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A UTHOR: BALFOUR, ARTHUR JAMES TITLE: THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF; BEING NOTES. PLACE: NEW YORK DA TE: [C1902] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARHFT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record 121 B19 Restrictions on Use: *^Thl ^'*''" /»™« ^tour, Jst earl of, 1848-1030 rm,^ISf^, 10 cm. I. Belief and doubt i. Title. BD215.B3 1895 Library ot Congress ,58ti, 4—4032 1. 1 ' I :i TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA FILM SIZE:___lit2:::^ REDUCTION RATIO: IMAGE PLACEMENT: L\ .^aTiB HE DATE FILMED:___ ^/ £^^3 INITIALS £££_ FILMED BY: RESEARCH PUBUCATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT i/y- c Association for Information and image Management 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100,. Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 mm mlmj|mjlm^^ Inches 1 1.0 1^ III 2.8 1 2.5 1^ IM nil 9 9 I.I if IIM ■ 1.0 I& ■KUU 1.4 2.0 11.8 1.6 1.25 MfiNUFRCTURED TO RUM STRNDRRDS BY RPPLIED IMRGE. INC. Cdmntria Wim\>tniitp LIBRARY From the Library of HERBERT GARDINER LORD Professor of Philosophy and Psycholojry in Columbia University. 1900 1922 Presented by MRS. HERBERT GARDINER LORD 1930 I II THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF BEING NOTES INTRODUCTORY TO THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY [Notes added for the first time in this Edition are included in square brackets.] THE FOUNDATIONS OF BELIEF BEING NOTES INTRODUCTORY TO THE STUDY OF THEOLOGY BY THE RIGHT HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR AUTHOR OF "a DEFENCE OF PHILOSOPHIC DOUBT," KTC. EIGHTH EDITION, REVISED IVITH A NEW INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON AND BOMBAY 1902 I Ali rights reserved 1 I J.4/\Jl^ t t * 1 ^» I "^i Copyright, 1894, by LONGMANS, GREEN. AND CO. Copyright, 190a, by LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. A a rights reservtd First Edition, February, 189s Rbprintbd, March, ApRI^ May, Junb, and October, 1895, December, 1396 Revised, April, 190a CONTENTS rAGB Introduction . • vii Note zxxv Preliminary i PART I SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEF CHAPTER I. Naturalism and Ethics II. Naturalism and ^Esthetic III. Naturalism and Reason IV. Summary and Conclusion of Part I • PART II II 33 67 77 TROW DIHeCTORY rRlNTINQ AND BOOKBINDINO COMMHV MtW YORK SOME reasons for BELIEF I. The Philosophic Basis of Naturalism • . 89 II. Idealism ; after some recent English Writ- ings 137 in. Philosophy and Rationalism . . . .163 IV. Rationalist Orthodoxy . . . . . • 182 CONTENTS . PART III SOME CAUSES OF BELIEF CMAPTBK I. Causes of Experience II. Authority and Reason rAGB 193 202 I. n. III. IV. PART IV suggestions towards a provisional philosophy The Groundwork . . . . • • • 243 •Ultimate Scientific IDKAS* .... 26* Science and Theology *7' Suggestions towards a Provisional Unifica- tion 303 APPENDIX BELIEFS, fwniidtti.. mm^ liALmis SUMMARY. . • . • 34» 371 INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION Except for three or four explanatory notes and a few verbal corrections, the body of the following essay remains what it was in the preceding editions. But I have added a summary of the argument, and trans- ferred to an appendix two chapters which are some- what parenthetical in character. I propose now to say a few words by way of introduction, in the hope of preventing some of the misconceptions to which experience has shown this presentation of my views to be peculiarly liable. I am far from thinking that these misconceptions are mainly due to the carelessness of the reader. Surveying the work after an interval of years, with a rested eye, I perceive in it certain peculiarities or, if it be preferred, errors of construction, which may well leave the reader more impressed — favourably or unfavourably — by particular arguments and episodes than by the ordered sequence of the whole. A well- known theologian (who, by the way, has himself completely failed to catch my general drift) observed • • Vll n Viii INTRODUCTION TO in a review, which he has since republished, that the book is redeemed by its digressions ; ^ and though 1 cannot be expected gratefully to accept so dubious a compliment, I admit that the interest of certain branches of the subject has occasionally betrayed me into giving them a relative prominence which the bare necessities of the general argument hardly seem to justify. Examples in point are the aesthetic discussion in the second chapter of Part I., and the chapter on Authority in Part III. I have made no attempt to correct this fault, if fault it be. Had I done so the book would, no doubt, have been a good deal altered, but I doubt whether it would on the whole have been altered for the better. It might have gained in proportion and balance ; but it would, perhaps, have lost whatever freshness and spontaneity it may ever have possessed. I have, therefore, contented myself with providing, in the argumentative summary mentioned above, a corrective to the too detailed treatment of certain portions of the work, hoping that by thus unspar- ingly thinning out the trees I shall enable the most careless wayfarer to understand without difficulty the general lie of the wood. I desire, however, emphatically to express a (perhaps not unbiassed) opinion that the book is something more than the ex- pansion of its sum mary , and that no extract or essence » Cathohasm, Roman and Anglican, by Principal Fairbairn, p. 384. THE EIGHTH EDITION IX ^ can really reproduce the qualities of the original preparation — whatever those qualities may be worth. To turn now from the form of the essay to its substance. The objection which seems most readily to suggest itself to my critics, is that the whole argument is a long endeavour to find in doubt the foundation of belief, to justify an excess of credulity by an excess of scepticism. If all creeds, whether scientific or theological (it is thus I am supposed to argue), are equally irrational, all may be equally ac- cepted. If there is no reason for believing anything, and yet something must in fact be believed, let that something be what we like rather than what we dis- like. If constructive reason is demonstrably barren, why should we be ashamed to find contentment in prejudice ? I am not concerned to defend a theory which, whatever be its merits, is by no means the one which the following essay is intended to advocate. But it may be worth while to dwell for a moment on the causes to which this misconception of the argument is probably due. The first of these, though by much the least important, is, I imagine, to be found in the avowedly tentative character of the scheme of thought I have endeavoured to expound. This scheme certainly claims, rightly or wrongly, to be philosophical, but it does not claim to constitute a philosophy ; nor do I for a moment desire to enter into the humblest competition with the great archi- INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION XI 4i tects of metaphysical systems. The world owes much to these remarkable men, but it does not owe them as yet a generally accepted theory of the knowable ; nor can I perceive any satisfactory indication that we are on the high-road to such a measure of agree- ment, either about the method of philosophy or its results, as has prevailed for two centuries in the case of science. Kant was of opinion that ' metaphysic, notwithstanding its high pretension, had * (up to the publication of the * Critique of Pure Reason * ) * been wandering round and round the same point withottt gaining a step.' If Kant's criterion of progress, namely, universal and permanent approval, is to be as rigorously applied to the period subsequent to 178 1 as he applied it to the preceding twenty cen- turies, I fear that in this respect the publication of his masterpiece can hardly be said to open a new philosophic epoch. But without fully accepting this pessimistic view, it is surely permitted to those who do not feel themselves able either to frame a fresh system of philosophy or to acknowledge the jurisdic- tion of any old one, candidly to confess the fact, without thereby laying themselves open to the charge of being dangerous sceptics masquerading for some sinister purpose as defenders of the faith ! No doubt this unambitious procedure has its diffi- culties. It carries with it, as an almost inevitable corollary, the admission, not only that the provisional theory advocated is incomplete, but that to a certain extent its various parts are not entirely coherent. For if our ideal philosophy is, as I think it ought to be, a system of thought co-extensive with the know- able and the real, whose various elements are shown not only to be consistent, but to be interdependent, then it seems highly probable that anything short of this would not only be incomplete, but to a certain extent obscure and contradictory. It does not seem likely, nay, it seems almost impossible, that our knowledge of what is only a fragment could be exact knowledge even of that fragment. Divorced from the context which it explains, and by which it is it- self explained, it must surely present incongruities and mysteries incapable of complete solution. To know in part must not merely be to know something less than the whole, but to know that something loosely and imperfectly. Now this modest estimate of the present reach of speculation may, no doubt, be contrasted with two others, both of which seem at first sight more in harmony with the dignity of reason. That dignity is, of course, not impaired by a mere admission of ignorance. It is on all hands allowed that by far the largest portion of the knowable is yet unknown, and, so far as mankind on this planet are concerned, is likely to remain so. But our ignorance and our cor- relative knowledge may be pictured in more than one way. We might, for example, conceive ourselves as in possession of a general outline of the knowable, Xll INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION xm if though ignorant of its details— as understanding in a broad but thoroughly consistent fashion the mutual relation of its principal provinces, though minutely acquainted with but a small corner of one of them. We should in that case be like geographers who had determined by an accurate triangulation the position of a few high mountain peaks dominating some vast continent, while avowedly unable to explore its in- terior, to penetrate its forests, or navigate its streams. Their knowledge would thus be small ; yet in a cer- tain sense it would cover the ground, it would be thoroughly coherent, and neither the progress of thought nor accumulating discoveries, however they might fill up its outlines, could seriously modify them. Something not much less than this has from time to time been claimed for the great metaphysical and theological systems by their disciples, perhaps even by their founders. And though I cannot persuade myself that we have as yet reached anything like this breadth and sureness of vision, it is not with those who think otherwise that my main controversy has to be fought out. The vital issue lies rather with those (in this book termed Naturalists) who map out the world of knowledge in a very different fashion. Unlike the metaphysicians, they glory in the limitations of their system. The narrower range of their vision is, they think, amply redeemed by its superior certitude. They admit, or rather proclaim, i that the area of reality open to their investigation is small compared with that over which Metaphysics or Theology profess to range. But though small, it is admittedly accessible; such surveys as have already been made of it are allowed on all hands to be trustworthy ; and it yields up its treasures of knowledge to methods of exploration which, valid though they be, can never, from the nature of the case, be employed in searching out the secrets of the surrounding solitudes. It is, I imagine, by those whose philosophy con- forms to this type, who are naturalistic rather than metaphysical, that the charge against the following essay of misusing sceptical methods is principally urged. And this is what might have been expected. Scepticism in the field of Theology or Metaphysic is too common to excite remark. Believers in Naturalism are sceptical about all theology and all metaphysics. Theologians and Metaphysicians are sceptical about all theology and all metaphysics but their own. The one subject which sceptical criticism usually spares is the one subject against which, in this essay, it is directed, namely, the current beliefs about the world of phenomena. No wonder there- fore that those to whom beliefs of this character rep- resent the sum of all actual and all possible knowl- edge find ground of suspicion against this method of conducting controversy. No wonder they suggest that freedom of thought when thus employed is in XIV INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION XV If \ I some danger of degenerating into licence ; that at the best it is useless, and may easily become harmful. Objections like these compel us to enquire into the legitimate uses of sceptical or destructive criticism. That it has its uses is denied by none. To hasten the final disintegration of dying superstition would be one, I suppose, universally approved of. But there will be less agreement about its value when ap- plied, as it is applied in the following pages, to beliefs which are neither dead nor likely to die. Everybody is gratified by the refutation of theories from which they differ ; but they are apt to receive with im- patience any criticism of statements on the truth of which (it may be) both they and the critic are agreed. Such questionings of the unquestionable are judged not only to be superfluous, but to be of dubious ex- pediency — disquieting yet unproductive, a profitless display of more or less ingenious argumentation. Now, it may readily be acknowledged that philo- sophic scepticism which neither carries with it, nor is intended to carry with it, any practical doubt, finds its chief uses within the region of pure specu- lation. There it may be a valuable measure of the success which speculative effort has already attained, a needful corrective of its exaggerated pretensions. It is at once a spur to philosophic curiosity and a touchstone of philosophic work. But even outside the sphere of pure speculation this sceptical criticism has its uses — humbler, no doubt, yet not without / their value. Though it provides no material out of which a creed can be formed, it may yet give a much- needed warning that the apparent stability of some very solid-looking beliefs cannot be shown to extend to their foundations. It may thus most wholesomely disturb a certain kind of intellectual dogmatism, which is often a real hindrance to free speculation, and so prepare the ground for constructive labours, to which directly it contributes nothing. This is the use to which I have endeavoured to put it ; and surely not without ample justification. How many persons are there who acquiesce in the limitations of the Naturalistic creed, not because it appeals to them as adequate — responsive and satis- fying to their whole nature — but because loyalty to reason seems to require their acceptance of it, and to require their acceptance of nothing else ? * Positive knowledge* they are taught to believe is really knowledge, and is the only knowledge. All else is but phantasie, unverified and unverifiable — specula- tive ore, unminted by experience, which each man may arbitrarily assess at his own valuation, which no man can force into general circulation. Natural- ism, on the other hand, provides them with a system of beliefs which, with all its limitations, is in their judgment rational, self-consistent, sure. It may not give them all they ask ; but what it promises it gives ; and what it gives may be accepted in all security. Now critical scepticism is the leading remedy (C I xvi INTRODUCTION TO indicated for this mood of dogmatic serenity. If it does nothing else, it should destroy the illusion that Naturalism is a creed in which mankind may find intellectual repose. It suggests the question whether, after all, there is, from the point of view of disin- terested reason, this profound distinction between the beliefs which Naturalism accepts and those which it rejects, and, if not, whether it can be legitimate to suppose that the so-called ' conflict between religion and science* touches more than the fringe of the deeper problems with which we are really confronted in our endeavour to comprehend the world in which we live. I have no doubt myself how this question should be answered. In spite of the importunate clamour which this * conflict * has so often occasioned since the revival of learning, drowning at times even the domestic quarrelling of the Churches, the issues de- cided have, after all, been but secondary and unes- sential. It is true, no doubt, that high ecclesiastical authorities have seen fit from time to time to de- nounce the teaching of astronomy, or geology, or morphology, or anthropology, or historical criticism. It is also true that in the long run science is seen to be justified of all her children. But do not on this account let us fall into the vulgar error of supposing that these skirmishings decide, or help to decide, the great cause which is in debate between naturalism and religion. It is not so. The difficulties and ob- THE EIGHTH EDITION xvn I I 1 I scurities which beset the attempt to fuse into a coherent whole the living beliefs of men are not to be found on one side only of the line dividing re- ligion from science. Naturalism is not the goal towards which we are being driven by the intel- lectual endeavour of the ages; nor is anything gained either for philosophy or science by attempt- ing to minimise its deficiencies. Some may think that in the following pages I have preached from this text with too persistent an iteration. At any rate, I seem to have given certain of my critics the impression that the principal, if not the sole, object of this work was to show that our beliefs concerning the material world and those con- cerning the spiritual world are equally poverty- stricken in the matter of philosophic proof, equally embarrassed by philosophic difficulties. This, how- ever, is not so; and if any think that by over-em- phasis I have given just occasion for the suspicion, let