Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics Part 3

CHAPTER II.

_HISTORY'S SCIENTIFIC PRETENSIONS_.

_Warwick._ There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which in their seeds, And weak beginnings, lie intreasured.

Such things become the hatch and brood of time; And, by the necessary form of this, King Richard might create a perfect guess, That great Northumberland, then false to him, Would, of that seed, grow to a greater falseness, Which should not find a ground to root upon, Unless on you.

_King Henry._ Are these things, then, necessities?

_King Henry IV._ Part II. Act. 3, Sc. I.

When equally competent thinkers appear to take directly opposite views of a matter of purely speculative interest, it will commonly be found that their differences arise from their using the same words in different senses, or from their being, by some other cause, prevented from thoroughly apprehending each other's meaning. An ill.u.s.tration is afforded by the controversy regarding the possibility of constructing a Science of History, which could scarcely have been so much prolonged if all who have taken part in it had begun by defining their terms, had agreed to and adhered to the same definitions, and had always kept steadily in view the points really in debate. If the word 'science' had been used only in the restricted, though rather inaccurate sense in which it is sometimes employed by some of the most distinguished of the disputants, there would have been less question as to its applicability to history. No one doubts that from an extensive historical survey may be drawn large general deductions on which reasonable expectations may be founded. No one denies that the experience of the past may teach lessons of political wisdom for the guidance of the future. If it were not so, history would be as uninstructive as fairy lore; its chief use would be to amuse the fancy; and little more practical advantage could result from investigating the causes of the failure of James II.'s designs on civil and religious liberty, than from an inquiry into the artifices by which Jack-the-Giant-killer contrived to escape the maw of the monsters against whom he had pitted himself. What is commonly understood, however, by a Science of History is something far beyond the idea entertained of it by such temperate reasoners as Mr. John Stuart Mill and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen. The science, for the reality of which M.

Comte in France and Mr. Buckle in England have been the foremost champions, would bear the same relation to political events as Optics and Astronomy do to the phenomena of light and of the solar and sidereal systems. It would deal less with the conjectural and probable than with the predicable and positive. 'In the moral as in the physical world,'

say its leading advocates, 'are invariable rule, inevitable sequence, undeviating regularity,' const.i.tuting 'one vast scheme of universal order.' 'The actions of men, and therefore of societies, are governed by fixed eternal laws,' which 'a.s.sign to every man his place in the necessary chain of being,' and 'allow him no choice as to what that place shall be.' One such law is that, 'in a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own lives:' another, that a certain number of persons must commit murder; a third, that when wages and prices are at certain points, a certain number of marriages must annually take place, 'the number being determined not by the temper and wishes of individuals, but by large general facts, over which individuals can exercise no authority.' These are general laws; but the special question as to who shall commit the crimes or the indiscretion enjoined by them, 'depends upon special laws, which, however, in their total action must obey the large social law to which they are all subordinate.' A Science of History would consist of a collection of 'social laws,' duly systematised and codified, by the application of which to given states of society the historical student might predict the future course of political events, with a confidence similar to that with which he could foretell the results of familiar chemical combinations, or the movement of the planets.[22]

This is the theory which a few years ago was so much discussed, and against which, notwithstanding the singular fascination it evidently possesses for some minds, the moral sense of a much larger number indignantly revolts, rightly apprehending that its establishment would be subversive of all morality. For, if the actions of men are governed by 'eternal and immutable laws,' men cannot be free agents; and where there is not free agency there cannot be moral responsibility. Nor are the apprehensions entertained on this score to be allayed by the answer, ingenious as it is, which has been given to them[23] by one of the ablest and most judicious apologists for the new creed. It is true that human actions can be said to be 'governed' only in the same metaphorical sense as that in which we speak of the laws of nature, which do not really govern anything, but merely describe the invariable order in which natural phenomena have been observed to occur. It is true that the discovery of invariable regularity in human affairs, supposing such a discovery to have been made, would not prove that there was any necessity for such regularity. It is conceivable that the orbs of heaven may be intelligent beings, possessing full power to change or to arrest their own course, and moving constantly in the same orbits merely because it pleases them to do so. Invariable regularity, therefore, would be perfectly consistent with free agency. All this is perfectly just, but it is also altogether beside the question. The offence given by the writers on whose behalf the apology is set up consists not so much in their a.s.serting that there are, as in their insisting that there must be, uniformity and regularity in human affairs; or, as Mr. Buckle expresses it, that social phenomena 'are the results of large and general causes which, working on the aggregate of society, _must_ produce certain consequences, without regard to the volition of the particular men of whom the society is composed.' Now, though free agency may co-exist with _invariable_ regularity, it obviously cannot co-exist with _necessary_ regularity, which, consequently, is incompatible likewise with moral responsibility. If men are compelled by the force of circ.u.mstances, or by any force, to move only in one direction, they cannot be responsible for not moving in a different direction. Nor is it more to the purpose to undertake a subtle a.n.a.lysis of the nature of causation, and to explain that it does not, properly speaking, involve compulsion, but simply means invariable antecedence. Let it be that a cannon-ball does not really knock down the wall against which it strikes, and that it would be more correct to say that the ball impinges and the wall falls; though, seeing that the wall would not have fallen unless the ball had impinged, the distinction is too nice for ordinary apprehension. As understood, at any rate, by the joint headmasters of the new school, causation does involve compulsion. 'Men's actions,' say they, 'are the product not of their volition, but of their antecedents,' and 'result from large and general causes which must produce certain consequences.' Neither, if this be so, is it of any avail to suggest that, possibly, the large and general causes in question may be of only temporary operation. 'It may be that the rules,'

