conception
          is magnificent, and is likely to win an abiding
          place within the memory of man.... The author
          has immense command of language, and a
          limitless audacity.... This interesting and
          remarkable romance will live long after much of
          the ephemeral literature of the day is
          forgotten.... A literary phenomenon ... novel,
          and even sublime.'--W. T. STEAD in the _Review
          of Reviews_.

THE MASTER CHRISTIAN.
                                       [_160th Thousand._

        'It cannot be denied that "The Master Christian"
          is a powerful book; that it is one likely to
          raise uncomfortable questions in all but the
          most self-satisfied readers, and that it
          strikes at the root of the failure of the
          Churches--the decay of faith--in a manner which
          shows the inevitable disaster heaping up....
          The good Cardinal Bonpré is a beautiful figure,
          fit to stand beside the good Bishop in "Les
          Misérables".... The chapter in which the
          Cardinal appears with Manuel before Leo XIII.
          is characterised by extraordinary realism and
          dramatic intensity.... It is a book with a
          serious purpose expressed with absolute
          unconventionality and passion.... And this is
          to say it is a book worth
          reading.'--_Examiner._


=Anthony Hope's Novels=

_Crown 8vo. 6s. each._

THE GOD IN THE CAR. _Ninth Edition._

        'A very remarkable book, deserving of critical
          analysis impossible within our limit;
          brilliant, but not superficial; well
          considered, but not elaborated; constructed
          with the proverbial art that conceals, but yet
          allows itself to be enjoyed by readers to whom
          fine literary method is a keen pleasure.'--_The
          World._

A CHANGE OF AIR. _Sixth Edition._

        'A graceful, vivacious comedy, true to human
          nature. The characters are traced with a
          masterly hand.'--_Times._

A MAN OF MARK. _Fifth Edition._

        'Of all Mr. Hope's books, "A Man of Mark" is the
          one which best compares with "The Prisoner of
          Zenda."'--_National Observer._

THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO. _Fourth
  Edition._

        'It is a perfectly enchanting story of love and
          chivalry, and pure romance. The Count is the
          most constant, desperate, and modest and tender
          of lovers, a peerless gentleman, an intrepid
          fighter, a faithful friend, and a magnanimous
          foe.'--_Guardian._

PHROSO. Illustrated by H. R. MILLAR.
  _Fifth Edition._

        'The tale is thoroughly fresh, quick with
          vitality, stirring the blood.'--_St. James's
          Gazette._

SIMON DALE. Illustrated. _Fifth
  Edition._

        'There is searching analysis of human nature,
          with a most ingeniously constructed plot. Mr.
          Hope has drawn the contrasts of his women with
          marvellous subtlety and delicacy.'--_Times._

THE KING'S MIRROR. _Third Edition._

        'In elegance, delicacy, and tact it ranks with
          the best of his novels, while in the wide range
          of its portraiture and the subtlety of its
          analysis it surpasses all his earlier
          ventures.'--_Spectator._

QUISANTE. _Third Edition._

        'The book is notable for a very high literary
          quality, and an impress of power and mastery on
          every page.'--_Daily Chronicle._


=Gilbert Parker's Novels=

_Crown 8vo. 6s. each._

PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE. _Fifth Edition._

        'Stories happily conceived and finely executed.
          There is strength and genius in Mr. Parker's
          style.'--_Daily Telegraph._

MRS. FALCHION. _Fourth Edition._

        'A splendid study of character.'--_Athenæum._

THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE. _Second
  Edition._

        'The plot is original and one difficult to work
          out; but Mr. Parker has done it with great
          skill and delicacy.'--_Daily Chronicle._

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. Illustrated.
  _Seventh Edition._

        'A rousing and dramatic tale. A book like this,
          in which swords flash, great surprises are
          undertaken, and daring deeds done, in which men
          and women live and love in the old passionate
          way, is a joy inexpressible.'--_Daily
          Chronicle._

WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC: The Story
  of a Lost Napoleon. _Fifth Edition._

        'Here we find romance--real, breathing, living
          romance. The character of Valmond is drawn
          unerringly.'--_Pall Mall Gazette._

AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH: The Last
  Adventures of 'Pretty Pierre.'
  _Second Edition._

        'The present book is full of fine and moving
          stories of the great North, and it will add to
          Mr. Parker's already high
          reputation.'--_Glasgow Herald._

THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. Illustrated.
  _Eleventh Edition._

        'Mr. Parker has produced a really fine historical
          novel.'--_Athenæum._

        'A great book.'--_Black and White._

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG: a Romance of
  Two Kingdoms. Illustrated. _Fourth
  Edition._

        'Nothing more vigorous or more human has come
          from Mr. Gilbert Parker than this novel. It has
          all the graphic power of his last book, with
          truer feeling for the romance, both of human
          life and wild nature.'--_Literature._

THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES. _Second
  Edition. 3s. 6d._

        'Unforced pathos, and a deeper knowledge of human
          nature than Mr. Parker has ever displayed
          before.'--_Pall Mall Gazette._


=S. Baring Gould's Novels=

_Crown 8vo. 6s. each._

ARMINELL. _Fifth Edition._

URITH. _Fifth Edition._

IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. _Seventh
  Edition._

MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN. _Fourth
  Edition._

CHEAP JACK ZITA. _Fourth Edition._

THE QUEEN OF LOVE. _Fifth Edition._

MARGERY OF QUETHER. _Third Edition._

JACQUETTA. _Third Edition._

KITTY ALONE. _Fifth Edition._

NOÉMI. Illustrated. _Fourth Edition._

THE BROOM-SQUIRE. Illustrated. _Fourth
  Edition._

THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS. _Third Edition._

DARTMOOR IDYLLS.

GUAVAS THE TINNER. Illustrated. _Second
  Edition._

BLADYS. Illustrated. _Second Edition._

DOMITIA. Illustrated. _Second Edition._

PABO THE PRIEST.

WINEFRED. Illustrated. _Second Edition._

THE FROBISHERS.

       *       *       *       *       *

=Conan Doyle.= ROUND THE RED LAMP. By
  A. CONAN DOYLE. _Seventh Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'The book is far and away the best view that has
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=Stanley Weyman.= UNDER THE RED ROBE.
  By STANLEY WEYMAN, Author of 'A
  Gentleman of France.' With
  Illustrations by R. C. WOODVILLE.
  _Sixteenth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Every one who reads books at all must read this
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=Lucas Malet.= THE WAGES OF SIN. By
  LUCAS MALET. _Thirteenth Edition.
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=Lucas Malet.= THE CARISSIMA. By LUCAS
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=Lucas Malet.= THE GATELESS BARRIER. By
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        'The story is told with a sense of style and a
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=W. W. Jacobs.= A MASTER OF CRAFT. By
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  Cargoes.' Illustrated. _Fourth
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        'Can be unreservedly recommended to all who have
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        'The best humorous book published for many a
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=W. W. Jacobs.= MANY CARGOES. By W. W.
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=W. W. Jacobs.= SEA URCHINS. By W. W.
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=Edna Lyall.= DERRICK VAUGHAN, NOVELIST.
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        'It is a bright and witty book above all things.
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        'The spirit of Dickens is in it.'--_Bookman._

=George Gissing.= THE CROWN OF LIFE. By
  GEORGE GISSING, Author of 'Demos,'
  'The Town Traveller,' etc. _Crown
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=Henry James.= THE SOFT SIDE. By HENRY
  JAMES, Author of 'What Maisie Knew.'
  _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'The amazing cleverness marks the great
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=H. James.= THE SACRED FOUNT. By HENRY
  JAMES, Author of 'What Maisie Knew.'
  _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        '"The Sacred Fount" is only for the few, but they
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=S. R. Crockett.= LOCHINVAR. By S. R.
  CROCKETT, Author of 'The Raiders,'
  etc. Illustrated. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Full of gallantry and pathos, of the clash of
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          love.'--_Westminster Gazette._

=S. R. Crockett.= THE STANDARD BEARER.
  By S. R. CROCKETT. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A delightful tale.'--_Speaker._

