Essays in Rationalism — A Closer Reading

Newman had an intermittent mind. He would write with great force and clearness, and in another letter, which was confused in parts, he would frankly say that his mind was leaving him, as was its wont as I understood him, and after a few months less or more, it would return to him, when he would write again. In this manly frankness and strong self-consciousness he resembled his two eminent brothers Francis and John. I trusted to his friend Mr. Purnell, who was the medium in communicating with me, to send me further letters when Mr. Charles was able or disposed to write them. I expected to hear from him again. Much occupied with debates and otherwise at the time, I neglected writing further to him myself. Afterwards thinking his disablement might have grown upon him with years, disinclined me from asking him to resume his letters. Mr. Wheeler seems ignorant of Charles Newman's mental peculiarity, and does not recognise what may be generous delicacy on the part of his brothers in not referring to it. To do so would have subjected them to the imputation, very frequent formerly, of imputing difference of opinion to want of saneness. Even so liberal a preacher as W. J. Fox accounted, in 1841, for my disbelief in Theism by conjecturing the existence of some mental deficiency. No doubt many persons with whom Charles Newman had dealings in offices he held, would regard his Atheism--which it was contrary to his nature to conceal--as a personal disqualification. He avowed his opinions as naturally and as boldly as Professor Newman and the Cardinal avowed theirs. It is not conceivable that Cardinal Newman ever intermitted his aid--or Professor Newman either--on this account. They were both incapable of personal intolerance. They might deplore that their brother Charles's opinions were so alien, so contrary to theirs; but this they would never make matter of reproach. It was doubtless a great trial to them that their brother, having fine powers like their own, making no persistent effort for his own maintenance, although he knew it must render independence impossible. Possibly the solitariness which he chose caused his tendency to unusualness of conduct, not to say eccentricity, to grow upon him--which they could not control or mitigate without an interference, which might subject them to resentment and reproach. Charles no doubt inherited his father's sympathy for social improvement, which led to his sharing Robert Owen's sociologic views. But he did not acquire his Atheism from Robert Owen--as Professor Newman has said--for Robert Owen was not an Atheist--always believing in some Great Power.

Professor Newman has told me that in any further edition of his little book upon his brother, the Cardinal, he will, on my authority, correct his description of Robert Owen as an Atheist. Charles owed his Atheism to himself, as his brothers owed their opinions to their own conclusions and reflections. Charles not taking a degree was less likely to be owing to means not being furnished to him than to his intermittent indecision of mind and his strong discernment, which produced satisfaction with the world, with others, and with himself.

George Jacob Holyoake.

TWO PRINCIPLES OF ORDER.

In my proof of the invalidity of that argument--it being indeed what is called "the Argument from Design"--I point out that our experience simultaneously informs us of two modes of producing order, otherwise called arrangement, relation of parts to each other and to the whole direction of means towards some recognisable end; or, to describe the phenomenon in the most summary, as well as the most practical, way--two modes of producing effects identical with those that proceed from design. I explain that, of these two principles of order, the one is Design itself, a modus operandi of intelligence (such as we find it here below, of which the human mind affords the best examples), while the other is something to which no name has been assigned, and which, consequently, we can only shortly describe by saying that it is not design. It becomes necessary, therefore, to give a farther periphrastic account of it as follows:--

This nameless principle of order, considered as a vague popular surmise, is as familiar to our experience as design. We all see, for instance, that water has a tendency to form a perfectly level and horizontal surface, that heavy bodies fall to the earth perpendicularly, that the plummet performs a straight line in just the same direction, that dew-drops and soap-bubbles assume a globular shape, that crystallisation observes similar artist-like rules, and so on. We are accustomed to say, "It is the nature of things," and we ground our daily actions on a confidence in this regularity of proceeding, without generally attempting to explain it. Science comes to our help, and shows us that this orderly action of things around us may be traced to, and is the necessary result of, the operation of certain powers or properties inherent in these natural things. Grant that the property called gravitation belongs to moving bodies, and an innumerable quantity of orderly phenomena may be predicated as springing of their own accord by inevitable consequence from this datum; which same phenomena, moreover, intelligence is able coincidently to reproduce in its own special mental way.

Here, then, is a principle of order, less popularly appreciated, but not less certainly evidenced and known, than design. It is, no doubt, a principle infinitely inferior in dignity, for it is blind and unintelligent, while design sees and understands, but this is not the question. The question, superseded by an answer derived from human experience, is to this effect--that nature and natural things are, with no less propriety, assignable as the doers of a certain non-designing kind of order, than man is assignable as the doer of the designing kind; that we just as truly perceive that nature, in the exercise of certain powers that we find to be inherent in her, produces order in a dew-drop or in a crystal, as that man, in the exercise of certain powers that we find to be inherent in him, produces order in a poem or in a cathedral, and that, consequently, the argument from design, based as it is on the assertion that our experience assures us of only one principle of order, is invalid.

