Читать книгу The Philosophy of Natural Theology - William Jackson T. - Страница 11

The advantages which ensue from this mode of "ranging round each topic" are well described by the late Sir B. Brodie (Psychological Inquiries, 1st series, p. 18). "Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the greatest degree of perfection will take cognisance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference which exists between the minds of different individuals; which distinguishes the far-sighted statesman from the shallow politician; the sagacious and accomplished general from the mere disciplinarian. Such also is the history, not only of the poetic genius, but also of the genius of discovery in science. 'I keep the subject,' said Sir Isaac Newton, 'constantly before me, and wait until the first dawnings open by little and little into a full light.' It was thus that, after long meditation, he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood; and that those views were suggested to Davy, which are propounded in the Bakerian lecture of 1806, and which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies."

Dr. Tyndall also considers the case of Newton ("Fragments of Science," p. 60). "Newton pondered all these things. He had a great power of pondering. He could look into the darkest subject until it became entirely luminous. How this light arises we cannot explain; but, as a matter of fact, it does arise." Dr. Tyndall had before remarked on the question thus suggested, that "There is much in this process of pondering and its results which it is impossible to analyse. It is by a kind of inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous contemplation of facts to the principles on which they depend. The mind is, as it were, a photographic plate, which is gradually cleansed by the effort to think rightly, and which when so cleansed, and not before, receives impressions from the light of truth. This passage from facts to principles is called induction, which in its highest form is inspiration; but, to make it sure, the inward sight must be shown to be in accordance with outward fact. To prove or disprove the induction, we must resort to deduction and experiment."—Ibid, p. 57-8.

This last remark concerns the process of verification which the accomplished writer discusses through several subsequent pages.

Notwithstanding a passing observation of Dr. Tyndall's that "this power of pondering facts is one with which the ancients could be but imperfectly acquainted," some readers will be struck by the thought that it forms the nearest approach which can be made by any inductive discoverer to the old philosophical method of Dialectic. Janet says, in a volume to which those who have not encountered it will thank me for introducing them, "La dialectique logique dans Platon est parfaitement conforme aux lois de la raison. Elle ne sert qu'à réfuter les idées fausses, ou à éclaircir les idées données antérieurement par une sorte de synthèse, qui, suivant les uns, n'est que le progrès de la généralisation, et, selon nous, est le progrès de l'intuition." (Études sur la Dialectique dans Platon et dans Hegel, p. 393.) For a more complete appreciation of what is here stated in few words, the student should peruse pp. 244, seq. The account given by Janet appears in some measure to coincide with Dr. Tyndall's idea, though perhaps the word "Intuition" might be more entirely approved by Schelling or Coleridge than by any Physicist.

Be this as it may, Dr. Tyndall's outline of the Inductive process in its highest form is evidently one which describes the prerogative of Genius—the exercise of Imagination as distinguished from Fancy—the child, that is, of Reason, rather than a stray bantling of sportive wit.

To bring his general conception within the grasp of every-day workers, and describe a procedure which may be adopted as a kind of practical rule or maxim, let us look at this subject in the following manner.

Suppose we take the example of a great idea; that, for instance, of the constitution of Great Britain, or any other nation which subsists in tolerable freedom from revolutionary change. There are clearly two elements involved—one, Permanence; the other, Progress. These, in the actual working constitution, form its factors, or moments (as they may be better termed); and in the idea or mental representation of the same, we may liken them to complementary colours in the spectrum, which appear separately contrasted in tint, but blend together in a wave of white light. Now, our analysing faculty of mind is, in point of fact, our intellectual prism. It separates each bright and strong idea into elements so antagonistic as to be apparently incompatible. Like clear yellow and shadowy violet, one component seems excellent in beauty, another its foil or opposite. To one class of minds truth consists in Permanence, and Progress is a note of evil omen. Of another class the contradictory is true. The real statesman alone knows that their blending is a question of measure and degree, of human affairs,—time, circumstance, and opportunity.

We may ask with reason what gain accrues to the statesman by looking at his country's constitution from this point of sight? Evidently a good deal. He will soon discern that practically it cannot exist in vigour if either factor be eliminated. Each is given in the analysis of his prolific idea, and, however great may seem the apparent incompatibility, both must be capable of co-existence and correlation. Now, there could be no synthesis if, on the one hand, Progress did not imply a something which remains identical and in unity with itself, while it flourishes and grows;—or, on the other hand, if Permanence were not safest, when its strength is manifested by its vital increase. Consequently, to grow is to continue essentially the same;—to be permanent is to live and bear fresh fruit every passing year.

