I. _Mysticism and Logic_
1
II. _The Place of Science in a Liberal Education_
33
III. _A Free Man's Worship_
46
IV. _The Study of Mathematics_
58
V. _Mathematics and the Metaphysicians_
74
VI. _On Scientific Method in Philosophy_
97
VII. _The Ultimate Constituents of Matter_
125
VIII. _The Relation of Sense-data to Physics_
145
IX. _On the Notion of Cause_
180
X. _Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description_
209
MYSTICISM AND LOGIC AND OTHER ESSAYS
I
MYSTICISM AND LOGIC
Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means
of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and
conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men
towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science. Some men
have achieved greatness through one of these impulses alone, others
through the other alone: in Hume, for example, the scientific impulse
reigns quite unchecked, while in Blake a strong hostility to science
co-exists with profound mystic insight. But the greatest men who have
been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism:
the attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what
always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some
minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.
Before attempting an explicit characterisation of the scientific and
the mystical impulses, I will illustrate them by examples from two
philosophers whose greatness lies in the very intimate blending which
they achieved. The two philosophers I mean are Heraclitus and Plato.
Heraclitus, as every one knows, was a believer in universal flux: time
builds and destroys all things. From the few fragments that remain, it
is not easy to discover how he arrived at his opinions, but there are
some sayings that strongly suggest scientific observation as the
source.
"The things that can be seen, heard, and learned," he says, "are what
I prize the most." This is the language of the empiricist, to whom
observation is the sole guarantee of truth. "The sun is new every
day," is another fragment; and this opinion, in spite of its
paradoxical character, is obviously inspired by scientific reflection,
and no doubt seemed to him to obviate the difficulty of understanding
how the sun can work its way underground from west to east during the
night. Actual observation must also have suggested to him his central
doctrine, that Fire is the one permanent substance, of which all
visible things are passing phases. In combustion we see things change
utterly, while their flame and heat rise up into the air and vanish.
"This world, which is the same for all," he says, "no one of gods or
men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be, an
ever-living Fire, with measures kindling, and measures going out."
"The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the
sea is earth, half whirlwind."
This theory, though no longer one which science can accept, is
nevertheless scientific in spirit. Science, too, might have inspired
the famous saying to which Plato alludes: "You cannot step twice into
the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you." But
we find also another statement among the extant fragments: "We step
and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not."
The comparison of this statement, which is mystical, with the one
quoted by Plato, which is scientific, shows how intimately the two
tendencies are blended in the system of Heraclitus.
Mysticism is, in
essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in
regard to what is believed about the universe; and this kind of
feeling leads Heraclitus, on the basis of his science, to strangely
poignant sayings concerning life and the world, such as:
"Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child's."
It is poetic imagination, not science, which presents Time as despotic
lord of the world, with all the irresponsible frivolity of a child. It
is mysticism, too, which leads Heraclitus to assert the identity of
opposites: "Good and ill are one," he says; and again:
"To God all
things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and
some right."
Much of mysticism underlies the ethics of Heraclitus. It is true that
a scientific determinism alone might have inspired the statement:
"Man's character is his fate"; but only a mystic would have said:
"Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows"; and again:
"It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to
get, it purchases at the cost of soul"; and again:
"Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things
are steered through all things."[1]
Examples might be multiplied, but those that have been given are
enough to show the character of the man: the facts of science, as they
appeared to him, fed the flame in his soul, and in its light he saw
into the depths of the world by the reflection of his own dancing
swiftly penetrating fire. In such a nature we see the true union of
the mystic and the man of science--the highest eminence, as I think,
that it is possible to achieve in the world of thought.
