LECTURE I

I

Those responsible for the selection of Gifford Lecturers have made it clear that, in their interpretation of Lord Gifford’s Trust, studies in a very wide range of subjects are relevant to the theme of Natural Religion. Gifford lectures have been devoted to such diverse themes as Comparative Religion, Primitive Mythologies, Vitalism, Psychology of Religious Experiences, the History of Religious Development at particular Epochs. And, in addition to these, we have had expounded to us systems of Metaphysics of more than one type, and drawing their inspiration from more than one school.

When I was honoured by an invitation to take a share in the perennial debate which centres round what Lord Gifford described as Natural Religion, I had to consider what kind of contribution I was least unfitted to make. Perhaps if this consideration had preceded my reply to the invitation, instead of following it, I might have declined the perilous honour. Neither in my own opinion nor in that of anybody else, am I qualified to contribute a special study of any of the scientific, psychological, anthropological, or historical problems which may throw light upon the central issue. This must of necessity be the work of specialists. No metaphysical system, again, am I in a position to provide;—for reasons which will appear in the sequel. A merely critical commentary upon the systems of other people might hardly meet either the expectations of my audience, or the wishes of those who appointed me to the post. Indeed, the enormous range of modern philosophic literature, and the divergent tendencies of modern philosophic thought would make the task, in any case, one of extreme difficulty. Few, indeed, are those who, by the width of their reading and the quickness of their intellectual sympathy, are qualified to survey the whole field of contemporary speculation; and, assuredly, I am not among them.

The vast amplitude of relevant material daily growing with the growth of knowledge, cannot but hamper the sincerest efforts of those who desire to take a comprehensive view of the great problems which Lord Gifford desired to solve. Most men are amateurs in all departments of activity but the one, be it scientific or practical, or artistic, to which they have devoted their lives. Bacon, indeed, with the magnificent audacity of youth, took all knowledge for his province. But he did so in the sixteenth century, not in the twentieth; and even Bacon did not escape the charge of being an amateur. No one, while human faculty remains unchanged, is likely to imitate his ambitions. More and more does the division and subdivision of labour become necessary for knowledge, as for industry. More and more have men to choose whether they shall be dabblers in many subjects or specialists in one. More and more does it become clear that, while each class has its characteristic defects, both are required in the republic of knowledge.

So far as specialists are concerned, this last proposition is self-evident. Specialists are a necessity. And it may well be that those who have successfully pressed forward the conquering forces of discovery along some narrow front, careless how the struggle towards enlightenment fared elsewhere, may be deemed by the historian to have been not only the happiest, but the most useful thinkers of their generation. Their achievements are definite. Their contributions to knowledge can be named and catalogued. The memory of them will remain when contemporary efforts to reach some general point of view will seem to posterity strangely ill-directed, worthless to all but the antiquarian explorers of half-forgotten speculation.

Yet such efforts can never be abandoned, nor can they be confined to philosophers. There are for all men moments when the need for some general point of view becomes insistent; when neither labour, nor care, nor pleasure, nor idleness, nor habit will stop a man from asking how he is to regard the universe of reality, how he is to think of it as a whole, how he is to think of his own relation to it.

Now I have no wish to overpraise these moments of reflection. They are not among the greatest. They do not of necessity involve strenuous action, or deep emotion, or concentrated thought. Often they are periods of relaxation rather than of tension, moods that pass and leave no trace. Yet it is not always so; and when the pressure of these ancient problems becomes oppressive, then those who, from taste or necessity, have lived only from hour to hour, seek aid from those who have had leisure and inclination to give them a more prolonged consideration.

Of these there is no lack; some speaking in the name of science, some in the name of religion, some in the name of philosophy. The founder of these lectures regarded philosophy, and (if I mistake not) philosophy in its most metaphysical aspect, as the surest guide to the truths of which he was in search. And certainly I am the last to criticise such a view. It is clearly the business of metaphysicians, if they have any business at all, to provide us with a universal system. They cannot lose themselves in concrete details, as may happen to men of science. They are neither aided, nor trammelled, as all working organisations, whether in Church or State, are necessarily aided and trammelled, by institutional traditions and practical necessities. They exist to supply answers to the very questions of which I have been speaking. Yet metaphysics does not appeal, and has never appealed, to the world at large. For one man who climbs to his chosen point of view by a metaphysical pathway, a thousand use some other road; and if we ask ourselves how many persons there are at this moment in existence whose views of the universe have been consciously modified by the great metaphysical systems (except in so far as these have been turned to account by theologians), we must admit that the number is insignificant.

Now, I do not think this is due to the fact, so often commented upon, both by the friends of metaphysics and its foes, that in this branch of inquiry there is little agreement among experts; that the labours of centuries have produced no accepted body of knowledge; that, while the separate sciences progress, metaphysics, which should justify them all, seems alone to change without advancing. Mankind is not so easily discouraged. New remedies are not less eagerly adopted because old remedies have so often failed. Few persons are prevented from thinking themselves right by the reflection that, if they be right, the rest of the world is wrong. And were metaphysical systems what men wanted, the disagreements among metaphysicians would no more destroy interest in metaphysics than the disagreements among theologians destroys interest in theology. The evil, if evil it be, lies deeper. It is not so much that mankind reject metaphysical systems, as that they omit the preliminary stage of considering them. Philosophy is now, perhaps has always been, an academic discipline which touches not our ordinary life. A general knowledge of the historic schools of thought may indeed be acquired by the young as part of their education; but it is commonly forgotten by the middle-aged; and, whether forgotten or remembered, is rarely treated as in any vital relation to the beliefs and disbeliefs which represent their working theories of life and death.