in accordance with which the sun has. .h.i.therto risen every morning since the creation of the world, 'will hold good only for a time.' It may be that the springs, whatever they are, by which the universe is kept in motion, may require to be periodically wound up like the works of a clock, and that, unless this be done, 'on some particular day out of many billions,' the sun may fail to rise, just as the clock, if suffered to run down, would stop on the eighth day. The conjecture would, of course, be not less applicable to social than to natural laws. It is conceivable that the large general causes a.s.sumed to regulate human actions might lose their efficacy at the end of a certain cycle, when mankind might either have to recommence a social revolution similar to the one just completed, or might have to begin an entirely different revolution under entirely different laws. Be it so. Still, if the causes, as long as they remained in operation, possessed a compulsory character--if, during the continuance of the supposed cycle, men were bound to act in a certain way in accordance with certain laws, and irrespectively of their own volition--what would it matter that those laws were not eternal and immutable? For the time being men would no more be free agents than the hands of a clock, while the clock was wound up. Both would be constrained to move in a prescribed direction, whether they would or no. Men in such circ.u.mstances might well be likened, as by Mr. Buckle they are likened, to links in a chain, but few would be prevented from joining in Mr. Goldwin Smith's eloquent protest against the comparison, by being told that the chain perhaps was not an endless one.

It is clear, then, that the principles to which we have been adverting would, if established, be really subversive of morality, inasmuch as they are incompatible with free agency, without which there can be no responsibility. The soundness of a doctrine does not, however, depend upon its tendencies; and Mr. Buckle was fully warranted in demanding that his views should be examined with reference, not at all to their consequences, but solely and exclusively to their truth. They certainly ought to be so examined, if examined at all; but morality is so indispensable to the happiness of mankind, that if there were reason for apprehending it to be based upon error, there would be equal reason for avoiding an enquiry which might demonstrate the weakness of its foundations, by bringing forward an antagonistic truth. The only adequate excuse, therefore, for enquiring, as I now proceed to do, into the validity of Mr. Buckle's theory, is the confidence I feel that it will be found to contain not recondite, newly-discovered truth, but, at best, only skilfully and curiously-compounded fallacies, which, being dispelled, will leave the foundations of morality as firm and unimpeachable as before.

In order that he might be able to prove the possibility of a Science of History, Mr. Buckle asked no more than the following concessions: 'That, when we perform an action, we perform it in consequence of some motive or motives; that those motives are the results of some antecedents, and that therefore, if we were acquainted with the whole of the antecedents and with all the laws of their movements, we could with unerring certainty predict the whole of their immediate results.' Now, there is certainly nothing in these demands which may not be unhesitatingly conceded. As there can be no effect without a cause, so there can be no action without a motive: the motive or motives of an action are the product of all the conditions and circ.u.mstances among which the agent is placed--which conditions and circ.u.mstances, again, must have been brought about by antecedent events. The same circ.u.mstances would indeed differently affect persons of different mental const.i.tutions and characters; but the original const.i.tution of a man's mind is itself the product of antecedent events, as is also any subsequent modification of character which it may have undergone. It cannot be denied, then, that men's motives are the results of antecedents. Equally undeniable is it that a knowledge of all the antecedents and of all the laws of their movements would enable us to foresee their results, for this, supposing the laws referred to to have any real existence, is merely equivalent to the self-evident proposition, that if we perceived certain causes and knew exactly how they would act, we should know beforehand what would be their effects.

But what if there be no such laws? What if, on the showing of Mr. Buckle himself and of his a.s.sociates, there neither are nor can be?

The true nature of a scientific law has never been better explained than by the writer already quoted as Mr. Buckle's dexterous apologist. A scientific law is not an ordinance, but a record. It simply professes to describe the order in which certain phenomena have been observed uniformly to recur. It differs from a legislative enactment, in that the one would be a law although it were never obeyed, whereas the other would cease to be a law if one single exception to its statement could be pointed out. Thus the Act of Parliament enjoining the registration of births, would be equally a law although no births were ever registered; whereas the law, that in a body moving in consequence of pressure the momentum generated is in proportion to the pressure, would entirely forfeit its legal character if, on any one occasion or in any circ.u.mstances, momentum were generated in any other proportion. It is essential, then, to the existence of a scientific law that there should be uniformity of phenomena. But in human affairs uniformity is impossible. No doubt, in exactly the same circ.u.mstances exactly the same events must happen; but exactly the same aggregation of circ.u.mstances cannot possibly be repeated. Such repet.i.tion is inconsistent with the very theory, which is based on the a.s.sumption that the repet.i.tion is continually happening.

