I wish to keep
close to the land question. But to understand fairly Mr. Spencer's views
on the land question as expressed in
Justice, and to discover
what ground there may be for the changes they show, it is necessary to get
some idea of the system of which it is the crown.
Justice is in fact the real revision
of
Social Statics in the new light of the system of
philosophy which its author has since elaborated. Both books go over the
same ground, that of social economics, and the title of one might serve
for that of the other. This ground it was that first attracted Mr. Spencer,
and he went over it forty-two years ago in the temper of a social reformer.
He now returns to these living, burning questions of the time with the
reputation of a great philosopher, after assiduous years spent in what purports
to be a wider and deeper survey. For of the philosophy which he has in the
meantime elaborated it is claimed not only that "it is more logically complete
than any other system," but that "it is more practical than any other, because
it bears immediately upon common experience, takes hold of the living questions
of the time, throws light upon the course of human affairs, and gives knowledge
that may serve both for public and individual guidance."*
*E. L. Youmans, M.D., Herbert
Spencer and the Doctrine of Evolution, Popular Science Library. D. Appleton
& Co., New York.
I speak of Herbert Spencer
in
Social Statics as a social reformer, to distinguish
his attitude at that time from his present attitude. But he was not content
in that book to advocate empirical remedies for the disorder, waste and
wrong that he beheld about him. He saw that expediency offered no sure guide;
that such was the infirmity of human powers, and such, in the complexity
of social actions and reactions, was the impossibility of calculating
results, that legislation based on mere policy was constantly bringing
to naught the best-laid schemes, constantly entangling men in blind ways,
constantly resulting in the unforeseen and unwished. The burden of
Social
Statics is that there is a better guide in social affairs than the calculations
of expediency; that what men should look to is not results but principles;
that the moral sense may be trusted where the intellect is certain to go
astray. Its central idea is that the universe bespeaks to us its origin
in an intelligence of which
Justice must be an attribute;
that there is in human affairs a divinely appointed order to which, if
it would prosper, society must conform; that there is an eternal rule of
right, by which, despite all perturbations of the intellect, social institutions
may be safely measured.
This rule of right, as expressed in the first
principle of
Social Statics—this "law of equal liberty," that "each
has freedom to do all that he wills provided that he infringes not the
equal freedom of any other"—what is it indeed but an expression in primary
essential of the Golden Rule? What Mr. Spencer declared in
Social Statics
is in fact what the National Assembly of France declared in 1789, "That
ignorance, neglect or contempt of human rights are the sole causes of public
misfortunes and corruptions of government." And with clearer vision than
the French Assembly, he saw and did not hesitate to assert that the most
important of human rights from the neglect and contempt of which society
today suffers, is the natural and equal right to the use of the planet.
It is its protest against materialism, its
assertion of the supremacy of the moral law, its declaration of God-given
rights that are above all human enactments, that despite whatever it may
contain of crudity and inconsistency make
Social Statics a noble book,
and in the deepest sense a religiously-minded book.
In the course Mr. Spencer thus entered in
his early manhood there was work enough to have engaged the greatest powers
for the longest lifetime; but work that would have involved a constant
and bitter contest with the strongest forces—forces that have at their
disposal not only the material things that make life pleasant, but present
honour as well. Mr. Spencer did not continue the struggle that in
Social
Statics he began. He turned from the field of social reform to the field
of speculative philosophy, in which he has won great reputation and authority.
It is the scheme of philosophy thus developed that forms the basis of
Justice,
as the ideas of a living God, of a divinely appointed order, and of an
eternal distinction between right and wrong, just and unjust, form the
basis of
Social Statics.
In its earlier volumes this philosophy was
styled "Spencer's Evolutionary Philosophy." This title has since been abandoned
for the less definite but more ambitious one of "Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy."
Since synthesis is the opposite of analysis, the putting together, instead
of taking apart—a synthetic philosophy is a philosophy which explains
the world (a term which in the philosophic sense includes all of which
we can become conscious), not by the process of taking things apart and
seeing of what they are composed; but by assuming an original principle
or principles, and from that starting-point mentally building up the world,
thus showing how it came to be. The Book of Genesis embodies probably
the oldest synthetic philosophy we have record of. Mr. Spencer's is the
latest.
Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy" is in the
main a fusion and extension of two hypotheses—the nebular hypothesis of
the formation of celestial bodies, and what is best known as the Darwinian
hypothesis of the development of species, with a bridging over of such
gulfs as the passage from the inorganic to the organic, and from matter
and motion to mind, and some infusion of what I take to be Kantian metaphysics.