them remember how deeply rooted is the prejudice that had to be combated, how persistently it troubles the conscience of the religious, how blatantly it triumphs in the popular literature of infidelity. But, of course, the dissipation of a prejudice, however fundamental, can at best be but an indirect contribution to the work of philosophic construction. Concede the full claims of the argument just referred to, it yet amounts to no more than this — that while it is irrational to adopt the procedure of XVIU INTRODUCTION TO i THE EIGHTH EDITION XIX Mi i ill 'II Naturalism, and elevate scientific methods and conclusions into the test and measure of universal truth, it is not necessarily irrational for those who accept the general methods and conclusions of science, to accept also ethical and theological beliefs which cannot be reached by these methods, and which, it may be, harmonise but imperfectly with these conclusions. This is indeed no unimportant result: yet if the argument stopped here it might not be untrue, though it would assuredly be mislead- ing, to say that the following essay only contributed to belief in one department of thought, by suggest- ing doubt in another. But the argument does not stop here. The most important part has still to be noted — that in which an endeavour is made to show that science, ethics, and (in its degree) aesthetics, are severally and collectively more intelligible, better fitted to form parts of a rational and coherent whole, when they are framed in a theological setting, than when they are framed in one which is purely naturalistic. The method of proof depends essentially upon the principle that for a creed to be truly consistent, there must exist a correspondence between the account it gives of the origin of its beliefs and the estimate it entertains of their value ; in other words, there must be a harmony between the accepted value of results and the accepted theory of causes. This compressed, and somewhat forbidding, formula will receive ample I I illustration in succeeding chapters, but even here it may perhaps be expanded and elucidated with ad- vantage. What, then, is meant by the phrase ' an accepted value ' in (say) the case of scientific beliefs ; and how can this be out of * harmony with their origin * ? The chief * accepted value,' the only one which we need here consider, is truth. And what the formula asserts is that no creed is really harmonious which sets this high value on truth, or on true beliefs, and at the same time holds a theory as to the ultimate origin of beliefs which suggests their falsity. If, underlying the rational apparatus by which scientific beliefs are formally justified, there is a wholly non- rational machinery by which they are in fact pro- duced, if we are of opinion that in the last resort our stock of convictions is determined by the blind interaction of natural forces and, so far as we know, by these alone, then there is a discord between one portion of our scheme of thought and another, between our estimate of values and our theory of origins, which may properly be described as incon- sistency. Again, if in the sphere of aesthetics we try to combine the * accepted value ' of some great work of art or some moving aspect of Nature, with a theory which traces our feeling for the beautiful to a blind accident or an irresponsible freak of fashion, a like collision between our estimate of worth and our » II INTRODUCTION TO theory of origins must inevitably occur. The emotions stirred in us by loveliness or grandeur wither in the climate produced by such a doctrine, and the message they seem to bring us — not, as we would fain hope, of less import because it is inarticu- late — becomes meaningless or trivial. A precisely parallel argument may be applied with even greater force in the sphere of ethics. The ordinarily * accepted value ' of the moral law, of moral sentiments, of responsibility, of repentance, self-sacrifice, and high resolve, clashes hopelessly with any doctrine of origins which should trace the pedigree of ethics through the long-drawn develop- ments produced by natural selection, till it be finally lost in some material, and therefore non-moral, be- ginning. In this case, as in the other two, we can only reach a consistency (relative, indeed, and im- perfect at the best) if we assume behind, or immanent in, the chain of causes cognisable by science, a uni- versal Spirit shaping them to a foreseen end. The line of argument thus indicated is the exact opposite of one with which we are all very familiar. We are often told— and it may be properly told— that this or that statement is true, this or that practice laudable, because it comes to us with a Divine sanction, or because it is in accordance with Nature. In the argument on which I am insisting the movement of thought is reversed. Starting from the conception that knowledge is indeed real, that THE EIGHTH EDITION XXI the moral law does indeed possess authority, it travels towards the conviction that the source from which they spring can itself be neither irrational nor unmoral. In the one case we infer validity from origin : in the other, origin from validity. It is of course evident that in strictness the * validity ' from which * origin ' is thus inferred, is not so much the absolute validity of even the most widely accepted conclusion, as the valid tendency of the general processes out of which these conclusions have arisen. To base our views of the universe on the finality and adequacy of particular scientific and ethical propositions or groups of propositions, might well be considered hazardous. Not only is the secular movement of thought constantly requir- ing of us to restate our beliefs, but as I have shown in a later portion of this volume, even in those cases where no restatement is necessary, this is not because the beliefs to be expressed remain un- changed, but because our mode of expressing them is elastic. No such admission, however, really touches the essence of the argument. It is enough for my purpose to establish that we cannot plausibly assume a truth ward tendency in th<^ belief-forming processes, a growing approximation to verity in their results, unless we are prepared to go further, and to rest that hypothesis itself on a theistic and spiritual founda- tion. On the argument thus barely and imperfectly I " """■*"■ I 3 II' |i xxu INTRODUCTION TO outlined two further observations may perhaps be made. The first is that, like every other appeal to consistency, it is essentially an argumentum ad haminem. It can only affect the man who * accepts ' both the * estimate of value * and the * theory of origin/ On him who is unmoved by beauty, or who regards morality and moral sentiments as no more than a device for the preservation of society or the continuation of the race, neither the aesthetic nor the ethic branch of the argument can have any hold or purchase. For him, again, if any such there be, whose agnosticism requires him to cut down his creed to the bare acceptance of a perceiving Self and a perceived series of subjective states, there can be no conflict between the theory of origins and the accepted value of the consequent beliefs, since by hypothesis he neither has, nor could have, any theory of origins at all. He lives in a world of shadows related to each other only as events succeeding each other in time ; a world in which there is no room for contradiction as there is no room for anything that deserves to be called knowledge. The man who makes profession of such doctrines may justly be suspected of lying, but he is not open, in this con- nexion at least, to any charge of philosophic incon- sistency. It may in the second place be worth noting that the preceding argument is both suggested by the modern theory of universal development, and is \ THE EIGHTH EDITION XXlll (as I think) its necessary philosophic complement. Before this general point of view was reached, the interest taken in the causes which produced beliefs as distinguished from the reasons which also justify them, was confined to particular cases, and suggested as a rule by a controversial or historical motive. This or tha doctrine was inspired (i,e, immediately caused) by Goci, and therefore it was true ; by the Devil, and therefore it was false: was due to the teaching of a pnwer-loving priesthood ; was un- consciously suggested by self-interested motives; was born of parental influence or the subtle power of social surroundings — such and such like comments have always been sufficiently common. But until the theory of evolution began to govern our recon- struction of the past, observations like these were but detached and episodical notes. They represented no generalised or universal view as to the genesis of human opinions. To regard all beliefs whatever, be they true or false, our own or other people's, as having a natural history as well as a logical or philosophical status ; to see them not merely as conclusions, but as effects, conditioned, like all other effects, by a succession of causes stretching back into an illimit- able past; to recognise the fact that, so far as induction and observation can inform us, only a fraction of these causes, and those not the most fundamental, can be described as rational — all this is new. New also (at least in degree) is it to realise xxn INTRODUCTION TO outlined two further observations may perhaps be made. The first is that, like every other appeal to consistency, it is essentially an argumentum ad hominem. It can only affect the man who * accepts * both the 'estimate of value* and the 'theory of origin/ On him who is unmoved by beauty, or who regards morality and moral sentiments as no more than a device for the preservation of society or the continuation of the race, neither the aesthetic nor the ethic branch of the argument can have any hold or purchase. For him, again, if any such there be, whose agnosticism requires him to cut down his creed to the bare acceptance of a perceiving Self and a perceived series of subjective states, there can be no conflict between the theory of origins and the accepted value of the consequent beliefs, since by hypothesis he neither has, nor could have, any theory of origins at all. He lives in a world of shadows related to each other only as events succeeding each other in time ; a world in which there is no room for contradiction as there is no room for anything that deserves to be called knowledge. The man who makes profession of such doctrines may justly be suspected of lying, but he is not open, in this con- nexion at least, to any charge of philosophic incon- sistency. It may in the second place be worth noting that the preceding argument is both suggested by the modern theory of universal development, and is I. THE EIGHTH EDITION • •• XXlll (as I think) its necessary philosophic complement. Before this general point of view was reached, the interest taken in the causes which produced beliefs as distinguished from the reasons which also justify them, was confined to particular cases, and suggested as a rule by a controversial or historical motive. This or tha doctrine was inspired (/.^. immediately caused) by Croci, and therefore it was true ; by the Devil, and therefore it was false: was due to the teaching of a pnwer-loving priesthood ; was un- consciously suggested by self-interested motives; was born of parental influence or the subtle power of social surroundings — such and such like comments have always been sufficiently common. But until the theory of evolution began to govern our recon- struction of the past, observations like these were but detached and episodical notes. They represented no generalised or universal view as to the genesis of human opinions. To regard all beliefs whatever, be they true or false, our own or other people's, as having a natural history as well as a logical or philosophical status ; to see them not merely as conclusions, but as effects, conditioned, like all other effects, by a succession of causes stretching back into an illimit- able past; to recognise the fact that, so far as induction and observation can inform us, only a fraction of these causes, and those not the most fundamental, can be described as rational — all this is new. New also (at least in degree) is it to realise mmmmnmm XXIV INTRODUCTION TO that the beginnings of morality are lost among the self-preserving and race-prolonging instincts which we share with the animal creation ; that religion in its higher forms is a development of infantine, and often brutal, superstitions ; that in the pedigree of the noblest and most subtle of our emotions are to be discovered primitive strains of coarsest quality. But though these truths are now admitted as truths of anthropology, I do not think their full philosophical consequences have yet been properly worked out. Their true bearing on the theory of scientific belief seems scarcely to have been recog- nised. In the domain of religious speculations there are many who suppose that to explain the natural genesis of some belief or observance, to trace its growth from a lower to a higher form in different races and widely separated countries, is in some way to throw it into discredit. In the sphere of Ethics a like suspicion has perhaps prompted the various attempts to construct * intuitive ' systems of morals which shall owe nothing to historical development and psychological causation. I cannot believe that this is philosophically to be defended. Nothing, and least of all what most we value, has come to us ready made from Heaven. Yet if we are still to value it, the modern conception of its natural growth requires us more than ever to believe that from Heaven in the last resort it comes. There is one more point on which I desire to throw I THE EIGHTH EDITION XXV light before bringing this Introduction to a close, one other class of objector whom, if possible, I should wish to conciliate. To these critics it may seem that, whatever be the value of the argumentative scheme herein set forth, it does not even pretend to give them that for which they have been looking. Compared with the philosophy of which they dream, it appears mere tinkering. It not only suffers, on its own con- fession, from rents and gaps, imperfect cohesion, un- solved antinomies, but it is infected by the vice inherent in all apologetics — the vice of foregone conclusions. It travels towards a predestined end. Not content simply to follow reason where reason freely leads, it endeavours to cajole it into uttering oracles about the universe which shall do no violence to what are conceived to be the moral and emotional needs of man : a course which may be rational, but the rationality of which should (they think) be proved, but ought by no means to be assumed. Now a criticism like this raises a most important question, which, in its full generality, does not per- haps receive all the attention it deserves. Since belief necessarily precedes the theory of belief, what is the proper relation which theory in the making should bear to beliefs already made? It may at first seem that any serious attempt to devise a philosophy should be preceded not merely by a sus- pension of judgment as to the truth of all pre-philo- sophic assumptions, but by their complete elimination XXVI INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION XXV 11 i ll as factors in the enquiry. From the nature of the case, they can as yet be no more than guesses, and in the eyes of philosophy a mere guess is as if it were not. The examination into what we ought to believe should therefore be wholly unaffected by what we do in fact believe. The seeker after truth should set forth on his speculative voyage neither commitf ted to a predetermined course nor bound for any port of predilection, and it should seem to him a far smaller evil to lie stagnant and becalmed in univer- sal doubt than to move towards the most attractive goal on any impulse but that of strictly disinterested reason. The policy is an attractive one ; but its immediate consequence would be a total and absolute sundering of theory and practice. In so far as he was theorist, the philosopher acting on these principles would, or should, regard himself as discredited if he believed anything which was not either self-evident or ra- tionally involved in that which was self-evident. In so far as he was a citizen of the world, he could not live ten minutes without acting on some principle which still waits in vain for rational proof ; and he ' would do so, be it observed, although (on his own principles) there is no probability whatever that when he has reached the philosophic theory of which he is in quest, it will be in any kind of agreement with his pre-philosophic practice. If such a probability exists, it should evidently have guided him in his investigations, and there would be at once an end of the * clean slate and disinterested reason.' For myself indeed I doubt whether this method is possible, or, if possible, likely to be fruitful. And I am fortified in this conviction by the reflection that those to whose constructive suggestions the world owes most have favoured a different procedure. They have not thus speculated in the void. In their search for a world-theory wherein they might find repose, they have been guided by some pre-con- ceived ideal, borrowed in its main outlines from the thought of their age, to which by excisions, modifi- cations, or additions, they have sought to give definiteness and a rational consistency. I do not, of course, suggest that they were advocates speaking from a brief, or that their conclusions were explicitly formulated before their arguments were devised. My meaning rather is that we must think of them as working over, and shaping afresh, a body of doctrine (empirical, ethical, metaphysical, or meta- physico-theological, as the case may be), which in j the main thtyfoundy but did not make; that, judged by their practice, they have not regarded * disinter- ested reason ' as the proper instrument of philosophic construction; nor have they in fact disdained to struggle towards foreseen and wished for conclu- sions. Is this not plainly true, for example, of such men as Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel? Is it XXVIU INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION XXIX li ^llli « not confessed in the very name of the 'common- sense ' school ? Should it not be admitted even of thinkers whose conclusions deviate so much from the normal as Spinoza or Schopenhauer? I say nothing of the many schools of moralists who teach an identic morality, though on the most divergent grounds, nor of those who, in their endeavours to frame a logic of experience assume (quite rightly, in my opinion) that the empirical methods which we actually employ are those which it is their business if possible to justify. It is sufficiently evident that their example, if not their profession, amply supports my contention. This is not the place, however, to labour the historic point ; and it is the less necessary because I think the reader will probably agree with me that, in its complete and consistent purity, this method of * disinterested reason * never has been, and probably never will be, employed. What has been, and con- stantly is, employed, is a partial and bastard adapta- lion of it — an adaptation under which * disinterested reason,' or what passes for such, is only exercised for purposes of destructive criticism, in arbitrarily se- lected portions of the total area of belief. On this subject, however, the reader endowed with sufficient patience will hear much in the sequel. For the present it is only necessary to state, by way of con- trast, what I conceive to be the mode in which philosophy can most profitably order its course in the presence of those living beliefs which precede it in order of time, though not in order of logic. In my view, then, it should do avowedly, and with open eyes, what in fact it has constantly done, though silently and with hesitation. It should pro- visionally assume, not of course that the general body of our beliefs are in conformity with reality, but that they represent a stage in the movement towards such conformity; that in particular the great presuppositions (such as, for example, the uniformity of Nature or the existence of a persistent reality capable of being experienced by us but inde- pendent of our experience) which form as it were the essential skeleton of our working creed, should be regarded as matters which it is our business, it possible, rationally to establish, but not necessarily our business to ignore until such time as our efforts shall have succeeded. No doubt this method assumes a kind of harmony between the knowing Self and the reality to be known, which seems only plausible if both are part of a common design ; while again, if such a design is to be accepted at all, it can hardly be confined to the Self as knowing subject, but must embrace other and not less notable aspects of our complex personality.