'In the moral as well as the physical world' there are, say the exponents of the new theory, not only 'invariable rule' and 'inevitable sequence,' but 'irresistible growth' and 'continual advance.' In other words, things can never be twice in precisely the same condition--never, at least, within the same cycle. It has, indeed, been suggested that there may be in human affairs the same sort of regularity as is observed by the hands of a clock; and that, as the latter, at the end of every twenty-four hours, recommence the movement which they have just concluded, so at the end of, say 'every ten thousand years,' all the same events which have been happening throughout the period may begin to happen over again in the same order as before. Such a succession, however, would involve quite as much of retrogression as of progression, and the continual advance so boastfully spoken of would be nothing else than a tendency of society to return to the condition from which it had originally emerged. But, even on this uncomfortable hypothesis, there could be no regularity of occurrences within the same cycle; no clue as to the future could be obtained from investigation of the past. On the contrary, the only certainty would then, as now, be that no combination of events which had happened once could happen again, as long as the existing order of things continued. The inference here follows necessarily from the premises. If there be continual advance--if things are constantly moving forward--they cannot remain in the same state; and if not in the same state, they cannot produce the same effects. For, if it be obvious, on the one hand, that precisely the same causes must invariably produce the same results, it is equally evident, on the other, that the same results cannot be reproduced except by the same causes. If causes calculated to bring about certain phenomena undergo either augmentation or diminution, there must be a corresponding change in the phenomena. Now, effects cannot be identical with their causes, and, in the moral world, effects once produced become in turn causes, acting either independently or in conjunction with pre-existing causes.

They become in turn the antecedents spoken of by Mr. Buckle, from which spring the motives of human conduct. But, as all such antecedents must necessarily differ from all former antecedents, they must also give rise to motives, must be followed by actions, and must bring about combinations of circ.u.mstances, differing from any previously experienced. Thus, in human affairs, there can be no recurrence either of antecedents or of consequences; and, as a scientific law is simply a record of the uniform recurrence of consequences, it follows that in human affairs there can be no scientific laws.

It will be understood that human conduct, and the circ.u.mstances or causes which influence it, are here spoken of in the aggregate. It is not pretended that particular causes or circ.u.mstances may not continue permanently in operation, though with an influence modified by the concomitance of fresh circ.u.mstances; or that they may not continue to produce consequences differing from their former consequences not more than in proportion to the modification undergone by the causes. Still less is it pretended that certain human phenomena, with which human motives have little or nothing to do, may not be repeated once and again, notwithstanding the important changes constantly going on in every human society. It is not denied that marriages may continue for years together to bear much the same annual proportion to the population, provided that during those years there be no material change in the amount of the economical obstacles which commonly interfere, more than anything else, with men's natural inclination to marry. Still less is it denied that, in a given number of births, the number of girls may always preserve nearly the same superiority over that of boys, or that the proportion between red-haired and flaxen-haired children may generally be about the same, or that the percentage of letters misdirected in a given country may vary little during long periods. But, in the first of these cases, men do not get married, as Mr. Buckle imagined, irrespectively of their volition. If, for several years together, marriages continue to bear about the same proportion to population, it is because during that period circ.u.mstances continue to present a certain amount, and no more, of opposition to men's connubial proclivities. In the other cases, it is not at all because the parents wish it that a girl is born instead of a boy, or with flaxen hair instead of carrots; neither is it from any motive or intention that letters are often misdirected, but, on the contrary, from want of thought, and from the carelessness and haste with which letter-writing, like most other human actions, is unfortunately too often performed.

But, before a.s.suming that this carelessness and haste bear an invariable proportion to numbers, we should inquire whether the proportion of misdirected letters is the same in all human societies--the same, for instance, in France and Spain as in England. If not--if varying circ.u.mstances produce different results in this respect in different countries--it may be inferred that a variation of circ.u.mstances may produce a difference of result in the same country. It will, at any rate, be clear that there is no 'necessary and invariable order' in which letters are misdirected. In one sense, indeed, it may be said that the proportion of misdirected letters depends upon 'the state of society,' if by that expression be meant, among other things, the numerical proportion which individuals of different characters and habits bear to each other. In that sense, we may accept some far more startling propositions. We may partly admit that the state of society determines the number of murders and suicides, if by this be simply meant that the number of murders and suicides committed will depend upon the number of persons whose characters have been so moulded by circ.u.mstances as to dispose them to put an end to their own or other people's lives. But Mr. Buckle, by whom the a.s.sertion was made, was careful to explain that his meaning was the very reverse of what is here supposed. Speaking of suicide, he declares it to be 'a general law that, in a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own lives;' adding that 'the question as to who shall commit the crime depends upon special laws,' and that 'the individual felon only carries into effect what is a necessary consequence of preceding circ.u.mstances.' In other words, it is not the amount of crime that depends upon the number of persons prepared to commit it; it is the number of criminals which depends upon the amount of crime that must needs be committed. 'Murder,' he elsewhere says, 'is committed with as much regularity, and bears as uniform a relation to certain known circ.u.mstances, as do the movements of the tides and the relations of the seasons.' 'The uniform reproduction of crime is more clearly marked, and more capable of being predicted, than are the physical laws connected with the disease and destruction of our bodies. The offences of men are the result not so much of the vices of individual offenders, as of the state of society into which the individuals are thrown.'

There is here so much looseness and inconsistency of language, that what is most offensive in it may easily bear more than one interpretation: and the shocking dogma that, in a given state of society, the force of circ.u.mstances constrains the commission of a certain amount of crime, may possibly admit of being explained away and softened down into the comparatively harmless proposition that, where all the circ.u.mstances, conditions or causes required for the commission of a certain amount of crime are present, that amount of crime will certainly be committed. But what is most provoking in Mr. Buckle is the heedlessness or wantonness with which he is constantly insisting that the causes in question are necessarily present and uniformly acting. What he calls the uniform reproduction of crime is likened by him to the uniform recurrence of the tides. According to him, it is a law that a certain number of suicides shall take place annually, just as it is a law that there shall be high and low water twice in every twenty-four hours. Now a law, as the word is here used, means a record of invariable repet.i.tions of phenomena. Has it been observed, then, that suicides bear, we will not say an invariable, but anything like a definite proportion to population? Mr.

