Part 3 of 3
§ 21. The preceding sections have shown that the logical grounds on which Pantheism was based are fallacious and unnecessary, and as it had already been shown to be equally valueless for religious, moral and scientific purposes, every possible basis and motive for asserting its validity has really been disposed of. Nevertheless there remains a strong metaphysical prejudice in favour of Pantheism which cannot be uprooted without an inquiry into the most fundamental question of metaphysics, viz., that whether existence is ultimately one or many.
If the ultimate oneness of all existence is maintained, the doctrine is Monism; if existence is asserted to be ultimately of two kinds, e.g., Matter and Spirit, it is Dualism; if plurality is asserted to be ultimate, it is Pluralism.
Of these, Monism has maintained a sort of preponderance, because it appeared simpler and more satisfactory to "the philosophic craving for unity." On the other hand, it is incurably pantheistic, and disposed to dissolve away all the distinctions between things.
Dualism, again, seemed able to preserve the all-important distinction between good and evil, for which Monism had left no room; but it harmonized neither with the apparent plurality of the world nor with the philosophic demand for unity.
Pluralism, lastly, had the advantage of departing least from the phenomena of the real world, but it seemed difficult to carry it out consistently.
Of these theories of ultimate existence, the intermediate theory of Dualism, which falls between two stools, may be rejected at once. It was virtually disposed of with the rejection of the ultimate difference of Matter and Spirit (ch. ix. § 16).
The real battle has to be fought out between the champions of the One and of the Many, between Monism and Pluralism. And contrary to the opinions of most previous philosophers, we are inclined to hold that the Many is a far more important principle than the One, and that Pluralism, consistently interpreted and properly explained, is the only possible answer to the ultimate question of ontology.
Monism, on the other hand, really has nothing to recommend it. It might indeed be possible to applaud the statement that philosophy aims at the unification of the universe, if it were not promptly made a pretext for asserting the reality of this unity, in the face of facts which deprive this so-called unity of all practical value, and reduce it from an assertion of a real oneness to that of a merely abstract unity. It would be more to the point if Monism could show a little more unanimity in the world, even at the expense of a little unity. And if more attention had been paid to the aiming at unity, the results would perhaps have been somewhat more satisfactory, and Monism might have recognized that a unity aimed at, and worth aiming at, is for that very reason not yet attained. If they had taken the trouble to interpret their theory strictly, Monists might have realized that though Monism would be an excellent theory when the world-process was ended, it is for this very reason quite inapplicable and extremely mischievous while it is still going on.
Then again, the supposed simplicity of Monism is a great delusion. It does not simplify the understanding of the world to deny plurality, in order to assert its abstract unity. Or if the One of Monism be taken as the unit of Number, it certainly requires an astonishing amount of simplicity to see any difficulty in passing from one to as many as are wanted. For how is it more difficult to assume many ultimate existences than one? One would have thought that when one was given, it was easy to count a thousand. If, therefore, the One of Monism is the unit of Number, the unity of ultimate existence is no simpler than its plurality, while if it is an abstract One, Monism is unable to explain plurality at all.
And unfortunately, Monism has no choice of evils; it is forced to interpret the One as an abstraction which excludes all plurality. No Monism can explain the existence of plurality: how the One became the Many, or how, having become, the Many can be distinguished from the One. For the One, being the sum total of existence, could generate the Many only out of itself, and however generated, their generation could not serve any purpose, nor could the Many really be independent of or distinct from the One. In whatever way we put it, the existence of the Many must be illusory: they are of the substance of the One, and can neither disown their parentage nor dissever themselves from the One which was and is and will be all things. The Many can have no real existence from the standpoint of the One, and no raison d'etre. For supposing even that the One found the single blessedness of eternity tiresome in the long run, and created a diversion by mysteriously "pouring itself out" into the world, there was yet no reason why plurality of types should not have sufficed, and this in no wise explains what is after all the real crux of plurality, viz., its indefinite multiplication of imperfect individuals under the same types, the lavish prodigality and meaningless repetition of the Many. Why were so many millions of fleas essential to the happiness or comfort of the Absolute? Would not a single specimen, nicely got up, have sufficed to show what absolute wisdom combined with absolute power could effect in the region of the infinitely little and infinitely disagreeable? Et mutato nomine de te, oh monistic philosopher, fabula narratur! [The change of name from you, oh monistic philosopher story!]
It appears here again that monistic Pantheism has to deny the reality of our world of Becoming and plurality. All systems which profess to explain the world from monistic principles have to make this transition from the One to the Many, and not one of them can make it intelligible.