If you desire confirmation of this statement, consider how few men of science have shown the smallest interest in metaphysical speculation. Philosophers, with one or two notorious exceptions, have commonly had a fair amateur acquaintance with the science of their day. Kant, though I believe that his mechanics were not always beyond reproach, anticipated Laplace in one famous hypothesis. Descartes and Leibnitz would be immortalised as mathematicians if they had never touched philosophy, and as philosophers if they had never touched mathematics. In our own day Huxley not only contributed to biology, but wrote on philosophy. Yet, speaking generally, metaphysics has in modern times been treated by men of science with an indifference which is sometimes respectful, more commonly contemptuous, almost always complete.

Nor can we attribute this attitude of mind, whether on the part of scientific specialists or the general public, to absorption in merely material interests. There are some observers who would have us believe that the energies of Western civilisation are now1 entirely occupied in the double task of creating wealth and disputing over its distribution. I cannot think so; I doubt whether there has been for generations a deeper interest than at this moment in things spiritual—however different be its manifestations from those with which we are familiar in history. We must look elsewhere for an explanation of our problem. There must be other reasons why, to the world at large, those who study metaphysics seem to sit (as it were) far apart from their fellow-men, seeking wisdom by methods hard of comprehension, and gently quarrelling with each other in an unknown tongue.

Among these reasons must no doubt be reckoned the very technical character of much metaphysical exposition. Some of this could be avoided, much of it could not; and, in any case, philosophers might well ask why people should expect metaphysics—to say nothing of logic and psychology—to be easier of comprehension than the differential calculus or the electro-magnetic theory of light. Plainly, there is no reason: and, in so far as the thoughts to be expressed are difficult, and the language required to express them is unfamiliar, the evil admits of no remedy.

But there is something more to be said. It must, I think, be admitted that most men approach the difficulties of a scientific exposition far more hopefully than the difficulties of a metaphysical argument. They will take more trouble because they expect more result. But why? In part, I think, because so much metaphysical debate is not, or does not appear to be, addressed to the problems of which they feel the pinch. On the contrary, it confuses what to them seems plain; it raises doubts about what to them seems obvious; and, of the doubts which they do entertain, it provides no simple or convincing solution.

The fact is, of course, that the metaphysician wants to re-think the universe; the plain man does not. The metaphysician seeks for an inclusive system where all reality can be rationally housed. The plain man is less ambitious. He is content with the kind of knowledge he possesses about men and things—so far as it goes. Science has already told him much; each day it tells him more. And, within the clearing thus made for him in the tangled wilderness of the unknown, he feels at home. Here he can manage his own affairs; here he needs no philosophy to help him. If philosophy can speak to him about questions on which science has little to say, he will listen; provided always that the problems dealt with are interesting, and the treatment of them easily understood. He would like, for example, to hear about God, if there be a God, and his Soul, if he has a Soul. But he turns silently away from discussions on the One and the Many, on Subject and Object, on degrees of Reality, on the possibility of Error, on Space and Time, on Reason and Intuition, on the nature of Experience, on the logical characteristics of the Absolute. These may be very proper topics for metaphysicians, but clearly they are no topics for him.

Now I am far from saying that in these opinions the plain man is right. His speculative ambitions are small, and his tacit assumptions are many. What is familiar seems to him easy; what is unfamiliar seems to him useless. And he is provokingly unaware of the difficulties with which his common-sense doctrines are beset. Yet in spite of all this, he has my sympathy; and I propose, with due qualifications and explanations, to approach the great subject, described by the Trust as Natural Religion, from his—the plain man’s—point of view.

II

But what is the plain man’s point of view? What is the creed of common sense?

It has never been summed up in articles, nor fenced round with definitions. But in our ordinary moments we all hold it; and there should be no insuperable difficulty in coming to an agreement about certain of its characteristics which are relevant to the purposes of my immediate argument. One such characteristic is that its most important formulas represent beliefs which, whether true or false, whether proved or unproved, are at least inevitable. All men accept them in fact. Even those who criticise them in theory live by them in practice.

Now this category of “inevitableness” is not often met with in metaphysics; indeed, so far as I know, it is not met with at all. We hear of innate beliefs, a priori judgments, axioms, laws of thought, truths of reason, truths the opposite of which is “inconceivable”—and so forth. These various descriptions are all devised in the interests of epistemology, i.e. the theory of knowledge. They are intended to mark off classes of judgments or beliefs which possess peculiar validity. But none of these classes are identical with the class “inevitable.” There are inevitable beliefs which nobody would think of describing either as a priori or axiomatic. There are others of which the contradictory is perfectly conceivable; though no one who had other things to do would take the trouble to conceive it. An inevitable belief need not be self-evident, nor even, in the last analysis, self-consistent. It is enough that those who deem it in need of proof yet cannot prove it, and those who think it lacks coherence yet cannot harmonise it, believe it all the same.

