Studies in science and religion

Front matter

^t Cornell Winiiietsiits

Mata. B. W.

Hibvav^

Preface

Falaeolith from Abbeville, S'rahce, ^ The geological conditions under which the implements figured on this and the following page are found are very similar. For their relation to the glacial age see chapter vi.

PRKFACE.

IX

Palaeolith from Trenton, N.J. |

X PREFACE.

from Dr. Abbott's^ recent, valuable, and exhaustive work on Primitive Industry of the Native Races of the Northern Atlantic Seaboard of America (Geo. A. Bates, Salem, Mass., 1881) ; and to Professor Dana for the cut on page 342 from the American Journal of Science. Of the five maps, II. is original ; I. is adapted from a map by Hitchcock, in New Hampshire Geological Report, Vol. 3 ; III. from Cook's Geological Report of New Jersey for 1878 ; IV. from Lyell's Travels in America (First Series) ; and V. from N. H. Winchell's Fifth Annual Report on the Geology of Minnesota. Important additions from original information have been made to I. and III. ,

In addition to the cuts in the body of the chapter, two made specially for this work are here presented, facing each other that the reader may compare the rough stone implements found in New Jersey with those found in similar conditions in Europe. The one on page eight is natural size, and is No. 3034 of the Mortillet Collection from Abbeville, France. The one on page nine is shortened one inch in the cut, and is proportionally narrow, the original being 5| inches long, and 3i wide. This is No. 19723 in Dr. Abbott's col-

PREFACE. XI

lection from Trenton. Both these collections are in the Archaeological Museum in Cambridge, Mass., where these specimens can at any time be seen. No. 19723 is specially interesting, because Professor Putnam took it with his own hands out of Trenton gravel from behind a small boulder which was firmly embedded four feet below the surface of the soil (see Proceeduigs of the Boston Society of Natural History, Vol. xxi. p. 149).

For the sake of those who are not perfectly familiar with the order of the geologic formations, a table is here inserted.

TABLE OP SEDIMENTARY STKATA.

POST-TEETIARY ) „ „ „ „„„

„ ,, , > QUATEKNART or FLBISTOCBNB.

(Age of Man.) )

CADfOZOIC or TERTIARY S Mio^cTnb^'

(Age of Mammals.) < eocene.

MESOZOICor SECONDARY ^ CRETACEons. (Age of Reptiles.) } Jurassic.

PALEOZOIC or PRIMARY

(Age of Invertebrates and

Fishes.)

Triassic. ' Permian.

CARBONIFEROnS.

Devonian.

Silurian.

Cambrian.

. Lacrentian.

G. FREDERICK WRIGHT.

Obbblin, Ohio, April 1882.

Table Of Contents

CHAPTER L

THE GROUND OF CONFIDENCE IN INDUCTIVE REASONING.

The Problem of Induction stated, 1-7 ; Principles upon which it is solved, 7-15 ; Relation of the Solution to the Doctrine of Design in Nature, 15-24 ; Conclusion, 24-26. (pp. 1-26.)

Chapter I. The Gkound Of Comtdence In Ejductive Reasoning

1. Weiters on logic find it difl&cult to defend the deductive syllogism from the charge of baldly begging the question. It is certainly harder to prove the major premise than to prove the conclusion. For example, it would seem impossible for those who state their syllogisms merely in extension, to show that John is in the class mortal until they have proven that he is really mortal. If all men are mortal, how can it be known that John is a man before he dies ?

In the hands of Sir William Hamilton the reasoning of the deductive' syllogism is represented as merely an explication of the concept contained in the major premise. Upon this view the advance made through use of the syllogism is merely towards clearness of conception. In the a THE GEODND OP CONFIDENCE

case referred to the attribute of mortality is postulated as a part of the concept man ; and the sentence " all men are mortal " is made to mean " all men possess mortality," that is, mortality is a part of the definition of the word " man."

The difficulty in the reasoning is that we see the other attributes, while this of mortality remains yet to be realized. By what right does this element enter the concept " man " ? How is the unseen attribute of mortality so connected with those that are visible as necessarily to be joined to them ? This is no imaginary difficulty, but is a genuine paradox. Hamilton cuts the Gordian knot by maintaining that deductive logic relates only to the forms of truth, having no regard to the truth itself as involved in the major premise ; thus, in reality, throwing the whole burden of proof back into the field of induction, where the major premise itself must find its guarantee of truthfulness. Plainly this is an evasion rather than a solution of the mystery.