A precisely similar advantage accrues to the Ethical Philosopher from a process of the like description. He considers (it may be) the concrete idea of moral activity. Obviously, there must be found in it an unfettered power of choice, and a conformity to the rule of moral law. Submitted to the analytic prism, the two elements come out at opposite poles in very decided contrast. At the pole of necessary conformity we find what looks like Determinism;—at the pole of choice appears its irreconcilable antagonist, a sense of Responsibility, logically unexplained, but inalienable from our moral nature. And our Ethical inquirer finds the only possible synthesis of his two contrasted moments of morality in the deep truth that each righteous man is a Law unto himself. And hence it is, that the righteous shines out over the lower world of mechanical arrangement—a faint, it may be, but still a visible image of the God who made him what he is.[11]

By the same process of analysis and reconstruction the Natural Theologian arrives (as may be shown) at a synthesis of Faith and Reason. Yet these two are antagonistic in the eyes both of the sceptic and the superstitious. Les extrêmes se touchent, and by both extremes faith is relegated to the region of sentimental æsthetics.

Reason, say both, is Faith's natural enemy; and must fail to yield any expectation of future happiness in the presence of a righteous God, together with its long train of present hopes and fears. Our plain answer is that the true synthesis of Natural Theism lies in the chief primary fact of our human nature—the undeniable existence of its Reasonable Beliefs. They originate deep down, and we may affirm respecting the birth of each and all, as Dr. Tyndall affirms of the inward vision which dawns upon the philosophic mind when photographically cleansed by its own efforts to think rightly,—"how this light arises we cannot explain, but as a matter of fact it does arise." In its degree it may be (to use Dr. Tyndall's word) "a kind of inspiration." And what endowment has a higher claim to such a representative kinship?—what nobler gift can be conceived from God to man than a Belief of Reason? Dr. Tyndall's further requirement that "the inward sight must be shown to be in accordance with the outward fact," a Natural Theologian may hope to meet by a sufficient verification. He may meet it in the case of this particular Belief by showing, as we shall try to show, our actual human experience of its working and its worth.

We might pursue similar examples through the regions of Discovery and Production, but the three instances already adduced may fairly suffice. It is, perhaps, more interesting to observe the real gains which accrue from pondering over an idea in the manner exemplified. How much political charlatanerie is at once disposed of when men distinctly acknowledge that two reputed incompatibilities, however useful as war-cries, are essentially conjoint elements in all truly statesmanlike action: what countless angry controversies die in the moral principle that each righteous man is a Law unto himself! And not only to Natural Theology, but to other parts of knowledge, it is of the greatest utility to perceive with equal distinctness that Reason has its beliefs as well as Unreason; and that when we accept reasonable beliefs as the basis of scientific investigation, we affirm their value for the conduct and government of life. The true amount of that value as a mainspring of our hopeful activities is estimated on another page. Meantime, we may remark from the three examples above discussed, how regularly an idea of Reason, analysed into its complementary factors, resumes a concrete form when we employ it as a maxim of practical life. The politician who separates progress from stability is really preparing his country for revolution. The man on whose heart the law is not written (like the necessity laid upon St. Paul[12]) is as yet imperfectly righteous. And so too, if in our Beliefs we lose sight of the gift that makes us human, we are likely to ring the changes between superstition, atheism, and effeminate sentimentality.

When, from results, we pass to the easiest method for attaining them, there seems but little to add to the extracts with which this note commenced. And if the object be clearly defined, the labour of the mental workshop need not be a severe discouragement. It is true that no man can take his Thought—the offspring of his inward Light—pull it to pieces, and reconstruct it, as he would deal with a thing of brass or iron. But every earnest ponderer may keep his prolific idea steadily in view, and hold conversations with himself respecting it. This is the well-known method by which Aristotle virtually obtains his conclusions before he finally proceeds to deduce them. From the same conception of Method, real thinking appears to Plato as a Dialogue without speech. And, doubtless, actual discussion between two or more living men would be the surest way of arriving at the goal of insight, provided those most uncommon of all endowments, common sense and common honesty, could be assured to the dialecticians.[13]

Thus much, then, may serve as an illustration of the task we are attempting, and of the means by which we hope to accomplish it. If achieved, it will form a contribution to the great work thus characterised by the Rector of Lincoln College from the University pulpit, as reported in the Oxford Undergraduates' Journal for October 26, 1871: "The Natural Theology of the last century is no longer found to be satisfactory in presence of the geological and biological sciences as they now stand. The answer that the sciences are wrong and the theologians are right does not admit of being discussed or refuted, for it is the answer of ignorance. The answer of the Catholic Church, which is to take refuge in its own authority, can only be practically tendered where there is an infallible living authority, as in the chair of S. Peter. It seems to be the business of the English Church especially—a Church which has never yet broken with reason or proscribed education—to fairly face these questions, to resume the Natural Theology of the past age, and to re-establish the synthesis of Science and Faith."