But, are there such inevitable beliefs? There certainly are. We cannot, in obedience to any dialectical pressure, suppose the world to be emptied of persons who think, who feel, who will; or of things which are material, independent, extended, and enduring. We cannot doubt that such entities exist, nor that they act on one another, nor that they are in space or time. Neither can we doubt that, in the world thus pictured, there reigns an amount of stability and repetition, which suggests anticipations and retrospects—and sometimes justifies them.

These beliefs are beliefs about what are sometimes called “facts” and sometimes “phenomena”—neither term being either very convenient or very accurate. They are assumed in all sciences of nature, in all histories of the past, in all forecasts of the future, in all practice, in all theory, outside philosophy itself. But there are two other kinds of beliefs which must, I think, be also regarded as inevitable, of which I shall have to speak in the course of these lectures. They have unfortunately no generic names, and I must defer any description of them till future lectures. It is sufficient for the moment to say that one of them relates to the ends of action, and includes morals; while the other relates to objects of contemplative interest, among which is beauty. In some shape or other—perhaps in shapes which seem to us utterly immoral or disgusting—beliefs of both kinds are, so far as I can judge, entertained by all men. And though they have not the coercive force possessed by such beliefs as those in the independent existence of things and persons, they may be counted, for my purposes, among the inevitable.

Here, then, are three classes of belief which in some shape or other common sense holds, has always held, and cannot help holding. But evidently the shapes in which they may be held are many. They vary from age to age and from person to person. They are modified by education, by temperament, by the general condition of learning, by individual opportunities, and by social pressure. The common sense of the twentieth century A.D. is very different from the common sense of the twentieth century B.C. Yet, different though it be, it possesses unalterable similarities, and up to a certain point submits to the same classification.

If you desire an illustration, consider the case of matter, or of material things. All men believe in what is commonly called the “external world”—they believe in it with evidence, or without evidence, sometimes (like David Hume) in the teeth of evidence, in any case independently of evidence. But as to what this “external world” really is they differ profoundly. The expert of to-day differs from the expert of yesterday, both differ from the average man, the average man of the twentieth century differs from his predecessors, and they differ from each other according to the stage of general and scientific culture at which they have severally arrived.

III

But, though all this be granted, to what, you may be disposed to ask, does it lead? What has it got to do with Theism? It is not alleged that in any shape these inevitable beliefs are necessarily true; it is admitted that in most of the shapes in which men have held them they are actually false; it is not even suggested that a belief in God is to be counted among them. How, then, is Natural Theology advanced?

To answer this question would be to anticipate the nine lectures which are still to come. In the meanwhile, it may be enough to say that these beliefs of common sense supply the material on which I propose to work; that I shall treat them as a developing and improving system, of which the present phase is the most developed and the best. It is with this phase that I am chiefly concerned. If, for example, I make use of beliefs about the “external world” they will be (mainly) the beliefs of contemporary or recent science so far as I know them. If I make use of ethics or Æsthetics, it will be the ethics and Æsthetics of Western civilisation, not of Melanesia. I shall not add to them nor subtract from them. I shall not criticise nor question them. I shall accept them at their face values. But I shall ask what this acceptance implies. I shall ask how these values are to be maintained. And in particular I shall inquire whether the course of development, whose last known stages these beliefs represent, can be regarded as a merely naturalistic process without doing fatal damage to their credit.

The answer I shall give to this last question will be in the negative. And, if the only alternative to Naturalism be Theism, as from the common-sense standpoint it certainly is, then the effect of my argument, for those who accept it, will be to link up a belief in God with all that is, or seems, most assured in knowledge, all that is, or seems, most beautiful in art or nature, and all that is, or seems, most noble in morality.

At this point you will inevitably ask me to explain what sort of Deity He is whose existence I wish to establish. Men have thought of God in many ways. In what way is He thought of in these lectures?

The question is legitimate, though I am in some doubt how far you will regard my answer as satisfactory. I, of course, admit that the conception of God has taken many shapes in the long-drawn course of human development, some of them degraded, all of them inadequate. But this, or something like this, was inevitable on any theory of development; and the subject-matter of theology does not seem to have fared differently in this respect from the subject-matter (say) of physics or psychology. It is in all cases the later stages of the process which mainly concern us.

There is, however, something more to be said. The highest conceptions of God seem to approximate to one of two types, which, without prejudice, and merely for convenience, I may respectively call the religious and the metaphysical. The metaphysical conception emphasises His all-inclusive unity. The religious type emphasises His ethical personality. The metaphysical type tends to regard Him as the logical glue which holds multiplicity together and makes it intelligible. The religious type willingly turns away from such speculations about the Absolute, to love and worship a Spirit among spirits. Which of these types is contemplated in the argument that follows?

To this question I would reply by another. Are the two conceptions incompatible? Must we abandon the second if we accept the first? If so, it is the second of which I propose to speak. It is the God according to religion, and not the God according to metaphysics, whose being I wish to prove. But there are theologians and philosophers of repute who think the two conceptions can be harmonised. They hold that belief in a personal and transcendent God is consistent with the acceptance even of those forms of Absolute Idealism which their friends call logical and their critics call intellectual—in both cases, perhaps, without sufficient justification.