^ ' It might at first seem as if this postulated harmony might be due not to design, but to the material universe having, in the process of development, somehow evolved a mind, or rather a multitude of minds, in this kind of correspondence with itself. The inadequacy of such a theory is shown in ? later chapter of this volume. But it fliil I INTRODUCTION TO I may observe that this, and no more than this, is the doctrine of * needs ' to which, as expounded in the following pages,* serious objection has been taken by a certain number of my critics. We have thus again reached the point of view to which, by a slightly different route, we had already travelled. Whether, taking as our point of departure beliefs as they are, we look for the setting which shall bind them into the most coherent whole; or whether, in searching out what they ought to be, we ask in what direction we had best start our explora- tions, we seem equally moved towards the hypothesis of a Spiritual origin common to the knower and the known. Now it will be observed that in both cases the creed aimed at is an inclusive one. There is, I mean, an admitted desire that no great department of knowledge (real or supposed) in which there are living and effective beliefs, shall be excluded from the final co-ordination. But inasmuch as this final co-ordination has not been reached, has indeed, as we fear, been scarcely approached, we are not only compelled in our gropings after a philosophy to accept guidance from beliefs which as yet possess no may be here observed that it is not very satisfactory to assume, even provisionally, the truth of a full-fiedged and very complex scientific theory at the starting point of an mvestigation into the proof of the fundamental principles on which that theory, and other empirical doctrines, ultimately depend. 1 See below pp. 243-260. '^ THE EIGHTH EDITION XXXI rational warranty, but to tolerate some which it seems impossible at present to harmonise. This seems a hard saying, and it inevitably sug- gests the question whether happier results might not be obtained by abandoning the attempt at com- prehension, and boldly expunging a number of tne conflicting opinions sufficient to secure immediate consistency. I am not aware, however, that any operation of this kind has so far been attended with the smallest success, nor does it seem very easy to justify it in the name of reason, unless on examination it turns out that the opinions retained have a better claim to reasonable acceptance than their rivals, a con- tingency more remote than is often supposed. Even from the purely empirical point of view, a considera- tion of the natural history oi knowledge, or what is accepted as knowledge, gives fair warning that this procedure (were it indeed practicable) would not be without its dangers. For knowledge does not grow merely by the addition of new discoveries : nor is it purified merely by the subtraction of detected errors. Truth and falsehood are often too intimately com- bined to be dissociated by any simple method of filtration. It is by a subtler process that new verities, while increasing the sum of our beliefs, act even more effectively as a kind of ferment, impressing on those that already exist a novel and previously unsuspected character; just as a fresh touch of colour added to a ^as ■- — ■ ■ ■ XXXll INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHTH EDITION 1 ' XXXlll i I' I picture, though it immediately affects but one comer of the canvas, may yet change the whole from un- likeness to likeness, from confusion to significance. Now if this be a faithful representation of what actually occurs, it seems plain that to amputate im- portant departments of belief in order to free what remains from any trace of incoherence, might, even if it succeeded, be to hinder, not to promote, the cause of truth. Nothing, indeed, which is incoherent can be true. But though it cannot be true, it may not only contain much truth, but may contain more than any system in which both the true and the false are abandoned in the premature and, at this stage of development, hopeless endeavour after a creed which, within however narrow limits, shall be perfectly clear and self-consistent. Most half-truths are half-errors ; but who is there who would refrain from grasping the half-truth although he could not obtain it at a less cost than that of taking the half-error with it ? There are those who would accept the historical application of this doctrine, who would admit that logical laxity had often in fact been of service to intellectual progress, but would altogether deny the propriety of admitting that such a theory could have any practical bearing on their own case. They would draw a distinction between a detected and an unde- tected incoherence. The unconscious acquiescence in the latter may happen to aid the cause of knowl- edge : the conscious acquiescence in the former must I "■I be a sin against reason. I do not think the distinc- tion will hold. Our business is to reach as much truth as we can ; and neither observation nor reflec- tion * give any countenance to the notion that this end will best be attained by turning the merely critical understanding into the undisputed arbiter in all matters of belief. Its importance for the clarifi- cation of knowledge cannot indeed be exaggerated. As a commentator it should be above control. As cross-examiner its rights should be unlimited. But it cannot arrogate to itself the duties of a final court of appeal. Should it, for example, show, as I think it does, that neither the common-sense views of ordi- nary men, nor the modification of these on which science proceeds, nor the elaborated systems of metaphysics, are more than temporary resting-places, seen to be insecure almost as soon as they are occu- pied, yet we must still hold them to be stages on i ^^ >4> c |wv^, a journey towards something better than a futile scepticism which, were it possible in practice, would j "^ 'yJI^J^ be ruinous alike to every form of conviction, whether scientific, ethical, or religious. When that journey is accomplished, but only then, can we hope that all difficulties will be smoothed away, all anomalies be reconciled, and the certainty and rational interde- pendence of all its parts made manifest in the trans- parent Whole of Knowledge. I have now endeavoured to present in isolation, * See this Introduction, anU, p. xi. pi XXXIV INTRODUCTION and with all the lucidity consistent with brevity, the fundamental ideas which underlie the various dis- cussions contained in the following Essay. For their development and illustration I must of course refer to the work itself ; and it may well happen that this preliminary treatment of them will not greatly pre- dispose some of my readers in their favour. But however this may be, I would fain hope that, whether they be approved or disapproved, they cannot, after what has been said, any longer be easily misunder- stood. WHITTINGEHAME, I90I« NOTE Part IL, Chapter II., of the following Essay ap. peared in 1893 in the October number of ' Mind.' Part I., Chapter I., was delivered as a Lecture to the Ethical Society of Cambridge in the spring of 1893, and subsequently appeared in the July number of the * International Journal of Ethics ' in the pres- ent year. Though published separately, both these chapters were originally written for the present vol- ume. The references to ' Philosophic Doubt ' which occur from time to time in the Notes, especially at the beginning of Part II., are to the only edition of that book which has as yet been published. It is now out of print, and copies are not easy to procure ; but if I have time to prepare a new edition, care will be taken to prevent any confusion which might arise from a diflFerent numbering of the chapters. I desire to acknowledge the kindness of those who have read through the proof-sheets of these Notes and made suggestions upon them. This somewhat ungrateful labour was undertaken by my Wends, the Rev. E. S. Talbot, Professor Andrew Seth, the Rev. James Robertson, and last, but very / t ri XXXVl NOTE far from least, my brother, Mr. G. W. Balfour, M.P., and my brother-in-law, Professor Henry Sidgwick. None of these gentlemen are, of course, in any way responsible for the views herein advocated, with which some of them, indeed, by no means agree. I am the more beholden to them for the assistance they have been good enough to render me. Am J» JtJ* Whittingehame, September 1894. \ \ \ \K PRELIMINARY As its title imports, the following Essay is intended to serve as an Introduction to the Study of Theol- ogy. The word ' Introduction,* however, is ambig- uous ; and in order that the reader may be as little disappointed as possible with the contents of the book, the sense in which I here use it must be first explained. Sometimes, by an Introduction to a sub- ject is meant a brief survey of its leading principles — a first initiation, as it were, into its methods and results. For such a task, however, in the case of Theology I have no qualifications. With the growth of knowledge Theology has enlarged its borders until it has included subjects about which even the most accomplished theologian of past ages did not greatly concern himself. To the Patristic, Dog- matic, and Controversial learning which has always been required, the theologian of to-day must add knowledge at first hand of the complex historical, antiquarian, and critical problems presented by the Old and New Testaments, and of the vast and daily increasing literature which has grown up around them. He must have a sufficient acquaintance with the comparative history of religions ; and in addi- tion to all this, he must be competent to deal with ll!^ 2 PRELIMINARY those scientific and philosophical questions which have a more profound and permanent bearing on Theology even than the results of critical and his- torical scholarship. Whether any single individual is fully compe- tent either to acquire or successfully to manipulate so formidable an apparatus of learning, I do not know. But in any case I am very far indeed from being even among that not inconsiderable number who are qualified to put the reader in the way of profitably cultivating some portion of this vast and always increasing field of research. The following pages, therefore, scarcely claim to deal with the sub- stance of Theology at all. They are in the narrow- est sense of the word an * introduction * to it. They deal for the most part with preliminaries ; and it is only towards the end of the volume, where the Intro- duction begins insensibly to merge into that which it is designed to introduce, that purely theological doc- trines are mentioned, except by way of illustration. Although what follows might thus be fitly de- scribed as * Considerations preliminary to a study of Theology,* I do not think the subjects dealt with are less important on that account. For, in truth, the decisive battles of Theology are fought beyond its frontiers. It is not over purely religious contro- versies that the cause of Religion is lost or won. The judgments we shall form upon its special prob- lems are commonly settled for us by our general mode of looking at the Universe ; and this again, in PRELIMINARY 3 so far as it is determined by arguments at all, is determined by arguments of so wide a scope that they can seldom be claimed as more nearly con- cerned with Theology than with the philosophy of Science or of Ethics. My object, then, is to recommend a particular way of looking at the World - problems, which, whether we like it or not, we are compelled to face. I wish, if I can, to lead the reader up to a point of view whence the small fragments of the Infinite Whole, of which we are able to obtain a glimpse, may appear to us in their true relative proportions. This is, therefore, no work of * Apologetics * in the ordinary sense of that word. Theological doctrines are not taken up in turn and defended from current objections ; nor is there any endeavour here made specifically to solve the * doubts * or allay the * diffi- culties * which in this, as in every other, age perplex the minds of a certain number of religious persons. Yet, as I think that perhaps the greater number of these doubts and difficulties would never even pre- sent themselves in that character were it not for a certain superficiality and one-sidedness in our habit- ual manner of considering the wider problems of belief, I cannot help entertaining the hope that by what is here said the work of the Apologist proper may indirectly be furthered. It is a natural, if not an absolutely necessary consequence of this plan, that the subjects alluded to in the following pages are, as a rule, more secular 4 PRELIMINARY than the title of the book might perhaps at first suggest, and also that the treatment of some of them has been brief even to meagreness. If the reader is tempted to complain of the extreme con- ciseness with which some topics of the greatest im- portance are touched on, and the apparent irrele- vance with which others have been introduced, I hope he will reserve his judgment until he has read to the end, should his patience hold out so long. If he then thinks that the * particular way of looking at the World-problems ' which this book is intended to recommend is not rendered clearer by any por- tion of what has been written, I shall be open to his criticism ; but not otherwise. What I have tried to do is not to write a monograph, or a series of mono- graphs, upon Theology, but to delineate, and, if possible, to recommend, a certain attitude of mind ; and I hope that in carrying out this less ambitious scheme I have put in few touches that were super- fluous and left out none that were necessary. If it be asked, ' For whom is this book intended?' I answer, that it is intended for the general body of readers interested in such subjects rather than for the specialist in Philosophy. I do not, of course, mean that I have either desired or been able to avoid questions which in essence are strictly philo- sophical. Such an attempt would have been wholly absurd. But no knowledge either of the history or the technicalities of Philosophy is assumed in the leader, nor do I believe that there is any train of PRELIMINARY s thought here suggested which, if he thinks it worth his while, he will have the least difficulty in follow- ing. He may, and very likely will, find objection both to the substance of my arguments and their form. But I shall be disappointed if, in addition to their other deficiencies, he finds them unintelligible or even obscure.^ There is one more point to be explained before these prefatory remarks are brought to a conclusion. In order that the views here advocated may be seen in the highest relief, it is convenient to exhibit them against the background of some other and contrast- ed system of thought. What system shall that be ? In Germany the philosophies of Kant and his suc- cessors may be (I know not whether they are) matters of such common knowledge that they fit- tingly supply a standard of reference, by the aid of which the relative positions of other and more or less differing systems may be conveniently deter- mined. As to whether this state of things, if it anywhere exists, is desirable or not, I offer no opinion. But I am very sure that it does not at present exist in any English-speaking community, and probably never will, until the ideas of these speculative giants are throughout rethought by Englishmen, and reproduced in a shape which ordinary Englishmen will consent to assimilate. Until this occurs Tran- scendental Idealism must continue to be what it is * These observations must not be taken as applying to Part II., Chapter II., which the general reader is recommended to omit. 6 PRELIMINARY now — the intellectual possession of a small minor- ity of philosophical specialists. Philosophy cannot, under existing conditions, become, like Science, ab- solutely international. There is in matters specu- lative, as in matters poetical, a certain amount of natural protection for the home-producer, which commentators and translators seem unable alto- gether to overcome. Though, therefore, I have devoted a chapter to the consideration of Transcendental Idealism as rep- resented in some recent English wfifings, it is not with overt or tacit reference to that system that I have arranged the material of the following Essay. I have, on the contrary, selected a system with which I am in much less sympathy, but which under many names numbers a formidable following, and is in reality the only system which ultimately profits by any defeats which Theology may sustain, or which may be counted on to flood the spaces from which the tide of Religion has receded. Agnosticism, Positivism, Empiricism, have all been used more or less correctly to describe this scheme of thought; though in the following pages, for reasons with which it is not necessary to trouble the reader, the term which I shall commonly employ is Naturalism.