These denials and destructive criticisms of the mechanical theory, which are now continually cropping up, [pg 275] lead, as must be obvious, towards a deeper conception and interpretation of reality in general, and towards a religious conception in particular. Unquestionably the most important fact in connection with them is the fresh revelation of the depth of things and of appearance, the increased recognition that our knowledge is only leading us towards mystery.
It is indeed questionable whether anything more than this can be said in regard to the problem of life, whether we ought not to content ourselves with recognising the limits of our knowledge, and reject all positive statements that go beyond these limits. For the mechanists are undoubtedly right in this, that “entelechy,”“the idea of the whole,”“co-operation,”“guidance,”“psychical factors,” and the like, are only names for riddles, and do not in themselves constitute knowledge.106 The case here is somewhat similar to what we have already seen in connection with “antinomies.” They, too, give us no positive insight into the true nature of things, but they at any rate prove to us that we have not yet understood what that is. And, just as they show us that our knowledge of the world as it appears to us can never be complete, so here it appears that we come upon inexplicabilities even within the domain accessible to our knowledge. [pg 276] Thus the religious conception of the world gains something here as from the antinomies, namely, a fresh proof that the world which appears to us and can be comprehended by us, proclaims its true nature and depths, but does not reveal them. Perhaps there is still another gain. For in any case the vital processes and the marvels of evolution and development are examples of the way in which physical processes are constantly subject to a peculiar guidance, which certainly cannot be explained from themselves or in terms of mechanism, organisation, and the like. All attempts to demonstrate this in detail, all “explanations” in terms of dynamic co-operation, of dominants, of ideas, or anything else, are vague, and seem to go to pieces when we try to take firm hold of them. But the fact remains none the less.
May not this be a paradigm of the processes and development of the world at large, and even of evolution in the domain of history? Here, too, all ideas of guidance, of endeavour after an aim, &c., which philosophical study of history or religious intuition seems to find, make shipwreck against the fact that every attempt to demonstrate their nature, fails. All these theories of influx, concursus, and so on, whether transcendental or immanent factors be employed, immediately become wooden, and never admit of verification in detail. But precisely the same is true of the dominance of the “idea,” or of the “law [pg 277] of evolution,” or of the “potential of development” in every developing organism. Yet incomprehensible and undemonstrable in detail as this “dominance” is, and completely as it may be concealed behind the play of physical causes, it is there, none the less.
The aim of our study has been to define our attitude to naturalism, and to maintain in the teeth of naturalism the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world. This seemed to be cramped and menaced by those “reductions to simpler terms” which we have already discussed.
But one of these reductions, the most important of all, we have not yet encountered, and it remains to be dealt with now. In comparison with this one all others are relatively unimportant, and it is easy to understand how some have regarded the problem of the relations of the naturalistic and the religious outlook as beginning at this point, and have neglected everything below it. For we have now to consider the attempt of naturalism to “reduce” spirit itself to terms of nature, either to derive it from nature, or, when that is recognised as quite too confused and impossible, to make it subject to nature and her system of laws, or to similar laws, and thus to rob it of its freedom and independence, of its essential character as above nature and free from it, and to bring it down to the level of an accompanying [pg 279] shadow or a mere reverse side of nature. The aggressive naturalism which we have discussed has from very early times exercised itself on this point, and has instinctively and rightly felt that herein lies the kernel of the whole problem under dispute. It has for the most part concentrated its interest and its attacks upon the “immortality of the soul.” But while this was often the starting-point, the nature of soul, and spirit, and consciousness in general have been brought under discussion and subjected to attacks which sought to show how vague and questionable was the reality of spirit as contrasted with the palpable, solid and indubitable reality of the outer world. Prominence was given to the fact that the spiritual side of our nature is dependent on and conditioned by the body and bodily states, the external environment, experiences and impressions. These were often the sole, and always the chief subjects of the doctrine of the vulgar naturalism. But the same is true of the naturalism of the higher order, as we described it in Chapter II. In order to acquire definite guiding principles of investigation, it makes the attempt to find the true reality of phenomena in the mechanical, corporeal, physiological processes, and to take little or no account of the co-operation, the interpolation, the general efficiency of sensation, perception, thought, or will, and to treat them as though they were a shadow and accompaniment of reality, but not as an equivalent, much less a preponderating constituent of it. Out of these [pg 280] fundamental principles of investigation, and out of the opposition and doubt with which the spiritual is regarded, there is compounded the current mongrel naturalism, which, without precision in its ideas, and without any great clearness or logical consequence in its views, is thoroughly imbued with the notion that that only is truly real which we can see, hear, and touch—the solid objective world of matter and energy, and that “science” begins and ends with this. As for anything outside of or beyond this, it is at most a beautiful dream of fancy, with which it is quite safe to occupy oneself as long as one clearly understands that of course it is not true. “Nature” is the only indubitable reality, and mind is but a kind of lusus or luxus naturÆ, which accompanies it at some few places, like a peculiarly coloured aura or shadow, but which must, as far as reality is concerned, yield pre-eminence to “Nature” in every respect.