        'Mr. Crockett at his best.'--_Literature._

=Arthur Morrison.= TALES OF MEAN
  STREETS. By ARTHUR MORRISON. _Fifth
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        Told with consummate art and extraordinary
          detail. In the true humanity of the book lies
          its justification, the permanence of its
          interest, and its indubitable
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        'A great book. The author's method is amazingly
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          The book is simply appalling and irresistible in
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          to make.'--_World._

=Arthur Morrison.= A CHILD OF THE JAGO.
  By ARTHUR MORRISON. _Third Edition.
  Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'The book is a masterpiece.'--_Pall Mall
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        'Told with great vigour and powerful
          simplicity.'--_Athenæum._

=Arthur Morrison.= TO LONDON TOWN. By
  ARTHUR MORRISON, Author of 'Tales of
  Mean Streets,' etc. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'We have idyllic pictures, woodland scenes full
          of tenderness and grace.... This is the new Mr.
          Arthur Morrison gracious and tender,
          sympathetic and human.'--_Daily Telegraph._

=Arthur Morrison.= CUNNING MURRELL. By
  ARTHUR MORRISON, Author of 'A Child
  of the Jago,' etc. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'The plot hangs admirably. The dialogue is
          perfect.'--_Daily Mail._

        'Admirable.... Delightful humorous relief ... a
          most artistic and satisfactory
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=Max Pemberton.= THE FOOTSTEPS OF A
  THRONE. By MAX PEMBERTON.
  Illustrated. _Second Edition. Crown
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        'A story of pure adventure, with a sensation on
          every page.'--_Daily Mail._

=M. Sutherland.= ONE HOUR AND THE NEXT.
  By THE DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. _Third
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Passionate, vivid, dramatic.'--_Literature._

=Mrs. Clifford.= A FLASH OF SUMMER. By
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  Anne,' etc. _Second Edition. Crown
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        'The story is a very beautiful one, exquisitely
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=Emily Lawless.= HURRISH. By the
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=Emily Lawless.= MAELCHO: a Sixteenth
  Century Romance. By the Honble. EMILY
  LAWLESS. _Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
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        'A really great book.'--_Spectator._

=Emily Lawless.= TRAITS AND
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  LAWLESS. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

=Eden Phillpotts.= LYING PROPHETS. By
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=Eden Phillpotts.= CHILDREN OF THE MIST.
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=Eden Phillpotts.= THE HUMAN BOY. By
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  of the Mist.' With a Frontispiece.
  _Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Mr. Phillpotts knows exactly what schoolboys do,
          and can lay bare their inmost thoughts;
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          humour.'--_Academy._

=Eden Phillpotts.= SONS OF THE MORNING.
  By EDEN PHILLPOTTS, Author of 'The
  Children of the Mist.' _Second
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A book of strange power and
          fascination.'--_Morning Post._

        'Inimitable humour.'--_Daily Graphic._

=Jane Barlow.= A CREEL OF IRISH
  STORIES. By JANE BARLOW, Author of
  'Irish Idylls.' _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Vivid and singularly real.'--_Scotsman._

=Jane Barlow.= FROM THE EAST UNTO THE
  WEST. By JANE BARLOW. _Crown 8vo.
  6s._

=J. H. Findlater.= THE GREEN GRAVES OF
  BALGOWRIE. By JANE H. FINDLATER.
  _Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A powerful and vivid story.'--_Standard._

        'A beautiful story, sad and strange as truth
          itself.'--_Vanity Fair._

        'A singularly original, clever, and beautiful
          story.'--_Guardian._

        'Reveals to us a new writer of undoubted faculty
          and reserve force.'--_Spectator._

        'An exquisite idyll, delicate, affecting, and
          beautiful.'--_Black and White._

=J. H. Findlater.= A DAUGHTER OF
  STRIFE. By JANE H. FINDLATER. _Crown
  8vo. 6s._

=J. H. Findlater.= RACHEL. By JANE H.
  FINDLATER. _Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'A not unworthy successor to "The Green Graves of
          Balgowrie."'--_Critic._

=J. H. and Mary Findlater.= TALES THAT
  ARE TOLD. By JANE H. FINDLATER, and
  MARY FINDLATER. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Delightful and graceful stories for which we
          have the warmest welcome.'--_Literature._