Though Mr. Spencer objects to the characterization, I can only describe
this philosophy as materialistic, since it accounts for the world and all
it contains, including the human ego, by the interactions of matter and
motion, without reference to any such thing as intelligence, purpose or
will, except as derived from them. It does not, of course, any more than
other materialistic philosophies, pretend to explain what matter and motion
are, or how they came to be. That, for it, is the unknowable, while it
deals only with what may be known by men. But within the region of the knowable,
all things to it have come to be, or are coming to be, by the interactions
of matter and motion, in a process which it terms "evolution," and which
it describes as "an integration of matter, and concomitant dissipation of
motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity
to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion
undergoes a parallel transformation."
After evolution has reached its limit and
all the motion is dissipated, comes a temporary equilibrium, and then
dissolution sets in, by the integration of motion and the dissipation
of matter, so that, according to the Synthetic Philosophy, the universe
goes on, so far as we can see, to infinity, like one of those disks boys
play with, which by means of a twisted string is made to spin around one
way, then to come to a momentary stop, and then spin back the other way,
the process continuing so long as the boy will gently extend and then gently
bring together his hands. What is it that supplies the force furnished
in the case of the toy by the boy's hands? And has it, like the boy's hands
conscious will behind it? This to the Spencerian Synthetic Philosophy is
the unknowable.
This unknowable is not God, though Mr. Spencer
presents it to the religious sentiment as something with which it may be
satisfied, and some of his followers, and sometimes even he himself, speak
of it in ways that suggest identity. In Social Statics, however, Mr. Spencer
frequently uses the term "God," but he certainly never thought that he knew
God in the sense of comprehending him, or that it was possible for man so
to know him. And if the unknowable of his philosophy means that—
Being above all beings! Mighty One,
Whom none can comprehend and none explore!
Who fill'st existence with thyself alone—
Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er—
Being whom we call God, and know no more!'*
—why should he with the development of his
philosophy have abandoned the use of the old term for that which beneath
the myths and fables and creeds by which men have endeavoured to formulate
spiritual perceptions has been always recognized as apparent to the human
soul yet transcending human knowledge?
*Derzhavin, Bowring's translation.
This unknowable must be distinguished from
the unknown. It is that which not only is not, but never can be known in
any way; that which not merely we cannot comprehend, but of which we can
know nothing at all, even of its intelligence or non-intelligence, its consciousness
or non-consciousness, its nature or its attributes. It is difficult indeed
to see how we may predicate even existence of it, as we may of an unknown
person or unknown thing. For this requires at least some knowledge. But of
the unknowable we lack the capacity of knowing anything whatever. Air is
unknowable directly to our sense of sight; we cannot directly see air. But
by its resistance, its weight, its chemical and other qualities, it is knowable
by our other faculties; and it is indirectly knowable even to our sight,
through the moving of leaves, the motion of watery surfaces, etc.; while
if air were unknowable, we could not be conscious of it in any possible way.
It would be precisely the same to us as no air.
By the constitution of the human mind it is
impossible for us in attempting to trace back the line of causation to
find any stopping-place until we reach that which thinks and wills—that
to which the volition is akin which to our consciousness is an originating
element in the trains of sequences that we ourselves set in motion, or at
least modify and divert. Thus any materialistic or mechanical philosophy
must either beg the question by assuming the eternity of matter and motion,
or admit something behind them which it must take for granted and leave out
of its explanation, simply denying that it can be recognized as intelligence
or will apart from matter and motion, i.e., spirit. If the unknowable in
the Spencerian philosophy means anything more than the vacuum that is thus
left where a spiritual First Cause is denied, it seems to mean what by some
metaphysicians is styled "the thing in itself."
This "thing in itself" is in metaphysical
language the noumenon as distinguished from the phenomenon: the thing
as it really is, as distinguished from the thing as it is recognized in
its qualities by the percipient being. But this, if not another name for
spirit, really amounts to vacancy. Such idea of "the thing in itself" as
opposed to the thing as known in phenomena, seems to come from the habit,
to which our use of language leads, of associating independent existence
with qualities to which we give independent names. Thus no man ever saw
white except as a white thing. But as things have other colours we can readily
separate the idea white from the idea thing. Forgetting, since we are dealing
only with words, that the abstraction of one colour implies its replacement
by another colour, and the abstraction of all colours would render the thing
non-existent so far at least as our sight is concerned, we may mentally separate
the idea of colour, and imagine the thing in other respects as remaining.
Extending the process of abstraction to all other qualities, we may fancy
that we have still remaining the idea of the thing separated from all idea
of its qualities. But what we have remaining is really only a verbal simulacrum,
that sounds like something, and may be written or parsed, but which on
analysis consists of negations, and means really no thing or nothing.