Buckle thinks it has, and he adduces some facts in support of the opinion; but his facts, properly understood, disprove instead of proving what he a.s.serts; and, even if they proved it, they would yet afford no support to his main theory.

In London, for some years past--how many is not stated--about 240 persons annually have made away with themselves--sometimes a few more, sometimes a few less--the highest number having been 266 in 1846, and the lowest 213 in 1849. But, while the number of suicides has thus been nearly stationary, population has been anything but stationary in the metropolitan district, but has advanced with vast and unremitting strides at an average rate of nearly 43,000 a year. In 1841 it was 1,948,369; in 1851, 2,361,640; and in 1861, 2,803,989. The proportion of suicide to population has consequently been by no means uniform, but has varied exceedingly, and on the whole has shown a constant tendency to decrease. But even if it had continued uniform, it would simply have shown that, during a certain number of years, the general character of Londoners had, in certain particulars, undergone no material change. It would not have proved that the regularity of suicide observable among Londoners was in accordance with any general law. To prove this it would have been necessary to show that the proportion had been uniform, not only in the same but in all societies; in Paris as well as in London, among the Esquimaux of Labrador, and among the Negroes of Soudan. For, if the proportion were found to vary by reason of the differing circ.u.mstances of different societies, it would plainly be seen to be at least susceptible of variation in the same society, inasmuch as in no society do circ.u.mstances remain the same from generation to generation.

So equally with murders. Even if there were no doubt that the percentage of such crimes in England had long continued the same, still that fact would prove nothing as to the uniform reproduction of crime, if it could be shown that the percentage had ever varied anywhere else--in France or Italy, for example, or in Dahomey. For it would be mere childishness to point to the different conditions of England and Dahomey, and to plead that no more was intended to be said than that, with uniformity of circ.u.mstances there would also be uniformity of results. So much no one, in the least competent to discuss the subject, would for a moment dream of disputing. But in political affairs there cannot be uniformity of circ.u.mstances. The aggregate of circ.u.mstances from which spring human motives cannot, from the nature of things, ever be repeated; and, though a few general causes may continue permanently in operation, they cannot continue to produce the same identical results; for even though they could themselves remain stationary, it would be impossible that their operation should not be affected by the constant change going on around, or should not partake of an otherwise universal forward movement. In political affairs there cannot possibly be any recurrence of identical phenomena; nor can there, except within a very limited period, be any occurrence of very similar phenomena. But recurrence (and not merely recurrence, but complete and invariable recurrence) is the very foundation of science. Without it there can be no scientific laws, and without such laws--_i.e._, without records of past recurrences--there can be no sure predictions as to the future. It is only because certain motions of certain bodies have hitherto been observed to take place with invariable regularity, that they are expected to continue to do so, and it is upon that a.s.sumption only that we venture to predict that the sun will rise to-morrow morning, or that an eclipse will take place next year. But if no event recorded in history has ever yet been known to occur twice under precisely the same conditions, and as a consequence of the same causes, what ground can there be for predicting whether or when any such event will occur again? What possibility is there of constructing a science of history, when history supplies no materials for either foundation or superstructure?

There is nothing in this conclusion in the slightest degree opposed to the most approved doctrine of causation. No effect can be without a cause. No doubt, then, the regency of invariable causation holds good of human volitions. No doubt the volitions and consequently the actions of men are the joint results of the external circ.u.mstances amid which men are placed, and of their own characters; which again are the results of circ.u.mstances, natural and artificial. So much must needs be admitted, and something more besides. Certain causes will infallibly be succeeded by certain effects. From any particular combination of circ.u.mstances, certain determinate consequences and no others will result; those again will give rise to consequences equally determinate, and those in turn to others, and so on in an infinite series. It follows, then, from the regency of causation, that there is a determinate course already, as it were, traced out, which human events will certainly follow to the end of time; every step of which course, however remote, might now be foreseen and predicted by adequate, that is to say by infinite, intelligence.

Infinite intelligence would do this, however, not by the aid of law, but by virtue of its own intrinsic and una.s.sisted strength, wherewith it would perceive how each succeeding combination of causes would operate.

For, as cannot be too often repeated, a law is merely a record of recurrences; and in human affairs there can be no recurrences of the same aggregate either of causes or results. There being then no historic laws, there can be no Science of History, for science cannot exist without laws. The historic prescience, which is an attribute of Infinite Intelligence, not being regulated by law, or at any rate not by any law except that of causation, is not, technically speaking, a science, and even if it were, would be utterly beyond the reach of human intellect and attainable only by Infinite Wisdom.