=Mary Findlater.= A NARROW WAY. By MARY
  FINDLATER, Author of 'Over the
  Hills.' _Third Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'A wholesome, thoughtful, and interesting
          novel.'--_Morning Post._

        'Singularly pleasant, full of quiet humour and
          tender sympathy.'--_Manchester Guardian._

=Mary Findlater.= OVER THE HILLS. By
  MARY FINDLATER. _Second Edition. Cr.
  8vo. 6s._

        'A strong and wise book of deep insight and
          unflinching truth.'--_Birmingham Post._

=Mary Findlater.= BETTY MUSGRAVE. By
  MARY FINDLATER. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Handled with dignity and delicacy.... A most
          touching story.'--_Spectator._

=Alfred Ollivant.= OWD BOB, THE GREY
  DOG OF KENMUIR. By ALFRED OLLIVANT.
  _Fifth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'Weird, thrilling, strikingly graphic.'--_Punch._

        'We admire this book.... It is one to read with
          admiration and to praise with
          enthusiasm.'--_Bookman._

        'It is a fine, open-air, blood-stirring book, to
          be enjoyed by every man and woman to whom a dog
          is dear.'--_Literature._

=B. M. Croker.= PEGGY OF THE BARTONS.
  By B. M. CROKER, Author of 'Diana
  Barrington.' _Fifth Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

        'Mrs. Croker excels in the admirably simple,
          easy, and direct flow of her narrative, the
          briskness of her dialogue, and the geniality of
          her portraiture.'--_Spectator._

=B. M. Croker.= A STATE SECRET. By B.
  M. CROKER, Author of 'Peggy of the
  Bartons,' etc. _Second Edition. Crown
  8vo. 3s. 6d._

        'Full of humour, and always fresh and
          pleasing.'--_Daily Express._

        'Ingenious, humorous, pretty, pathetic.'--_World._

=H. G. Wells.= THE STOLEN BACILLUS, and
  other Stories. By H. G. WELLS.
  _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'The impressions of a very striking
          imagination.'--_Saturday Review._

=H. G. Wells.= THE PLATTNER STORY AND
  OTHERS. By H. G. WELLS. _Second
  Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'Weird and mysterious, they seem to hold the
          reader as by a magic spell.'--_Scotsman._

=Sara Jeannette Duncan.= A VOYAGE OF
  CONSOLATION. By SARA JEANNETTE
  DUNCAN, Author of 'An American Girl
  in London.' Illustrated. _Third
  Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'The dialogue is full of wit.'--_Globe._

=Sara Jeannette Duncan.= THE PATH OF A
  STAR. By SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN,
  Author of 'A Voyage of Consolation.'
  Illustrated. _Second Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

=C. F. Keary.= THE JOURNALIST. By C. F.
  KEARY. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._

=W. E. Norris.= MATTHEW AUSTIN. By W. E.
  NORRIS, Author of 'Mademoiselle de
  Mersac,' etc. _Fourth Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

        'An intellectually satisfactory and morally
          bracing novel.'--_Daily Telegraph._

=W. E. Norris.= HIS GRACE. By W. E.
  NORRIS. _Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

=W. E. Norris.= THE DESPOTIC LADY AND
  OTHERS. By W. E. NORRIS. _Crown 8vo.
  6s._

=W. E. Norris.= CLARISSA FURIOSA. By W.
  E. NORRIS. _Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'As a story it is admirable, as a _jeu d'esprit_
          it is capital, as a lay sermon studded with
          gems of wit and wisdom it is a model.'--_The
          World._

=W. E. Norris.= GILES INGILBY. By W. E.
  NORRIS. Illustrated. _Second Edition.
  Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Interesting, wholesome, and charmingly
          written.'--_Glasgow Herald._

=W. E. Norris.= AN OCTAVE. By W. E.
  NORRIS. _Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

=W. Clark Russell.= MY DANISH
  SWEETHEART. By W. CLARK RUSSELL.
  Illustrated. _Fourth Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

=Robert Barr.= IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS.
  By ROBERT BARR. _Third Edition. Cr.
  8vo. 6s._