This, as well as I can understand it, is that "thing in itself," of which,
in some part, or in some aspects, Mr. Spencer's unknowable seems to consist.
But if the Spencerian philosophy is thus indefinite
as to what precedes or underlies matter and motion, it certainly shows
no lack of definiteness from the appearance of matter and motion onward.
With matter and motion begins its knowable, and from thenceforward, without
pause or break, it builds up the whole universe by the integration of the
one, and the dissipation of the other, in the mode described as evolution,
without recourse to any other element.
In this elimination of any spiritual element
lies, it seems to me, the essential characteristic of the Spencerian philosophy.
It is not, as is largely supposed, the evolution philosophy, but an evolution
philosophy; that is to say, its rejection of any spiritual element in
its account of the genesis of things does not follow from its acceptance
of the principle of evolution; but the peculiarity of its teachings as
to evolution arises from its ignoring of the spiritual element, from its
assumption that, matter and motion given, their interactions will account
for all that we see, feel or know.
In reality the Spencerian idea of evolution
differs as widely from that held by such evolutionists as Alfred Russel
Wallace, St George Mivart, or Joseph Le Conte, as it differs from the idea
of special and direct creation. It is only when this is recognized that
the real point of issue raised by or perhaps rather around the doctrine
of evolution is seen. We all see that the oak is evolved from the acorn,
the man from the child. And that it is intended for the evolution of something
is the only intelligible account that we can make for ourselves of the
universe. Thus in some sense we all believe in evolution, and in some sense
the vast majority of men always have. And even the evolution of man from
the animal kingdom offers no real difficulty so long as this is understood
as only the form or external of his genesis. To me, for instance, who, possibly
from my ignorance of such branches, am unable to see the weight of the evidence
of man's descent from other animals, which many specialists in natural science
deem conclusive, it yet appears antecedently probable that externally
such might have been his descent. For it seems better to accord with the
economy manifested through nature, to think that when the soul of man
first took incasement in physical body on this earth it should have taken
the form nearest to its needs, rather than that inorganic matter should
be built up. And while I cannot conceive how, even in illimitable time,
the animal could of itself turn into the man, it is easy for me to think
that if the spirit of man passed into the body of a brute the animal body
would soon assume human shape.
Let me illustrate the distinction I wish to
point out:
Here is a locomotive of the first class, or
a great Corliss engine, capable on the pressure of a child's finger of
exerting to definite ends a mighty force. How did it come to be?
"It came to be," some one might answer, "from
the integrations of matter and motion. This matter existed not to go further
back than is necessary, in ores of iron and copper and zinc, and in the
wood of trees. By motion acting on matter these materials were transported,
separated, combined and adjusted, until integrated into this definite,
coherent heterogeneity that you see."
Such answer would not satisfy me. I would
indeed see that it was quite true that from the first wresting of the
ores from their beds, to the last touch of file or emerypaper, every step
in this construction involved the action of motion on matter; but I would
know that this was not all, and that what so ordered and directed the action
of motion on matter as to bring this construction into being was the intelligence
and volition of man. And I would reply, "You do not go deep enough: what
this construction really bespeaks is something you have omitted; something
to which matter is but the material, and motion the tool-the intelligence,
consciousness and freedom of human will."
Or, here is a picture. Let it be a reproduction
of a Madonna of Raphael's, such as are made or might be made by selffeeding
presses. Shall anyone explain the impression of grace and beauty and loving
purity that it produces on him who contemplates it, by explaining on the
undulatory theory of light how impressions of colour are produced on the
retina of the eye? Or shall he account for its genesis by telling me that
by integrations of matter and motion certain pigments have become disposed
on paper in a certain way? Should he attempt to do so I would say to him,
"You are telling me merely of the medium through which in this picture soul
speaks to soul; you are merely telling me of the means by which the thought
of the painter found expression in outward form."
But suppose he should answer—
"You delude yourself. I have investigated
the matter, and have been to the place where such pictures as this are
brought forth. I saw no painter; I saw only a series of revolving cylinders,
through which an endless roll of paper was drawn by steel fingers. By
the automatic motion of this machinery one cylinder impressed on the paper
some patches of one colour, and another some patches of another colour,
till at last, by such successive actions of motion on matter, a picture
like this came forth."
Would I be any more convinced that such a
picture could have come to be without that power, essentially different
from matter and motion, which we feel in ourselves and recognize in other
men, which draws a deep gulf between man and all other animals; that power
which plans, contrives, and by using matter and motion creates; that power
in short which we call spirit? Would I not say to him, "What you tell me
of the way this picture was brought forth by no means lessens my certainty
that it could primarily have originated only in the mind and soul of a painter,
but only shows me in the automatic working of the presses of which you speak
a higher expression of the same power of using tools to body forth thought
that was shown in the use of palette and brush. In this reproduction, as
in each and all of the various processes and machines by which it was brought
to be, I see a manifestation of the same essential thing that the original
picture would show to me originating will, adapting mind; in short, not
matter and motion, but spirit, or soul."