For myself, I must admit that I have never succeeded to my own satisfaction in fusing the two conceptions. Yet I do not profess to be content with their separation. The attribution of personality to God, though much truer, I think, than the denial of it, is manifestly inadequate to the full reality we are struggling to express. Some of the greatest religious teachers, Christian and non-Christian, that the world has seen have more or less explicitly held both, or at least have leaned towards neither exclusively. This is surely true, for example, of Plato the Greek philosopher, of Philo the platonising Jew, of St. Paul the Christian Apostle, of St. Augustine the patristic theologian. Nor (so far as I know), has religious mysticism ever felt the least difficulty in bridging the chasm by which, in the eyes of discursive reason, the two conceptions seem to be divided. This may well represent the highest wisdom. But, the argument of these lectures has a narrower scope: and when, in the course of them, I speak of God, I mean something other than an Identity wherein all differences vanish, or a Unity which includes but does not transcend the differences which it somehow holds in solution. I mean a God whom men can love, a God to whom men can pray, who takes sides, who has purposes and preferences, whose attributes, howsoever conceived, leave unimpaired the possibility of a personal relation between Himself and those whom He has created.

But is not this (it may be objected) the degradation of religion? What is a deity so conceived but the old tribal god, with his character improved and his local limitations swept away? If God be not the Absolute, can he be more than a magnified man? Can you hope to cleanse these religious conceptions from the mud in which they once so rankly flourished?

Now there are plenty of unsolved, and perhaps insoluble, difficulties involved in the religious, or indeed in any other, conception of God. But I hardly count among them the lowly origin and crime-stained history of religious development. On this point you will be able to form a better opinion as these lectures proceed. But, in the meanwhile, it may be observed that though no tragic accompaniments attach to the growth of a purely Absolutist philosophy, this by no means implies that metaphysics is better than religion. It is true that, for the sake of a purely logical Absolute, no man has been moved to do what a later and higher morality condemns—to placate it, for example, with bloody rites or obscene revels. But this is because, for the sake of such an Absolute, no man has ever yet been moved to do anything at all. A belief in it may be the conclusion of our intellectual labours; but hardly (as it seems to me) their motive or their reward.

IV

Let me now bring this introductory lecture to a close by adding to what, so far, must seem a bare and obscure suggestion of what my argument is, a warning hint as to what, at first sight, it might seem to be, but is not.

It is not an argument from common sense, as that phrase ought properly to be interpreted. It does not say to the opponents of Theism: “You accept current beliefs in science, in morality, in ethics. In some shape or other common sense has always accepted them, in some shape or other you cannot help accepting them. You do, in fact, probably accept them in the shape which finds favour with the ‘best thought of the age’ or what you conceive to be such. This is common sense. Why not do in the sphere of religion what you are admittedly doing in these other spheres of theory and practice? Would not this be common sense also? True, there is one important difference between the two cases. Theological beliefs are not inevitable—at least not at our present stage of culture. It is possible to be an atheist; and easy to be an agnostic. But inevitableness, in itself, is no ground of philosophic certitude. So this point may be ignored; and in all other respects the parallel seems to be complete. Some form of Theism has been prevalent from an immemorial past. It has strongly appealed to the needs and feelings of mankind. You do not pause before accepting beliefs about things and persons till philosophy has solved all the speculative doubts about them which philosophy itself has raised. Why, then, should you apply a standard of rationality to religion which, with general approval, you reject in the case of science?”

Now I do not suggest that this is bad advice. Quite the contrary. Neither is it necessarily bad argument. But it is not the argument of these lectures. Whatever be its intrinsic merits, it has, from my point of view, the defect of implying a theory of knowledge—a very modest and unassuming theory indeed; but still a theory. And it therefore comes into competition with all other theories of knowledge—Absolutist, Empirical, Pragmatic, Neo-Kantian, Neo-Hegelian, Realist, New Realist, to say nothing of Professor Mach’s philosophy of science, or M. Bergson’s world-famous speculations.

Now I preach no theory of knowledge; partly because I have none to preach, partly because, in these lectures, I desire to dogmatise as little as I can about fundamentals, and to be constructive rather than critical. If you ask me how it is possible to be constructive without first settling fundamentals, and how it is possible to settle fundamentals without first being critical, I reply that it is only possible if you start from premises which are practically accepted by both parties to the controversy, however little agreement there may be as to their speculative proof; and this is what I am trying to do.

Nor ought this procedure to be deemed unworthy of the attention of serious thinkers. It is provisional, no doubt; but I do not think it shallow. It can never give us a metaphysic of the universe; but the creators of such a metaphysic, when they come, will not find it stand in their way. Moreover, it takes account of facts as they are. A creed of some kind, religious or irreligious, is a vital necessity for all, not a speculative luxury for the few: and the practical creed of the few who speculate has a singular, and even suspicious, resemblance to that of the many who do not. While those rare individuals who have thought deeply about the theory of knowledge are profoundly divided as to why we should believe, they largely agree as to what we should believe with that vast multitude who, on the theory of knowledge, have never thought at all. Is not this a circumstance in itself most worthy of closer consideration? May it not guide us to some approximate solution of our present perplexities? The present lectures are an attempt to answer this question.