They labour in vain to describe it by inexplicable and unintelligible processes, which severely tax their resources in the way of obscure metaphor. But in reality the gulf between the One and the Many can be bridged by no fair or valid means: nor has the self-sacrifice of monistic philosophers, who have discarded all restraints of prudence and consistency in order to precipitate themselves into it with a reckless devotion worthy of Mettius Curtius, availed to close the gulf.
§ 22. We may reasonably conclude, then, that Monism is a failure, that by assuming unity at the outset it incapacitates itself for the task of explaining phenomenal plurality, and a fortiori for the still higher task of really uniting the Many in a significant union.
But is Pluralism any better off? Pluralism, by assuming the ultimateness of plurality, does indeed avoid the difficulty which is so fatal to Monism. It starts with an immense advantage over Monism: it has no need to explain away the appearance of plurality. But unless its position is very carefully stated, with more precision and consistency than pluralist philosophers have hitherto bestowed upon it, it has considerable difficulty in explaining the possibility, not of the abstract unity it rejects, but of real union.
This difficulty may be elucidated by the example of the greatest of pluralist systems, that of Leibnitz, and the criticism upon it. Leibnitz asserted that the world was ultimately composed of spiritual beings, ''windowless monads," each of whom ideally included, but really excluded all others. And this statement in its natural sense might have been taken as a forcible expression of the fact that the mutually impenetrable consciousnesses of spiritual beings yet communicate through the common world of thought. But an unappreciative criticism could easily discover obscurities and flaws in Leibnitz's expressions. It was observed that if the monads were absolutely exclusive, they could not communicate at all, and hence no world could exist, nor plurality in it, and that Pluralism thus supplied its own refutation. If, on the other hand, the Leibnitzian conception of God as the Central Monad, including all the rest, was to be taken seriously, there was an end to the substantiality of the others, and here again Pluralism was abandoned.
Such criticism, though it disregards the spirit, if not the letter, of Pluralism, may serve at least to bring out the subtle way in which Pluralism includes and involves the unity of things.
It is absurd, in the first place, to suppose that Pluralism asserts the existence of the Many in a sense and under conditions which would destroy the very fact it is most anxious to explain. The exclusiveness and self-existence of the Many must not be so interpreted as to make nonsense of the whole position and to stultify the whole solution of the problem of plurality. For it is clear that if the Many were absolutely exclusive and incapable of having any connection or communion with one another, there would be no Many, and no Plurality could exist. Each monad would form a world by itself, would be a One as impervious to criticism and as unconscious of all outside influence as the One of Monism itself. Pluralism would be no better than Monism. When, therefore, Pluralism asserts that the Many as a matter of fact exist, it must be taken to have thereby implied that they are also capable of existing as many, i.e., the possibility of the interaction of the Many is implied in their very existence, and does not require any special proof.
And Leibnitz might well take for granted that as the Many do interact, they must also be capable of interacting, and that it was unnecessary to demonstrate that what actually existed was also capable of existing. He himself was far too well versed in Aristotelian philosophy to suspect that his critics would require him to justify the possibility of the potentiality, where the actuality was obviously given. To such criticism, from the Leibnitzian as from the Aristotelian standpoint, there could be but one answer; viz., that the potentiality was nothing without the actuality (ch. vii. § 17), and consequently that the One, as the possibility of their interaction, was nothing without the Many, and that the real reason of things must be sought in the Many.
Yet as this possibility of the interaction of the Many is the One, Pluralism is in a way based upon Monism: the Many presuppose the One. But not in any sense which can affect the substantiality of the Many. The One which is presupposed by Pluralism is the most meaningless of all things; it is a mere possibility of the interaction or co-existence of the Many; it is a mere potentiality which has no actual existence except as an ideal factor in a real plurality. It is the actual interaction of the Many that gives a meaning to the One; Monism becomes possible only when it has been included and absorbed in Pluralism. For if each of the many individual existences had never actually exerted its power of interacting with the others, no world would have existed. The terms "one" and "many" would have had no meaning, and there would have been no occasion for Monism to be invented in order to explain how the many could be one.