John Stuart Mill denies that there are any imperative, universal propositions such as are wont to figure in the major premise of deductive syllogisms, and squarely defends the doctrine that all productive reasoning is strictly inductive. With him the deductive syllogism is valuable only as a convenient register of past observations by which we may readily check rash conclusions

IN INDUCTIVE REABONING. 3

from too narrow an experience. The statement of the major premise leads us to go over the ground again, and assure ourselves of the exact force of our past experience. But the real reasoning, he maintains, is from particulars to particulars. From observing that John, Thomas, and Harry are mortal, we advance to the conclusion that James, who is still alive, is mortal also. Here is not an explication of the more clearly known from the less clearly known, but the addition of something entirely new.^ To ascertain the authority ■ for this something entirely new which is added in inductive reasoning is the object of our present inquiry.

Hamilton avers that we advance from the limited observation to the universal conclusion by adding to it the force of the natural presumption " that nature is uniform in her operations." ^ This , presumption of the uniformity of nature's operations would be his authority for translating the " some " of inductive reasoning into the " all " of the deductive formulary. Tliis, however, he would not call a logical conclusion, but merely a " philosophical presumption " ; and the real question still remains, By what authority do we make this philosophical presumption ? For, as Hamilton

1 See Mill's Logic, Book ii. chap. 3. Examination of HamiUbn, Vol. ii. p. 195 (Spencer's ed., Boston, 1866).

2 Hamilton's Metaphysics, pp. 72, 510; Logic, pp. 451, 453 (Boston, 1865).

4 THE GROUND OF CONFIDENCE

remarks, " In some cases the observation of a very few particulars or individual examples is sufficient to warrant an assertion in regard to the whole class ; in others the total judgment is hardly competent until our observation has gone

through each of its constituent parts For

example, it would require a far less induction to prove that all animals breathe than to prove that the mammalia, and the mammalia alone, have lateral lobes to the cerebellum."

Mill states the difficulty even more forcibly :i " When a chemist announces the existence and properties of a newly-discovered substance, if we confide in his accuracy, we feel assured that the conclusions he has arrived at will hold universally, although the induction be founded but. on a single instance Here, then, is a general law of

nature inferred without hesitation from a single instance — a universal proposition from a singular one. Now mark another case, and contrast it with this. Not all the instances which have been observed since the beginning of the world in support of the general proposition that all crows are black would be deemed a sufficient presumption of the truth of the proposition to outweigh the testimony of one unexceptionable witness who . should affirm that in some region of the earth not fully explored he had caught and examined a

1 Logic, Book iii. chap. 3.

crow, aud had found it to be gray. Why is a single instance in some cases sufficient for a complete induction, while in others myriads of concurring instances, without a single exception known or presumed, go such a very little way toward establishing a universal proposition ? Whoever can answer this question knows more of the philosophy of logic than the wisest of the ancients, and has solved the great problem of induction."

Hamilton attempts a solution by propounding a distinction between characters that are essential and characters that are unessential. Still he adds,^ " the difference of essential and accidental is one itself founded on induction, and varies according to the greater or less perfection to which this has been carried. In the progress of science, the lateral lobes of the cerebellum may appear to future physiologists as necessary a condition of the function of suckling their young as the organs of breathing appear to us of circulation and of life."

Hamilton's distinction of essential and accidental characters seems to involve the same theory that is presented by Professor H. N. Day ,2 in which all inductive reasoning is made to depend upon the relation of part to complementary part. From one part of a causal whole, all the parts are necessarily inferred. There seems, however, to be some doubt -whether causal is used by him with reference to "final cause" at all, or wholly with regard to secondary causes.

President Porter,^ advocating this distinction between essential and accidental characters, as giving validity to inductive reasoning, would determine what is essential and what accidental by a judicious appeal to the intuition of final causes. In his opinion, the decisive reason why we believe it to be a uniform law of nature that men's heads are situated above their shoulders on so much less evidence than we would believe it a uniform law of nature that birds having the anatomical structure of swans must always be white, is that the position of the head in the anatomical structure is an essential attribute, while the color of the skin is an unessential attribute. The position of men's heads in their anatomical structure is essential, because " otherwise they could not perform the functions of men with any convenience or success. Such a form would ofiend both the eye and the mind, and would be entirely incompatible with the ideal of beauty and convenience to which we assume nature would certainly conform." *' Considerations of convenience and of adaptation, and even of beauty and grace," he adds, " go far towards deciding the question. They give that weight and force to those ' single instances

1 Human Intellect, pp. 481, 482, et al.

which in some cases are sufl&cient for a complete induction,' and detract all force from ' the myriads of coiicurring instances ' in other directions." The assumption is here made that we are created in the image of God, and hence can positively interpret his ends and methods in creation. The other assumptions which he considers as underlying the inductive process are the reality, " first, of the distinction of substance and attribute ; second, of the causative relation ; third, of time and space ; fourth, of uniformity in the indications and operations of nature ; fifth, of the adaptation of the beings and powers of nature to certain ends." Upon these he asserts, " the entire process of induction rests, and upon their validity is founded its trustworthiness." The object of the present discussion is to consider more critically and fully the degree of validity belonging to these various assumptions, and their relation to the real basis of confidence in induction.