The admission made in the last paragraph has cleared the way for the introduction of a question, from which the subject under discussion derives its princ.i.p.al interest, and which it is indispensable therefore carefully, though briefly, to examine. If there be certain determinate lines of conduct which men will infallibly pursue throughout all succeeding generations, how can men be free agents? How--for it is merely the old puzzle over again--how can foreknowledge be reconciled with freewill? The difficulty is not to be got rid of by discrediting the reality of freewill, and treating it as a thing for which there is no evidence. When Johnson silenced Boswell's chatter with the words, 'Sir, we know our will is free and there's an end on't,' he expressed a great truth in language not the less philosophically accurate on account of its colloquial curtness. The consciousness possessed by an agent about to perform an act, that he is at liberty to perform it or not, is really conclusive evidence that the act is free. For it matters not a jot whether consciousness be 'an independent faculty,' or whether--as, Mr. Buckle reminds us, 'is the opinion of some of the ablest thinkers'--it be not merely 'a state or condition of the mind.' If consciousness be a condition of the mind, so also is perception; but perception, whatever else it be, is also that which makes us acquainted with external phenomena, just as consciousness is that which makes us acquainted with internal emotions. The two informants, it is true, are not equally trustworthy. Perception often deceives us, but consciousness, never. We often fancy we perceive what we do not perceive. We may fancy we see a ghost, when we are merely mocked by an optical illusion, or we may mistake the impalpable imagery of the Fata Morgana for solid objects, or the rumbling of a cart for thunder. But consciousness is infallible. We cannot fancy we experience an emotion which we do not experience. We cannot fancy we are glad when we are not glad, or sorry when we are not sorry, or hopeful when in despair; and to pretend that we can possibly be conscious of willing when we are not willing, would be as absurd as to meet the _cogito, ergo sum_ of Descartes, with the reply that, perhaps, we do not really think, but only think we think.

Freewill, then, being an indisputable reality, how can it be reconciled with foreknowledge? There can be no more conclusive way of showing that the two things are capable of co-existing than to point to an example of their actual co-existence, and such an example is afforded by the idea of Infinite Power. Omnipotence, which by its nature implies freewill, comprehends also Omniscience. Omnipotence can do anything whatsoever which does not involve a contradiction; but even Omnipotence can do nothing which Omniscience does not foresee. It can, indeed, do whatsoever it pleases; but Omniscience foresees precisely what it will be pleased to do. With unbounded liberty to choose any course of action, it can yet choose no course which has not been foreseen; but its freedom of choice is evidently not affected by the fact that the choice which it will make is known before hand. Neither is that of man. An eager aspirant to ecclesiastical preferment is not the less at liberty to refuse a proffered mitre, because all his acquaintances have a well founded a.s.surance that he will accept. A wayfarer, with a yawning precipice before his eyes, may or may not, as he pleases, cast himself down headlong. Whether he will do so or not must always have been positively foreknown to Omniscience; but that fact in no degree affects his power of deciding for himself. If arguing on the notion that what is to be must be, he decide on moving forward to his destruction, then what has been foreseen is simply that he will so argue and be self-deceived, and will consequently perish. But the foreknowledge which simply perceives what direction will be taken by the will is a very different thing from an over-ruling destiny, which should compel the will to take some special direction. Still it is obvious that, in this instance also, foreknowledge is based entirely on causation. It is solely because human volitions take place as inevitable effects of antecedent causes that Omniscience itself can be conceived as capable of foreseeing them.

But on such conditions, how can human volitions really be free? How can man be really at liberty to will of his good pleasure, if what he is prompted to will depends on the influence which the circ.u.mstances that happen to surround him may exercise on the const.i.tution and character, which he has derived from pre-existing circ.u.mstances? How can his will be free, if that will be moulded and shaped by circ.u.mstances over which he has no control? I have, I am aware, by the mode I have adopted of reconciling free-will with foreknowledge, incurred the obligation of reconciling it with another co-existence of yet greater apparent incompatibility. By admitting that 'human volitions take place as inevitable effects of antecedent causes,' that they must be such, and cannot be other than such, as antecedent causes make them, I have admitted that the will, though independent of law, is absolutely subject to, and _must_ implicitly obey, causes. Freewill, then, must be shown to be compatible not with foreknowledge only, but with necessity also. For there is no use in attempting to ignore necessity; no use in exclaiming with Professor Huxley: 'Fact I know, and Law I know; but what is Necessity but an empty shadow of the mind's own throwing?'[24] A shadow it most certainly is not, though it is a bugbear, and the veriest that was ever suffered to torment a morbid imagination. It is an indisputable reality, a substantial, but at the same time perfectly harmless, or rather salutary reality, whose terrors need only to be boldly confronted in order to disappear and to transform themselves into highly attractive recommendations. For what, after all, does it imply? What but that effects must follow their causes, and causes precede their effects, as plainly they must, unless cause and effect be utterly unmeaning expletives. Of course we must on all occasions be affected by surrounding circ.u.mstances, in modes exactly accordant with our idiosyncracies, moral and physical. Of course, too, our volitions must exactly correspond with our contemporaneous affections. When we are empty, we must, if in health, feel hungry, and desire to eat; when full, we must, unless we are hogs, be satisfied, and prefer to ruminate. Most men are so organised that when tickled they must laugh; when wronged, must frown or sigh. The sight of distress makes them pity, and desire to see it relieved. That of virtue makes them admire, and desire to see it rewarded. That of vice makes them angry, and desire to see it punished.