* *CThis sentence has greatly excited the wrath of Mr. Frederic Harrison. But whether his indignation is directed against my de- scription of the meaning in which the word * Positivism ' is frequently used, or against that meaning itself, is not quite so clear. If my description is accurate, I see no reason why he should be angry with me ; and that it is accurate seems beyond doubt. I commend to Mr. PRELIMINARY But whatever the name selected, the thing itself is sufficiently easy to describe. For its leading doctrines are that we may know * phenomena * ^ and the laws Harrison's attention the following passage from John Mill's volume on * Auguste Comte and Positivism : ' * ' The character by which he (Comte) defines Positive Philosophy is the following : We have no knowledge of anything but Phenomena; and our knowledge of Phenomena is relative, not absolute. . . . The laws of Phenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us.' Mill's account of the * character by which Comte defines Positive Philosophy * (which, as the reader will see, is almost identical with my account of Naturalism) may, in Mr. Harrison's elegant language,! be a * coagulated clot of confusions and mis-statements,' but passages of a like import (which could easily be multiplied) fully account for the use of the term * Positivism ' to which I have referred in the text. • Positivism,' says Mr. Harrison, * is the religion of humanity resting on the philosophy of human nature.'} Very possibly; but if so, Positivism as described by Mr. Harrison is a strangely different thing from * Positive Philosophy ' as described by John Mill ; and it is hardly to be wondered at that these words are sometimes employed in a manner displeasing to the religious sect of which Mr. Harrison is so distinguished a member. This, however, is no fault of mine. Let me add that Mr. Harrison's ill humour may in part be due to his supposing that I regard Positivists as being ipso facto materialists. I need not say to the attentive reader of the following essay that I do nothing of the sort.] * I feel that explanation, and perhaps apology, is due for this use of the word * phenomena.' In its proper sense the term implies, I suppose, that which appears, as distinguished from something, pre- sumably more real, which does not appear, I neither use it as carry- ing this metaphysical implication, nor do I restrict it to things which appear, or even to things which ^^«/<£/ appear to beings endowed with senses like ours. The ether, for instance, though it is impossible that we should ever know it except by its effects, I should call a phenom- * P. 6, ed. 1865. t Positivist Review ^ No. 29, p. 79. % Positivist Review for May 1895, p. 79. 6 PRELIMINARY I by which they are connected, but nothing more. * More* there may or may not be ; but if it exists we can never apprehend it : and whatever the World may be * in its reality ' (supposing such an expression to be otherwise than meaningless), the World for us, the World with which alone we are concerned, or of which alone we can have any cognisance, is that World which is revealed to us through perception, internal and external, and which is the subject-matter of the Natural Sciences. Here, and here only, are we on firm ground. Here, and here only, can we discover anything which deserves to be described as Knowledge. Here, and here only, may we profitably exercise our reason or gather the fruits of Wisdom. Such, in rough outline, is Naturalism. My first task will be the preparatory one of examining certain of its consequences in various departments of human thought and emotion ; and to this in the next four chapters I proceed to devote myself, cnon. The coagulation of nebular meteors into suns and planets I should call a phenomenon, though nobody may have existed to whom it could appear. Roughly speaking, things and events, the general subject-matter of Natural Science, are what I endeavour to indicate by a term for which, as thus used, there is, unfortunately, no substitute, however little the meaning which I give to it can be etymologically justified. While I am on the subject of definitions, it may be as well to say that, generally speaking, I distinguish between Philosophy and Meta- physics. To Philosophy I give an epistemol<^ical significance. I regard it as the systematic exposition of our grounds of knowledge. Thus, the philosophy of Religion or the philosophy of Science would mean the theoretic justification of our theological or scientific beliefs. By Metaphysics, on the other hand, I usually mean the knowledge that we have, or suppose ourselves to have, respecting realities which are not phenomenal, e,g, God, and the Soul. PART I SOME CONSEQUENCES OF BELIEF %\ CHAPTER I NATURALISM AND ETHICS The two subjects on which the professors of every creed, theological and anti-theological, seem least anxious to differ, are the general substance of the Moral Law, and the character of the sentiments with which it should be regarded. That it is worthy of all reverence; that it demands our ungrudging submission ; and that we owe it not merely obedience, but love — these are common- places which the preachers of all schools vie with each other in proclaiming. And they are certainly right. Morality is more than a bare code of laws, than a catalogue raisonnd of things to be done or left undone. Were it otherwise, we must change something more important than the mere customa- ry language of exhortation. The old ideals of the world would have to be uprooted, and no new ones could spring up and flourish in their stead ; the very soil on which they grew would be sterilised, and the phrases in which all that has hitherto been regard- ed as best and noblest in human life has been ex- pressed, nay, the words * best ' and * noblest ' them- 12 NATURALISM AND ETHICS NATURALISM AND ETHICS 13 selves, would become as foolish and unmeaning as the incantation of a forgotten superstition. This unanimity, familiar though it be, is surely very remarkable. And it is the more remarkable because the unanimity prevails only as to con- clusions, and is accompanied by the widest diver- gence of opinion with regard to the premises on which these conclusions are supposed to be founded. Nothing but habit could blind us to the strangeness of the fact that the man who believes that morality is based on a priori principles, and the man who believes it to be based on the commands of God, tlae transcendentalist, the theologian, the mystic, and the evolutionist, should be pretty well at one both as to what morality teaches, and as to the sentiments with which its teaching should be regarded. It is not my business in this place to examine the Philosophy of Morals, or to find an answer to the charge which this suspicious harmony of opinion among various schools of moralists appears to suggest, namely, that in their speculations they have taken current morality for granted, and have squared their proofs to their conclusions, and not their con- clusions to their proofs. I desire now rather to direct the reader's attention to certain questions relating to the origin of ethical systems, not to their justification ; to the natural history of morals, not to its philosophy ; to the place which the moral law occupies in the general chain of causes and effects, M f not to the nature of its claim on the unquestioning obedience of mankind. I am aware, of course, that many persons have been, and are, of opinion that these two sets of questions are not merely related, but identical ; that the validity of a command depends only on the source from which it springs ; and that in the investigation into the character and authority of this source consists the principal busi- ness of the moral philosopher. I am not concerned here to controvert this theory, though, as thus stated, I do not agree with it. It will be sufficient if I lay down two propositions of a much less dubious character: — (i) That, practically, human beings being what they are, no moral code can be effective which does not inspire, in those who are asked to obey it, emotions of reverence ; and (2) that, practically, the capacity of any code to excite this or any other elevated emotion cannot be wholly inde- pendent of the origin from which those who accept that code suppose it to emanate.^ Now what, according to the naturalistic creed, is the origin of the generally accepted, or, indeed, of any other possible, moral law ? What position does it occupy in the great web of interdependent phenom- ena by which the knowable 'Whole' is on this hypothesis constituted? The answer is plain: as * These are statements, it will be noted, not relating to ethics proper. They have nothing to do either with the contents of the moral law or with its validity ; and if we are to class them as be- longing to any special department of knowledge at all, it is to psy- chology or anthropology that they should in strictness be assigned. 14 NATURALISM AND ETHICS life is but a petty episode in the history of the universe ; as feeling is an attribute of only a frac- tion of things that live, so moral sentiments and the apprehension of moral rules are found in but an ^ insignificant minority of things that feel. They are not, so to speak, among the necessities of Nature ; no great spaces are marked out for their accommodation; were they to vanish to-morrow, the great machine would move on with no noticeable variation ; the sum of realities would not suffer sensible diminution ; the organic world itself would scarcely mark the change. A few highly developed mammals, and chiefest among these many would lose instincts and beliefs which have proved of considerable value in the struggle for existence, if not between individuals, at least between tribes and species. But put it at the highest, we can say no more than that there would be a great diminution of human happiness, that civilisation would become difficult or impossible, and that the * higher * races might even succumb and disappear. These are considerations which to the ' higher * races themselves may seem not unimportant, how- ever trifling to the universe at large. But let it be noted that every one of these propositions can be asserted with equal or greater assurance of all the bodily appetites, and of many of the vulgarest forms of desire and ambition. On most of the processes, in- deed, by which consciousness and life are maintained in the individual and perpetuated in the race we are NATURALISM AND ETHICS IS never consulted ; of their intimate character we are for the most part totally ignorant, and no one is in any case asked to consider them with any other emotion than that of enlightened curiosity. But in the few and simple instances in which our co-opera- tion is required, it is obtained through the stimulus supplied by appetite and disgust, pleasure and pain, instinct, reason, and morality ; and it is hard to see, on the naturalistic hypothesis, whence any one of these various natural agents is to derive a dignity or a consideration not shared by all the others, why morality should be put above appetite, or reason above pleasure. It may, perhaps, be replied that the sentiments with which we choose to regard any set of actions or motives do not require special justification, that there is no disputing about this any more than about other questions of * taste,* and that, as a matter of fact, the persons who take a strictly naturalistic view of man and of the universe are often the loudest and not the least sincere in the homage they pay to the 'majesty of the moral law.* This is, no doubt, perfectly true ; but it does not meet the real diffi- culty. I am not contending that sentiments of the kind referred to may not be, and are not, frequently entertained by persons of all shades of philosophical or theological opinion. My point is, that in the case of those holding the naturalistic creed the sentiments and the creed are antagonistic ; and that the more clearly the creed is grasped, the more thoroughly 1(5 NATURALISM AND ETHICS NATURALISM AND ETHICS 17 tic intellect is saturated with its essential teaching, the more certain are the sentiments thus violently and unnaturally associated with it to languish or to die. For not only does there seem to be no ground, from the point of view of biology, for drawing a distiiicfion in fatofif of any of the processes, physio- logical or psychological, by which the individual or the race is benefited ; not only are we bound to consider the coarsest appetites, the most calculating selfishness, and the most devoted heroism, as all sprung from analogous causes and all evolved for similar objects, but we can hardly doubt that the august sentiments which cling to the ideas of duty and sacrifice are nothing better than a device of Nature to trick us into the performance of altruistic actions.^ The working ant expends its life in labour- ing, with more than maternal devotion, for a prog- eny not its own, and, so far as the race of ants is concerned, doubtless it does well. Instinct, the in- herited impulse to follow a certain course with no developed consciousness of its final goal, is here the instrument selected by Nature to attain her ends. But in the case of man, more flexible if less certain methods have to be employed. Does conscience, in bidding us to do or to refrain, speak with an authority from which there seems no appeal ? Does * It is scarcely necessary to state that by this phrase I do not wish to suggest that Biology necessarily is teleological. Naturalism of course cannot be. our blood tingle at the narrative of some great deed? Do courage and self-surrender extort our passionate sympathy, and invite, however vainly, our halting imitation? Does that which is noble attract even the least noble, and that which is base repel even the basest ? Nay, have the words ' noble * and ' base ' a meaning for us at all ? If so, it is from no essential and immutable quality in the deeds themselves. It is because, in the struggle for ex- istence, the altruistic virtues are an advantage to the family, the tribe, or the nation, but not always an advantage to the individual ; it is because man comes into the world richly endowed with the inheritance of self-regarding instincts and appetites required by his animal progenitors, but poor indeed in any inbred inclination to the unselfishness neces- sary to the well-being of the society in which he lives ; it is because in no other way can the original impulses be displaced by those of late growth to the degree required by public utility, that Nature, in- different to our happiness, indifferent to our morals, but sedulous of our survival, commends disinterested virtue to our practice by decking it out in all the splendour which the specifically ethical sentiments alone are capable of supplying. Could we imagine the chronological order of the evolutionary process reversed: if courage and abnegation had been the qualities first needed, earliest developed, and there- fore most deeply rooted in the ancestral organism ; while selfishness, cowardice, greediness, and lust t8 NATURALISM AND ETHICS NATURALISM AND ETHICS 19 t 1 represented impulses required only at a later stage of physical and intellectual development, doubtless we should find the * elevated * emotions which now crystallise round the first set of attributes transferred without alteration or amendment to the second ; the preacher would expend his eloquence in warning us against excessive indulgence in deeds of self- immolation, to which, like the * worker* ant, we should be driven by inherited instinct, and in ex. horting us to the performance of actions and the cultivation of habits from which we now, unfortu- nately, find it only too difficult to abstain. Kant, as we all know, compared the Moral Law to the starry heavens, and found them both sublime. It would, on the naturalistic hypothesis, be more appropriate to compare it to the protective blotches on the beetle's back, and to find them both ingenious. But how on this view is the * beauty of holiness ' to retain its lustre in the minds of those who know so much of its pedigree ? In despite of theories, man- kind — even instructed mankind — may, indeed, long preserve uninjured sentiments which they have learned in their most impressionable years from those they love best ; but if, while they are being taught the supremacy of conscience and the austere majesty of duty, they are also to be taught that these sentiments and beliefs are merely samples of the complicated contrivances, many of them mean and many of them disgusting, wrought into the physical or into the social organism by the shaping forces of selection and elimination, assuredly much of the efficacy of these moral lessons will be de- stroyed, and the contradiction between ethical senti- ment and naturalistic theory will remain intrusive and perplexing, a constant stumbling-block to those who endeavour to combine in one harmonious creed the bare explanations of Biology and the lofty claims of Ethics.