In Plato, the same twofold impulse exists, though the mystic impulse
is distinctly the stronger of the two, and secures ultimate victory
whenever the conflict is sharp. His description of the cave is the
classical statement of belief in a knowledge and reality truer and
more real than that of the senses:
"Imagine[2] a number of men living in an underground cavernous
chamber, with an entrance open to the light, extending along the
entire length of the cavern, in which they have been confined, from
their childhood, with their legs and necks so shackled that they
are obliged to sit still and look straight forwards, because their
chains render it impossible for them to turn their heads round: and
imagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and behind them,
and an elevated roadway passing between the fire and the prisoners,
with a low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors
put up in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit
their wonders.
I have it, he replied.
Also figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this
wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other
animals, wrought in wood and stone and all kinds of materials,
together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and,
as you might expect, let some of the passers-by be talking, and
others silent.
You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.
They resemble us, I replied.
Now consider what would happen if the course of nature brought them
a release from their fetters, and a remedy for their foolishness,
in the following manner. Let us suppose that one of them has been
released, and compelled suddenly to stand up, and turn his neck
round and walk with open eyes towards the light; and let us suppose
that he goes through all these actions with pain, and that the
dazzling splendour renders him incapable of discerning those
objects of which he used formerly to see the shadows.
What answer
should you expect him to make, if some one were to tell him that in
those days he was watching foolish phantoms, but that now he is
somewhat nearer to reality, and is turned towards things more real,
and sees more correctly; above all, if he were to point out to him
the several objects that are passing by, and question him, and
compel him to answer what they are? Should you not expect him to be
puzzled, and to regard his old visions as truer than the objects
now forced upon his notice?
Yes, much truer....
Hence, I suppose, habit will be necessary to enable him to perceive
objects in that upper world. At first he will be most successful in
distinguishing shadows; then he will discern the reflections of men
and other things in water, and afterwards the realities; and after
this he will raise his eyes to encounter the light of the moon and
stars, finding it less difficult to study the heavenly bodies and
the heaven itself by night, than the sun and the sun's light by
day.
Doubtless.
Last of all, I imagine, he will be able to observe and contemplate
the nature of the sun, not as it _appears_ in water or on alien
ground, but as it is in itself in its own territory.
Of course.
His next step will be to draw the conclusion, that the sun is the
author of the seasons and the years, and the guardian of all things
in the visible world, and in a manner the cause of all those things
which he and his companions used to see.
Obviously, this will be his next step....
Now this imaginary case, my dear Glancon, you must apply in all its
parts to our former statements, by comparing the region which the
eye reveals to the prison house, and the light of the fire therein
to the power of the sun: and if, by the upward ascent and the
contemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of
the soul into the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of
my own surmises, since you desire to be told what they are; though,
indeed, God only knows whether they are correct. But, be that as it
may, the view which I take of the subject is to the following
effect. In the world of knowledge, the essential Form of Good is
the limit of our enquiries, and can barely be perceived; but, when
perceived, we cannot help concluding that it is in every case the
source of all that is bright and beautiful,--in the visible world
giving birth to light and its master, and in the intellectual world
dispensing, immediately and with full authority, truth and
reason;--and that whosoever would act wisely, either in private or
in public, must set this Form of Good before his eyes."
But in this passage, as throughout most of Plato's teaching, there is
an identification of the good with the truly real, which became
embodied in the philosophical tradition, and is still largely
operative in our own day. In thus allowing a legislative function to
the good, Plato produced a divorce between philosophy and science,
from which, in my opinion, both have suffered ever since and are still
suffering. The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay
them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he is to
achieve truth, must do the same. Ethical considerations can only
legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained: they can and
should appear as determining our feeling towards the truth, and our
manner of ordering our lives in view of the truth, but not as
themselves dictating what the truth is to be.
There are passages in Plato--among those which illustrate the
scientific side of his mind--where he seems clearly aware of this. The
most noteworthy is the one in which Socrates, as a young man, is
explaining the theory of ideas to Parmenides.
After Socrates has explained that there is an idea of the good, but
not of such things as hair and mud and dirt, Parmenides advises him
"not to despise even the meanest things," and this advice shows the
genuine scientific temper. It is with this impartial temper that the
mystic's apparent insight into a higher reality and a hidden good has
to be combined if philosophy is to realise its greatest possibilities.