Would we have all these things reversed? Would it be well for us that our being starved or surfeited should make no difference in our wish to feed, or our willingness to fast? Should we like the chances to be equal whether we should desire distress to be alleviated or aggravated? If not, what is the bondage under which we groan? What the liberty wherewith we long to be made free? Our sole grievance is that, according to actual arrangements, there must be reasons for our wishes, and that on those reasons our wishes must depend. Should we then prefer that there were no such reasons? Would we have our wishes to be independent of reason, and adrift before irrational caprice? Probably we may, on second thoughts, be content to forego an enfranchis.e.m.e.nt like this; but, if not, we may at least console ourselves for its indefinite postponement, by reflecting that Omnipotence itself is, equally with ourselves, subject to the sort of necessity under which we are groaning; equally dest.i.tute of the sort of free-will to which we aspire. It is manifest that, since there cannot be omnipotence without boundless liberty, omnipotence must possess completest freedom of will. Yet even the Will of Omnipotence is subject to the despotism of causation. Divine perfection cannot but be at all times affected in modes as exactly corresponding with its own excellence as human imperfection is in modes corresponding with its deficiencies, and the movements of the Divine Mind cannot but correspond with the affections of the Divine Mind. Those movements are not unmeaning, purposeless, wayward. They, too, have their appropriate springs, and proceed by regular process from legitimate causes, the chief of those causes being the infinite perfection of the Divine Nature. Divine Power cannot then, any more than human, be directed by its owner's will to purposes against which its owner's nature revolts. But is this inability a matter to lament over? Those must be greatly at a loss for a grievance who make one of its being impossible for them to will things which they have over-ruling reasons for not willing. Besides, does man, in order to believe himself free, require more freedom than his Maker? The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. Surely it is sufficient that the disciple be as his master, and the servant as his lord.[25]

The fact, then, that human conduct is subject to causation, and may by adequate intelligence be predicted in its minutest details until the end of time, no more proves that it is governed by invariable laws, which act irrespectively of human volitions, than the corresponding fact with reference to Divine conduct impairs the freedom of the Divine Will.

There is no one living to whom such a doctrine--degrading man, as it does, into a helpless puppet, robbing him of all moral responsibility and of every motive for either exertion or self-control--can be more utterly repugnant than to Mr. Mill, who nevertheless, although dissenting from Mr. Buckle's more extreme opinions, makes use of some expressions which may be construed into a qualified approval of his general views. Even Mr. Mill speaks of 'human volitions as depending on scientific laws,' thereby implying that the circ.u.mstances from which human motives and, consequently, human actions result are continually recurring with a certain regularity. He speaks of 'general laws affecting communities, which are indeed modified in their action by special causes affecting individuals, but which, if their effects could be observed over a field sufficiently wide and for a period sufficiently long to embrace all possible combinations of the special causes, would be found to produce constant results.'[26] This proposition seems to proceed on the a.s.sumption that general causes are either of uniform operation, or that, if they vary in their effects, their variations, and also those of special causes, occur with a certain regularity, and constantly recur within a certain definite period. But this is precisely what cannot possibly happen. Among the general causes referred to, some few are continuous--those, namely, which are inherent in human nature; but even these are continually modified in their action by changes continually taking place in those other general causes which const.i.tute the existing state of society, and which are not merely continually changing, but are continually becoming more and more different from what they were originally. So much is fully admitted by Mr. Mill himself, and indeed can be scarcely more strongly enforced than by his own words.

'There is a progressive change,' he says, 'both in the character of the human race, and in their outward circ.u.mstances, so far as moulded by themselves; in each successive age the princ.i.p.al phenomena of society are different from what they were in the age preceding, and still more different from any previous age.'[27] It is admitted, then, that there can be no recurrence of social phenomena; and it is obvious that, the longer the period of observation, the less possibility can there be of their recurring, since the greater is the certainty that new causes will come into operation. But, even though it were possible that all the external circ.u.mstances which have once influenced either communities or individuals could be repeated, the same circ.u.mstances could not a second time produce the same effects. Men of different characters are affected in very different ways by the same influences, and the characters of any particular generation of men are always very different from those of every preceding generation. Let it be supposed, for the sake of argument, that the French of the present day could be placed in precisely the same social condition in which their fathers were towards the close of the last century; still they would act very differently from their fathers. Nay, even though they should, with one single exception, have inherited the dispositions of their fathers, the difference of character in one single individual might suffice to give an entirely new turn to the course of events. If every other antecedent of the first French Revolution were again present, still there might be no second revolution, provided only that, instead of another Louis the Sixteenth, a Leopold of Belgium, or a Frederick the Great were king.[28]

With the last mentioned on the throne, there would a.s.suredly be no repet.i.tion of that vacillation of purpose which rocked the cradle and fostered the growth of popular fury till it culminated in a Reign of Terror. Since, then, there cannot be either a repet.i.tion of the same circ.u.mstances to act upon men, or a reproduction of the same sort of men to be acted upon by circ.u.mstances, human conduct can never exhibit a repet.i.tion of the same phenomena; experience of the past can never, in social or political affairs, furnish a formula for predictions as to the future. Accordingly Mr. Mill, in common with Mr. Stephen, disclaims the idea of positive, and pleads only for conditional, predictions. But the very term 'conditional predictions' involves a contradiction, since it is obviously impossible to see beforehand what perhaps may never come to pa.s.s. What is meant by the phrase is really nothing more than conjectures; and conjectures, however ingenious and reasonable, cannot be admitted within the pale of science. They cannot be accepted as fruits of a tree which has by the quality of its fruits proved its right to be ent.i.tled the Science of History.

With the view of enhancing the value of conditional predictions, it has been urged that they are of precisely the same description as those which we are in the habit of hazarding with respect to our familiar acquaintance. There are, it is said, 'general maxims regarding human conduct, by the application of which to given states of fact, predictions may be made as to what will happen;' and all that is necessary for the construction of historical science, is the employment of these maxims on a larger scale. If the premiss here be sound, the inference may be owned to be sufficiently legitimate. If there be any formula with which the actions of individuals are observed to correspond, there is every likelihood that the same formula may, by extension and amplification, be adapted to the actions of communities.