And of what moment would be the question whether
this picture came into existence by the direct action of human will upon
the paper, or indirectly through its action upon automatic machinery, as
compared with the question whether its existence involved human action or
not?
It is on this vital point of the existence
or non-existence of spirit as a prime motor that the real issue raised by
theories of evolution comes. Such evolutionism as is represented by the
men of whom I have spoken, sees in evolution only a mode in which the creative
spirit works. Such evolutionism as is formulated in the Spencerian philosophy
eliminates spirit from its hypothesis, and takes into account only matter
and motion.
Here is where all materialistic or mechanical
theories of the universe ultimately fail. The belief in God, that is to
say, in a Spiritual Originator, has no such utterly inadequate and ridiculous
genesis as that which we shall shortly see Mr. Spencer gives for it. It
springs from the same primary ineradicable perception that universally leads
men, whenever they see in a thing destitute of life the evidence of adaptation
involving choice, to attribute it to man. No civilized man, after inspection,
ever took the rudest huts raised by savages for the structures of lower
animals. No savage who might at a distance have thought a ship a bird,
or a steamer a marine monster, ever failed on closer view to know that
it was a man's building. No wandering Bedouin ever attributed to natural
forces ruins so vast that they transcended his ideas of man's ability. On
the contrary, so clear is the impress and testimony of that creative power
which so widely and unmistakably distinguishes man from all other animals,
that rude peoples invariably attribute constructions which they deem beyond
man's ability, to genii, fairies or demons—beings possessing powers of the
same kind as man, but in larger degree. And they do this for the same reason
that they attribute the bringing into being of the highest of adaptations,
those that embody life, to a highest of spiritual beings—the Great Spirit,
or God. And when our larger knowledge shows us no wavering or confusion in
the line which marks conscious adaptation, so that to the specialist the
chipping of a flint taken from a long-buried river-drift, or the scratching
on a tusk of a preglacial animal, shows the same unmistakable evidence of
man's work as does the engine or the picture, how shall we otherwise interpret
the evidences of design similar in kind but infinitely higher in degree which
nature on every hand reveals than as indicating the work of God?
But to return again to our illustration: If
when, to him who contends that the engine or the picture has come to be
by the integrations of matter and motion, I say that such structures unmistakably
bespeak man's work, suppose he should reply to me:
"What is man's work but the interaction of
matter and motion? What is man's hand but a certain arrangement of matter?
What is the force it exerts but a dissipation of motion? Did they, too, not
exist in an indefinite, incoherent homogeneous shape in the primordial mass?
Do they not come to man from unnumbered transmutations in the food he eats,
the water he drinks, the air he breathes, to pass from him into other numberless
mutations? If you think man is not included in matter and motion, shut
off even for a little while his supplies of matter and motion, and where
is your man?"
"Your explanation no better satisfies me than
before," I would reply. "While it may be true as far as it goes, it is
inadequate and false in omitting an essential factor, and that a factor
which is not last but first. Matter and motion acting to all eternity could
not bring forth such a structure as this. I know, from all my experience
of how things come to be, that this structure had its primary genesis in
thought; that in all its parts, and as a combined whole, it was thought out
before it was worked out. I grant you that, at least normally, our perceptions
of thought in others are dependent on our perceptions of matter and motion.
But I too think. And I know from perceptions that are even closer and truer
than my perceptions of matter and motion, that thought is something different
from matter and motion, and from any combination of them. I think when my
body is still, when my eyes are shut, even when my senses are locked from
the external world by sleep. And though I can only look out, not in; though
I cannot tell you what I myself am, any more than you can tell me what matter
and motion are; although I can no more tell you how I came to be than you
can tell me how matter and motion came to be, nor in what way this, that
I feel is I, is embodied in a material frame, I do feel directly, and know
from its capacities, that it is something different from and superior to
the matter and motion of that frame, and that it endures while they change.
And so your explanation of the genesis of things that excludes everything
but matter and motion, is to me as superficial as if you were to explain
a Caesar or Shakespeare by the food he ate; an In Memoriam by pen and ink;
or my recognition of my friend's voice, and our communication of thought
through the telephone, by the copper wire and the current of electricity.