The religious conception is deeply and essentially antagonistic to all such attempts to range spirit, spiritual being, and the subjective world under “nature,”“matter,”“energy,” or whatever we may call what is opposed to mind and ranked above it in reality and value. The religious conception is made up essentially of a belief in spirit, its worth and pre-eminence. It does not even seek to compare the reality and origin of spirit with anything else whatever. For all its beliefs, the most sublime and the crudest alike, conceal within them the conviction that [pg 281] fundamentally spirit alone has truth and reality, and that everything else is derived from it. It is a somewhat pitiful mode of procedure to direct all apologetic endeavours towards the one relatively small question of “immortality,” thus following exactly the lines usually adopted by the aggressive exponents of naturalism, and thus allowing opponents to dictate the form of the questions and answers. It is quite certain that all religion which is in any way complete, includes within itself a belief in the everlastingness of our spiritual, personal nature, and its independence of the becoming or passing away of external things. But, on the one hand, this particular question can only be settled in connection with the whole problem, and, on the other hand, it is only a fraction of the much farther-reaching belief in the reality of spirit and its superiority to nature. The very being of religion depends upon this. That it may be able to take itself seriously and regard itself as true; that all deep and pious feelings, of humility and devotion, may be cherished as genuine and as founded in truth; that it behoves it to find and experience the noble and divine in the world's course, in history and in individual life; that the whole world of feeling with all its deep stirrings and mysteries is of all things the most real and true, and the most significant fact of existence—all these are features apart from which it is impossible to think of religion at all. But they all depend upon the reality, independence and absolute pre-eminence of [pg 282] spirit. Freedom and responsibility, duty, moral control and self-development, the valuation of life and our life-work according to our life's mission and ideal aims, even according to everlasting aims, and “sub specie Æterni,” the idea of the good, the true and the beautiful—all things apart from which religion cannot be thought of—all these depend upon spirit and its truth. And finally “God is Spirit”: religion cannot represent, or conceive, or possess its own highest good and supreme idea, except by thinking in terms of the highest analogies of what it knows in itself as spiritual being and reality. If spirit is not real and above all other realities; if it is derivable, subordinate and dependent, it is impossible to think of anything whatever to which the name of “God” can be given. And this is as true of the refined speculations of the pantheistic poetic religions, as of the idea of God in simple piety. The interest of religion as against the claims of naturalism includes all this. And it would be doing the cause of religion sorry service to extract from this whole some isolated question to which the mood of the time or traditional custom has given prominence. Our task must be to show that religion maintains its validity and freedom because of the truth and independence of spirit and its superiority to nature.
It is, of course, impossible to give an exhaustive treatment of this problem in a short study like this. The answer to this question would include the whole range of mental science with all its parts and branches. [pg 283] Mental science, from logic and epistemology up to and including the moral and Æsthetic sciences, proves by its very existence, and by the fact that it cannot be reduced to terms of natural science, that spirit can neither be derived from nor analysed into anything else. And it is only when we have mastered all this that we can say how far and how strongly knowledge and known realities corroborate religion and its great conclusions as to spirit and spiritual existence, how they reinforce it and admit its validity and freedom. Since this is so, all isolated and particular endeavours in this direction can only be a prelude or introduction, and a more or less arbitrary selection from the relevant material of facts and ideas. And nothing more than this is aimed at in the following pages.