But, although there are plenty of maxims telling men what they _ought_ to do, there is not one--except that which declares that they must all die--which affords any positive information as to what they _will_ do.

'Thou shalt not steal,' 'thou shalt not kill,' 'thou shalt not commit adultery;'--all these and many more are moral laws; but of not one of them--the more's the pity--is the observance sufficiently regular, to give it the smallest pretension to be styled a scientific law. General propositions, too, there are in abundance, representing with more or less accuracy the probable results of particular lines of conduct. Such are the proverbial sayings, that 'Honesty is the best policy,' that 'A rolling stone gathers no moss,' that 'The racecourse is the road to ruin.' But adages like these were never supposed to afford any basis for prophecy. It may be that an honest man more commonly gets on in the world than a knave, though there is also much to be said on behalf of the counter-proposition, that 'The children of darkness are wiser in their generation than the children of light;' but, at any rate, there is no doubt that a man may be honest without being prosperous, and that he is often all the poorer for his probity. But, indeed, is there any one conceivable situation in life in which a positive rule can be laid down as to the course which men will follow? Can it even--to make use of an ill.u.s.tration which has been very effectively employed on the other side--can it even be said that a man will certainly marry a woman with whom he is deeply in love, who returns his affection, whom he can marry if he likes, and whom he has the means of maintaining in a suitable manner? Nine times out of ten he probably will; but in the tenth instance a Brahmin's pa.s.sion may be checked by fear of contamination with a Pariah, or a King Cophetua's pride may prevent his wedding a beggar-maid, or the t.i.tled owner of an entailed estate may decline to illegitimatise his offspring by espousing his deceased wife's sister, or betrothed lovers may be parted by some such mysterious barrier as sprang up between Talbot Bulstrode and Aurora Floyd, or an Adam Bede, in spite of the example set by George Eliot's hero, may refrain from marrying Dinah for fear of breaking his brother Seth's heart.

Equally vain would be the search for any rule invariably applicable to political affairs. Even general propositions which sound like truisms are not universally true. It cannot even be said that misgovernment always produces discontent, or that the combination of superior strength and superior strategy is always successful in war; for examples might be cited of nations remaining patient under an iron despotism, and perhaps also of campaigns lost by armies with every advantage of skill, numbers, and discipline on their side. No better specimen can be given of what are popularly spoken of as historical laws than one propounded by Mr. C.

Merivale, whose careful study of Roman annals has taught him to regard it as 'a condition of permanent dominion that conquerors should absorb the conquered gradually into their own body, by extending, as circ.u.mstances arise, a share in their own exclusive privileges to the ma.s.ses from whom they have torn their original independence.' The principle thus laid down is of great value, but it must not be mistaken for an index pointing unerringly to a goal which will certainly be obtained by following its direction. At least the offer of Austrian citizens.h.i.+p had no perceptible effect in overcoming the exclusiveness of Hungarian nationality; nor in inducing Venetia to become a willing member of a Teutonic Federation, and to lend the same a.s.sistance to the House of Hapsburg, as Gaul and Spain did to the Caesars, in suppressing insurrection on the banks of the Danube. History supplies many principles similar to the one evolved by Mr. Merivale, all more or less useful for the guidance of the statesman. So far as they are just, they indicate the results which would spring from the adoption of certain lines of policy, unless something unforeseen should happen. It is true that something unforeseen is almost sure to happen and to divert or impede the course which events would otherwise take; but still, it is most important to be able to perceive clearly the influence exerted by certain causes, how much soever that influence may be disturbed by other causes; since, if it does nothing else, it will at least prevent the disturbing causes from producing what would otherwise have been their full effect. On principles which indicate only a few out of many causes in simultaneous operation, it is evident that nothing deserving to be called predictions can be founded; but from them, nevertheless--inasmuch as they teach that some causes act for good and others for evil, as far as their action extends--practical rules of government may be deduced.

Such rules, however, which at best can only furnish a loose and s.h.i.+fting basis for doubtful conjectures, stand without the confines of positive knowledge; they occupy a middle-ground between science and nescience, and const.i.tute what, until very lately, was thought to be designated with sufficient distinctness as the 'Philosophy of History.' By that term, Mr. Stephen in one place says, is really meant all that he ever meant by the Science of History; and the observation, were it not apparently inconsistent with his general reasoning, might seem to imply that the only question between him and his opponents is whether a thing, the existence of which is not disputed, ought or ought not to receive a new appellation. But it is otherwise, at any rate, with Mr. Mill. The language used by him on this as on all other subjects, is too clear and precise to admit of its being supposed that he has used a new phrase without attaching to it a new signification, or to permit the present writer to believe, as he fain would do, that a point of nomenclature is the only point of difference between himself and one from whom it is so difficult to differ without diffidence and self-distrust.

FOOTNOTES:

[22] Mr. Buckle's first chapter, _pa.s.sim_.

[23] 'Cornhill Magazine,' for June and July, 1861.

[24] 'Lay Sermons,' p. 158.

