Evolution Part 2

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

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

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

The proviso, "at the moment of apprehension, at the moment of desire,"

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

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

It is important also to note that the real does not forfeit its reality to our apprehension when and because it takes up its abode in us: goodness does not cease to be good because we do it, nor truth cease to be truth because we know it. It does not follow that because the ideal cannot be fully realised, it cannot be realised at all. On the contrary, the conviction that it cannot be completely attained is itself the guarantee that it can be attained partially. Yet it has been a.s.sumed that if a thing is apprehended by us it cannot be real, that real knowledge begins just where our knowledge ends, that the further we push our knowledge forward the further real knowledge recedes from our view.

On this a.s.sumption is built the theory of the Unknowable, the theory that whatever is known to man is a state of man's consciousness; that states of consciousness are subjective, are merely the appearances of things, not the things themselves; that the real things, the things themselves, are unknowable; their appearances alone can be known to man; therefore the real is for ever unknowable. "The reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown."[4] Consequently, inferences about the Real are valueless and futile. By way of compensation, however, our knowledge of the unreal is, on this theory, varied and extensive: it includes, for instance, the theory of evolution and the whole of science.

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

V.

THE REAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To say "Yes" is to admit that things can exist out of consciousness as well as in, which is what subjective idealism is there to deny.

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

We apprehend a thing as being both our sensations and something more.

When the idealist says that the latter half of this apprehension is a misapprehension, he rejects an observed fact of experience, not because he does not find it in his experience, but because it seems to him impossible that it should be there. He argues that to say we can be conscious of what is not in our consciousness is to say that we can be conscious of something of which we are unconscious--a patent nonsense.

He might admit, for the sake of argument, that possibly a thing could exist both in consciousness and out, and even that we might know that it so existed. But he cannot admit that a man is conscious of what he is not conscious of.

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

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

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

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

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

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

We act, and we know that we act. Reality must be accorded to both or denied to both; it cannot be accorded to one and denied to the other.

Indeed, knowledge itself is action, a series of actions. But it is also something more, just as an action of which we are conscious is something more than our consciousness of it.

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

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

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

Nor do we trust morality on any other ground. So far as we trust the impulse to do right, or base any calculations upon it or draw any inferences from it, we do so because we apprehend it, in the act of apprehension, as both a state of our consciousness and something more.

As in the impact of a moving body we apprehend not merely our sensations, but also the presence of a real power, so in the impulse to good we apprehend not only our consciousness thereof, but the presence of a real power, with regard to which we know not only that it is, but to some extent what it is--a power which would have us do good and be good.

If material things are but ideas of ours, so the Right and Good may be.

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

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

of a thing is only a metaphor.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

[7] _Ibid._, -- 26.

VI.

EVOLUTION AS THE REDISTRIBUTION OF MATTER AND MOTION