Is my argument, then, nothing better than an appeal from the competent to the incompetent, from the few to the many? By no means. Progress, though of small account unless it touch the many, gets its vital impetus always from the few. It is to the patient labours of those rare intelligences who possess originality, courage, subtlety, and sympathy that we must look for the gradual working out of a theory of the universe which shall as fully satisfy our reason and our conscience as the limitations of our faculties permit. But that consummation is not yet. And since, whether we be philosophers or not, we all act on a working body of root-beliefs about men and things: since we are also in general agreement as to the form in which those beliefs can best express the present state of knowledge, is it not legitimate to ask whether, on the basis thus provided, a still larger measure of practical harmony cannot in the meantime be reasonably established? It is true that Theism could never by such methods acquire a certitude either greater than, or independent of, the beliefs of science and common sense. But, could it acquire as much, theologians might well be content, though philosophers most rightly strove for more.

LECTURE II

I

The argument, then, which I propose to lay before you, though its material is provided by our common-sense beliefs, is not an argument from common sense. It does not extend to theology those uncritical methods which we accept (most of us without protest) in the sphere of our every-day activities. Is it, then, you may be tempted to ask, some form of the yet more familiar argument from design? Is it more than Paley and the Bridgwater treatises brought up to date? And, if so, has not the vanity of all such endeavours been demonstrated in advance: from the side of sceptical philosophy by Hume; from the side of idealist philosophy by Kant and his successors; from the side of empirical philosophy by the nineteenth-century agnostics; from the side of science by the theory of Natural Selection? Do not the very catch-words of the argument—“contrivance,” “design,” “adaptation,” exercised by the “Architect of the Universe” fill us with a certain weariness? Do they not represent the very dregs of stale apologetics; the outworn residue of half-forgotten controversies?

For my own part, I do not think the argument from contrivance bad, but I do think it very limited: limited in respect of its premises; limited also in respect of its conclusions. It may, perhaps, be worth dwelling on some of these limitations, if only to make my own position clearer by contrast.

In the first place, it must be noted that, from a consideration of inanimate nature alone it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to infer design. The mere existence of natural laws is not, as it seems to me, a sufficient basis for the argument; we require also that these laws should combine to subserve an end. Were the universe, for example, like a huge impervious reservoir of some simple gas, where nothing rested but nothing changed, where amid all the hurry and bustle of colliding atoms no new thing was ever born, nor any old thing ever perished, we might find in it admirable illustrations of natural law, but no hints, so far as I can see, of purpose or design. Nor is the case really mended if, instead of thus artificially simplifying inanimate nature, we consider it in all its concrete complexity. Even cosmic evolution of the Spencerian type will scarcely help us. Herbert Spencer, as we know, regarded the world-story as a continuous progress from the simple to the complex, in which the emergence of the living out of the not-living is treated as a harmonious episode in one vast evolutionary drama. The plot opens in the first chapter with diffused nebulÆ; it culminates in the last with the social organisation of man. Unfortunately its central episode, the transition from the not-living to the living, was never explained by the author of the “Synthetic Philosophy”; and the lamentable gap must be filled in by each disciple according to his personal predilections. For the moment, however, we are concerned only with one part of the story, that which deals with the evolution of inanimate nature. Can this be regarded as displaying design? I hardly think so. Granting, for the sake of argument, the validity of the Spencerian physics, granting that the material Universe exhibits this general trend from the simple to the complex, from a loose diffusion of nebulous matter to the balanced movements of suns and satellites, does this of itself give any hint of purpose? Only, I believe, if we confound evolution with elaboration and elaboration with improvement, and read into it some suggestion of progress borrowed from biology or ethics, sociology or religion.

But we have not the slightest right to do this. Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless uniformity? Why should this type of “evolution” have about it any suggestion of progress? And, if it has not, how can it indicate design?

Spencer himself was, of course, no advocate of “design” after the manner of Paley; and I only mention his cosmic speculations because their unavowed optimism—the optimism that is always apt to lurk in the word “evolution”—makes of them material peculiarly suitable for those who seek for marks of design in lifeless nature. But let us add two touches to Spencer’s picture, and see how the argument then stands.

I have already commented on the great omission which mars the continuity of his world-story—the omission, I mean, of any account of the transition from the not-living to the living. I shall have again to refer to it. But there are, besides this, two other omissions, one at the beginning of his narrative, and the other at the end, whose significance in relation to “design” should receive a passing comment.

As I understand the matter, an intelligence sufficiently endowed—let us call him Laplace’s calculator—might infer the past state of the material universe from the present by a process of rigorous deduction, on accepted physical principles. But, if he carried back his investigations into a period sufficiently remote, he would find a point at which certain fundamental processes reach a theoretical limit; and, though we must believe that this condition of things had antecedents, yet infinite powers of calculation, based upon infinite knowledge of the present, could not, it seems, tell us what they were.

So much for the past. Now for the future. Here our calculator would be more successful. His prophecy, unlike his history, would not break helplessly against any impassable barrier. He could range at will over the illimitable future. But the prospect, though unbounded, would not be exhilarating. No faintest tinge of optimism would colour his anticipations. Everything that happened, good or bad, would subtract something from the lessening store of useful energy, till a time arrived when nothing could happen any more, and the universe, frozen into eternal repose, would for ever be as if it were not.