Monism is thus essentially parasitic in its nature; it is a theory which becomes possible only on the basis of the real fact of plurality. And it is equally dependent upon Pluralism for its further development. It is a theory parasitic also in this, that it construes the One on the analogy of the Many and after a fashion derived from its knowledge of the phenomenal world with its many substances; in other words, it hypostasizes it. But by this hypostasization it refutes itself; by treating as a real and transcendent substance this co-existence and possibility of the interaction of the Many, this immanent and impersonal ultimate nature of existence, it reduces the real world of existences, which it set out to explain, to absolute unreality. And all this in order to be able to assert the reality of a unity which, on its own showing, lies beyond all human thought and feeling! It would be a sufficient justification for Pluralism that it protects us against such absurdities.
§ 23. But Pluralism can do more than this: it not only vindicates the actual plurality of things, and explains how the unity implied in plurality may be treated without dissolving all reality in an unmeaning One, but it can assert unity in a higher sense, which no Monism can reach.
To assert the unity of the universe at present is to assert what is either trivial or false. If by unity is meant the abstract unity of the category of oneness, if unity means merely that in thinking "the universe" we must from the nature of our thought imply its oneness, or, again, if it means the possibility of the interaction of the Many, the statement is the most trivial and unimportant that can possibly be made. If by unity is meant something incompatible with plurality, it is false. If, again, a real unity is meant, it is false; for a real and complete union of the elements of the world does not exist. The interactions of things are not harmonious, they are not at one but at war.
But Pluralism can hold out to us a hope that such a real union may yet be achieved. The Many, who at present interact discordantly, may come not only to interact, but also to act together; and their perfect and harmonious interaction would realize the ideal of a true union, of a real unitedness, as far superior to the imperfect union of our present cosmos as the latter is to the abstract unity of the underlying One.
Thus, in a way, the One is Alpha and Omega: as the basis of the Many, it is the lowest and least of things; as their perfection and final harmony, it is the highest and last of things; but it is Pluralism alone that can distinguish between these two senses of unity, which Monism inextricably confounds.
Thus satisfaction is given to the legitimate claims alike of the One and of the Many, in a higher synthesis which transcends the extremes both of Pantheism and of individualism. Unity (in the sense of union) is admitted to be a higher ideal than plurality, but for that very reason it cannot be treated as real in an imperfect world. For the explanation of our existing world the first sense of the One is irrelevant, as being included in the mere fact of the world's existence, whereas the second is inapplicable, as being not yet attained. In the interpretation, therefore, of our world Pluralism is supreme; it is the only possible and relevant answer to the ultimate question of ontology. It is only by asserting existences to be ultimately many that we can satisfy the demands either of the Real or of the ideal.
And it is a mere prejudice to suppose that there is any intrinsic difficulty in the ultimate existence of many individuals; for the conception of ultimate existence is no more difficult in the case of many than of one. All thought must admit the ultimateness of some existence, admit a limit to the question of the origin or cause of existence; for otherwise it would have to confess to the absurdity that the ultimate cause of everything is nothing or unknowable (§ 1). But as we saw in chapter ii. (§ 5), our thinking faculty, when rightly interrogated, does not require such an infinite regress of reasons, but readily acquiesces in the self-evident, and the question as to the cause of existence as such is idle and invalid. Our inquiry must come to a stop somewhere, and this limit, the ultimate ground of existence, must be either the irrational or the self-evident and self-sufficient. Now of these alternatives, it has been made abundantly evident that monistic Pantheism adopts the former, and reduces the world to the irrational, to "the delirium of an insane God," whereas Pluralism, by uniting the Many in an eternal harmony, necessarily arrives at the latter, at a state in which the ever-present reality of perfection permits no question into what lies beyond and before the actual.
But though this reconciliation of the One and the Many affords us once again a view of the ideal we have already twice caught sight of, once in discussing the relation of the individual to society (ch. viii. § 19), and once in analysing that of the part to the whole (§ 19), we must leave its elucidation to a later period (ch. xii.), and content ourselves for the present with settling the comparative merits of Monism and Pluralism. Irrespective of the hopes Pluralism holds out for the future, it is enough that it is superior in the present. Whatever the difficulties that beset the question of ultimate existence, they are the same for both, the same whether existence be ultimately one or many. And we are clearly bound in our inquiry to draw the line at a point where the conception of ultimate existence will throw light upon the phenomenal existence of our world. The world exists, and its existences are many; Pluralism admits the facts, and thereby affords a valid theory of the world; Monism cannot admit the facts, does not explain the world, and therefore is not a valid theory of ultimate existence or ontology.