* II Unfortunately for my reader, it is not possible wholly to omit from this section some references to the questionings which cluster round the time-worn debate on Determinism and Free Will ; but my re- marks will be brief, and as little tedious as may be. * It may perhaps be thought that in this section I have too confi- dently assumed that morality, or, more strictly, the moral sentiments (including among these the feeling of authority which attaches to ethical imperatives), are due to the working of natural selection. I have no desire to dogmatise on a subject on which it is the busi- ness of the biologist and anthropologist to pronounce. But it seems difficult to believe that natural selection should not have had the most important share in producing and making permanent things so obviously useful. If the reader prefers to take the op- posite view, and to regard moral sentiments as * accidental,' he may do so, without on that account being obliged to differ from my general argument. He will then, of course, class moral sentiments with the aesthetic emotions dealt with in the next chapter. Of course I make no attempt to trace the causes of the variations on which selective action has worked, nor to distinguish between the moral sentiments, an inclination to or an aptitude for which has been bred into the physical organism of man or some races of men, and those which have been wrought only into the social organ- ism of the family, the tribe, or the State. I ' it I 20 NATURALISM AND ETHICS I have nothing here to do with the truth or un- truth of either of the contending theories. It is sufficient to remind the reader that on the naturalis- tic view, at least, free will is an absurdity, and that those who hold that view are bound to believe that every decision at which mankind have arrived, and every consequent action which they have performed, was implicitly determined by the quantity and dis- tribution of the various forms of matter and energy which preceded the birth of the solar system. The fact, no doubt, remains* that every individual, while balancing between two courses, is under the inevi- table impression that he is at liberty to pursue either, tiid that it depends upon * himself and himself alone, * himself ' as distinguished from his character, his desires, his surroundings, and his antecedents, which of the offered alternatives he will elect to pursue. I do not know that any explanation has been proposed of what, on the naturalistic hypothe- sis, we must regard as a singular illusion. I vent- ure with some diffidence to suggest, as a theory pro- visionally adequate, perhaps, for scientific purposes, that the phenomenon is due to the same cause as so many other beneficent oddities in the organic world, namely, to natural selection. To an animal with no self-consciousness a sense of freedom would evidently be unnecessary, if not, indeed, absolutely unmeaning. But as soon as self-consciousness is developed, as »At least, so it seems to me. There are, however, eminent fsychologists who differ. NATURALISM AND ETHICS 21 soon as man begins to reflect, however crudely and imperfectly, upon himself and the world in which he lives, then deliberation, volition, and the sense of re- sponsibility become wheels in the ordinary machinery by which species-preserving actions are produced; and as these psychological states would be weakened or neutralised if they were accompanied by the imme- diate consciousness that they were as rigidly deter- mined by their antecedents as any other effects by any other causes, benevolent Nature steps in, and by a process of selective slaughter makes the conscious- ness in such circumstances practically impossible. The spectacle of all mankind suffering under the delusion that in their decision they are free, when, as a matter of fact, they are nothing of the kind, must certainly appear extremely ludicrous to any superior observer, were it possible to conceive, on the naturalistic hypothesis, that such observers should exist ; and the comedy could not be other- wise than greatly relieved and heightened by the performances of the small sect of philosophers who, knowing perfectly as an abstract truth that freedom is an absurdity, yet in moments of balance and deliberation invariably conceive themselves to pos- sess it, just as if they were savages or idealists. The roots of a superstition so ineradicable must lie deep in the groundwork of our inherited organ- ism, and must, if not now, at least in the first begin- ning of self-consciousness, have been essential to the welfare of the race which entertained it. Yet it ii 22 NATURALISM AND ETHICS NATURALISM AND ETHICS 23 1 1 may, perhaps, be thought that this requires us to attribute to the dawn of intelligence ideas which are notoriously of late development; and that as the primitive man knew nothing of * invariable sequences * or 'universal causation,* he could in nowise be em- barrassed in the struggle for existence by recognising that he and his proceedings were as absolutely deter- mined by their antecedents as sticks and stones. It is, of course, true that in any formal or philosophical shape such ideas would be as remote from the intel- ligence of the savage as the differential calculus. But it can, nevertheless, hardly be denied that, in some shape or other, there must be implicitly present to his consciousness the sense of freedom, since his fetichism largely consists in attributing to inanimate objects the spontaneity which he finds in himself ; and it seems equally certain that the sense, I will not say of constraint^ but of inevitableness, would be as embarrassing to a savage in the act of choice as it would to his more cultivated descendant, and would be not less productive of that moral im- poverishment which, as I proceed briefly to point out, Determinism is calculated to produce.^ * It seems to be regarded as quite simple and natural that this attribution of human spontaneity to inanimate objects should be the first stage in the interpretation of the external world, and that it should be only after the uniformity of material Nature had been con- clusively established by long and laborious experience that the same principles were applied to the inner experience of man himself. But, in truth, unless man in the very earliest stages of his development had believed himself to be free, precisely the opposite order of discovery might have been anticipated. Even now our means of external And here I am anxious to avoid any appearance of the exaggeration which, as I think, has sometimes characterised discussions upon this subject. I admit that there is nothing in the theory of determinism which need modify the substance of the moral law. That which duty prescribes, or the * Practical Rea- son * recommends, is equally prescribed and recom- mended whether our actual decisions are or are not irrevocably bound by a causal chain which reaches back in unbroken retrogression through a limitless past. It may also be admitted that no argument investigation are so imperfect that it is rather a stretch of lan- guage to say that the theory of unifomiity is in accordance with experience, much less that it is established by it. On the contrary, the more refined are our experiments, the more elaborate are our precautions, the more difficult it is to obtain results absolutely identi- cal with each other, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. So far, therefore, as mere observation goes. Nature seems to be always aiming at a uniformity which she never quite succeeds in attaining ; and though it is no doubt true that the differences are due to errors in the observations and not to errors in Nature, this manifestly cannot be proved by the observations themselves, but only by a theory established independently of the observations, and by which these may be corrected and interpreted. But a man's own motives for acting in a particular way at a particular time are simple compared with the complexities of the material world, and to himself at least might be known (one would suppose) with reasonable certainty. Here, then (were it not for the inveterate illusion, old as self- consciousness itself, that at the moment of choice no uniformity of antecedents need insure a uniformity of consequences) would have been the natural starting-point and suggestion of a theory of causa- tion which, as experience ripened and knowledge g^ew, might have gradually extended itself to the universe at large. Man would, in fact, have had nothing more to do than to apply to the chaotic com- plex of the macrocosm the principles of rigid and unchanging law by which he had discovered the microcosm to be governed. tr ir 24 NATURALISM AND ETHICS against good resolutions or virtuous endeavours can fairly be founded upon necessitarian doctrines. No doubt he who makes either good resolutions or virtuous endeavours does so (on the determinist theory) because he could not do otherwise ; but none the less may these play an important part among the antecedents by which moral actions are ultimately produced. An even stronger admission may, I think, be properly made. There is a fatalis- tic temper of mind found in some of the greatest men of action, religious and irreligious, in which the sense that all that happens is fore-ordained does in no way weaken the energy of volition, but only adds a finer temper to the courage. It nevertheless femains the fact that the persistent realisation of the doctrine that voluntary decisions are as com- pletely determined by external and (if you go far enough back) by material conditions as involuntary ones, does really conflict with the sense of personal responsibility, and that with the sense of personal responsibility is bound up the moral will. Nor is this all. It may be a small matter that determinism should render it thoroughly irrational to feel right- eous indignation at the misconduct of other people. It cannot be wholly without importance that it should render it equally irrational to feel righteous indignation at our own. Self-condemnation, repent- ance, remorse, and the whole train of cognate emo- tions, are really so useful for the promotion of virt- ue that it is a pity to find them at a stroke thus NATURALISM AND ETHICS 25 deprived of all reasonable foundation, and reduced, if they are to survive at all, to the position of ami- able but unintelligent weaknesses. It is clear, more- over, that these emotions, if they are to fall, will not fall alone. What is to become of moral admiration? The virtuous man will, indeed, continue to deserve and to receive admiration of a certain kind — the admiration, namely, which we justly accord to a well-made machine ; but this is a very different senti- ment from that at present evoked by the heroic or the saintly; and it is, therefore, much to be feared that, at least in the region of the higher feelings, the world will be no great gainer by the effective spread of sound naturalistic doctrine. No doubt this conflict between a creed which claims intellectual assent and emotions which have their root and justification in beliefs which are deliberately rejected, is greatly mitigated by the precious faculty which the human race enjoys of quietly ignoring the logical consequences of its own accepted theories. If the abstract reason by which such theories are contrived always ended in pro- ducing a practice corresponding to them, natural selection would long ago have killed off all those who possessed abstract reason. If a complete accord between practice and speculation were required of us, philosophers would long ago have been eliminated. Nevertheless, the persistent con- flict between that which is thought to be true, and that which is felt to be noble and of good !i fl I ;i iki I j6 ]tATURil£lill JIND ETHICi report, not only produces a sense of moral tmresf in the individual, but makes it impossible for us to avoid the conclusion that the creed which leads to such results is, somehow, un^uited for * such beings as we are in such a world as ours.* Ill There is thus an incongruity between the senti- meiits subservient to morality, and the naturalistic account of their origin. It remains to inquire whether any better harmony prevails between the demands of the ethical imagination and what Naturalism tells us concerning the final goal of all human endeavour. This is plainly not a question of small or sub- sidiary importance, though it is one which I shall make no attempt to treat with anything like com- pleteness. Two only of these ethical demands is it necessary, indeed, that I should here refer to : that which requires the ends prescribed by morality to be consistent ; and that which requires them to be adequate. Can we say that either one or the other is of a kind which the naturalistic theory is able to satisfy ? The first of these questions — that relating to consistency— will no doubt be dealt with in different ways by various schools of moralists ; but by what- ever path they travel, all should arrive at a negative conclusion. Tho^e wlo b^gi ^ I da, that * reason- NATURALISM AND ETHICS 2^ able self-love* has a legitimate position among ethical ends ; that as a matter of fact it is a virtue wholly incompatible with what is commonly called selfishness ; and that society suffers not from having too much of it, but from having too little, will probably take the view that, until the world under- goes a very remarkable transformation, a complete harmony between * egoism * and ' altruism,* between the pursuit of the highest happiness for one*s self and the highest happiness for other people, can never be provided by a creed which refuses to admit that the deeds done and the character formed in this life can flow over into another, and there permit a reconciliation and an adjust- ment between the conflicting principles which are not always possible here. To those, again, who hold (as I think, erroneously), both that the 'greatest happiness of the greatest number* is the right end of action, and also that, as a matter of fact, every agent invariably pursues his own, a heaven and a hell, which should make it certain that principle and interest were always in agreement, would seem almost a necessity. Not otherwise, neither by education, public opinion, nor positive law, can there be any assured harmony produced between that which man must do by the constitution of his will, and that which he ought to do according to the promptings of his conscience. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that those moralists who are of opinion that * altruistic * ends alone are \ 28 NATURALISM AND ETHICS worthy of being described as moral, and that man is not incapable of pursuing them without any self- regarding motives, require no future life to eke out their practical system. But even they would prob- ably not be unwilling to admit, with the rest of the world, that there is something jarring to the moral sense in a comparison between the distribution of happiness and the distribution of virtue, and that no better mitigation of the difficulty has yet been suggested than that which is provided by a system of * rewards and punishments,* impossible in any uni- verse constructed on strictly naturalistic principles. With this bar ^'ndication of some of the points which naturally suggest themselves in connection with the first question suggested above, I pass on to the more interesting problem raised by the second : that which is concerned with the emotional adequacy of the ends prescribed by Naturalistic Ethics. And in order to consider this to the best advantage I will assume that we are dealing with an ethical sys- tem which puts these ends at their highest ; which charges them, as it were, to the full with all that, on the naturalistic theory, they are capable of con- taining. Taking, then, as my text no narrow or egoistic scheme, I will suppose that in the per- fection and felicity of the sentient creation we may find the all-inclusive object prescribed by morality for human endeavour. Does this, then, or does it not, supply us with all that is needed to satisfy our ethical imagination ? Does it, or does it not, pro- NATURALISM AND ETHICS 29 vide us with an ideal end, not merely big enough to exhaust our energies, but great enough to satisfy our aspirations ? At first sight the question may seem absurd. The object is admittedly worthy ; it is admittedly beyond our reach. The unwearied efforts of count- less generations, the slow accumulation of inherited experience, may, to those who find themselves able to read optimism into evolution, promise some faint approximation to the millennium at some far distant epoch. How, then, can we, whose own contribution to the great result must be at the best insignificant, at the worst nothing or worse than nothing, presume to think that the prescribed object is less than adequate to our highest emotional requirements? The reason is plain: our ideals are framed, not according to the measure of our performances, but according to the measure of our thoughts ; and our thoughts about the world in which we live tend, under the influence of increasing knowledge, con- stantly to dwarf our estimate of the importance of man, if man be indeed, as Naturalism would have us believe, no more than a phenomenon among phenom- ena, a natural object among other natural objects. For what is man looked at from this point of view? Time was when his tribe and its fortunes were enough to exhaust the energies and to bound the imagination of the primitive sage.