"So clear, so certain, am I that what I can
recognize, better than I can define, as spirit, is alone competent to
produce things in which I see conscious, willing intelligence that if
you were to show me a brush that seemed of itself to paint pictures, a pen
that seemed of itself to write intelligible words, or even an animal that
seemed to show that power which is the essential characteristic of man,
I could only account for it as a manifestation of spirit acting in a way
unfamiliar to me—if not spirit in a human body, playing a trick upon me,
then spirit in some other form. And this would be the conclusion of all
men."
While less acute thinkers profess to sneer
at the evidence from design, Schopenhauer, whose great ability certainly
entitles him to high rank among atheistic philosophers, is able to avoid
the conclusion of an Originating Intelligence only by eliminating intelligence
from will, and assuming that bare will, or desire unconjoined with intelligence,
directly originates, just as the will to make a bodily movement brings about
that movement without knowledge or consciousness of how it is brought about.*
*Schopenhauer's explanation
of the origin of species is in interesting contrast to that of the evolutionary
hypothesis, and to my mind comes closer to the truth. According to him
the numberless forms and adaptations of animated nature, instead of proceeding
from slow modifications, by which various creatures have been adapted
to their conditions, are the expression of the desire or collective volition
of the animal. I quote from the chapter on Comparative Anatomy in The Will
in Nature, Bohn translation:
"Every animal form is a longing of the will
to live which is roused by circumstances. For instance, the will is seized
with a longing to live on trees, to hang on their branches, to devour their
leaves, without contention with other animals and without over touching
the ground. This longing presents itself throughout endless time in the form
(or Platonic idea) of the sloth. It can hardly walk at all, being only adapted
for climbing; helpless on the ground it is agile on trees and looks itself
like a moss-clad bough in order to escape the notice of its pursuers. …
"The universal fitness for their ends, the
obviously intentional design of all the parts of the organism of the lower
animals without exception proclaim too distinctly for it over to have been
seriously questioned, that here no forces of Nature acting by chance and
without plan have been at work, but a will … (That) no organ interferes with
another, each rather assisting the others and none remaining unemployed; also
that no subordinate organ would be better suited to another mode of existence,
while the life which the animal really leads is determined by the principal
organs alone, but on the contrary each part of the animal not only corresponds
to every other part, but also to its mode of life: its claws for instance
are invariably adapted for seizing the prey which its teeth are suited to
tear and break, and its intestinal canal to digest; its limbs are constructed
to convey it where that prey is to be found, and no organ ever remains unemployed
… added to the circumstance that no organ required for its mode of life is
ever wanting in any animal, and that all, oven the most heterogeneous, harmonize
together and are as it were calculated for a quite specially determined way
of life, for the element in which the prey dwells, for the pursuit, the overcoming,
the crushing and digesting of that prey—all this, we say, proves that the
animal's structure has been determined by the mode of life by which the
animal desired to find its substance, and not vice versa. It also proves
that the result is exactly the same as if a knowledge of that mode of life
and of its outward conditions had preceded the structure, and as if therefore
every animal had chosen its equipment before it assumed a body; just as a
sportsman before starting chooses his whole equipment, gun, powder, shot,
pouch, hunting-knife and dress, according to the game he intends chasing.
He does not take aim at the wild boar because he happens to have a rifle;
he took the rifle with him and not a fowling-piece, because he intended
to hunt the wild boar. The ox does not butt because it happens to have horns;
it has horns because it intends to butt.
"Now to render this proof complete we have
the additional circumstance that in many animals, during the time they are
growing, the effort of the will to which a limb is destined to minister,
manifests itself before the existence of the limb itself, its employment
thus anticipating its existence. Young he-goats, rams, calves for instance
butt with their bare polls before they have any horns; the young boar tries
to gore on either side, before its tusks are fully developed which would
respond to the intended effect, while on the other hand it neglects to use
the smaller teeth it already has in its mouth and with which it might really
bite. Thus its mode of defending itself does not adapt itself to the existing
weapons, but vice versa.
"… Behold the countless varieties of animal
shapes. How entirely is each of them the mere image of its volition, the
evident expression of the strivings of the will which constitute its character!
Their difference in shape is only the portrait of their difference in character.
