Evolution Part 8

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

Now, what is true and self-consistent in the case of science in its own sphere is equally so in the case of morality. It is the common belief of mankind that we can, and are able to, choose what is right; and just as no amount of evidence will convince a really scientific mind that a violation of the uniformity of Nature is possible, so there is no evidence which will convince a really moral man that he could not have done right when he did do what was wrong. "We ought, therefore we can,"

does not exactly express the facts. Rather, it is the other way: we can love, be merciful, tender, compa.s.sionate, therefore we ought. Liberty itself is a law to the free, the source of moral obligation, the gift of Him "whose service is perfect freedom."

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

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

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

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

What must be, must be, because it must.

The attempt to render morality scientific ends in a result fatal to morality; and the reason seems clear. It is that science is not morality, nor are the principles of science those of morality. Science is knowledge, morality is action. Knowledge, to be knowledge, has to presuppose that Nature is uniform and that the things it deals with are real. So, too, action, to be moral, requires the belief that our moral ideals are real and that we are free to choose between good and evil.

The optimist who would have us believe that science includes all the remaining articles of the common faith, and the pessimist who argues that it excludes them, alike fall into the error of imagining that science, the knowledge of what is, is the whole of knowledge, and that the a.s.sumptions which are required in order to describe what is will enable us to do and to know what ought to be. Science, which is a true description of part of our experience, becomes a misleading half-truth when it is offered as an exhaustive account of the whole. If, knowing the rules of chess and having a record of the moves in a solitary (and unfinished) game, we refused to inquire why the pieces moved, on the ground that if we succeeded in the inquiry we should have made no addition to our knowledge of the way in which the pieces do move, we should never understand the game. But we should be nearer the truth than if we a.s.sumed that a piece caused its own movements or those of the other pieces; and that will or purpose was quite incompatible with the uniformity of their movements.

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

But it is clear that man can and does reflect, not only on the way in which the mechanism acts, but also on the use to which he puts it and the relation of that use to his ideals. These reflections may add nothing to his science, to his knowledge that rooks when moved must be moved parallel to the sides of the board, but they do add to his knowledge of the game. In fine, man gains a more important part of that knowledge by or in playing the game than he does by studying the rules.

The rules acquaint him with the resources which are at his disposal, the capacities of the various pieces and the powers of the various forces of Nature or human nature. But it would be absurd to pa.s.s this off as a complete knowledge of the game. We may, by playing the game, add only to our knowledge of how the game ought to be played, of how the mechanism of Nature and human nature ought to be used, and not add to our knowledge of the fact that if and when the mechanism is set agoing it acts in the way described by science. But the one kind of knowledge, though not science, is just as true as the other, on the same terms, viz. if you accept the a.s.sumptions presupposed by it.

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

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

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

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

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

Legitimate as it is, when we are working at the details of the problem, to distinguish the moral consciousness from the scientific, and the religious consciousness from the moral, it is necessary to bear in mind that these distinctions are merely abstractions. In thought we may and do so distinguish, but in fact and experience consciousness is a unity.

The same man who is conscious of sense-phenomena is also conscious of moral obligation: the "I" which is conscious of moral experience is the same "I" that is conscious of spiritual experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

XII.

PROGRESS

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

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

Two things are implied in this conception of evolution: the first is that evolution may or may not in any given case be progress; the next that we have a means of judging, a canon whereby to determine, whether evolution is progress. Both points are ill.u.s.trated by the argument of Professor Huxley, who uses the moral ideals as a test whereby to judge the process of evolution, and decides that evolution has been progressive in the past and will be regressive in the future. Strange to say, the reason why Professor Huxley maintains that evolution will be regressive is exactly the same reason that leads Mr. Herbert Spencer to maintain that it will be progressive. It is that the law of evolution is Necessity, that evolution is the outcome of mechanical causes. But in effect both arguments lead logically to the same conclusion, for the progress which is the outcome of Mr. Spencer's argument is not progress in the moral or any other sense of the word. In fine, progress is eventually impossible if evolution is due to mechanical causes; progress is conceivable only if we interpret the process of evolution teleologically and as expressing the operation of a final cause.