        'A book which has abundantly satisfied us by its
          capital humour.'--_Daily Chronicle._

=Robert Barr.= THE MUTABLE MANY. By
  ROBERT BARR. _Second Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

        'Very much the best novel that Mr. Barr has yet
          given us. There is much insight in it, and much
          excellent humour.'--_Daily Chronicle._

=Robert Barr.= THE COUNTESS TEKLA. By
  ROBERT BARR. _Third Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

        'Of these mediæval romances, which are now
          gaining ground, "The Countess Tekla" is the
          very best we have seen. The story is written in
          clear English, and a picturesque, moving
          style.'--_Pall Mall Gazette._

=Robert Barr.= THE STRONG ARM. By
  ROBERT BARR, Author of 'The Countess
  Tekla.' Illustrated. _Second Edition.
  8vo. 6s._

=C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne.= PRINCE RUPERT
  THE BUCCANEER. By C. J. CUTCLIFFE
  HYNE, Author of 'Captain Kettle.' With
  8 Illustrations by G. GRENVILLE
  MANTON. _Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        A narrative of the romantic adventures of the
          famous Prince Rupert, and of his exploits in
          the Spanish Indies after the Cromwellian wars.

=Mrs. Dudeney.= THE THIRD FLOOR. By
  Mrs. DUDENEY, Author of 'Folly
  Corner.' _Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'One of the brightest, wittiest, and most
          entertaining novels published this
          spring.'--_Sketch._

=Andrew Balfour.= BY STROKE OF SWORD.
  By A. BALFOUR. Illustrated. _Fourth
  Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'A recital of thrilling interest, told with
          unflagging vigour.'--_Globe._

=Andrew Balfour.= TO ARMS! By ANDREW
  BALFOUR. Illustrated. _Second
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'The marvellous perils through which Allan passes
          are told in powerful and lively
          fashion.'--_Pall Mall Gazette._

=Andrew Balfour.= VENGEANCE IS MINE. By
  ANDREW BALFOUR. Author of 'By Stroke
  of Sword.' Illustrated. _Crown 8vo.
  6s._

        'A vigorous piece of work, well written, and
          abounding in stirring incidents.'--_Glasgow
          Herald._

=R. Hichens.= BYEWAYS. By ROBERT
  HICHENS. Author of 'Flames,' etc.
  _Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s._

        'The work is undeniably that of a man of striking
          imagination.'--_Daily News._

=R. Hichens.= TONGUES OF CONSCIENCE. By
  ROBERT HICHENS, Author of 'Flames.'
  _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Of a strange, haunting quality.'--_Glasgow
          Herald._

=Stephen Crane.= WOUNDS IN THE RAIN.
  WAR STORIES. By STEPHEN CRANE, Author
  of 'The Red Badge of Courage.'
  _Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'A fascinating volume.'--_Spectator._

=Dorothea Gerard.= THE CONQUEST OF
  LONDON. By DOROTHEA GERARD, Author of
  'Lady Baby.' _Second Edition. Crown
  8vo. 6s._

        'Bright and entertaining.'--_Spectator._

        'Highly entertaining and enjoyable.'--_Scotsman._

=Dorothea Gerard.= THE SUPREME CRIME.
  By DOROTHEA GERARD. _Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'One of the very best plots we have met with in
          recent fiction, and handled with that quiet
          unerring realism which always distinguishes the
          author's best work.'--_Academy._

=C. F. Goss.= THE REDEMPTION OF DAVID
  CORSON. By C. F. GOSS. _Third
  Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s._

        'Dramatic instinct and a vigorous imagination
          mark this soul history of a Quaker
          mystic.'--_Athenæum._

        'A really fine book.'--_Public Opinion._

        'A powerful and original book, and unusually
          striking.'--_Pilot._

        'Worthy to stand high in the ranks of modern
          fiction.'--_Literature._


=OTHER SIX-SHILLING NOVELS=

_Crown 8vo._

A SECRETARY OF LEGATION. By HOPE
  DAWLISH.

THE SALVATION SEEKERS. By NOEL AINSLIE.

STRANGE HAPPENINGS. By W. CLARK RUSSELL
  and other Authors.

