Evolution Part 6

FOOTNOTES:

[25] HUXLEY, _Darwiniana_, p. 361.

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

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

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

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

IX.

CONSEQUENCES

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

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

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

Again, belief in science is based not on any ground of reason, but upon "the great act of faith" which leads the man of science to a.s.sent to it.

It is therefore again puzzling to learn that "a.s.sent without rational ground for belief is to the man of science merely an immoral pretence,"

and that "scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."[34]

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

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

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

The reluctance to admit that it is permissible to believe without evidence even in a truth so undisputed as the Uniformity of Nature, is also in part due to yet another cause. It is felt that to admit belief without regard to evidence is to invite intellectual anarchy, and to leave mankind the helpless prey of ignorance, error, and superst.i.tion.

Hence, in many candid souls, a lamentable feeling of distraction and hopelessness: to abandon their old faith, even if it has no evidence, is almost more than they can bear; to retain it, knowing that it has no evidence, is to open the floodgates of a saturnalia of unreason by which the foundations of civilisation would be swept away. Hence, too, the zeal with which other minds call for the destruction of every belief, but especially religious belief, not based on evidence, and with which they denounce faith as the one unpardonable sin.

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

It seems, then, a piece of alarmist exaggeration to say that if we admit one thing, _e.g._ the Uniformity of Nature, without evidence, we forfeit the right ever again to ask for evidence for any other statement: on the contrary, whenever evidence can be got, we must get it and abide by it.

But this only shows that no disastrous consequences will necessarily ensue, if we frankly admit what in any case is the fact, viz. that there is no evidence for the postulate on which all science is built. You will not have committed high treason against the best interests of mankind by acting, in this case, on the principle that a man may sometimes believe a thing on evidence which, he is well aware, is insufficient, or on no evidence at all. On the other hand, in another case, to act on the principle might be, if not high treason, at least mischievous.

It seems, then, first, that there are some things which a man may believe without evidence, and some which he may not; and, next, that he may not believe things the consequences of which would be disastrous or mischievous. But now what of the things not mischievous or disastrous?

On what principle are we to choose amongst them? Let us once more follow our guide, the man of science, and ask him on what principle he elected to believe that Nature was uniform, rather than that she was not. I imagine it was once more on the ground of the consequences: grant that Nature is uniform, and then all the marvellous discoveries, the revelations of the past and prophecies of the future, which science has made, become things that we can reasonably believe in. Refuse to believe, withhold your faith, and then you have no reason to believe anything whatever, thought and action alike are paralysed. It is between these consequences that we have to choose. Our choice is an act of will; and it is on our will that our beliefs and our actions depend.

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

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

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

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

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

On the theory of evolution, again, man's wants must have aided him in the struggle for existence; and no evolutionist will doubt that the desire to be rational and to do that which is right has a.s.sisted man in his upward struggle. The victory has remained with those who have been contented to feel certain about things for which they had no evidence, and to act on faith. It is those who hesitate to do right until sacrifice of self is proved to be reasonable, who lose their chance, and consequently have been and are being, though slowly, weeded out.

Those who have yielded to their inner impulse to believe, without evidence, have evidently been the better fitted to their environment, and the more in harmony with the ruling principle of the cosmos and its evolution.

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

X.

THE CHESS-BOARD

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

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

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

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

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