Science, as such, declines to inquire whether there is any purpose in evolution, and leaves it an open question. The moral consciousness affirms only that the process of evolution ought to make for good. The religious consciousness alone is in a position to say that its spiritual experience requires us to affirm that evolution, in accordance with the uniformity of the Divine nature, will be, in years to come as in ages past, a continuous movement towards the realisation of all that in its best moments the human heart holds most dear.

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

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

But the perfect work of art or love, when done, becomes not merely the canon by which to test progress; it becomes itself the cause of progress, both because of its more perfect revelation of the ideal and because of the emulation which it arouses in others to go and do likewise. They likewise strive after the ideal and labour for its sake: it is the final cause of their endeavours, the purpose of their attempts; and were there no such final cause there would be no progress.

The ideal is a principle both of thought and action, the test of knowledge and the source of progress. Truth is the ideal of science: approximation to truth is that for which the man of science labours and that in which he conceives that scientific progress lies. The gravitation formula not only expresses a wide-reaching truth, but has acted as an incentive to many attempts to extend it to the domain of chemistry, and serves as an ideal yet to be rivalled in other branches of science. But science and progress in science are alike impossible, if consciousness and experience be discredited, or if the ideal of science be not real, _i.e._ if the laws of science have not the permanence, the independence, and the self-ident.i.ty which are the attributes of the real, but are as transient as the minds that discovered them, exist only when thought of by man, and are not really the same at different times.

But if these ideals, whether of truth, beauty, or goodness, are thus real, then they are "our" ideals only in the sense that we are aware of them and adopt them, not in the sense that we make them; they are ours because they are present in the common consciousness of mankind, but not in the sense that they are created by that consciousness. They are revealed to man before they are manifested by man.

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

If the continuity of evolution does not warrant us in a.s.signing the same value, aesthetic or moral, to all the links, highest and lowest, in the chain, still less does it authorise or require us to deny all value to the lowest. On the contrary, we should rather see in the lowest what it has of the highest, than look in the highest for the lowest we can find.

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

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

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

If, as Professor Huxley maintains, the test of progress is approximation to the ideal, then one condition of progress is that man shall be conscious, to whatever extent is necessary for the purpose, of the ideal, shall feel that the ideal of love, tenderness, compa.s.sion, justice, truth, beauty, etc., is a thing for him to strive for, an end for him to attain. To the chosen few--the great artists, the moral or religious reformer--a sense of the ideal is dealt in a larger measure than to the rest of men. By the chosen few it is manifested to the many.

But it does not become the cause of progress, unless it leavens the ma.s.s, unless they too are inspired by it to do better and be better. In a word, when, or if, ever the ideal has been manifested in its fulness, it is not a fresh revelation which is necessary for progress, but fresh conviction in us and renewed determination. Indeed, so long as we do not act up to the light that we have, even an imperfect revelation of the ideal may serve for imperfect beings.

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

It is, however, one thing to have an ideal, and another to live up to it. "To scorn delights and live laborious days" in the search for truth or in single-minded devotion to the cause of art requires some will.

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

But it may be doubted whether this logical order of ideas is the chronological order of events. As a matter of fact, we go through a number of struggles and temptations long before we reflect, if ever we do reflect, upon them in such a way as to see what is the general principle logically implied by our repeated if intermittent resistance to temptation, just as a child acts in a way that for its logical justification would require a formal recognition of the uniformity of Nature, though the infant of two years, or less, does not formulate that principle as a condition precedent of crying for its food or its nurse.

Chronologically, then, the will to act seems to precede the will to believe in the uniformity of Nature, and in the case of most human beings is never followed by any fully conscious formulation of the principle on which we act as an abstract principle in which to believe.

That fact, however, does not in the least detract from the value which the formulation of the abstract principle has: when formulated it becomes in the hands of science as Ithuriel's spear for the detection of lingering superst.i.tions and confusions of thought--

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

At touch of the question, "Does it contradict the uniformity of Nature?"

error is seen for what it is, and is exploded sooner thus than in any other way.

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

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