II. 1. In regard to the assumptions that there is a distinction between substance and attribute — being and phenomena — and, what amounts to the same thing in the end, the assumption that there is a relation of causality in the sense of secondary, or efficient, causality, we remark that these may be ruled out of the case, as tending to entangle the real problem with useless questions concerning ontology, or the nature of things in themselves.

8 THE GBOUND OP CONFIDENCE

We need not for the purposes of the present discussion concern ourselves with the question whether we can hy experience get back of the attributes of substance, the phenomena of being, or the effects of causes. So far as all confidence in inductive reasoning is concerned, we shall not be embarrassed by adopting the phrase of Mill, " permanent possibility of phenomena," as being all there is between us and God. The words " permanent possibility " would here cover all the ground of secondary causes needed for the argument.

2. The assumption with regard to the so-called law of uniformity in nature needs restatement.

What, for example, do writers mean when they say that belief in the uniformity of nature's operations is the ground of our confidence that the sun will rise to-morrow ? They certainly do not speak of an absolute uniformity, for no one denies that the movements which occasion the phenomena of sun-rising had a beginning. The nebular hypothesis agrees with others regarding that. Nor do they mean that these motions are necessarily to continue forever. This appears forcibly in the accotiut Mill gives of his belief in to-morrow's sun-rising.^ He believes that he discovers so many causes in operation to produce the rising of the sun to-morrow, that there could not bo coun-

^ Logic^ Book iii. chap. 19.

teracting causes enough in operation to prevent it in so short a time, without exhibiting signs of their presence to-day. Still he admits that, if asked whether the sun will rise a million years hence, he has no answer.

As it stands this answer of Mill is evidently fallacious. What ground has he for believing that causes sufl&cient to counteract the forces producing the phenomena of the sun-rising to-morrow, must exhibit themselves to-day, i.e. one day before their efifectuation ? Why does a million of years change the conditions of the problem ? Has he never heard of nitro-glycerine, which presents a constant and harmless set of phenomena under a great variety of circumstances, but only awaits some otherwise insignificant changes to complete the conditions necessary to bring its explosive properties into working order ? What grounds of confidence have we that there are not in the solar system forces analogous to this ? If it is answered : such phenomena are extremely rare in nature's large operations, we ask what is a long interval in eternal time, and what is a large operation ? Our experience, for good reasons, has not taught us the exact accompaniments of the explosion of a solar system ; but certainly there is no natural impossibility in its taking place without premonition. Nor is there any allowance made in this answer for the supposition that a personal ruler of the universe may be operating by such catastrophes as we have supposed, for the purpose of promoting the ultimate good of his creation. It will thus be seen that such a question as that immediately before us cannot be settled without discussing the question of the existence and discoverability of final causes in the constitution and laws of the physical creation. , Consider now another instance. It is not exaggeration to aflBrm that our present material civilization is built upon the belief, that iron will continue to exhibit its well-known attributes of hardness, tenacity, and non-explosiveness. There is, however, no natural absurdity in supposing that the earth may come into such different relations to the forces operating in the universe that iron shall lose some of these properties, and become utterly unreliable for the purposes to which it is now put. Indeed, the forces of nature are so multifarious, and their interactions so nearly infinite, that it is well nigh absurd for us to speak of the uniformity of its working in material things. Everything changes. There may be a conservation oi force, but there are infinite changes of form. This is especially noticeable in the organic world. Both the Darwinians and their opponents admit that nature is not uniform in her products, but works on a line of development. It has come to be a postulate in natural history that nature never exactly repeats herself. On any theory, when one species dies its place is somehow supplied by a new species. Absolute uniformity is not proved to be a law of nature anywhere in the physical world. To be valid our reasoning must take into consideration not merely the nature of the things themselves, but as well the nature of all things acting upon them and modifying them.

3. But as has just been remarked, we cannot avoid considering the question of our ability to discover final causes in the phenomena about us. As this subject is still obscured by an indefinite use of language, it will facilitate matters to draw what we consider to be the real distinction between deduction and induction. Deduction may be defined as the process by which man enlarges his knowledge of the things that have no dependence upon a personal Creator. Time, space, and the moral law in its highest sense are not objects of creation. They are necessary forms under which all creation proceeds. Pure mathematics and moral philosophy deal theoretically with these forms. These sciences are built up wholly and purely by deduction.