Mr. F. W. Newman's argument is one of this erroneous class. He points to "Animal Instincts" as an effect, which, owing to our knowing of no other agency by which it could have been produced, can alone be accounted for by reference to a designer, and consequently as manifesting the objective existence of that designer, who could only be the theistic God. The question that Mr. F. Newman's adduced instance required him to consider was, whether the non-designing principle of order, which, we are aware, is in many cases able to produce the same effects as the other, could have been thus operative here, and he had got to prove that it could not have been so, that there was something in the nature of the case that forced us exclusively to have recourse to the intelligent principle of order, and resisted any solution from the other principle. The result of a proof so conducted would have been, that Mr. F. Newman was entitled to conclude that (granting our earthly experience was a sufficient test of the matter) Design must have been the sole worker of the debated phenomenon. He would then have established his theistic argument. Instead of doing this, he simplifies his proceeding by being incognisant of a notorious fact, and ignoring the non-designing principle altogether.

1. The fact is, that there is not one way only of producing the phenomena of design (I am here using an ordinary elliptical mode of speaking, since literal metaphysical correctness is sometimes cumbrous)--but there are two ways: one, the mind of a designer, and the other (whatever may be its nature, which the present question does not call upon me to define) not the mind of a designer.

2. The shortest way of proving this theorem, is to state that there are two ways of your obtaining a facsimile of your own person. One is to have your portrait taken, and the other is to stand before a looking-glass, and that of these two ways the former is that of design, and the latter confessedly not design, being the well-known necessary effect of certain so-called second causes, whose operation in this instance is familiar to modern science.

3. Consequently, S. D. Collet is incorrect in the principle which she makes the foundation of her argument at p. 27, where it is said, "What the Theist maintains is this, that when we see the exercise of Force in the direction of a purpose, we, by an inevitable inference, attribute the phenomenon to some conscious agent."

4. Force is seen to be exercised in the direction of a purpose--the purpose being that of producing similitude--with equal evidence in the two cases just compared; for though the force exercised in said direction is less in the case of the painter than it is in that of the looking-glass (for the resemblance produced by the former is in less degree a resemblance than that produced by the latter), the evidence cannot be said to be less, since it is no less able to convince. We are as perfectly sure that the painter could not have produced that lesser similitude of a man, and a particular man, by chance (the alternative of this supposition, according to our experience, being that he must have used design) as we are that the looking-glass could not have produced that greater similitude of a man, and a particular man, by chance (the alternative of this supposition, according to our experience, being that it must have used certain so-called laws of nature); this collective experience of ours, equally assuring us on the one hand, that the only way of the painter's achieving these effects is by design, and on the other, that the only way of the looking-glass's doing so, is by the natural agencies referred to.

5. The human experience on which the decision of this question must be founded--though not at the present era essentially different--may yet be said to be considerably so from what it was in certain former periods. In no times could mankind think and observe without becoming aware of these two principles of order--whether you call them facts or inferences--as a portion of their familiar experience. And so far as they might have compared them, they must have abundantly seen that the natural one is more powerful than the artificial one, and that the straight line or the circle must seek its perfection much rather from the plummet or the revolving radius, than from the pencil of Apelles.

6. Thus the essential point of the existence of the two principles has always been known, but the idea of their respective spheres and limits, of the efficient prevalence of each within our experience, has fluctuated in society. Art and handicraft are, of course, peculiarly competent to appreciate the artificial principle of order, while physical science is especially conversant with the natural one. As the ancients were equal to the moderns in the former pursuits, but vastly inferior to them in the latter, they must so far have had a tendency to think more of the designing principle, and less of the other principle than we do. But it must be remembered, that one or other of these two principles, or at least the arbitrament between them, is the animating basis of all religion, and of all religious sects and persuasions; and further, that of these two principles, the religion founded on the artificial one, which is the one traditionally derived to us, is liable to be, and is wont to be, a far more powerful religion (because it deals far more intensely in personification, having reference singly to some supposed artist) than either the religion that is constituted by the natural principle, or that which results from a mixture of the two principles. And indeed, I will incidentally say that this last kind of religion seems to me to have much analogy on its side, and that the old idea of "the two principles" might, on several grounds besides the present one, and in several respects, perhaps, be found to shadow forth a certain amount of most important truth and applicability.

7. To return. By considering the state of religion and of religious belief in the times of Socrates and Cicero, in connection with the state of art, handicraft, and science, in the same time, and coincidently taking care not to forget that religious sentiment (that at least of the kind which had in their era already been, and much more since has been, communicated from the east to the west) is an incomparably more vigorous impeller of opinion, than reason and argument; we shall have some of the principal data, and in a main matter shall be prepared to use them judiciously in any inquiry we might make, why it was that Socrates and Cicero, having their attention arrested by the artificial principle of order and arrangement, seemed absolutely to forget the existence of the natural one, and why in consequence it was, that the latter wrote to this effect: "He who can look up to the heavenly vault, and doubt the existence of a one personal God, the designer and governor of all things, is equivalent to a madman"; and why, further, we, spite of our vast physical science, are prone to the same fallacy.

