Chapter III. Erroneous Explanations, And Conclusion.
Any correct explanation of the universe must postulate an intuitive knowledge of the existence of the external world, of self, and of God. The desire for scientific unity, however, has occasioned attempts to reduce these three factors to one, and according as one or another of the three has been regarded as the all-inclusive principle, the result has been Materialism, Materialistic Idealism, or Idealistic Pantheism. This scientific impulse is better satisfied by a system which we may designate as Ethical Monism.
We may summarize the present chapter as follows: 1. Materialism: Universe = Atoms. Reply: Atoms can do nothing without force, and can be nothing (intelligible) without ideas. 2. Materialistic Idealism: Universe = Force + Ideas. Reply: Ideas belong to Mind, and Force can be exerted only by Will. 3. Idealistic Pantheism: Universe = Immanent and Impersonal Mind and Will. Reply: Spirit in man shows that the Infinite Spirit must be Transcendent and Personal Mind and Will. We are led from these three forms of error to a conclusion which we may denominate 4. Ethical Monism: Universe = Finite, partial, graded manifestation of the divine Life; Matter being God's self-limitation under the law of necessity, Humanity being God's self-limitation under the law of freedom, Incarnation and Atonement being God's self-limitations under the law of grace. Metaphysical Monism, or the doctrine of one Substance, Principle, or Ground of Being, is consistent with Psychological Dualism, or the doctrine that the soul is personally distinct from matter on the one hand and from God on the other.
I. Materialism.
Materialism is that method of thought which gives priority to matter, rather than to mind, in its explanations of the universe. Upon this view, material atoms constitute the ultimate and fundamental reality of which all things, rational and irrational, are but combinations and phenomena. Force is regarded as a universal and inseparable property of matter.
The element of truth in materialism is the reality of the external world. Its error is in regarding the external world as having original and independent existence, and in regarding mind as its product.
Materialism regards atoms as the bricks of which the material universe, the house we inhabit, is built. Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) estimates that, if a drop of water were magnified to the size of our earth, the atoms of which it consists would certainly appear larger than boy's marbles, and yet would be smaller than billiard balls. Of these atoms, all things, visible and invisible, are made. Mind, with all its activities, is a combination or phenomenon of atoms. “Man ist was er iszt: ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke”—“One is what he eats: without phosphorus, no thought.” Ethics is a bill of fare; and worship, like heat, is a mode of motion. Agassiz, however, wittily asked: “Are fishermen, then, more intelligent than farmers, because they eat so much fish, and therefore take in more phosphorus?”
It is evident that much is here attributed to atoms which really belongs to force. Deprive atoms of force, and all that remains is extension, which = space = zero. Moreover, “if atoms are extended, they cannot be ultimate, for extension implies divisibility, and that which is conceivably divisible cannot be a philosophical ultimate. But, if atoms are not extended, then even an infinite multiplication and combination of them could not produce an extended substance. Furthermore, an atom that is neither extended substance nor thinking substance is inconceivable. The real ultimate is force, and this force cannot be exerted by nothing, but, as we shall hereafter see, can be exerted only by a personal Spirit, for this alone possesses the characteristics of reality, namely, definiteness, unity, and activity.”
Not only force but also intelligence must be attributed to atoms, before they can explain any operation of nature. Herschel says not only that “the force of gravitation seems like that of a universal will,” but that the atoms themselves, in recognizing each other in order to combine, show a great deal of “presence of mind.” Ladd, Introd. to Philosophy, 269—“A distinguished astronomer has said that every body in the solar system is behaving as if it knew precisely how it ought to behave in consistency with its own nature, and with the behavior of every other body in the same system. … Each atom has danced countless millions of miles, with countless millions of different partners, many of which required an important modification of its mode of motion, without ever departing from the correct step or the right time.” J. P. Cooke, Credentials of Science, 104, 177, suggests that something more than atoms is needed to explain the universe. A correlating Intelligence and Will must be assumed. Atoms by themselves would be like a heap of loose nails which need to be magnetized if they are to hold together. All structures would be resolved, and all forms of matter would disappear, if the Presence which sustains them were withdrawn. The atom, like the monad of Leibnitz, is “parvus in suo genere deus”—“a little god in its nature”—only because it is the expression of the mind and will of an immanent God.
Plato speaks of men who are “dazzled by too near a look at material things.” They do not perceive that these very material things, since they can be interpreted only in terms of spirit, must themselves be essentially spiritual. Materialism is the explanation of a world of which we know something—the world of mind—by a world of which we know next to nothing—the world of matter. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 297, 298—“How about your material atoms and brain-molecules? They have no real existence save as objects of thought, and therefore the very thought, which you say your atoms produce, turns out to be the essential precondition of their own existence.” With this agree the words of Dr. Ladd: “Knowledge of matter involves repeated activities of sensation and reflection, of inductive and deductive inference, of intuitional belief in substance. These are all activities of mind. Only as the mind has a self-conscious life, is any knowledge of what matter is, or can do, to be gained. … Everything is real which is the permanent subject of changing states. That which touches, feels, sees, is more real than that which is touched, felt, seen.”
H. N. Gardner, Presb. Rev., 1885:301, 665, 666—“Mind gives to matter its chief meaning—hence matter alone can never explain the universe.” Gore, Incarnation, 31—“Mind is not the product of nature, but the necessary constituent of nature, considered as an ordered knowable system.” Fraser, Philos. of Theism: “An immoral act must originate in the immoral agent; a physical effect is not known to originate in its physical cause.” Matter, inorganic and organic, presupposes mind; but it is not true that mind presupposes matter. LeConte: “If I could remove your brain cap, what would I see? Only physical changes. But you—what do you perceive? Consciousness, thought, emotion, will. Now take external nature, the Cosmos. The observer from the outside sees only physical phenomena. But must there not be in this case also—on the other side—psychical phenomena, a Self, a Person, a Will?”
The impossibility of finding in matter, regarded as mere atoms, any of the attributes of a cause, has led to a general abandonment of this old Materialism of Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Condillac, Holbach, Feuerbach, Büchner; and Materialistic Idealism has taken its place, which instead of regarding force as a property of matter, regards matter as a manifestation of force. From this section we therefore pass to Materialistic Idealism, and inquire whether the universe can be interpreted simply as a system of force and of ideas. A quarter of a century ago, John Tyndall, in his opening address as President of the British Association at Belfast, declared that in matter was to be found the promise and potency of every form of life. But in 1898, Sir