§ 24. An elaborate investigation of the doctrine of the infinity of the Deity has been found necessary, but it was fully warranted by the magnitude of the issues involved, and of the results attained. For it ought to have resulted in a firm conviction that neither religion nor science nor philosophy has anything to gain rather than everything to lose by the assertion of this doctrine. It ought to be at length clear to all that the Pantheism which is arrived at by deifying the abstract category of the unity of the universe arises out of paralogisms and confusions, is unable to explain the interaction of existences which do not require it, and, were it conceivable, would plunge all speculative and practical philosophy into irredeemable chaos.
The assertion, therefore, of the finiteness of God is primarily the assertion of the knowableness of the world, of the commensurateness of the Deity with our intelligence. By becoming finite God becomes once more a real principle in the understanding of the world, a real motive in the conduct of life, a real factor in the existence of things, a factor none the less real for being unseen and inferred. For it is much that the Deity can once more be made the subject of inferences, that intelligible reasons can once more be given for the existence of God, and that the Kantian criticism of the "physico-theological proof" (ch. II. § 19) falls to the ground. And it is a sufficient concession to the instinctive humility of religious feeling to admit that the Deity is unknown to us as yet, that He is a God who "wears a fold of heaven and earth across His face"; we must not permit it to ascribe to Him the suicidal attribute of unknowableness.
And the discussion of the relations of Monism and Pluralism should have largely brought out also the nature of God's finiteness. The finiteness of God depends on the very attributes that make Him really God, on His personality, on His being, like all real beings, an individual existence. God is one among the Many, their supreme ruler and aim, and not the One underlying the Many. The latter theory makes the Many inexplicable and the One indifferent. God therefore must not be identified with Nature. For if by Nature we mean the All of things, then Nature is the possibility of the interaction of the ultimate existences, and of these God is one. And the existence of these ultimate existences explains also how God can be finite; He is limited by the co-existence of other individuals. And from His relations to these other existences, which we have called spirits (ch. ix. § 31), arise all the features of our world which were so insoluble a puzzle to Monism — its Becoming, its process, and its Evil — and in them also must be sought the explanation of the arrangement of the world down to its minutest detail. For as the existence of these spirits is an ultimate fact, God has no power to annihilate them; the most that can be done is to bring them into harmony with the Divine Will. And this is just what the world-process is designed to effect, this is just the reason why the world is in process. For if the divine power were infinite, it would be unnecessary to produce the harmony with the divine will by a long and arduous process. As it is not infinite, occasion arises for the display of intelligence and economy, for that adaptation of means to ends which has always been justly esteemed the surest ground of a belief in God. And this same limitation is also the general explanation of Evil; the world is evil because it is imperfectly harmonized with the divine will. And yet as God is not all things, He can be an ''eternal (or unceasing) tendency making for righteousness," and need not be, as on all other theories He must be, the responsible Author of Evil. For when once the identification of God with the whole of Nature is given up, the evil in the world may be due to that element in it which is not God, to the resistance of existences God cannot destroy and has not yet reconciled. And there are many points about the specific character of evil which bear out this interpretation.
§ 25. For let us compare the deductions from such a theory of the nature of Evil with the facts we find. We start with a number of spiritual beings struggling against and opposing the Divine Power, which may overpower, but cannot destroy them. What is to be done? To leave them in the full possession of their powers and intelligence would be to give them the power to do evil, to reduce the spiritual order to a chaotic play of wild antagonisms. To destroy them is impossible. But it is possible to do the next best thing, viz., to reduce their consciousness to the verge of non-existence. In such a state of torpor it would be possible to induce them to give an all but unconscious assent to the laws of the cosmos, and gradually to accustom them to the order which the divine wisdom had seen to be the best, and the best means to attain a perfectly harmonious co-operation of all existences. And as they grow more harmonized, a higher development of consciousness, and a higher phase of life becomes permissible. Nevertheless every advance in consciousness renders possible a correspondingly intense relapse into antagonism or Evil, nor will such relapses cease to be possible until a complete harmony of all existences has been attained.
Now do not the facts accurately correspond to this scheme? The history of the world begins with beings to whom we can hardly attribute any consciousness or spiritual character. This obliteration of consciousness is dependent on Matter, which has been recognized in the last chapter (ix. §§ 27, 28) as a mechanism for depressing consciousness. Out of these lowest and hardly conscious beings there are gradually evolved, in periods which to us appear almost "infinite," higher beings with a higher consciousness and higher powers. And on the whole they display progressively higher phases of association and social harmony. The abuse of their higher powers for evil purposes, on the other hand, though possible, is confined to very narrow limits. For the physical and social laws of life form an effectual system of checks upon the selfish lawlessness of individuals, and prevent evil-doing beyond a certain point. However evil the intentions of a refractory spirit may be, his actions must involve some degree of submission to the cosmic order. And not only is he forced to recognize this order, but in proportion as he fails to mould himself in accordance with it, he tends to lose his power of disturbing it, by reverting to a lower and less dangerous type.