8. Having thus proved that the argument of the Theist generally, as well as the particular one advanced by S. D. C. at p. 27, is, by being based on the erroneous statement that there is only one means known to human experience, of producing phenomena identical with those that are the product of design, and that this one is design itself; there being, on the contrary, two such means, one of which is not design; having, I say, proved that your argument, by being so based, is invalid, I find I must fully agree with you, that there is evidence of "an unmistakable cosmical unity."

9. The true inquiry, therefore, is, which of those two principles of order is, in the agency inquired into, the agent under these circumstances, and whether both, and how far, under our ignorance of what may be (a most important point that is carefully to be considered) we are entitled to affirm as indubitable, to denounce as contradictory, to advance as probable, to conjecture, to surmise, or to speculate on this question.

THE TRUTH OF FIRST PRINCIPLES.

1. You ask "my idea on the impossibility of proving the truth of First Principles?"

By "truth" you mean the ascertained existence of any idea or thing, and the ascertained consistency of any statement with some such idea or thing.

By "principles" you mean not simply cardinal propositions, but cardinal propositions that we have ascertained to be true.

By "first principles" you mean the indubitably true but unprovable elementary principles of all our knowledge. You mean that these principles are the ground whereon we build in our reasonings; all that we build upon them must, in consequence of being so built, admit of being "proved" whether we have built rightly--that is, admit of being subjected to the test whether the reasoning is correct; but these "first principles" are confessedly exempted from this test, and yet are received as true, no less than the others that have sustained this ordeal. You ask the meaning of this privilege, whether it is right; and, if so, to what propriety or necessity of the case it is due?

2. You ask, "How is truth ascertained to be truth?" or, in other words, "What is the criterion of truth?"

With respect to the first query--In accordance with the definition I have above given of truth, it would seem that it must have two sources, experience and reason, experience who notifies the existence of certain ideas or things, and reason, who forms propositions suggested by them. Experience, therefore, acts the simple part of supplying all the materials of truth; while reason, besides his acknowledged office of judge of all truth, exercises the quite different function of being himself the purveyor of a portion of it.

So indubitable is it that truth can have these two sources only, that even fanaticism would be found confessing the principle; while it appeals to the experience of those who agree with it, as well as professes to be reasonable.

First principles must, accordingly, be of two kinds. Of those that are based upon experience, I will give the following instances:--I hear the chirping of a bird, and I see an inkstand before me. That I have the sensation of hearing and seeing in these two cases, are facts of which it is impossible I can doubt. Reason perceives that these are primary facts or first principles, neither admitting nor requiring any proof, testified by consciousness, and self-evidently verified on that testimony.

By reason, of course is meant the reason of all mankind--that is, of all who are presumably competent to judge on the subject. So that any just or reasonable confidence in the verdict of my own reason--in this or in any other matter, presupposes a due comparison of my own reason with that of others, nay, in some cases, a consideration of the supposably more enlightened reason of future times.

I discriminate first principles from derived ones thus:--"I see the sun," is a first principle to me; "you see it," is a first principle to you; by comparing these two ideas, each attains the derived principle that the other sees what he does, and the further derived principle that the sun is an existence independent of both. His own existence is, indeed, to every one the first principle, by means of which he infers the existence of other things and beings.

In coming now to the other kind of first principles, consisting of propositions formed by reason, we perceive that these show symptoms of still further difference from the above, than that which results from the difference of their source, of difference that affects their philosophical character, and their technical right to the name under which they present themselves to us. In short, the primary philosophy has not yet settled their title.

They are perceived by us to be true by an act of reason called intuition. Not similarly, however, does our reason inform us that they really are first principles, and our science is hitherto unequal to this inquiry.

Take, for instance, the following celebrated thesis, so often cited as the most fundamental of all the propositions of reason, insomuch as to be tacitly implied in all our reasonings; which yet we are not sure is a first principle, all that can be said in favor of its pretensions being that we can find no one who is able to reduce it to more primary elements:--

It is impossible for a thing at the same time to be and not to be.

Any one agreeing, as every one must, that this is true, might still justly put the query, Why is it impossible? thereby calling its assertion in question, demanding its credentials of proof, seeking some ground for its truth other than its own testimony, and hypothesising some other proposition more fundamental than it of which it would be a derivative, and by all and each of these proceedings, rejecting its claim to be a first principle.

Its resisting our analysis is a good subjective ground for our ranking this and other similar propositions among our first principles. But they could only have the true claim by its being made clear that the inability results from the nature of the case, and not from our own incompetency.

This test is borne by the former description of first principles; we are able to see that the instances I adduced, such as the statements, "I see the sun," "I see an inkstand," "I hear a bird," "I am conscious that I exist," evade our power of ordinary proving, because they do not admit of such proof.