Do our ideas of material evolution, thus corrected and supplemented, lend themselves easily to the argument from design? I hardly think so. It is true that in retrospect we can ideally reach a limit which no calculations, based upon physical laws, will permit us to overpass, and that where (what in old-fashioned language were called) “secondary causes” fail us, a First Cause may plausibly be invoked; but, if we gaze forward instead of backward, the physical course of nature does not merely fail to indicate design, it seems loudly to proclaim its absence. A world where all energy suffers inevitable degradation, considered by itself, appears atheistic on the face of it: nor can even life consciousness or thought redeem it, if they, too, are doomed to perish when further transformations of energy become impossible.

It is not, therefore, on any general survey of material nature that, in the present state of our knowledge, we can base the argument from “design.” Nor is this the foundation on which those who use the argument have chiefly built. They have always sought for proofs of contrivance rather among the living than among the dead. In the intricate adjustment of different parts of an organism to the interests of the whole; in the adaptation of that whole to its environment, they found the evidence they required. Arrangements which so irresistibly suggested purpose could not (they thought) be reasonably attributed to chance.

This argument possessed immense force in what was, comparatively speaking, the infancy of biology. Has that force been lessened by the growth of knowledge? Yes and No. If we consider organic adaptations and adjustments in themselves, scientific discovery has increased a thousand-fold our sense of their exquisite nicety and their amazing complexity. I take it as certain that, had no such theory as Natural Selection been devised, nothing would have persuaded mankind that the organic world came into being unguided by intelligence. Chance, whatever chance may mean, would never have been accepted as a solution. Agnosticism would have been scouted as stupidity.

All this has been changed, as every one knows, by Darwin. But what exactly was it that, in this connection, Darwin did? He is justly regarded as the greatest among the founders of the doctrine of organic evolution; but there is nothing in the mere idea of organic evolution which is incongruous with design. On the contrary, it almost suggests guidance, it has all the appearance of a plan. Why, then, has Natural Selection been supposed to shake teleology to its foundation?

The reason, of course, is that though the fact of Selection does not make it harder to believe in design, it makes it easier to believe in accident; and, as design and accident are the two mutually exclusive alternatives between which the argument from design requires us to choose, this comes to the same thing. Before Darwin’s great discovery those who denied the existence of a Contriver were hard put to it to explain the appearance of contrivance. Darwin, within certain limits and on certain suppositions, provided an explanation. He showed how the most complicated and purposeful organs, if only they were useful to the species, might gradually arise out of random variations, continuously weeded by an unthinking process of elimination. Assume the existence of living organisms, however simple, let them multiply enough and vary enough, let their variations be heritable, then, if sufficient time be granted, all the rest will follow. In these conditions, and out of this material, blind causation will adapt means to ends with a wealth of ingenuity which we not only cannot equal, but which we are barely beginning to comprehend.2

The theory of selection thus destroys much of the foundation on which, a hundred years ago, the argument from design was based. What does it leave untouched?

It leaves untouched all that can be inferred from the existence of the conditions which make organic evolution possible: matter which lives, multiplies, and varies; an environment which possesses the marvellously complex constitution required to make these processes possible. Selection may modify these conditions, but it cannot start them. It may modify the manner in which multiplication is secured; it may modify the lines which variations follow; it may enable organic species to adapt their powers to their environment, and (within narrow limits) their environment to their powers. But it cannot produce either the original environment or the original living matter. These must be due either to luck or to contrivance; and, if they be due to luck, the luck (we must own) is great. How great we cannot say. We cannot measure the improbability of a fortuitous arrangement of molecules producing not merely living matter, but living matter of the right kind, living matter on which selection can act. Here, indeed, Laplace’s calculator might conceivably help us. But suppose him to have done so, suppose him to have measured the odds against the accidental emergence of the desired brand of protoplasm, how are we to compare this probability with its assumed alternative—intelligent design? Here, I think, even Laplace’s calculator would fail us; for he is only at home in a material world governed by mechanical and physical laws. He has no principles which would enable him to make exhaustive inferences about a world in which other elements are included: and such a world is ours.

For a Greek philosopher to assert that the world is material was legitimate enough. He was in search of a universal principle; and if he found it in matter we need neither wonder nor criticise. After all, matter lies round us on every side; we are immersed in it; we are largely dependent on it. It may well seem but a small step further, and a very natural one, to treat it as the essence of all that is.

But, as it seems to me, we now know too much about matter to be materialists. The philosophical difficulties in the way of accepting a materialistic world-system are notorious—at least to philosophers. But I am not speaking of them. I am thinking of the scientific difficulties, those that cannot but suggest themselves when we consider the breach of continuity involved in the appearance of life, and still more obviously of feeling, at particular points in the long procession of material causes and effects. The very essence of the physical order of things is that it creates nothing new. Change is never more than a redistribution of that which never changes. But sensibility belongs to the world of consciousness, not to the world of matter. It is a new creation, of which physical equations can give no account; nay, rather, which falsifies such equations; which requires us to say that, before a certain date in the history of the universe, energy in one shape was converted into precisely the same amount of energy in another shape, and into nothing more; that matter in one position was transferred to another position without increase or diminution: but that, after this date, the transformations of energy and the movements of matter were sometimes accompanied by psychical “epiphenomena” which differ from them in kind, which are incommensurable with them in amount, and which no equations can represent.