To say that an evil-doer makes a beast of himself is true in more senses than one; for by his indulgence in his evil passions he tends to lose the higher consciousness which raises men above the beasts. His vices destroy his moral and intellectual perceptions even more surely than they do his body. For the lowest depth alike of ignorance and of wickedness is unconscious: the utterly degraded criminal has lost the moral and intellectual insight, the conscience and the intelligence, which the beast has not yet acquired. And even physically, could his life be prolonged, he would revert into an animal state. For as evil is anti-social, the extreme evildoer would be outcast from society, and so become unable to secure the manifold appliances of civilization. He would have to depend for his livelihood on his own unaided resources, on his strength of hand and fleetness of foot. His expression would be coarsened and animalized by his life. The higher mental activities would find no scope for their exercise, and the part of the brain by which they were expressed would be atrophied by disuse. For lack of the means of making clothing, he would have to grow a thicker covering of hair; for the lack of tools, he would have to develop his nails into claws.
Nor is it inconsistent with this view that more intelligent and cold-blooded wickedness maintains itself in society, and often too in honour. For it is just by its obedience to the laws, divine and human, by the moderation which, from self-regarding prudence, avoids offences which a superior power would surely punish, that such wickedness is possible. The criminality is confined to intentions, and not permitted to issue in overt acts. A bad man in a modern society is probably worse than a bad man 10,000 years ago, because his intelligence is higher. But his instincts will not be as brutal, nor his actions as outrageous as those of his predecessor. He will be more consciously selfish in the choice of his ends, but he will not be as ruthless and barbarous in the choice of his means. He will, e.g., beware of a free indulgence in manslaughter, for the conditions of civilized life render murder too dangerous a pastime. Physically, also, his conduct will be more prudent, for he will find that the more complex dissipations of modern life are more exhausting to his physical powers than the simpler debaucheries of the savage.
Thus Evil is impotent and infra-human, in our world at least, rather than superhuman. And such a character of Evil serves to further the world-process indirectly also. It makes the attitude of resistance to the Divine Purpose ridiculous, contemptible, and disgusting, as well as futile. The adversary of God is not a defiant fiend, armed with archangelic powers and irreconcilable in the intense consciousness of his undying hate, not the Demon we had been wont to fear, but the beast we had been wont to despise, a sordid swine, whose narrow outlook over the nature of things is limited by the barriers of his garbage, and the boundaries of his sty. And so the nature of our world confirms what we ought to have conjectured beforehand, viz., that the divine wisdom does not permit the world to be made a playground for devils, but imposes upon Evil disabilities which minimize its power to thwart the purposes of God and to affect the course of history.
§ 26. And so we find that Evil is that which resists the Evolution of the world, and fights a losing battle against the tendencies of things. It consists in this, that the end is not yet, that the purpose of the world-process is still being achieved, that the discordant elements are still being harmonized, and that hence what is cannot yet realize what ought to be.
But though on this account Evil is an inseparable element in our world, an ineradicable element in all existing things, yet from the beginning [x]7 and constrained chaotic wills into the scheme of cosmic order. But this cosmic order of perfect harmony is as yet unattained, and so the world contains a negative element of the unknowable, impersonal ("Matter"), indeterminate (''Becoming"), impermanent ("Time"), indefinite ("ignorance"), and imperfect (pain) — in short, of Evil; it is a world of Becoming and of Time, and not a true cosmos. But yet it is ever progressing towards perfection; Evil and imperfection is that which is ever vanishing away. It is impermanent itself and the cause of impermanence in the imperfect, the lawless and a-cosmic factor, which must be continually transcended and ultimately eliminated in the process towards perfect Being. And of that process all phenomenal things are transitory phases, that bear within them the curse of change and the seed of death, and we ourselves also must pass away. We are imperfect phases in the interaction between God and the Egos, the reflexes of relations that are not satisfactory or harmonious, and hence endure but for season. Hard then as is our lot, and bitter as are the pains the flow of Time and the impermanence of life inflict, it is yet not ill that the all-receiving gate of Death should open up to us a prospect of promotion into a more abiding state of being.