And it is failure in this respect that has made so much of idealistic
philosophy thin, lifeless, and insubstantial. It is only in marriage
with the world that our ideals can bear fruit: divorced from it, they
remain barren. But marriage with the world is not to be achieved by an
ideal which shrinks from fact, or demands in advance that the world
shall conform to its desires.
Parmenides himself is the source of a peculiarly interesting strain
of mysticism which pervades Plato's thought--the mysticism which may
be called "logical" because it is embodied in theories on logic. This
form of mysticism, which appears, so far as the West is concerned, to
have originated with Parmenides, dominates the reasonings of all the
great mystical metaphysicians from his day to that of Hegel and his
modern disciples. Reality, he says, is uncreated, indestructible,
unchanging, indivisible; it is "immovable in the bonds of mighty
chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into being and
passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them
away." The fundamental principle of his inquiry is stated in a
sentence which would not be out of place in Hegel: "Thou canst not
know what is not--that is impossible--nor utter it; for it is the same
thing that can be thought and that can be." And again:
"It needs must
be that what can be thought and spoken of is; for it is possible for
it to be, and it is not possible for what is nothing to be." The
impossibility of change follows from this principle; for what is past
can be spoken of, and therefore, by the principle, still is.
Mystical philosophy, in all ages and in all parts of the world, is
characterised by certain beliefs which are illustrated by the
doctrines we have been considering.
There is, first, the belief in insight as against discursive analytic
knowledge: the belief in a way of wisdom, sudden, penetrating,
coercive, which is contrasted with the slow and fallible study of
outward appearance by a science relying wholly upon the senses. All
who are capable of absorption in an inward passion must have
experienced at times the strange feeling of unreality in common
objects, the loss of contact with daily things, in which the solidity
of the outer world is lost, and the soul seems, in utter loneliness,
to bring forth, out of its own depths, the mad dance of fantastic
phantoms which have hitherto appeared as independently real and
living. This is the negative side of the mystic's initiation: the
doubt concerning common knowledge, preparing the way for the reception
of what seems a higher wisdom. Many men to whom this negative
experience is familiar do not pass beyond it, but for the mystic it is
merely the gateway to an ampler world.
The mystic insight begins with the sense of a mystery unveiled, of a
hidden wisdom now suddenly become certain beyond the possibility of a
doubt. The sense of certainty and revelation comes earlier than any
definite belief. The definite beliefs at which mystics arrive are the
result of reflection upon the inarticulate experience gained in the
moment of insight. Often, beliefs which have no real connection with
this moment become subsequently attracted into the central nucleus;
thus in addition to the convictions which all mystics share, we find,
in many of them, other convictions of a more local and temporary
character, which no doubt become amalgamated with what was essentially
mystical in virtue of their subjective certainty. We may ignore such
inessential accretions, and confine ourselves to the beliefs which all
mystics share.
The first and most direct outcome of the moment of illumination is
belief in the possibility of a way of knowledge which may be called
revelation or insight or intuition, as contrasted with sense, reason,
and analysis, which are regarded as blind guides leading to the morass
of illusion. Closely connected with this belief is the conception of a
Reality behind the world of appearance and utterly different from it.
This Reality is regarded with an admiration often amounting to
worship; it is felt to be always and everywhere close at hand, thinly
veiled by the shows of sense, ready, for the receptive mind, to shine
in its glory even through the apparent folly and wickedness of Man.
The poet, the artist, and the lover are seekers after that glory: the
haunting beauty that they pursue is the faint reflection of its sun.
But the mystic lives in the full light of the vision: what others
dimly seek he knows, with a knowledge beside which all other knowledge
is ignorance.