Inductive logic, on the other hand, deals with the particular facts occurring under the necessary forms with which deduction has to do — facts which depend upon the action of a personal Creator. In this realm no other than iuductive, or what is really the same thing, analogical, reasoning is possible. The problem of inductive reasoning, however, is not so forbidding as would appear at first glance, for we have a body of experimental facts to guide us toward a conclusion. We are not compelled, as some suppose, to evolve the whole conception of nature out of our own consciousness. We are not left to foretell from a priori knowledge what the Creator would do under the all-pervading conditions of infinite space, eternal time, and a perfect moral law.

In inductive reasoning we start with the facts of experience, and proceed upon the assumption (the ground of which we do not here discuss) that the Creator works in accordance with the highest wisdom for the highest good of being. In this conception the " good of being " is the absolute, final cause of the creation, both when considered as a whole and in its several parts. No statement less general than this meets all the conditions of the problem. No single and limited good can be assigned as the final cause of any contrivance in nature. The real final cause of any contrivance in nature is the sum of all the uses to which it is ever to be put. Any use to which a contrivance in nature is put, we may be sure formed a part of the Creator's purpose in causing it to be. An element in making up the final cause of the existence of a particular tree,

IN INBUCTIVE REASONING. 13

for example, is the good the birds get out of it in building their nests in its branches. But the birds would be very far from the truth were they to regard *that good as exhausting the purposes for which the tree exists. A part of the manifest design of the human form is to embody ideas of physical beauty, and to serve man's temporal pleasure and convenience. But it may be as difficult for us to tell beforehand just how groat a share of the final causes of the creation of our bodies consists of the good thus derived, as for the swallows to tell what portion of the final cause for building the barn consisted in the convenience it affords them for the purposes of nest-building. In a world where there is, without question, moral disorder we cannot tell, without going beyond the evident limit of human acquirements, how much of physical deformity and iigliness is necessary for discipline.

Taking the facts as we find them, it would be diflBcult for us to say in so plain a case apparently, for instance, as that of the final cause for the existence of our teeth, whether they were chiefly designed to assist the stomach in digestion, or for purposes of moral discipline through their liability to disease and decay. They certainly do not assist the stomach as much as they might.

Recurring to the idea that beauty and grace in the human form are the final cause of its being shaped as it is, we' would ask where is the ground of confidence that that element of beauty which undoubtedly enters as one factor in the sum of good composing the final cause of thfe creation of some individuals and some races may not in other circumstances be overborne by such moral considerations as require that ugliness of physical form and inconvenience of locomotion shall be the general result ? Who but he that knows all things shall say beforehand that a race of beings with their heads anywhere but on their shoulders might not be a necessary accompaniment of certain developments of sin — i.e. necessary for the highest good ? Who would be so bold as to say that nowhere, never, shall human beings be found in bodies conforming to the grotesque and horrid shapes that filled the imagination of Daiite ? Are there not, in fact, many deformities of disease which well nigh realize some of the strangest of his visions of bodily deformity in " Inferno " ?

And as matter of fact, other peculiarities of anatomical structure, like the appearance of rudimentary forms for which there can be no assignable use discovered, are as persistent in their continuance as is that of the relation of the head to the spinal column. So that practically we must fall back upon Mill's process of solving the paradox, viz. that the statement that men existed with heads beneath their shoulders would have to be established against all analogy ; while endence that what were crows in everything else but color, were sometimes gray instead of black, would have the antecedent improbability against it almost all removed by what is familiar in regard to variability of color in other birds and animals. In consenting to this statement of the case, however, we do not abandon the assumption of final cause, but only prepare the way for introducing it in another form.

III. Let us now give formal and fuller statement to the exact truth regarding the extent of our knowledge upon this subject.

The -assumptions which underlie all inductive reasoning are four in number :

1. The " good of being " is the absolute final cause of all things.

2. God's choice of the good of being and his wisdom in promoting it are the only actual and absolute uniformities.

We do not discuss here the genesis of these ideas ; that is remanded to natural theology and metaphysics proper.^ Nor do we propose to show how with these postulates all the diflSculties of the universe can be solved, for it would require an infinite mind to understand all that an infinite mind might do. It will be seen at once that with

1 For a brief discussion of this theme see the author's Logic of Christian Evidences. Part II. Chap. 1.

16 THE GROUND OF CONFIDENCE

these postulates alone a finite being could not do much either at ■world-making or at world-interpreting. On mere a priori grounds we cannot determine accurately the proximate ends that would conduce to the good of being ; and with our limited experience we can hope to determine proximate ends only about as accurately as we can guess how mauy grains of sand make a handful. That the creation is calculated to promote the good of being we may be sure. This involves only the two assumptions that the goodness of God designed it for that end ; and that his wisdom has not been amiss in its arrangements.