§ 27. Thus the complete account of man's relation to God is that our actual selves, and the world in which we live, are correlated results of an interaction between the Deity and ultimate spiritual beings or Egos, of whom we form the conscious part (ch. ix. §§ 22, 24). The imperfection and transitoriness of this world of ours is conditioned by the unsatisfactory and unstable nature of the relations between the Deity and the Ego, and to this also must be ascribed the all-pervading element of Evil.
But as the Deity is one factor in this interaction, i.e., in all things, there is within and throughout the world also an element of good, that makes for a more perfect harmony between God and the Egos, ourselves and the world. Thus God is immanent in all things, a constant, all-inspiring, ever-active Force. And yet God is not dissolved in the All, which was the heavy price paid by Pantheism for the immanence of its "God," but has also a real personality, a truer and transcendent existence for Himself. In this way we solve the old controversy of the transcendence or immanence of the Deity, by showing how God is in different ways both immanent and transcendent, and oppose to the Pantheistic Monism, which could not explain the world, a pluralistic Theism, which can.
§ 28. And if this doctrine seem at first somewhat to detract from the effective supremacy of God, and to shock the ears accustomed to an unthinking worship of the "infinite," and if the ascription of Evil to the limitation of God seem even to reduce His power to a shadow, let us reflect, and realize that omnipotence becomes impotence in the absence of resistance, that resistance also is the measure of power. Hence, though it may seem a task unworthy of the divine power to overcome the resistance of fools and beasts, it does not follow that the apparent is a true measure of the real resistance. For to impress on fools and beasts even a dim sense of the rationality of the scheme of things, is a task more difficult by far than to prevail over the dissent of superhuman intelligences. And besides, how do we know that this very contemptibleness in appearance of the obstacles to the world's progress (cp. § 25 s.f.) is not in itself an effective method of the divine guidance of the process, that it does not form part of the humorous element in things, of that subtle "irony of fate" and that gentle cynicism of nature's ways, which we so often fancy we can trace in the course of the world? We have hardly yet got the data for estimating the strength of the spiritual resistances to the divine purpose. It is only when we see how slowly the vast and incalculable power which is displayed in the order of the physical universe grinds small the obstacles to its purpose, how many millions of years were required to evolve man, how many thousands of years to civilize him, and how slow even now the stubborn obstinacy of unreason makes the ever-accelerating progress of the world — it is only when we observe and ponder on all this, that we may form some faint image of the strength of the spiritual resistances to the world-process, and obtain an idea of the grandeur of the Divine Purpose immensely more vivid and impressive than the vague hyperboles of an uncritical adulation of the infinite. The conception of the Divine Power as finite exalts the Deity, actually and morally, as far above an unintelligible infinite as modern astronomy has exalted our sense of the grandeur of the universe, as compared with the ancient fancies that the stars were set in the firmament to adorn our skies, or that the sun was "about the size of Peloponnese," and was put out every night in the "baths of Ocean."
And the moral stimulus and emotional relief also of such a conception of the world-process ought to be immense. It represents us no longer as the helpless playthings of an infinite and infamous Deity, the victims of a senseless tyranny of an Omnipotence we can neither resist nor assist, purposely condemned to some idle task-work or equally unmeaning idleness in a purposeless world, that could achieve nothing the infinite might not have achieved without our sufferings and without our sorrows. We are now ourselves the subjects of the world's redemption; we can ourselves assist in our own salvation; we can ourselves co-operate with God in hastening the achievement of the world-process, co-operate in the sweet assurance that no effort will be rejected as too petty or too vain, that no struggle will lack divine support. It is beyond the scope of an essay like this to draw out in detail the practical consequences of theoretic principles, and to proceed to the exhortations of practical religion, but it is evident that it would be difficult indeed to imagine a creed more apt than this to fortify the best elements in the human soul, or to appeal more strongly to all the higher instincts of our nature.
§ 29. But perhaps it may be asked, if God is not identical with Nature, and if the interacting Many are the ultimate nature of things, why need we go beyond the phenomenal Many at all, and why complicate our scheme of things by a reference to a transcendent God and ultimate realities? Granted that the sum of things cannot fitly be called God, why do we require a God besides? Why should our Pluralism be theistic? Should we not do just as well by regarding the world as it appears as the world of ultimate reality, composed of interacting material beings, which can admit of no God that is not like it phenomenal?