^ The gods* * The line of thought here is identical with that which I pursued in an already published essay on the Religion of Humanity, I 30 NATURALISM AND ETHICS NATURALISM AND ETHICS 31 I pcctiliar care, fi« central object of an attendant uni- verse, that for which the sun shone and the dew fell, to which the stars in their courses ministered, it drew its origin in the past from divine ancestors, and might by divine favour be destined to an indef- inite existence of success and triumph in the future. These ideas represent no early or rudimentary stage in the human thought, yet have we left them far behind. The family, the tribe, the nation, are no longer enough to absorb our interests. Man- past, present, and future— lays claim to our devo- tion. What, then, can we say of him ? Man, so far as natural science by itself is able to teach us, is no longer the final cause of the universe, the Heaven- descended heir of all the ages. His very existence is an accident, his story a brief and transitory episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets. Of the combination of causes which first converted a dead organic compound into the living progenitors of humanity, science, indeed, as yet knows nothing. It is enough that from such begin- nings famine, disease, and mutual slaughter, fit nursed of the future lords of creation, have gradually evolved, after infinite travail, a race with conscience enough to feel that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past, and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid ac- have not hesitated to borrow the phraseology of that essay wherever il iciemed convenient. quiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time open to our investigation, the energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest. Matter will know itself no longer. * Imperishable monuments ' and * immortal deeds,' death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect. It is no reply to say that the substance of the Moral Law need suffer no change through any modification of our views of man's place in the universe. This may be true, but it is irrelevant. We desire, and desire most passionately when we are most ourselves, to give our service to that which is Universal, and to that which is Abiding. Of what moment is it, then (from this point of view), to be assured of the fixity of the moral law when it and the sentient world, where alone it has any signifi- cance, are alike destined to vanish utterly away within periods trifling beside those with which the JihJIIII NATURALISM AND ETHICS l! II geologist and the astronomer lightly deal in the course of their habitual speculations ? No doubt to us ordinary men in our ordinary moments considera- tions like these may seem far off and of little mean- ing. In the hurry and bustle of every-day life death itself— the death of the individual— seems shadowy and unreal; how much more shadowy, how much less real, that remoter but not less certain death which must some day overtake the race ! Yet, after all, it is in moments of reflection that the worth of creeds may best be tested ; it is through moments of reflection that they come into living and effectual contact with our active life. It cannot, therefore, be a matter to us of ^mall moment that, as we learn to survey the material world with a wider vision, as we more clearly measure the true proportions which man and his performances bear to the ordered Whole, our practical ideal gets relatively dwarfed and beggared, till we may well feel inclined to ask whether so transitory and so unimportant an acci- dent in the general scheme of things as the fortunes of the human race can any longer satisfy aspirations and emotions nourished upon beliefs in the Ever- * lasting and the Divine, CHAPTER II NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC In the last chapter I considered the effects which Naturalism must tend to produce upon the senti- ments associated with Morality. I now proceed to consider the same question in connection with the sentiments known as aesthetic ; and as I assumed that the former class were, like other evolutionary utilities, in the main produced by the normal operation of selection, so I now assume that the latter, being (at least in any developed stage) quite useless for the preservation of the individual or species, must be re- garded, upon the naturalistic hypothesis, as mere by- products of the great machinery by which organic life is varied and sustained. It will not, I hope, be supposed that I propose to offer this distinction as a material contribution towards the definition either of ethic or of aesthetic sentiments. This is a ques- tion in which I am in no way interested ; and I am quite prepared to admit that some emotions which in ordinary language would be described as * moral,* are useless enough to be included in the class of natural accidents; and also that this class may, I i I \ (!l ! 34 NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC indeed does, include many emotions which no one following common usage would chartcterise as aesthetic. The fact remains, however, that the capacity for every form of feeling must in the main either be, or not be, the direct result of selection and elimination ; and whereas in the first section of the last chapter I considered the former class, taking moral emotion as their type, so now I propose to offer some observations on the second class, taking as their type the emotions excited by the Beautiful. Whatever value these Notes may have will not necessarily be affected by any error that I may have made in the apportionment between the two divisions, and the reader may make what redistri- bution he thinks fit, without thereby necessarily in- validating the substance of the conclusions which I offer for his acceptance. I do not, however, anticipate that there will be any serious objection raised from the scientific side to the description of developed aesthetic emotion as 'accidental,' in the sense in which that word is here employed. The obstacle I have to deal with in conducting the argument of this chapter is of a different kind. My object is to indicate the conse- quences which flow from a purely naturalistic treat- ment of the theory of the Beautiful ; and I am at once met with the difficulty that, so far as I am aware, no such treatment has ever been attempted on a large scale, and that the fragmentary contributions which have been made to the subject do not meet NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC 35 with general acceptance on the part of scientific in- vestigators themselves. To say that certain capaci- ties for highly complex feeling are not the direct result of natural selection, and were not evolved to aid the race in the struggle for existence, may be a true, but is a purely negative account of the matter, and gives but little help in dealing with the two questions to which an answer is especially required : namely, What are the causes, historical, psychologi- cal, and physiological, which enable us to derive aes- thetic gratification from some objects, and forbid us to derive it from others ? and, Is there any fixed and permanent element in Beauty, any unchanging reali- ty which we perceive in or through beautiful objects, and to which normal aesthetic feelings correspond ? Now, it is clear that on the naturalistic hypothesis the second question cannot be properly dealt with till some sort of answer has been given to the first ; and the answers given to the first seem so unsat- isfactory that they can hardly be regarded as even provisionally adequate. In order to realise the difficulties and, as I think, the shortcomings of existing theories on the sub- ject, let us take the case of Music — by far the most convenient of the Fine Arts for our purpose, part- ly because, unlike Architecture, it serves no very obvious purpose,^ and we are thus absolved from * I may be permitted to ignore Mr. Spencer's suggestion that *he function of music is to promote sympathy by improving our modulation in speech. i Ii NATURALISM AND itSTHETIC giving any opinion on the relation between beauty and utility; partly because, unlike Painting and Poetry, it has no external reference, and we are thus absolved from giving any opinion on the relation between beauty and truth. Of the inestimable blessings which these peculiarities carry with them, anyone may judge who has ever got bogged in the barren controversies concerning the Beautiful and the Useful, the Real and the Ideal, which fill so large a space in certain classes of aesthetic literature. Great indeed will he feel the advantages to be of dealing with an Art whose most characteristic utterances have so little directly to do, either with utility or truth. What, then, is the cause of our delight in Music? It is sometimes hastily said to have originated in the ancestors of man through the action of sexual selection. This is of course impossible. Sexual selection can only work on materials already in existence. Like other forms of selection, it can im- prove, but it cannot create; and the capacity for enjoying music (or noise) on the part of the female, and the capacity for making it on the part of the male, must both have existed in a rudimentary state before matrimonial preferences can have improved either one gift or the other. I do not in any case quite understand how sexual selection is supposed even to improve the capacity for enjoyment. If the taste exist, it can no doubt develop the means re- quired for its gratification ; but how can it improve NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC 37 the taste itself? The females of certain species ol spiders, I believe, like to see good dancing. Sexual selection, therefore, no doubt may gradually improve the dancing of the male. The females of many animals are, it seems, fond of particular kinds of noise. Sexual selection may therefore gradually fur- nish the male with the apparatus by which appro- priate noises may be produced. In both cases, however, a pre-existing taste is the cause of the variation, not the variation of the taste; nor, ex- cept in the case of the advanced arts, which do not flourish at a period when those who successfully practise them have any advantage in the matri- monial struggle, does taste appear to be one of the necessary qualifications of the successful artist. Of course, if violin - playing were an important aid to courtship, sexual selection would tend to develop that musical feeling and discrimination, without which good violin-playing is impossible. But a grasshopper requires no artistic sensibility before it can successfully rub its wing-cases together ; so that Nature is only concerned to provide the an- atomical machinery by which such rubbing may result in a sibilation gratifying to the existing aesthetic sensibilities of the female, but cannot in any way be concerned in developing the artistic side of those sensibilities themselves. Sexual selection, therefore, however well it may be fitted to give an explanation of a large number of animal noises and of the growth of the organs by 38 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC which they are produced, throws but little light oe the origin and development of musical feeling, either in animals or men. And the other explanations I have seen do not seem to me much better. Take, for instance, Mr. Spencer's modification of Rousseau's theory. According to Mr. Spencer, strong emotions are naturally accompanied by muscular exertion, and, among other muscular exertions, by contractions and extensions of * the muscles of the chest, abdomen, and vocal cords.' The resultant noises recall by association the emotions which gave them birth, and from this primordial coincidence sprang, as we are asked to believe, first cadenced speech, and then music. Now I do not desire to quarrel with the * primordial coincidence/ My point is, that even if it ever took place, it affords no explanation of any modem feeling for music. Grant that a particular emotion produced a * contraction of the abdomen,* that the ' contraction of the abdomen ' produced a sound or series of sounds, and that, through this association with the originating emotion, the sound ultimately came to have independent aesthetic value, how are we advanced towards any explanation of the fact that quite different sound-effects now please us, and that the nearer we get to the original noises, the more hideous they appear ? How does the * pri- mordial coincidence ' account for our ancestors lik. ing the tom-tom ? And how does the fact that our ancestors liked the tom-tom account for our liking the Ninth Symphony ? NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC The truth is that Mr. Spencer's theory, like all others which endeavour to trace back the pleasure- giving qualities of art to some simple and original association, slurs over the real difficulties of the problem. If it is the primitive association which produces the pleasure-giving quality, the further this is left behind by the developing art, the less pleasure should be produced. Of course, if the art is con- tinually fed from other associations and different experiences, if fresh emotional elements are con- stantly added to it capable of being worn and weathered into the fitting soil for an aesthetic har- vest, in that case, no doubt, we may suppose that with each new development its pleasure - giving qualities may be enriched and multiplied. But then, it is to these new elements and to these new experi- ences, not to the ' primordial coincidence,' that we should mainly look for the causal explanation of our aesthetic feeling. In the case of music, where are these new elements and experiences to be found? None can tell us; few theorists even try. Indeed, the procedure of those who account for music by searching for the primitive association which first in the history of man or of his ancestors conferred aesthetic value upon noise, is as if one should explain the Amazon in its flood by point- ing to the rivulet in the far Andes which, as the tributary most distant from its mouth, has the honour of being called its source. This may be allowed to stand as a geographical description, but it is very 40 NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC 41 I I ■f inadequate as a physical explanation. Dry up the rivulet, and the huge river would still flow on, without abatement or diminution. Only its titular origin has been touched ; and if we would know the Amazon in its beginnings, and trace back the history of the vast result through all the complex ramifica- tions of its contributory causes, each great confluent must be explored, each of the countless streams enumerated whose gathered waters sweep into the sea four thousand miles across the plain. The imperfection of this mode of procedure will become clear if we compare it with that adopted by the same school of theorists when they endeavour to explain the beauty of landscape. I do not mean to express any assent to their account of the causes of our feelings for scenery ; on the contrary, these accounts seem to me untenable. But though unten- able, they are not on the face of them inadequate. Natural objects — the sky and hills, woods and waters — are spread out before us as they were spread out before our remotest ancestors, and there is no ob- vious absurdity (if the hereditary transmission of acquired qualities be granted) in conceiving them, through the secular experience of mankind, to be- come charged with associations which reappear for us in the vague and massive form of aesthetic pleas- ure. But according to all association theories of music, that which is charged with the raw material of aesthetic pleasure is not the music w ^ wish to have explained, but some primeval howl, or at best the unmusical variations of ordinary speech, and no solution whatever is offered of the paradox that the sounds which give musical delight have no associa- tions, and that the sounds which have associations give no musical delight. It is, perhaps, partly in consequence of these or analogous difficulties, but mainly in consequence of his views on heredity, which preclude him from accepting any theory which involves the transmis- sion of acquired qualities, that Weismann gives an account of the musical sense which is practically equivalent to the denial that any explanation of the pleasure we derive from music is possible at all. For him, the faculties which enable us to appreciate and enjoy music were evolved for entirely differ- ent purposes, and it is a mere accident that, when they come into relation with certain combinations of sound, we obtain through their means aesthetic gratification. Mankind, no doubt, are continually inventing new musical devices, as they are con- tinually inventing new dishes. But as the second process implies an advance in the art of cookery, but no transmitted modification in the human pal- ate, so the former implies musical progress, but no change in the innate capacities of successive genera- tions of listeners.^ ' I have made no allusion to Helmholtz's classic investigations, for these deal chiefly with the physical character of the sounds, or combinations of sound, which give us pleasure, but do not pretend fully to answer the question wky they give pleasure. 