3. We assume that the universe is a " solidarity" — that nothing is made in vain — that every part is a complement to every other part. That is a corollary from the wisdom of God ; but is not exactly the same principle as what is usually styled the law of parsimony.

The simplest means for attaining certain ends cannot be determined till we know what the ends are. Men wliose business is transportation might insist that the law of parsimony demanded that all rivers should be straight and of gentle current, if, indeed, of any current at all. Whereas farmers and mill-owners would enlarge the conception of the law so as to have it include their individual ends. Thus the law of parsimony really can exist only in relation to the final cause as we have defined it above. The economy of contrivance can be estimated only from its fitness to promote the good of being in general. Hence, we cannot say that the law of parsimony characterizes any contrivance in its relation to any single or proximate end.

The difficulty in the way of our interpretation of nature lies in our limited capacity and experience. Were there another infinite mind, he could understand the meaning of the whole universe from an inspection of any part. To such a mind, " the part brings the whole with it, as absolutely as the whole brings the part."

The problem, then, in inductive reasoning is not merely to ascertain what appears in the narrow circle of our observation, but rather to determine the significance of what appears, — to divine what other phenomena they indicate as connected with them, and thus to enlarge our knowledge by reasoning upon the facts of experience. Properly we assume that nothing would have been just what it is except everything else had been just what it has been. Putting our experience and our a priori ideas together, our great business in life is to strike out before us a line of practical belief and action. The nature and difficulties of the problem will be illustrated by those that would meet a shipbuilder while inspecting a strange vessel in process of construction. He has this positive knowledge

18 THE GEOUN]> OP CONFIDENCE

to start with, that every portion of the vessel represents some idea of the builder ; but in interpreting that idea he labors under several very serious embarrassments. He may not know whether his own ideas of economy of construction are the same with those of the builder. That the ship is designed for the good of being he may be sure, but by just what methods it is designed to promote the good of being, whether by its fast-sailing properties or by its. strength, he cannot know, except from the indications given in the part before him. If he were examining the engine designed for a Monitor, its strength might suggest a fast-sailing steamer, or one designed for long ocean voyages. While a Monitor was being put in shape by Erioson, one who had no conception of the wants of modern warfa,re would have had insuperable difficulties in inferring the idea of it from an incomplete specimen. A Phoenician mariner might examine even a completed one without catching the idea at all. So it must be admitted that we are most incompetent judges of the- practical reasons for the creation of such crafts as the infinite mind has launched on eternity's sea. Still it would not do for us to deny ourselves all power of interpreting proximate ends. Build we should, and build we must. It is of infinite concern that we know what our foundation is, that we may determine how high it is safe to build.

IN INDUCTIVB REASONING. 19

. 4. The Veracity of God.

An appeal is sometimes made to the veracity of God, as if that gave the ground of confidence in inductive reasoning. When God has done a thing nine times we take this as a promise that he will do it the tenth time. In efifect this postulate is equivalent to that of the uniformity of nature. It should be noted, however, that God's veracity cannot be made manifest to us abpolutely, except with reference to the ultimate end of all things. For we cannot perfectly translate the language of an infinite being — we cannot fully understand any contrivance designed to secure an end so far off, and composed of so many items, as the general good of being. Hence it is, both in theory and in fact, that only by the most laborious processes do we sift out the things that seem in nature from the things that are. Great pains are taken in the universe, as Coleridge says, to " show how cheap dirt is." Numerous elaborate material contrivances seem to have been made for the purpose of being destroyed, so that thereby the moral creation might be forced to think of its own superlative worth. The gourd grew not so much to shelter Jonah's head as to point a moral when it was withered. The Paley line of argument respecting design in nature is especially faulty in the exaggerated importance it attaches to economy of contrivance for the accomplishment of mere material ends. God'a

20 THE GROUND OF CONFIDENCE

ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts' than our thought!. Moral ends are infinitely superior to material ends.

Let it not be supposed, however, that we are left in total ignorance of the ideas of God. If we were wc could not reason at all. In proportion as we come to understand the most imperative wants of our spiritual nature, we shall be able to discern the significance of the things that surround us. Hence, we may assume as a corollary from God's love that the exhibition of his veracity mil he of such hind as to give us opportunity to supply our wants — the wants lohich he has created. This follows also from his wisdom, which has made everything adapted to everything else.