… Each particular striving of the will presents itself in a particular
modification of shape. The abode of the prey therefore has determined the
shape of its pursuer … and no shape is rejected by the will to live as
too grotesque to attain its ends. … As the will has equipped itself with
every organ and every weapon, offensive as well as defensive, so has it
likewise provided itself in every animal shape with an intellect, as a means
of preservation for the individual and the species. … Beasts of prey do
not hunt nor foxes thieve because they have more intelligence; on the contrary
they have more intelligence, just as they have stronger tooth and clews,
because they wished to live by hunting and thieving.---
But within the sphere in which we can trace
origination does it anywhere appear that will without intelligence can
accomplish anything? So far as we can see clearly, is it not always true
that where volition without commensurate intelligence seems to result in
accomplishment it is because the needed intelligence has been supplied by
another will? Thus an engine-driver desires his train to move forward or
backward, fast or slow, and by a motion that seems directly responsive to
his will, his desire takes effect through the pulling of a lever. He may
know nothing of the adjustments of the machine that in response to his will
thus converts heat into motion, and utterly lack the intelligence needed
to construct it. But that knowledge and intelligence were none the less
necessary to this moving of the train. If not conjoined with his will they
were conjoined with other wills—the wills that have constructed a machine
by which a train may be moved on the pulling of a lever. The little intelligence
needed in use proves the great intelligence exerted in construction.
So a lady at the opera puts her glass to her
eyes and turns a screw as she wishes to make what she sees appear nearer.
She may not know how many lenses her glass contains; still less their nature
and properties; and is utterly without the knowledge required for making
such glasses. But that she may accomplish at will results requiring such
knowledge is because others possess it.
So, if we look through any part of the wide
field in which human advance has brought volition nearer to result and
lessened the knowledge and intelligence required by the will to use, we
find its reason in the greater knowledge and intelligence shown in adaptation.
If the ordinary shipmaster of today can with the aid of a quadrant, a nautical
almanac and a table of logarithms learn from the heavens his position on
the trackless ocean, it is because of the high intelligence and tireless
studies of others. If girls who know only how to strike a key and interpret
a click, or put a peg in a hole, can talk with each other hundreds of miles
apart, it is because of discoverers, inventors and constructors.
If, then, in the only field in which we can
see origination taking place, we find that the originator is always intelligent,
conscious will, and if we find that where the will that uses an adaptation
does not possess the knowledge or intelligence necessary to originate
it, another will or wills conjoined with deeper knowledge and wider intelligence
has done so, what is the reasonable inference as to adaptations of a higher
kind, the genesis of which we cannot see, and which so far transcend the
knowledge and intelligence of the creatures that through them are enabled
to give their own wills effect?
What are our bodies but a more perfect adjustment
of parts, such as we see in machines? What are our eyes but a more perfect
adjustment of lenses, such as we see in operaglasses? If, then, my hand
closes when I will to grasp, without any knowledge on my part of the correlated
movements that must necessarily intervene; if when I merely will to look,
the lenses of my eyes are by delicate and complex machinery directed to
the position and adapted to the distance; if all through animal and even
vegetable nature I may see utilisations of knowledge and adaptations of
intelligence transcending, not merely the powers of their users, but the
highest human knowledge and intelligence, shall I infer that these utilisations
and adaptations come without knowledge and intelligence? Or shall I regard
them as evidences of a deeper knowledge and wider intelligence, which, since
we find intelligence and knowledge invariably associated with consciousness,
must pertain to a higher consciousness?
But to come back to the Book of Genesis that
is offered to us in Mr. Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy.
First—if we will insist upon a first—comes
the unknowable; then force; then from force, matter and motion. Matter first
appears, permeated with motion, in a state of indefinite, incoherent homogeneity,
from which a principle which is styled "the instability of the homogeneous"
starts the "integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion,"
called evolution, "during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the
retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation."
This is in brief the whole story:
Matter revolving in accordance with the nebular
hypothesis gives rise to nebulous aggregations; these to suns, which throw
off revolving satellites, that in the course of time cool into earths,
on the crust of which continuing evolution separates gases and differentiates
the strata of inorganic matter. By the multiplying effects of motion acting
on matter, the earth becomes fitted for life; and from the differences
in the physical mobilities and chemical activities in the segregations
of matter produce in colloid or jelly-like substances, such as starch,
the beginnings of life, which is defined as "the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence
with external coexistences and sequences." And then by forces of various
kinds, but all derived from motion, and being its mechanical equivalents,
all the forms of life, vegetable and animal, proceed.
By this process of evolution man was finally
developed from a lower animal—he himself, with all his attributes and social
institutions, being like everything else an outcome of this process, which,
acting through survival of the fittest, heredity and the pressure of conditions,
has been and is moulding him into harmony with those conditions.
Of primitive man we have much and very definite
information from Mr. Spencer. He was smaller and less powerful, especially
in the lower limbs, than man is now, but had a larger abdomen and came
earlier to maturity. He was wavering and inconstant; he had no surprise
or curiosity or ingenuity; his imagination was reminiscent only, not constructive;
he lacked abstract ideas, was without notion of definiteness and truth,
or of benevolence equity or duty; he was unable to think even of a single
law, much less of law in general; had neither the habit of expressing things
definitely, nor the habit of testing assertions, nor a due sense of contrast
between fact and fiction; and for him deliberately to weigh evidence was
impossible. He was a cannibal; was entirely promiscuous in his sexual relations;
had no idea of any other life or of any supernatural existences or powers,
and no care for, no sympathy with, and no idea of the goodness or badness
of acts toward any of his fellows, except so far as female primitive man
was concerned with her offspring during infancy.