THE BLACK WOLF'S BREED. By HARRIS
  DICKSON. Illustrated. _Second
  Edition._

BELINDA FITZWARREN. By the EARL OF
  IDDESLEIGH.

DERWENT'S HORSE. By VICTOR ROUSSEAU.

ANNE MAULEVERER. By Mrs. CAFFYN (Iota).

SIREN CITY. By BENJAMIN SWIFT.

AN ENGLISHMAN. By MARY L. PENDERED.

THE PLUNDERERS. By MORLEY ROBERTS.

THE HUMAN INTEREST. By VIOLET HUNT.

THE KING OF ANDAMAN: A Saviour of
  Society. By J. MACLAREN COBBAN.

THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT. By J.
  MACLAREN COBBAN.

IN THE DAY OF ADVERSITY. By J.
  BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.

DENOUNCED. By J. BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.

THE CLASH OF ARMS. By J.
  BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.

ACROSS THE SALT SEAS. By J.
  BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.

SERVANTS OF SIN. By J.
  BLOUNDELLE-BURTON.

PATH AND GOAL. _Second Edition._ By ADA
  CAMBRIDGE.

THE SEEN AND THE UNSEEN. By RICHARD
  MARSH.

MARVELS AND MYSTERIES. By RICHARD MARSH.

ELMSLIE'S DRAG-NET. By E. H. STRAIN.

A FOREST OFFICER. By Mrs. PENNY.

THE WHITE HECATOMB. By W. C. SCULLY.

BETWEEN SUN AND SAND. By W. C. SCULLY.

SIR ROBERT'S FORTUNE. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.

THE TWO MARYS. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.

THE LADY'S WALK. By Mrs. OLIPHANT.

MIRRY-ANN. By NORMA LORIMER.

JOSIAH'S WIFE. By NORMA LORIMER.

THE STRONG GOD CIRCUMSTANCE. By HELEN
  SHIPTON.

CHRISTALLA. By ESMÉ STUART.

THE DESPATCH RIDER. By ERNEST GLANVILLE.

AN ENEMY TO THE KING. By R. N. STEPHENS.

A GENTLEMAN PLAYER. By R. N. STEPHENS.

THE PATHS OF THE PRUDENT. By J. S.
  FLETCHER.

THE BUILDERS. By J. S. FLETCHER.

DANIEL WHYTE. By A. J. DAWSON.

THE CAPSINA. By E. F. BENSON.

DODO: A DETAIL OF THE DAY. By E. F.
  BENSON.

THE VINTAGE. By E. F. BENSON.
  Illustrated by G. P. JACOMB-HOOD.

ROSE À CHARLITTE. By MARSHALL SAUNDERS.

WILLOWBRAKE. By R. MURRAY GILCHRIST.

THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED. By DOROTHEA
  GERARD.

LONE PINE: A ROMANCE OF MEXICAN LIFE. By
  R. B. TOWNSHEND.

WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN? By J.
  MACLAREN COBBAN.

A PASSIONATE PILGRIM. By PERCY WHITE.

SECRETARY TO BAYNE, M.P. By W. PETT
  RIDGE.

ADRIAN ROME. By E. DAWSON and A. MOORE.

GALLIA. By MÉNIE MURIEL DOWIE.

THE CROOK OF THE BOUGH. By MÉNIE MURIEL
  DOWIE.

A BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS. By JULIAN
  CORBETT.

MISS ERIN. By M. E. FRANCIS.

ANANIAS. By the Hon. Mrs. ALAN BRODRICK.

CORRAGEEN IN '98. By Mrs. ORPEN.

THE PLUNDER PIT. By J. KEIGHLEY SNOWDEN.

CROSS TRAILS. By VICTOR WAITE.

SUCCESSORS TO THE TITLE. By Mrs.
  WALFORD.

KIRKHAM'S FIND. By MARY GAUNT.

DEADMAN'S. By MARY GAUNT.

CAPTAIN JACOBUS: A ROMANCE OF THE ROAD.
  By L. COPE CORNFORD.

SONS OF ADVERSITY. By L. COPE CORNFORD.

THE KING OF ALBERIA. By LAURA DAINTREY.