'ww' NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC f NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC 43 n This is, perhaps, a sufficiently striking example of the unsatisfactory condition of scientific aesthetics, and may serve to show how difficult it is to find in the opinions of different authorities a common body of doctrine on which to rest the argument of this chapter. I should imagine, however, both from the speculations to which I have just briefly ad- verted, and from any others with which I am ac- quainted, that no person who is at all in sympathy with the naturalistic view of things would maintain that there anywhere exists an intrinsic and essential quality of beauty, independent of the feelings and the taste of the observer. The very nature, indeed, of the senses principally engaged indicates that on the naturalistic hypothesis they cannot, in most cases, refer to any external and permanent object of beauty. For Naturalism (as commonly held) is deeply com- mitted to the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter ; the former (exten- sion, solidity, and so forth) being supposed to exist as they are perceived, while the latter (such as sound and colour) are due to the action of the primary qualities upon the sentient organism, and apart from the sen- tient organism have no independent being. Every scene in Nature, therefore, and every work of art, whose beauty consists either directly or indirectly, either presentatively or representatively, in colour or in sound, has, and can have, no more permanent exist- ence than is possessed by that relation between the senses and our material environment which gave them birth, and in the absence of which they perish. If we could perceive the succession of events which constitute a sunset exactly as they occur, as they are (physically, not metaphysically speaking) in themselves, they would, so far as we can guess, have no aesthetic merit, or even meaning. If we could perform the same operation on a symphony, it would end in a like result. The first would be no more than a special agitation of the ether; the ij|| second would be no more than a special agitation of the air. However much they might excite the curiosity of the physicist or the mathematician, for the artist they could no longer possess either inter- est or significance. It might, however, be said that the Beautiful, although it cannot be called permanent as compared with the general framework of the external world, is, nevertheless, sufficiently permanent for all human purposes, inasmuch as it depends upon fixed rela- tions between our senses and their material sur- roundings. Without at present stopping to dispute this, let us consider whether we have any right to suppose that even this degree of * objectivity * can be claimed for the quality of beauty. In order to settle the question we can, on the naturalistic hypothesis, appeal, it would seem, to only one authority, namely, the experience of mankind. NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC Does this, then, provide us with any evidence that beauty is more than the name for a miscellaneous flux of endlessly varying causes, possessing no property in common, except that at some place, at some time, and in some person, they have shown themselves able to evoke the kind of feeling which we choose to describe as aesthetic ? Put thus there seems room for but one answer. The variations of opinion on the subject of beauty are notorious. Discordant pronouncements are made by different races, different ages, different individuals, the same individual at different times. Nor does it seem possible to devise any scheme by which an authoritative verdict can be extracted from this chaos of contradiction. An appeal, indeed, is sometimes made from the opinion of the vulgar to the decision of persons of ' trained sensibility ' ; and there is no doubt that, as a matter of fact, through the action of those who profess to belong to this class, an orthodox tradition has grown up which may seem at first sight almost to provide some faint approximation to the * objective ' standard of which we are in search. Yet it will be evident on con- sideration that it is not simply on their * trained sensibility* that experts rely in forming their opinion. The ordinary critical estimate of a work of art is the result of a highly complicated set of antecedents, and by no means consists in a simple and naked valuation of the ' aesthetic thrill ' which the aforesaid work produces in the critic, now and NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 45 here. If it were so, clearly it could not be of any importance to the art critic when and by whom any particular work of art was produced. Problems of age and questions of authorship would be left en- tirely to the historian, and the student of the beau- tiful would, as such, ask himself no question but this: How and why are my aesthetic sensibilities affected by this statue, poem, picture, as it is in itself? or (to put the same thing in a form less open to metaphysical disputation), What would my feelings towards it be if I were totally ignorant of its date, its author, and the circumstances of its production ? As we all know, these collateral considerations are never in practice ignored by the critic. He is preoccupied, and rightly preoccupied, by a multi- tude of questions beyond the mere valuation of the outstanding amount of aesthetic enjoyment which, in the year 1892, any artistic or literary work, taken simpliciter, is, as a matter of fact, capable of produc- ing. He is much concerned with its technical pecul- iarities. He is anxious to do justice to its author, to assign him his true rank among the productive geniuses of his age and country, to make due allow- ance for his * environment,* for the traditions in which he was nurtured, for the causes which make his creative genius embody itself in one form rather than in another. Never for one instant does the critic forget, or allow his reader to forget, that the real magnitude of the foreshortened object under observation must be estimated by the rules of his^ 46 NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC torical perspective. Never does he omit, in dealing with the artistic legacies of bygone times, to take account of any long - accepted opinion which may exist concerning them. He endeavours to make himself the exponent of the 'correct view.' His judgment is, consciously or unconsciously, but not, I think, wrongly, a sort of compromise between that which he would form if he drew solely from his own inner experience, and that which has been formed for him by the accumulated wisdom of his predecessors on the bench. He expounds case- made law. He is partly the creature and partly the creator of a critical tradition; and we can easily conjecture how devious his course would be, were his orbit not largely controlled by the attraction of received views, if we watch the disastrous fate which so often overtakes him when he pronounces judgment on new works, or on works of which there is no estimate embodied in any literary creed which he thinks it necessary to respect. Voltaire's opinion of Shakespeare does not make one think less of Voltaire, but it throws an interesting light on the genesis of average critical decisions and the normal growth of taste. From these considerations, which might easily be supplemented, it seems plain that the opinions of critical experts represent, not an objective standard, if such a thing there be, but an historical compro- mise. The agreement among them, so far as such a thing is to be found, is not due solely to the fact NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC that with their own eyes they all see the same things, and therefore say the same things ; it is not wholly the result of a common experience : it arises in no small measure from their sympathetic endeav- ours to see as others have seen, to feel as others have felt, to judge as others have judged. This may be, and I suppose is, the fairest way of compar- ing the merits of deceased artists. But, at the same time, it makes it impossible for us to attach much weight to the assumed consensus of the ages, or to suppose that this, so far as it exists, implies the reality of a standard independent of the varying whims and fancies of individual critics. In truth, however, the consensus of the ages, even about the greatest works of creative genius, is not only in part due to the process of critical manufacture indicated above, but its whole scope and magnitude are ab- surdly exaggerated in the phrases which pass cur- rent on the subject. This is not a question, be it observed, of aesthetic right and wrong, of good taste or bad taste ; it is a question of statistics. We are not here concerned with what the mass of mankind, even of educated mankind, ought to feel, but with what as a matter of fact they do feel, about the works of literature and art which they have inher- ited from the past. And I believe that every im- partial observer will admit that, of the aesthetic emotion actually experienced by any generation, the merest fraction is due to the * immortal ' productions of the generations which have long preceded it. 48 NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC Their immortality is largely an immortality of libraries and museums; they supply material to critics and historians, rather than enjoyment to mankind ; and if it were to be maintained that one music-hall song gives more aesthetic pleasure in a night than the most exquisite compositions of Pales- trina in a decade, I know not how the proposition could be refuted. The ancier. ' orsemen supposed that besiaes the soul of the dead, which went to the region of de- parted spirits, there survived a ghost, haunting, though not for ever, the scenes of his earthly la- bours. At first vivid and almost lifelike, it slowly waned and faded, until at length it vanished, leav- ing behind it no trace or memory of its spectral fresence amidst the throng of living men. So, it seems to me, is the immortality we glibly predicate 0f departed artists. If they survive at all, it is but a shadowy life they live, moving on through the gradations of slow decay to distant but inevitable death. They can no longer, as heretofore, speak directly to the hearts of their fellow-men, evoking their tears or laughter, and all the pleasures, be they sad or merry, of which imagination holds the secret. Driven from the market-place, they become first the companions of the student, then the victims pf the specialist. He who would still hold familiar intercourse with them must train himself to pene- trate the veil which, in ever-thickening folds, con- ceals them from the ordinary gaze ; he must catch NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 49 the tone of a vanished society, he must move in a circle of alien associations, he must think in a lan- guage not his own. Need we, then, wonder that under such conditions the outfit of a critic is as much intellectual as emotional, or that if from off the complex sentiments with which they regard the * immortal legacies of the past ' we strip all that is due to interests connected with history, with biog- raphy, with critical analyses, with scholarship, and with technique, but a small modicum will, as a rule, remain which can with justice be attributed to pure aesthetic sensibility. Ill I have, however, no intention of implying by the preceding observations that the aesthetic feelings of * the vulgar ' are less sophisticated than those of the learned. A very cursory examination of * public taste' and its revolutions may suffice to convince anyone of the contrary. And, in the first place, let us ask why every * public ' has a taste ? And why, at least in Western communities, that taste is so apt to alter ? Why, in other words, do communities or sections of communities so often feel the same thing at the same time, and so often feel different things at different times ? Why is there so much uniformity, and why is there so much change ? These questions are of great interest, although they have not, perhaps, met with all the attention 50 MATURALISM AND ESTHETIC they deserve. In these Notes it would not be fitting to attempt to deal with them at length, and I shall only offer observations on two points which seem relevant to the design of the present chapter. The question of Uniformity is best approached at the humbler end of the aesthetic scale, in connec- tion, not with art in its narrower and loftier sense, but with dress. Everybody is acquainted, either by observation or by personal experience, with the coercive force of fashion; but not everybody is aware what an instructive and interesting phenom- enon it presents. Consider the case of bonnets. During the same season all persons belonging, or aspiring to belong, to the same ' public,* if they wear bonnets at all, wear bonnets modelled on the same type. Why do they do this ? If we were asking a similar question, not about bonnets, but about steam- engines, the answer would be plain. People tend at the same date to use the same kind of engine for the same kind of purpose because it is the best avail- able. They change their practice when a better one is invented. But as so used the words * better* and ' best ' have no application to modern dress. Neither efficiency nor economy, it will at once be admitted, supplies the grounds of choice or the motives for variation. If again, we were asking the question about some great phase of art, we should probably be told that the general acceptance of it by a whole generation was due to iome important combination of historic NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC 51 causes, acting alike on artist and on public. Such causes no doubt exist and have existed ; but the case of fashion proves that uniformity is not produced by them alone, since it will hardly be pretended that there is any widely diffused cause in the social environment, except the coercive operation of fash- Ion itself, which should make the bonnets which were thought becoming in 1881 unbecoming in the year 1892. Again, we might be told that art contains essen- tial principles of self-development, which require one productive phase to succeed another by a kind of inner necessity, and determine not merely that there shall be variation, but what that variation shall be This also may be, and is, in a certain sense, true. But it can hardly be supposed that we can explain the fashions which prevail in any year by assuming, not merely that the fashions of the previous years were foredoomed to change, but also that, in the na- ture of the case, only one change was possible, that, namely, which actually took place. Such a doctrine would be equivalent to saying that if all the bonnet- wearers were for a space deprived of any knowledge of each other's proceedings (all other things remain- ing the same), they would, on the resumption of their ordinary intercourse, find that they had all inclined towards much the same modification of the type of bonnet prevalent before their separation — a con- clusion which seems to me, I confess, to be some- what improbable. 52 NATURALISM AND /ESTHETIC It may perhaps be hazarded, as a further expla- nation, that this uniformity of practice is indeed a fact, and is really produced by a complex group of causes which we denominate * fashion,* but that it is a uniformity of practice alone, not of taste or feeling, and has no real relation to any aesthetic problem whatever. This is a question the answer to which can be supplied, I apprehend, by observation alone ; and the answer which observation enables us to give seems to me quite unambiguous. If, as is possi- ble, my readers have but small experience in such matters themselves, let them examine the experi- ences of their acquaintance. They will find, if I mistake not, that by whatever means conformity to a particular pattern may have been brought about, those who conform are not, as a rule, conscious of coercion by an external and arbitrary authority. They do not act under penalty ; they yield no un- willing obedience. On the contrary, their admira- tion for a * well-dressed person,* qud well-dressed, is at least as genuine an aesthetic approval as any they are in the habit of expressing for other forms of beauty ; just as their objection to an outworn fash- ion is based on a perfectly genuine aesthetic dislike. They are repelled by the unaccustomed sight, as a reader of discrimination is repelled by turgidity or false pathos. It appears to them ugly, even gro- tesque, and they turn from it with an aversion as disinterested, as unperturbed by personal or * so- ciety ' considerations, as if they were critics contem- NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC 53 plating the production of some pretender in the region of Great Art. In truth this tendency in matters aesthetic is only a particular case of a general tendency to agreement which plays an even more important part in other departments of human activity. Its operation, benefi- cent doubtless on the whole, may be traced through all social and political life. We owe to it in part that deep-lying likeness in tastes, in opinions, and in habits, without which cohesion among the individ- ual units of a community would be impossible, and which constitutes the unmoved platform on which we fight out our political battles. It is no contemp- tible factor among the forces by which nations are created and religions disseminated and maintained. It is the very breath of life to sects and coteries. Sometimes, no doubt, its results are ludicrous. Sometimes they are unfortunate. Sometimes merely insignificant. Under which of these heads we should class our ever-changing uniformity in dress I will not take upon me to determine. It is sufficient for my present purpose to point out that the aesthetic likings which fashion originates, however trivial, are perfectly genuine ; and that to an origin similar in kind, however different in dignity and permanence, should be traced much of the characteristic quality which gives its special flavour to the higher artistic sentiments of each successive generation. I 54 NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC 55 I i IV It is, of course, true that this * tendency to agree, ment,' ^ this principle of drill, cannot itself determine the objects in respect of which the agreement is to take place. It can do much to make every member of a particular ' public * like the same bonnet, or the same epic, at the same time; but it cannot deter- mine what that bonnet or that epic is to be. A fashion, as the phrase goes, has to be * set,* and the persons who set it manifestly do not follow it. What, then, do they follow ? We note the influences that move the flock. What moves the bell-wether ? Here again much might conveniently be learnt from an examination of fashion and its changes, for these provide us with a field of research where we are disturbed by no preconceived theories or incon- venient admirations, and wh'ere we may dissect our subject with the cold impartiality which befits scientific investigation. The reader, however, may think that enough has been done already by this method; and I shall accordingly pursue a more general treatment of the subject, premising that in the brief observations which follow no complete * Of course the * tendency to agreement ' is not presented to the reader as a simple, undecomposable social force. It is, doubtless, highly complex, one of its most important elements being, I sup^ pose, the instinct of uncritical imitation, which is the very basis of all effective education. The line of thought hinted at in this paragraph is pursued much further in the Third Part of this Essay. analysis of the complexity of concrete Nature is attempted, or is, indeed, necessary for my purpose. It will be convenient, in the first place, to dis- tinguish between the mode in which the public who enjoy, and the artists who produce, respectively promote aesthetic change. That the public are often weary and expectant — weary of what is provided for them, and expectant of some good thing to come — will hardly be denied. Yet I do not think they can be usually credited with the conscious demand for a fresh artistic development. For though they often want some new thing, they do not often want a new kind of thing ; and accordingly it commonly, though t!