How this sorry monster, this big-bellied,
short-legged, bad lot of an ancestor of ours managed to avoid the fate
of the Kilkenny cats, and keep in existence, we are not definitely informed;
but it seems from the Synthetic Philosophy that he did, and went on evoluting.
Various processes of his further evolution
are in the Synthetic Philosophy described. Seeing shadows cast by the sun,
the primitive man took them for other selves, which, aided by his dreams,
brought him to a belief in doubles, more extensive even than that which
Mr. Stead has expounded in his Real Ghost Stories and More Ghost Stories.
This led him to believe in another life, and
his fear of chiefs and efforts to propitiate them after they were dead evolved
the idea of God. Some regard for others, and some crude notion of property,
was also evolved by fear of reprisal from others when he injured them or
took their belongings, and by the punishment inflicted by chiefs. Cannibalism
declined as the practice of slavery grew, and it became more profitable
to work a captive than to eat him. But primitive man was not only a cannibal,
he was a trophy-taker, given to the practice of gathering human heads and
jaw-bones as evidences of his prowess. This led to mutilations of the living,
or self-mutilations, as marks of respect or deference, and this again led
to the giving of presents; and this in its turn evolved on the one side
into political and ecclesiastical revenues, and on the other into a greater
respect for property, and a recognition of value, and finally into barter,
and then trade. In similar ways all our perceptions, feelings, instincts
and habits have arisen. As for the mooted question, whether we have innate
ideas or whether all our ideas are derived from experience, the solution
of the Synthetic Philosophy is, that while all our ideas are originally derived
from experience, they are of two kinds—those which the experience of our
ancestors has registered in our inherited nervous system, and which therefore
seem to us original, or innate, and those which we ourselves derive from
experience.
Such, in brief, is the scheme of philosophy
that in the interval between the publication of Social Statics and the
publication of
Justice Mr. Spencer has developed; and which it is
the purpose of the last book to apply to the moral questions gone over in
the first.
Of the inadequacy of such a philosophy to
account for human progress, or coherently to marshal the great facts of
human life and human history I have already treated at some length in
Book X of Progress and Poverty, entitled "The Law of Human Progress."
But what we are now concerned with is the question, Where in such a philosophy
is a basis for moral ideas to be found?
I cannot see, nor can I find that Mr. Spencer
has been able to. Though still continuing to condemn Bentham, as he did
in Social Statics, all his efforts to obtain something like a moral sanction
reach no further than expediency.
And how can it be otherwise? If, in all we
are and think and feel, we are but passing phases of the interactions of
matter and motion?—if behind the force manifested in matter and motion is
nothing but the unknowable, and before us nothing but dissipation—personal
dissipation when we die, and the matter and motion of which alone we are
composed seek other forms; and then a death of the race, followed by a dissipation
of the globe?—why should we not eat, drink, and be merry to the limit of
opportunity and digestion? If our ideas of God and of a future life come
merely from the blunders of savages so stupid that they took shadows for
other selves and dreams for realities? if we would still be eating each other
had it not been discovered that man might use man more profitably as a labourer
than as food? if what we call the promptings of conscience are merely inherited
habits, the results of the fear of punishment transmitted through the nervous
system?—why should I not lie whenever I may find it convenient and safe
to lie? why should I avoid any omission or commission that will bring no
legal or social or personal penalty or inconvenience? why should I refrain
from selling my ability, whatever it may be, to any cause or interest that
has power to give me what I desire, whether it be wealth or honour?