The raising of this question is in reality merely one form of asking why we need to go behind the phenomenal. And the ultimate answer to it is that all science and all knowledge, every intelligible view of life, must go behind the phenomenal. Even the most materialistic and unspeculative science must do it to some extent, must form theories of the unseen and imperceptible, in order to account for appearances (cp. ch. iii. § 3). And so the philosophic ground for the existence of a God is of a precisely similar character to the scientific ground for assuming the existence of atoms or undiscovered planets. It is an inference to account for the actions of the apparent: we infer the existence of the unseen reality God, just as the astronomer inferred the existence of the unknown planet Neptune from the motions of the known planet Uranus. We infer it because there is no other reasonable way of accounting for the motions of the world.
That this is the case will easily appear, if we consider what are the characteristics of the world which directly necessitate the inference to the existence of a God.
It is agreed, in the first place, that if the phenomenal world is ultimate, the individual existences in it are alone real, and that it is a superstition to hypostasize their interaction as ''Nature" or "the All." Nature is not a reality superior to the individuals and capable of controlling their destinies, but simply the sum total of their interactions, and all the operations of nature must be explained by the capacities of the known individuals. Hence all the intelligence, reason, or purpose we discover in the world must be conscious intelligence, in some or other of its real existences. Even, therefore, if we could think such things as unconscious purpose or impersonal reason, even if all canons of valid thinking did not forbid us thus gratuitously to multiply entities, which no experience can suggest, there would be no room for them in our world. Whatever intelligence, therefore, is found to be active in the world must be due to the action of some real being.
But we do find in the world manifold traces of an intelligent purpose which is not that of any known intelligence. Intelligent observation of the course of events strongly suggests that there is ''a Providence that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." And even strict science is forced to recognize this in the Evolution of the world. Here we have all things tending persistently and constantly in a single and definite direction. This tendency of things goes on while as yet no one had discovered it, it goes on although no one consciously aims at it, nay, in spite of the constant opposition of a large portion of the conscious intelligence of the world. But the idea that this constant tendency is due to any of the known intelligences of the world refutes itself as soon as it is stated; to suppose that atoms and amoebas could, at the time when they were the highest individuals in the world, direct its process towards the development of individuals in association (ch. viii.) is absurd. We have, therefore, in the world-process the working of an intelligence which not only guides the actions of the unconscious material existences, but overrules those of the conscious intelligences. The only possible inference from the fact of the constant and definite tendency of the world-process is that it is purposed by the intelligence of a real being, of a God, who, though not seen, is yet known by His action on the phenomenal world. And when it becomes possible to formulate the tendency of the world's Evolution in terms which appeal to our own intelligence, this inference as to the existence of God becomes as certain as any of our inferences can be.
And a similar conclusion follows from the elimination of evil and the contemplation of the moral aspects of the world-process. If we admit — and unless we are pessimists we must admit — that Good is gradually prevailing over Evil, that the world-process tends towards harmony, we must admit also that this improvement is neither inherent in the constitution of things nor yet due to the efforts of the known existences. It is not inherent in the constitution of things, for the present condition of the world sufficiently shows that in itself that constitution is perfectly compatible with the existence of disorder, conflict, and Evil, that the existence of the world is just as possible with a discordant as with a harmonious interaction of its parts. The constitution of things is equally consistent with a good and with a bad world, and hence cannot be regarded as the cause of the world's improvements. Nor can we ascribe it to the efforts of the known existences, in face of their ignorance of the good, and their frequent and lamentable failures to discover the conduct which really benefits them. The progress, therefore, of the world directly points to God as its author.
Thus a personal and finite, but non-phenomenal, God is the only possible cause that can account for the existence and character of the world-process, and the belief in God's existence is intimately bound up with the belief in the reality of the world-process.
Hence the method also of our proof of God's existence stands in the sharpest contrast with that of Pantheism. It is not based on a supposed necessity of hypostasizing the abstract formula of a logical unity of the universe, a unity indifferent to every content and intrinsically empty. It does not yield a God who is equally implied in every sort of world, without reference to its nature and its character, a God indifferent to the course of things, and without influence upon it, a God unknowable and unprovable. On the contrary, it proves His existence in the only way in which it has been evident, since Kant, that it could be proved (ch. ii. § 19), viz., not a priori, from the consideration of a world, as such, or of an abstract totality of reality, but a posteriori from the particular nature of this particular world of ours. And being an inference from real data it will permit the proof of something beyond mere existence (cp. ch. ii. § 3). The character and nature of God and of His purpose may be obscured in the gloom of our ignorance and degradation, but they are not intrinsically unknowable. And the divine education of the human race lies just in this, that in studying the nature and history of our world, we are spelling out the elements of God's revelation to men.