Babbage, in order to show how occasional “miracles” might “naturally” break the continuity of the longest sequences, devised a machine which produced numbers according to a particular law for an indefinite period, then broke this uniformity by a single exception, and, thereafter, reverted for ever to its original principle of action. But Babbage’s results, however startling, depended wholly on known mathematical and mechanical laws. Their irregularity was only apparent. To Laplace’s calculator, they would have seemed not merely inevitable but obvious. It is quite otherwise with the appearance and disappearance of feeling, thought, will, consciousness in general, within the strictly determinal series of mechanical causes and effects. Here the anomaly is real: the breach of continuity inexplicable by any physical laws and indeed incompatible with them. I am not at this moment concerned either to deny or to assert that at the critical frontier where mind and matter meet, the even course of nature suffers violence. I am not suggesting, for example, that, if a given physiological state were exactly repeated, the psychical state formerly associated with it would not be repeated also. My point is different. It is that in a strictly determined physical system, depending on the laws of matter and energy alone, no room has been found, and no room can be found, for psychical states at all. They are novelties, whose intrusion into the material world cannot be denied, but whose presence and behaviour cannot be explained by the laws which that world obeys.

The difficulty is a very familiar one; and I cannot see that the progress either of science or philosophy has brought us nearer to its solution. But what (you may be disposed to ask) has it to do with the argument from design? At least this much:

Those who refuse to accept design do so because they think the world-story at least as intelligible without it as with it. This opinion is very commonly associated with a conception of the universe according to which the laws of matter and energy are sufficient to explain, not only all that is, but all that has been or that will be. If we thus know the sort of explanation which is sufficient to cover the facts, why (it is asked) should we travel further afield into the misty realms of theology or metaphysics?

But the explanation does not cover the facts, even when all has been conceded to the opponents of design that I, at least, am ready to concede. Grant that the inorganic world, considered in and for itself, does not suggest contrivance; grant that the contrivance which the organic world does undoubtedly suggest may in great part be counterfeit—there still remains a vast residue of fact quite recalcitrant to merely physical explanation. I will not argue whether in this residue we should or should not include life. It is enough that we must undoubtedly include feeling and all other phases of consciousness. We must include them, even if they be no more than the passive accompaniments of material change; still more must we include them if we speculatively accept (what I deem to be) the inevitable belief that they can, within limits, themselves initiate movement and guide energy. The choice, therefore, is not between two accounts of the universe, each of which may conceivably be sufficient. The mechanical account is not sufficient. It doubly fails to provide a satisfactory substitute for design. In the first place, it requires us to believe that the extraordinary combination of material conditions required for organic life is due to hazard. In the second place, it has to admit that these material conditions are insufficient, and have somehow to be supplemented. We must assume, that is to say, an infinitely improbable accident, and, when we have assumed it, we are still unprovided with an explanation. Nay, the case is even worse—for the laws by whose blind operation this infinitely improbable accident has been brought about are, by hypothesis, mechanical; and, though mechanical laws can account for rearrangements, they cannot account for creation; since, therefore, consciousness is more than rearrangement, its causes must be more than mechanical.

To me, then, it seems that the common-sense “argument from design” is still of value. But, if it carries us beyond mechanical materialism, it must be owned that it does not carry us very far towards a religious theology. It is inconsistent with Naturalism: it is inconsistent with Agnosticism. But its demands would be satisfied by the barest creed which acknowledged that the universe, or part of it, showed marks of intelligent purpose. And, though most persons willing to accept this impoverished form of Theism will certainly ask for more, this is not because they are swept forward by the inevitable logic of the argument, but because the argument has done something to clear a path which they were already anxious to pursue.

II

As the conclusions which I desire to establish are richer in contents than any which can be derived merely from marks of contrivance, so the method of arriving at them is essentially different. In the first place, it is based not upon considerations drawn from external nature, but from the mind and soul of man. Stress is laid, not upon contrivances, adjustments, and the happy adaptation of means to ends, but on the character of certain results attained. It is not an argument from design, but an argument from value. To emphasise the contrast, it might be called an argument to design. Value (we assert) is lost if design be absent. Value (you will ask) of what? Of our most valuable beliefs, (I answer) and of their associated emotions.

We are, no doubt, accustomed to connect the notion of value rather with things believed in, than with the beliefs of which they are the subjects. A fine symphony, an heroic deed, a good dinner, an assured livelihood, have admitted values. But what values can we attribute to beliefs and judgments, except is so far as they are aids and instruments for obtaining valuable objects?

This question, however, is based, as I think, upon an insufficient survey of the subject. We are in search of a world outlook. Creeds, therefore, are our concern. The inquiry with which these lectures are concerned is whether, among the beliefs which together constitute our general view of the universe, we should, or should not, include a belief in God. And to this question it is certainly relevant to inquire whether the elimination of such a belief might not involve a loss of value in other elements of our creed—a loss in which we are not prepared to acquiesce.