Mr. Spencer's philosophy makes no distinction
between motives and results, nor does it admit of any. If it has any gospel,
it is the gospel of results, and the results that it treats as to be sought
are only results that make life pleasurable. Temperance, chastity, probity,
industry, public spirit, generosity, love! They have in this philosophy
no promise and no reward, save as they may directly or indirectly add to
the pleasure of the individual. For the self-sacrifice of the hero, the devotion
of the saint, the steadfastness of the martyr; for the spirit that ennobles
the annals of mankind, that has led and yet leads so many to endure discomfort,
want, pain, death, for the love of the true and the pure and the good;
for the noble hope of doing something to break the chains of the captive,
to open the eyes of the blind, to make life for those who may come after
fuller, nobler, happier; for the faith that has led men to dare all things
and suffer all things; it has no breath of stimulation or praise. In the
cold glare that it takes for light, such men are fools. For it knows no more
of human will as a factor in the advance of mankind than it does of the Divine
Will. To it what conditions exist, and what conditions will exist, are determined
by the irresistible grind of forces that in the last analysis are resolvable
into the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion. Its fatalism
eliminates free will. Environment and heredity are everything, human volition
nothing. Carry this philosophy to its legitimate conclusion, and the man
is a mere automaton who thinks he is a free agent only because he does
not feel the strings that move him. That I am a man is because I have been
evolved from the brute, as the boulder is rounded from the rock; as the
brute, my ancestor, was evolved from colloid, and colloid from indefinite,
incoherent homogeneous matter. And that I am this or that kind of a man,
with such and such powers, tastes, habits, ways of thinking, feeling, perceiving,
acting, is simply the result of the external influences that registered
in my ancestors the nerve impressions transmitted to me, and that have continued
to mould me. Social institutions, the outgrowth of a similar evolution in
which free will had no part, will continue their evolution without help
or hindrance from anything which is really choice or volition of mine.
Extremes sometimes curiously meet. The philosophy
of Schopenhauer, which in deriving everything from will is the antipodes
of the Spencerian philosophy, and which, like the philosophies of India,
of which it is a European version, holds existence an evil, and looks for
relief only to the renunciation of the will to live, would, if it were generally
accepted, produce among the European races the same social lethargy, the
same hopelessness of reform, the same readiness to bow before any tyrant,
that have so long characterized the masses of India. It seems to me that
the essential fatalism of the philosophy of Mr. Spencer would have a similar
result.*
*In Progress and Poverty, Book X, Chapter 1, I
say:
"The practical outcome of this theory is in
a sort of hopeful fatalism, of which current literature is full. In this
view, progress is the result of forces which work slowly, steadily and
remorselessly, for the elevation of man. War, slavery, tyranny, superstition,
famine and pestilence, the want and misery which fester in modern civilization,
are the impelling causes which drive man on, by eliminating poorer types
and extending the higher; and hereditary transmission is the power by which
advances are fixed, and past advances made the footing for new advances.
The individual is the result of changes thus impressed upon and perpetuated
through a long series of past individuals, and the social organization takes
its form from the individuals of which it is composed. Thus, while this
theory is, as Herbert Spencer says** 'radical to a degree beyond anything
which current radicalism conceives,' inasmuch as it looks for changes in
the very nature of man; it is at the same time 'conservative to a degree
beyond anything conceived by current conservatism,' inasmuch as it holds
that no change can avail save these slow changes in men's natures. Philosophers
may teach that this does not lessen the duty of endeavouring to reform abuses,
just as the theologians who taught predestinarianism insisted on the duty
of all to struggle for salvation; but, as generally apprehended, the result
is fatalism—do what we may, the mill of the gods grind on regardless either
of our aid or our hindrance.
Some years after this was written I had a
curious illustration of its truth. Talking one day with the late E. L.
Youmans, the great populariser of Spencerianism in the United States, a
man of warm and generous sympathies, whose philosophy seemed to me like
an ill-fitting coat he had accidentally picked up and put on, he fell into
speaking with much warmth of the political corruption of New York, of the
utter carelessness and selfishness of the rich, and of their readiness
to submit to it, or to promote it wherever it served their money-getting
purposes to do so. He became so indignant as he went on that he raised his
voice till he almost shouted.
Alluding to a conversation some time before,
in which I had affirmed and he had denied the duty of taking part in politics,
I said to him, "What do you propose to do about it?"
Of a sudden his manner and tone were completely
changed, as remembering his Spencerianism he threw himself back, and replied,
with something like a sigh, "Nothing! You and I can do nothing at all.
It's all a matter of evolution. We can only wait for evolution. Perhaps
in four or five thousand years evolution may have carried men beyond this
state of things. But we can do nothing."
** The Study of Sociolog—Conclusion
And as the pessimistic philosophy of the one
seems to flow from the abandonment of action for mere speculation, and from
the satiety and ennui which under certain conditions accompany it, so the
evolutionary philosophy of the other seems to be such as might result from
the abandonment of a noble purpose—from a turning from the thorny path
which an attack upon vested wrongs must open, to embrace the pleasanter
ways of acquiescence in things as they are.
It is not for me to say what is cause and
what is effect; but the correspondence of Mr. Spencer's philosophy, which
ignores the spiritual element and knows nothing of duty, with his own
attitude as shown in his letters to the
St. James's Gazette and
The Times and in
The Man versus the State, is
very striking. In
Justice we shall see more of this correspondence.