§ 30. It will be necessary to touch upon one more objection to the principles laid down in the preceding sections, not because it is very important in itself, but because it contains a certain amount of truth. The question may be asked, how does this view assure us that God is one and not many? In answer it would certainly have to be admitted that the unity of the divine person was not a matter of philosophic principle. If there are other reasons for holding that God is three, our theory offers no obstacle. For we cannot infer from the unity of the world's plan and working anything more than unanimity or harmonious co-operation in its cause. But if the world-process displays, as it surely does, perfect unity alike in its conception and its execution, there can certainly be no philosophic reason either for assuming a plurality of guiding intelligences. Still less would our experience of combined action in our world warrant such a hasty belief in its efficiency as would justify us in substituting a heavenly democracy for the monarchical rule of a single God. And so it will doubtless appear preferable to most minds to retain the unity of the Godhead, to which their feelings have grown accustomed, in a case where the assumption of plurality could not possibly serve any practical purpose. What is alone important is that the conception of the Deity sketched in this chapter should not be thought to afford any support to polytheism, with its discordant interferences and jealous animosities of conflicting deities; beyond that it is needless to dogmatize prematurely upon a subject which possesses neither theoretic nor practical importance.
§ 31. We have completed the second great stage of our journey by the investigation of man's relations to his cause, and of the whence of life. We have also traced the nature and origin of his present environment, and discovered that we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual universe; but the final question of the "whither?" of life yet remains to be solved in accordance with the results already attained, before we can formulate a complete answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx.
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Notes:
1 Personality being avowedly an ideal (ch. viii. § 19), the attribution of personality asserts merely that God is the perfection of the process whereby personal beings have arisen out of the lowest individualities of atoms. There is no objection, however, to the use of terms like supra-personal or ultra-personal, if we mean by them something including and transcending, rather than excluding, personality. For doubtless the personality of God transcends that of man as far as that of the highest man transcends that of the atom.
2 Or perhaps we should rather say "distinctness," for it is as a ratio essendi, and not as a ratio cognoscendi, that the distinction is important. It is important that God should be distinct from the world, but not that He should know Himself as such.
3 In his Essays on Religion (3rd ed.), p. 36 ff., p. 176 ff.
4 It is sufficient to show this in one case, for exemplo ab uno disce omnes, and we shall choose for that purpose one who is as certainly the frankest and clearest as he is the ablest of modern metaphysicians. E. von Hartmann is strongly and sincerely convinced that the world is a process, and that, too, a process of redemption. A redemption of what? Of the Absolute! For the Absolute is now no longer absolute, but a mere ci-devant Absolute, and requires to be redeemed from the deplorable consequences of a youthful faux pas. It created the world, or entered upon the world-process, in a fit of temporary insanity. Or, as von Hartmann puts it more politely, when the absolute Unconscious is quiescent, its Reason is non-existent, and its Will is potential. Only, unfortunately, the Will is not in this condition guided by Reason, and so the Unconscious commits an irrational act of willing, and becomes actual. But by the nature of things (superior to the Absolute-Unconscious?), to will is to be miserable, and the Unconscious is supremely miserable. So it stirs up its Reason, and the Reason devises the world-process as a sort of homoeopathic cure of the misery of the Absolute, the end of which is to bring the Unconscious back into the quiescence from which it so rashly and irrationally departed. It is interesting to note in this, (1) the frank admission that the ultimate cause of the world's existence is the irrational, in this case an irrational act of Will; (2) that even when this has been assumed, it must be supposed also that for practical purposes of explaining the world, the infinite has ceased to be infinite. Not even when we have been told that the ultimate reason of things is something for which no reason can be given, can anything be made of the world except on the supposition that somehow this irrational Absolute has ceased to be infinite.
5 Cp. ch. vii. § 24. It may, perhaps, be objected to this illustration that to assume a content A is to Assume the finiteness of that content. And this is true, but the assumption is really first made when the world is supposed to have a meaning, i.e., a content expressible in terms of the All. For (owing to the finiteness of our minds?) all the conceptions of our thought imply finitude, and an infinite meaning is a meaning which means both this and that, i.e., is indeterminate, and so means nothing at all. If, therefore, we are to reason about the infinite at all, we can only do so in terms constantly implying finiteness, a fact which is significant enough to those who deny the reality of the infinite, though it may well drive its champions to despair.
6 The hectocotylus. It matters not that this independence of the parts endures only for a limited period, for the wholes also which dispense with their parts are equally impermanent.
7 "And the plan of Zeus was working out its fulfilment." — Iliad