But how, you will ask, is this loss of value brought about? What is the connection between a belief in God and a belief concerning (say) beauty, or goodness, or natural law? Evidently the connection is not, in the ordinary sense, a logical one. Neither Æsthetic, nor ethic, nor scientific judgments can be ‘deduced’ from Theism; nor can Theism be ‘deduced’ from them. We are not dealing with premises and conclusions bound together by a formal chain of inference. How, then, is our procedure to be described?

In order to make this clear, I must call your attention to a double aspect possessed by all beliefs alike, whatever be the subject-matter with which they deal. All beliefs have a position, actually or potentially, in a cognitive series; all beliefs, again, have a position, known or unknown, in a causal series. All beliefs, in so far as they belong to the first kind of series, are elements in one or more collections of interdependent propositions. They are conclusions, or premises, or both. All beliefs, in so far as they belong to the second kind of series, are elements in the temporal succession of interdependent events. They are causes, or effects, or both.

It has, further, to be noted that whereas reasons may, and usually do, figure among the proximate causes of belief, and thus play a part in both kinds of series, it is always possible to trace back the causal series to a point where every trace of rationality vanishes; where we are left face to face with conditions of beliefs—social, physiological, and physical—which, considered in themselves, are quite a-logical in their character.

It is on this last point that I particularly desire to insist. We are all very familiar with the equivocal origin of most human creeds. To be sure, we observe it chiefly in the case of other people. In our own case, we dwell by preference on those causes of our beliefs which are also reasons. But in our detached studies of the opinions we do not share, we easily perceive how insufficient are the arguments officially urged on their behalf, and how often even these insufficient arguments have only a nominal connection with the convictions of which they claim the legal paternity. We must, however, go yet one step further. We must realise that, on any merely naturalistic hypothesis, the rational elements in the causal series lie always on the surface. Penetrate but a short way down, and they are found no more. You might as easily detect life in the minerals wherein plants are rooted, as reason in the physiological and physical changes to which the source of our most carefully reasoned beliefs must, in the last resort, be traced.

Consider, for example, an extreme case—say a proposition of Euclid. Here we have a belief logically inferred from well-assured premises—so, at least, we were accustomed to suppose before mathematicians became so very fastidious in the matter of proof. Can we not say that in this case the elements of the two series are in a sense identical, that all the causes for our belief are also reasons for it? Certainly we are not moved by prejudice, or affection, or authority. It is neither self-interest nor party passion that induces us to believe, for example, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Has our thought, then, in this case freed itself from the dominion of a-logical conditions? Is our belief the child of uncontaminated reason? I answer—No. Though the argument, qua argument, is doubtless independent of time, the argumentative process by which we are in fact convinced occurs in time, and, like all psychological processes, is somehow associated with physiological changes in the brain, These, again, are part of the general stream of physical happenings, which in themselves have nothing rational about them. Follow up this stream but a little further and every trace, not only of mind but of life, is completely lost; and we are left face to face with unthinking matter and its purposeless movements. Logical inference is thus no more than the reasoned termination of an unreasoning process. Scratch an argument, and you find a cause.

If this be admitted, the question at once arises whether we can treat the two kinds of series thus intimately connected as separable when we are estimating the values of the beliefs with which they are both associated. Is it permissible, is it even possible, to ignore the genesis of knowledge when we are considering its validity? Do not origins qualify values?

In many cases they notoriously do. A distinguished agnostic once observed that in these days Christianity was not refuted, it was explained. Doubtless the difference between the two operations was, in his view, a matter rather of form than of substance. That which was once explained needed, he thought, no further refutation. And certainly we are all made happy when a belief, which seems to us obviously absurd, is shown nevertheless to be natural in those who hold it.

But we must be careful. True beliefs are effects no less than false. In this respect magic and mathematics are on a level. Both demand scientific explanation; both are susceptible of it. Manifestly, then, we cannot admit that explanation may be treated as a kind of refutation. For, if so, the more successfully science carried out its explanatory task, the more completely would it shatter its own principles. This way lies universal scepticism. Thus would all intellectual values be utterly destroyed.

But we have not to do with intellectual values alone. There are beliefs (as I have already said) round which crystallise complex emotions, Æsthetic and ethic, which play no small part in our highest life. Without the beliefs the emotions would dwindle; without the emotions the beliefs would lose their worth. Though they do not imply each other in the world of logic, they are mutually necessary in the world of values. Here, of course, there is no question of a contrast between the logical and the causal series. Emotions are always effects; they are never inferences. In their case, therefore, the relation of value to origin is not obscured by considerations like those which must occupy us in the case of mere beliefs; and we have to face in a simpler and more direct form the central problem of these lectures: the problem of the relation which origin bears to value. It is with this branch of my subject as it is raised by Æsthetic and by ethic emotions that I shall be mainly occupied in the next two lectures. And as in the later part of my course I shall contend that it is destructive of rational values to root them in unreason, so I shall now contend that the emotional values associated with, and required by, our beliefs about beauty and virtue must have some more congruous source than the blind transformation of physical energy. If I am successful in my endeavour I shall have done something to show that “design” is demanded by all that we deem most valuable in life, by beauty, by morals, by scientific truth: and that it is design far deeper in purpose, far richer in significance, than any which could be inferred from the most ingenious and elaborate adjustments displayed by organic life.