«t invariably, happens that, when the new thing appears, it is welcomed at first by the few, and only gradually — by the force of fashion and otherwise — conquers the genuine admiration of the many. The artist, on the other hand, is moved in no small measure by a desire that his work should be his own, no pale reflection of another*s methods, but an expression of himself in his own language. He will vary for the better if he can, yet, rather than be conscious of repetition, he will vary for the worse ; for vary he must, either in substance or in form, unless he is to be in his own eyes, not a creator, but an imitator ; not an artist, but a copyist* It will be observed that I am not obliged to * No doubt it is an echo of this feeling that makes purchasers commonly prefer a bad original to the best copy of the best original — a preference which in argument it would be exceedingly difficult to justify. \ 56 NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC draw the dividing-line between originality and pla- giarism ; to distinguish between the man who is one of a school, and the man who has done no more than merely catch the trick of a master. It is enough that the artist himself draws the distinction, and will never consciously allow himself to sink from the first category into the second. We have here, then, a general cause of change, but not a cause of change in any particular direction, or of any particular amount. These I believe to be determined in part by the relation between the artists and the public for whom they produce, and in part by the condition of the art itself at the time the change occurs. As regards the first, it is commonly said that the artist is the creation of his age, and the discovery of this fact is sometimes thought to be a momentous contribution made by science to the theory of sesthetic evolution. The statement, how- ever, is unfortunately worded. The action of the age is, no doubt, important, but it would be more accurate, I imagine, to describe it as destructive than as creative ; it does not so much produce as select. It is true, of course, that the influence of •the environment' in moulding, developing, and stimulating genius within the limits of its original capacity is very great, and may seem, especially in the humbler walks of artistic production, to be all- powerful. But innate and original genius is not the creation of any age. It is a biological accident, the incalculable product of two sets of ancestral ten- NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 57 dencies ; and what the age does to these biological accidents is not to create them, but to choose from them, to encourage those which are in harmony with its spirit, to crush out and to sterilise the rest. Its action is analogous to that which a plot of ground exercises on the seeds which fall upon it. Some thrive, some languish, some die ; and the resulting vegetation is sharply characterised, not because few kinds of seed have there sown themselves, but because few kinds have been allowed to grow up. Without pushing the parallel too far, it may yet serve to illustrate the truth that, as a stained win- dow derives its character and significance from the absorption of a large portion of the rays which endeavour to pass through it, so an age is what it is, not only by reason of what it fosters, but as much, perhaps, by reason of what it destroys. We may con- ceive, then, that from the total but wholly unknown number of men of productive capacity born in any generation, those whose gifts are in harmony with the tastes of their contemporaries will produce their best; those whose gifts are wholly out of harmony will be extinguished, or, which is very nearly the same thing, will produce only for the benefit of the critics in succeeding generations ; while those who occupy an intermediate position will, indeed, produce, but their powers will, consciously or unconsciously, be warped and thwarted, and their creations fall short of what, under happier circumstances, they might have been able to achieve. 58 NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC 59 Here, then, we have a tendency to change aris- ing out of the artist's insistence on originality, and a limitation on change imposed by the character of the age in which he lives. The kind of change will be largely determined by the condition of the art which he is practising. If it be in an early phase, full as yet of undeveloped possibili- ties, then in all probability he will content him- self with improving on his predecessors, without widely deviating from the lines they have laid down. For this is the direction of least resistance : here is no public taste to be formed, here are no great experiments to be tried, here the pioneer's rough work of discovery has already been accom- plished. But if this particular fashion of art has culminated, and be in its decline ; if, that is to say, the artist feels more and more difficulty in express- ing himself through it, without saying worse what his predecessors have said already, then one of three things happens — either originality is perforce sought for in exaggeration; or a new style is invented ; or artistic creation is abandoned and the field is given up to mere copyists. Which of these events shall happen depends, no doubt, partly on the accident of genius, but it depends, I think, still more on the prevailing taste. If, as has frequently happened, that taste be dominated by the memory of past ideals ; if the little public whom the big public follow are content with nothing that does not conform to certain ancient models, a period of artistic sterility is inevitable. But if circumstances be more propitious, then art continues to move; the direction and character of its movement being due partly to the special turn of genius possessed by the artist who succeeds in producing a public taste in harmony with his powers, and partly to the reaction of the taste thus created, or in process of creation, upon the general artistic talent of the community. Even, however, in those periods when the movement of art is most striking, it is dangerous to assume that movement implies progress, if by progress be meant increase in the power to excite (esthetic emotion. It would be rash to assume this even as regards Music, where the movement has been more remarkable, more continuous, and more apparently progressive over a long period of time than in any other art whatever. In music, the artist's desire for originality of expression has been aided generation after generation by the discovery of new methods, new forms, new instruments. From the bare simplicity of the ecclesiastical chant or the village dance to the ordered complexity of the modern score, the art has passed through successive stages of development, in each of which genius has dis- covered devices of harmony, devices of instrumenta- tion, and devices of rhythm which would have been musical paradoxes to preceding generations, and became musical commonplaces to the generations that followed after. Yet, what has been the net II I \4 NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC gain? Read through the long catena of critical judgments, from Wagner back (if you please) to Plato, which every age has passed on its own per- formances, and you will find that to each of them its music has been as adequate as ours is to us. It moved them not less deeply, nor did it move them differently; and compositions which for us have lost their magic, and which we regard as at best but agreeable curiosities, contained for them the secret of all the unpictured beauties which music shows to her worshippers. Surely there is here a great paradox. The history of Literature and Art is tolerably well known to us for many hundreds of years. During that period Poetry and Sculpture and Painting have been subject to the usual mutations of fashion; there have been seasons of sterility and seasons of plenty ; schools have arisen and decayed ; new nations and languages have been pressed into the service of Art ; old nations have fallen out of line. But it is not commonly supposed that at the end of it all we are much better off than the Greeks of the age of Pericles in respect of the technical dexterity of the artist, or of the resources which he has at his com- mand. During the same period, and measured by the same external standard, the development of Music has been so great that it is not, I think, easy to exag- gerate it. Yet, through all this vast revolution, the position and importance of the art as compared with other arts seem, so far as 1 can discover, to have NATURALISM AND .ESTHETIC 6i suffered no sensible change. It was as great four hundred years before Christ as it is at the present moment. It was as great in the sixteenth, seven- teenth, and eighteenth centuries as if is in the nine- teenth. How, then, can we resist the conclusion that this amazing musical development, produced by the expenditure of so much genius, has added little to the felicity of mankind; unless, indeed, it so happens that in his particular art a steady level of aesthetic sensation can only be maintained by increasing doses of aesthetic stimulant. These somewhat desultory observations do not, it must be acknowledged, carry us very far towards that of which we are in search, namely, a theory of aesthetics in harmony with naturalism. Yet, on recapitulation, negative conclusions of some impor- tance will, I think, be seen to follow from them. It is clear, for instance, that those who, like Goethe, long to dwell among * permanent relations,* wherever else they may find them, will at least not find them in or behind the feeling of beauty. Such permanent relations do, indeed, exist, binding in their unchang- ing framework the various forms of energy and matter which make up the physical universe ; but it is not the perception of these which, either in Nature or in art, stirs within us aesthetic emotion- else should we find our surest guides to beauty in Il 62 NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC an astronomical chart or a table of chemical equiva- lents, and nothing would seem to us of less aes- thetic significance than a symphony or a love-song. That which is beautiful is not the object as we know it to be-the vibrating molecule and the un- dulating ether-but the object as we know it not to be-glorious with qualities of colour or of sound. Nor can its beauty be supposed to last any longer than the transient reaction between it and our spe- cial senses, which are assuredly not permanent or important elements in the constitution of the world in which we live. But even within these narrow limits-narrow I mean, compared with the wide sweep of our scientific vision-^there seemed to be no ground for supposing that there is in Nature any standard of beauty to which all human tastes tend to conform, any beauti- f ul objects which all normally constituted individuals are moved to admire, any aesthetic judgments which can claim to be universal. The divergence between different tastes is, indeed, not only notorious, but is what we should have expected. As our aesthetic feelings are not due to natural selection, natural se- lection will have no tendency to keep them uni- form and stable. In this respect they differ, as 1 have said, from ethical sentiments and beliefs. De^ viations from sound morality are injurious either to the individual or to the community— those who indulge in them are at a disadvantage in the struggle lor ^mtence ; hence, on the naturalistic hypothesis, NATURALISM AND ESTHETIC 63 the approximation to identity in the accepted codes of different nations. But there is, fortunately, no natural punishment annexed to bad taste ; and ac- cordingly the variation between tastes has passed into a proverb. Even in those cases where some slender thread of similarity seemed to bind together the tastes of different times or different persons, further con- sideration showed that this was largely due to causes which can by no possibility be connected with any supposed permanent element in beauty. The agreement, for example, between critics, in so far as it exists, is to no small extent an agreement in statement and in analysis, rather than an agree- ment in feeling ; they have the same opinion as to the cooking of the dinner, but they by no means all eat it with the same relish. In few cases, indeed, do their estimates of excellence correspond with the living facts of aesthetic emotion as shown either in themselves or in anybody else. Their whole pro- cedure, necessary though it may be for the compara- tive estimate of the worth of individual artists, unduly conceals the vast and arbitrary^ changes by which the taste of one generation is divided from that of another. And when we turn from critical tradi- tion to the aesthetic likes and dislikes of men and women ; when we leave the admirations which are professed for the emotions which are felt, we find 1 1 'Arbitrary,' ue, not due to any causes which point to the ex- istence of objective beauty. 64 NATURALISM AND ^ESTHETIC NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC ^S • 1 in vast multitudes of cases that these are not connected with the object wMch happens to ex- cite them by any permanent aesthetic bond at all. Their true determining cause is to be sought in fashion, in that * tendency to agreement* which plays so large and beneficent a part in social economy. Nor, in considering the causes which produce the rise and fall of schools, and all the smaller muta- tions in the character of aesthetic production, did we perceive more room for the belief that there is somewhere to be found a permanent element in the beautiful. There is no evidence that these changes constitute stages in any process of gradual approxi- mation to an unchanging standard ; they are not born of any strivings after some ideal archetype ; they do not, like the movements of science, bring us ever nearer to central and immutable truth. On the contrary, though schools are born, mature, and perish, though ancient forms decay, and new ones are continually devised, this restless movement is, so far as science can pronounce, without meaning or purpose, the casual product of the quest after novelty, determined in its course by incalculable forces, by accidents of genius, by accidents of public humour, involving change but not progress, and predestined, perhaps, to end universally, as at many times and in many places it has ended already, in a mood of barren acquiescence in the repetition of ancient models, the very Nirvana of artistic imagi- nation, without desire and without pain. And yet the persistent and almost pathetic endeavours of aesthetic theory to show that the beautiful is a necessary and unchanging element in the general scheme of things, if they prove nothing else, may at least convince us that mankind will not easily reconcile themselves to the view which the naturalistic theory of the world would seemingly compel them to accept. We feel no difficulty, perhaps, in admitting the full consequences of that theory at the lower end of the aesthetic scale, in the region, for instance, of bonnets and wall-papers. We may tolerate it even when it deals with impor- tant elements in the highest art, such as the sense of technical excellence, or sympathy with the crafts- man's skill. But when we look back on those too rare moments when feelings stirred in us by some beautiful object not only seem wholly to absorb us, but to raise us to the vision of things far above the ken of bodily sense or discursive reason, we cannot acquiesce in any attempt at explanation which con- fines itself to the bare enumeration of psychological and physiological causes and effects. We cannot willingly assent to a theory which makes a good composer only differ from a good cook in that he deals in more complicated relations, moves in a wider circle of associations, and arouses our feel- ings through a different sense. However little, therefore, we may be prepared to accept any par- ticular scheme of metaphysical aesthetics— and most of these appear to me to be very absurd— we must 5 i;'|( 66 NATURALISM AND iESTHETIC believe that somewhere and for some Being there shines an unchanging splendour of beauty, of which in Nature and in Art we see, each of us from our own standpoint, only passing gleams and stray reflec- tions, whose different aspects we cannot now co- ordinate, whose import we cannot fully comprehend, but which at least is something other than the chance play of subjective sensibility or the far-off echo of ancestral lusts. No such mystical creed can, how- ever, be squeezed out of observation and experi- ment; Science cannot give it us; nor can it be forced into any sort of consistency with the Nat- Mfalistic Xheoiry of the Universe. CHAPTER III NATURALISM AND REASON Among those who accept without substantial modi- fication the naturalistic theory of the universe are some who find a compensation for the general non- rationality of Nature in the fact that, after all, rea- son, human reason, is Nature's final product. If the world is not made by Reason, Reason is at all events made by the world ; and the unthinking in- teraction of causes and effects has at least resulted in a consciousness wherein that interaction may be reflected and understood. This is not Teleology. Indeed it is a doctrine which leaves no room for any belief in design. But in the minds of some who have but imperfectly grasped their own doctrines, it appears capable of partially meeting the senti- mental needs to which teleology gives a fuller satis- faction, inasmuch as reason thus finds an assured place in the scheme cS things, and is enabled, after the fashion of the Chinese, in some sort to ennoble its ignoble progenitors. This theory of the non-rational origin of reason, which is a necessary corollary of the naturalistic '-1 m 'I -I 68 NATURALISM AND REASON Si t- i 11 scheme, has philosophical consequences of great in- terest, to some of which I have alluded elsewhere,^ and which must occupy our attention in a later chapter of these Notes. In the meanwhile, there are other aspects of the subject which deserve a moment's consideration. From the point of view of organic evolution there is no distinction, I imagine, to be drawn be- tween the development of reason and that of any other faculty, physiological or psychical, by which the interests of the individual or the race are pro- moted. From the humblest form of nervous irri- tability at one end of the scale, to the reasoning capacity of the most advanced races at the other, everything, without exception — sensation, instinct, desire, volition — has been produced, directly or in- directly, by natural causes acting for the most part on strictly utilitarian principles. Convenience, not knowledge, therefore, has been the main end to which this process has tended. * It was not for pur- poses of research that our senses were evolved,' nor was it in order to penetrate the secrets of the uni- verse that we are endowed with reason. Under these circumstances it is n