The second characteristic of mysticism is its belief in unity, and its
refusal to admit opposition or division anywhere. We found Heraclitus
saying "good and ill are one"; and again he says, "the way up and the
way down is one and the same." The same attitude appears in the
simultaneous assertion of contradictory propositions, such as: "We
step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not." The
assertion of Parmenides, that reality is one and indivisible, comes
from the same impulse towards unity. In Plato, this impulse is less
prominent, being held in check by his theory of ideas; but it
reappears, so far as his logic permits, in the doctrine of the primacy
of the Good.
A third mark of almost all mystical metaphysics is the denial of the
reality of Time. This is an outcome of the denial of division; if all
is one, the distinction of past and future must be illusory. We have
seen this doctrine prominent in Parmenides; and among moderns it is
fundamental in the systems of Spinoza and Hegel.
The last of the doctrines of mysticism which we have to consider is
its belief that all evil is mere appearance, an illusion produced by
the divisions and oppositions of the analytic intellect.
Mysticism
does not maintain that such things as cruelty, for example, are good,
but it denies that they are real: they belong to that lower world of
phantoms from which we are to be liberated by the insight of the
vision. Sometimes--for example in Hegel, and at least verbally in
Spinoza--not only evil, but good also, is regarded as illusory, though
nevertheless the emotional attitude towards what is held to be Reality
is such as would naturally be associated with the belief that Reality
is good. What is, in all cases, ethically characteristic of mysticism
is absence of indignation or protest, acceptance with joy, disbelief
in the ultimate truth of the division into two hostile camps, the good
and the bad. This attitude is a direct outcome of the nature of the
mystical experience: with its sense of unity is associated a feeling
of infinite peace. Indeed it may be suspected that the feeling of
peace produces, as feelings do in dreams, the whole system of
associated beliefs which make up the body of mystic doctrine. But this
is a difficult question, and one on which it cannot be hoped that
mankind will reach agreement.
Four questions thus arise in considering the truth or falsehood of
mysticism, namely:
I. Are there two ways of knowing, which may be called respectively
reason and intuition? And if so, is either to be preferred to the
other?
II. Is all plurality and division illusory?
III. Is time unreal?
IV. What kind of reality belongs to good and evil?
On all four of these questions, while fully developed mysticism seems
to me mistaken, I yet believe that, by sufficient restraint, there is
an element of wisdom to be learned from the mystical way of feeling,
which does not seem to be attainable in any other manner. If this is
the truth, mysticism is to be commended as an attitude towards life,
not as a creed about the world. The meta-physical creed, I shall
maintain, is a mistaken outcome of the emotion, although this emotion,
as colouring and informing all other thoughts and feelings, is the
inspirer of whatever is best in Man. Even the cautious and patient
investigation of truth by science, which seems the very antithesis of
the mystic's swift certainty, may be fostered and nourished by that
very spirit of reverence in which mysticism lives and moves.
I. REASON AND INTUITION[3]
Of the reality or unreality of the mystic's world I know nothing. I
have no wish to deny it, nor even to declare that the insight which
reveals it is not a genuine insight. What I do wish to maintain--and
it is here that the scientific attitude becomes imperative--is that
insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of
truth, in spite of the fact that much of the most important truth is
first suggested by its means. It is common to speak of an opposition
between instinct and reason; in the eighteenth century, the opposition
was drawn in favour of reason, but under the influence of Rousseau and
the romantic movement instinct was given the preference, first by
those who rebelled against artificial forms of government and thought,
and then, as the purely rationalistic defence of traditional theology
became increasingly difficult, by all who felt in science a menace to
creeds which they associated with a spiritual outlook on life and the
world. Bergson, under the name of "intuition," has raised instinct to
the position of sole arbiter of metaphysical truth. But in fact the
opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory.
Instinct,
intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which
subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it
is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other
beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling
force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical
realm, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
Where instinct and reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single
beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no
degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment.
Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error.
Those in whom
reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards
themselves, though all admit it in regard to others.
Where instinct is
least liable to error is in practical matters as to which right
judgment is a help to survival: fr