[25] A highly esteemed literary friend, who has done me the favour of looking over these pages in ma.n.u.script, considers that what I have proved is, not that Omnipotence involves the co-existence of Freewill and Necessity, but that Omnipotence itself, although capable of possessing all things, could not possess Freewill, and that consequently Freewill cannot possibly exist--that there cannot possibly be any such thing.

Although, for reasons stated four pages back, not myself prepared to accept this view of the matter, I should cheerfully accept it if I could. The argument in the text proceeds upon the a.s.sumption that people mean something when they talk about Freewill. If, however, they have no meaning, if the phrase be a simple sound signifying nothing, of course all controversy regarding the possible co-existence of that nothing with Necessity is settled at once and for ever, while no great amount of philosophy will be requisite to induce mankind to resign themselves very placidly to the absence of that same nothing.

[26] Mill's 'Logic.' Fifth edition. Vol. ii. p. 527.

[27] Mill's 'Logic,' vol. ii. p. 504.

[28] 'S'il se fut trouve alors (vers 1750) sur le trone un prince de la taille et de l'humeur du Grand Frederic, je ne doute point qu'il n'eut accompli dans la societe et dans le gouvernement plusieurs des plus grands changements que la Revolution y a faits, non-seulement sans perdre sa couronne, mais en augmentant beaucoup son pouvoir.'--De Tocqueville, _L'Ancien Regime_, p. 274.

CHAPTER III.

_DAVID HUME AS A METAPHYSICIAN._

But the mischief lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their whole time in the pursuit of knowledge professing an entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths which they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable.--Berkeley's _Hylas and Philonous_.

In no department of science is it possible for an enquirer to advance considerably beyond all his predecessors without serving as a light by whose aid his successors may advance somewhat beyond him. This is the only apology that I feel disposed to offer for the freedom with which I am about to criticize one who, having been, by judges so competent as Adam Smith and Professor Huxley, p.r.o.nounced to be 'by far the greatest philosopher' and 'acutest thinker' of his own age, would, doubtless, be at least on a level with the greatest philosophers of the present age if he were living now. The veriest cripple that can manage to sit on horseback may contrive to crawl some few steps beyond the utmost point to which his steed has borne him, and, if those steps be uphill, may, by looking back on the course he has come, perceive where the animal has deviated from the right road. Yet he does not on that account suppose that his own locomotive power is in any respect to be compared to his horse's; neither need an annotator on Hume, when pointing to holes in his author's metaphysical coat, be supposed not to be perfectly aware that it is the strength, not of his own eyes, but of the spectacles furnished to him by his author, that enables him to perceive them.

The concentrated essence of Hume's metaphysics is to be found in 'An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding,' forming part of a volume of Essays which Hume published somewhat late in life, and which he desired might 'alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.' To a formal, though necessarily rapid, examination of the results of this 'Enquiry,' the present chapter will be almost exclusively devoted. Often as the operation has been performed already, there are two reasons why its repet.i.tion here may not be without utility: for, first, its subject is a treatise containing the germs of much subsequent and still current speculation which, in so far as it is merely a development of those germs, cannot but be infected by whatever unsoundness may be inherent in them; and, secondly, because the subject, hackneyed as it may seem, is so far from being exhausted, that there is scarcely one among the doctrines embodied in it to which, as I proceed at once to show, fresh objection, more or less grave, may not be taken by a fresh investigator.

To begin very near indeed to the beginning, let us take, first, the section of the 'Enquiry' which treats of the 'Origin of Ideas.' All the perceptions of the mind may, according to Hume, be divided into two cla.s.ses, whereof the one consists of all those 'more lively perceptions,' termed by him indifferently Impressions or Sensations, which we experience when we 'hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will:' the other, of those 'less lively perceptions of which we are conscious when we reflect on any of the sensations above-mentioned,' and which are commonly denominated thoughts or ideas.

'All our ideas or more feeble perceptions,' he continues, 'are copies of our impressions or more lively ones,' the 'entire creative power of the mind amounting to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminis.h.i.+ng the materials afforded by the senses and experience.' So confident is he of the literal accuracy of this statement, as to proceed to intimate that whenever we find in conversation or argument 'a philosophical term employed seemingly without any idea or meaning,' we have only to enquire from what impression its idea, if it have one, is derived, when, if no impression can be adduced, we may be sure that no idea is present either. The only phenomenon opposed to this rule, which he professes himself able to think of, is that of a person who, of a colour--as, for instance, blue--with which he is familiar, is able to conceive a shade somewhat different from any of the shades which he has actually seen; but this instance he disregards as too singular to affect the general maxim, to which, as he might have added, it is not really an exception, any more than would be the power of a person who had never seen a mountain higher than Snowdon or Mont Blanc to conceive one as high as Chimborazo or Mount Everest, for, equally in both cases, the ideas are copies of sensible impressions, although of complex, not simple, ones--of colour and graduation in the first case, of size and increase in the second.

Still, there is at least one genuine exception, which it is the more remarkable that Hume should have overlooked, as it may be said to have stared him in the face from the very subject-matter he was considering.

Our idea of idea itself, from what sensible impression is that derived?

We have just been told that the difference between an idea and a sensation is that the first is a copy of the second, a feeble copy of a lively original. The idea therefore is not itself a sensation; the copy is not itself an original. Neither consequently can the idea or notion which the mind proceeds to form of any of its previous ideas be derived from or be a copy of a sensation: it cannot have entered the mind 'in the only manner by which,' according to Hume, 'an idea can have access to the mind, to wit, by actual feeling and sensation.'