THE DAUGHTER OF ALOUETTE. By MARY A.
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UNDER SHADOW OF THE MISSION. By L. S.
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THE SPECULATORS. By J. F. BREWER.

THE SPIRIT OF STORM. By RONALD ROSS.

THE QUEENSBERRY CUP. By CLIVE P. WOLLEY.

A HOME IN INVERESK. By T. L. PATON.

MISS ARMSTRONG'S AND OTHER
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DR. CONGALTON'S LEGACY. By HENRY
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TIME AND THE WOMAN. By RICHARD PRYCE.

THIS MAN'S DOMINION. By the Author of 'A
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DIOGENES OF LONDON. By H. B. MARRIOTT
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THE STONE DRAGON. By R. MURRAY
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A VICAR'S WIFE. By EVELYN DICKINSON.

ELSA. By E. M'QUEEN GRAY.

THE SINGER OF MARLY. By I. HOOPER.

THE FALL OF THE SPARROW. By M. C.
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A SERIOUS COMEDY. By HERBERT MORRAH.

THE FAITHFUL CITY. By HERBERT MORRAH.

IN THE GREAT DEEP. By J. A. BARRY.

BIJLI, THE DANCER. By JAMES BLYTHE
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VAUSSORE. By FRANCIS BRUNE.


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THE LOST REGIMENT. By ERNEST GLANVILLE.

BUNTER'S CRUISE. By CHARLES GLEIG.
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AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL. By X. L.

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A MAN WITH BLACK EYELASHES. By H. A.
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JACK'S FATHER. By W. E. NORRIS.

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 XVII. DERRICK VAUGHAN. EDNA LYALL.

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A HISTORY OF ENGLISH POLITICAL ECONOMY.
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VICTORIAN POETS. By A. SHARP.

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ENGLISH SOCIAL REFORMERS. By H. DE B.
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ENGLISH TRADE AND FINANCE IN THE
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ENGLISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT. By E. JENKS,
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THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE. By G. L.
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TRADE UNIONISM--NEW AND OLD. By G.
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MUTUAL THRIFT. By Rev. J. FROME
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PROBLEMS OF POVERTY. By J. A. HOBSON,
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THE COMMERCE OF NATIONS. By C. F.
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THE ALIEN INVASION. By W. H. WILKINS,
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THE RURAL EXODUS. By P. ANDERSON GRAHAM.

LAND NATIONALIZATION. By HAROLD COX,
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A SHORTER WORKING DAY. By H. DE B.
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BACK TO THE LAND: An Inquiry into the
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TRUSTS, POOLS AND CORNERS. By J. STEPHEN
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WORKHOUSES AND PAUPERISM. By LOUISA
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CLASSICAL TRANSLATIONS

Edited by H. F. FOX, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Brasenose College,
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       *       *       *       *       *
Transcriber's Notes:


Minor punctuation and typography inconsistencies have been corrected
without comment.


Spelling Corrections: (Evolution, Text)

  p. 80 FOOTNOTE 14: "Merz" to "Mertz" (As set out in the Index)

  p. 99, "firstfruits" to "first-fruits" (the first-fruits of)

Spelling Corrections: (Publisher's Catalogue)

  p. 25 of CATALOGUE - "County" to "Country" (--Country Gentleman.)

  p. 29, "Deaconness" to "Deaconess" (2) (Deaconess Cecilia)

  p. 33, "subtilty" to "subtlety" (2) (subtlety of its analysis)


In the Catalogue--

  Major Section Headings, originally in large point "Sentence Text" have
  been placed in UPPERCASE text, without further comment.

  Secondary Headings, originally in Bold Gothic print, have been placed
  within +Plus Signs+.

  Other Secondary Headings, (Specifically within the "Educational Books"
  section), originally shown in Uppercase Bold Italic print, are shown
  with =_EQUALS AND UNDERSCORES_=.


WORD VARIATIONS:

  "D.Litt." (4) and "Litt.D." (15)
  "pre-supposition" (1) and "presupposition(s)" (2)
  "Sc.D" (1) and "D.Sc" (4)


Words using the oe ligature which are represented as "oe" in this e-text:
amoeba.





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