Ideals of science & faith

Preface

For several centuries Religion and Science have been much at enmity — sometimes in open warfare, sometimes in covert hostilities. Round these two great interests social alliances, temporal and spiritual, have grouped themselves. Religion has received a wavering and intermittent support from Philosophy, and has enjoyed an alliance- — bickering yet abiding — with the Governing Classes, Military, Political, and Juristic. Science has been in alliance — always unorganised and generally unconscious — with Industry; from the first with the Mechanical Crafts, and of late increasingly with the great vital activities of Agriculture, Health Maintenance, and Education. ~

A new grouping is now beginning to appear. That the feud between Religion and Science will wholly disappear is perhaps more than can be hoped for under present circumstances; but on all sides is a growing recognition that the ideals common to both Religion and Science are not only numerous, but are indeed the very ideals for which the nobler

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spirits on both sides care most. Hence it is that men of science and theologians alike evince an increasing desire for mutual toleration, sometimes even for some measure of co-operation, if not positive alliance. That is a position from which the deepest and most practical minds on both sides have never been far removed.

Thus at the present time not a few leaders of thought formerly ranged in opposing camps are beginning to forecast the possibilities of such new groupings, even to suggest co-operative campaigns on behalf of the ideals common to both the theological and scientific thought of to-day.

As a recent notable example of the approach toward religious problems from the side of physical science the Editor has to express his indebtedness for the permission to reprint Sir Oliver Lodge's papers in the Hibbert Journal. The HON. Bertrand Russell's paper in this volume is reprinted by kind permission of the Editor of the Independent Review.

The further definition of the ideals of the sciences, their correspondence with those of faith, their application to life, are the questions which the Editor of this volume has proposed to the remaining writers, whom he has invited as representatives of different standpoints. Each writer, of course, remains exclu-

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sively responsible for his own contribution. Their answers complete the present volume of papers.

My warmest thanks are due to each writer. The compilation of this collection would never have been attempted without the concurrence and advice of my friends, Professor Patrick Geddes, Mr. Victor V. Branford, and Rev. Ronald Bayne.

J. E. HAND.

St. Mary's, Bryanston Square,

London, W.

March 7, 1904.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

Introduction xi

II

Leaving the general, and coming to details, let us look at a few of the simpler religious doctrines, such as are still, I suppose, popularly held in this country. The creed of the ancient Israelites was well, or at least strikingly, summarised by Mr. Huxley in one of his Nineteenth Century articles (March 1886). He there says: "The chief articles of the theological creed of the old Israelites, which are made known to us by the direct evidence of the ancient records, . . . are as remarkable for that which they contain as for that which is absent from them. They reveal a firm conviction that, when death takes place, a something termed a soul, or spirit, leaves the body and continues to exist in Sheol for a period of indefinite duration, even though there is no proof of any belief in absolute immortality ; that such spirits can return to earth to possess and inspire the living; that they are in appearance and in disposition likenesses of the men to whom they belonged, but that, as spirits, they have larger powers and are freer from physical limitations ; that they thus form one of a number of kinds of spiritual existence known as Elohim, of whom Jahveh, the national God of Israel, is one ; that, consistently with this view, Jahveh was conceived as a sort of spirit, human in aspect and in sense, and with many human passions, but with immensely greater intelligence and power than any other Elohim, whether human or divine."

The mere calm statement of so preposterous a creed is plainly held by Mr. Huxley to be a sufficient refutation.

But we need not limit ourselves to the Old Testament, where doubtless some supposed facts may be abandoned without detriment, as belonging to the legendary or the obscure ; we may be constrained by science to go further, and to admit that even fundamental Christian doctrines, such as the Incarnation or non-natural birth, and the Resurrection or non-natural disappearance of the body from the tomb, have, from the scientific point of view, no reasonable likelihood or possibility whatever. It may be, and often has been, asserted that they appear as childish fancies, appropriate to the infancy of civilisation and a pre-scientific credulous age ; readily intelligible to the historian and student of folk-lore, but not otherwise interesting. The same has been said of every variety of miracle, and not merely of such dogmas as the fall of man from an original state of perfection, of the comparatively recent extirpation of the human race down to a single family, and so on.

The whole historical record, wherever it exceeds the commonplace, every act attributed directly to the Deity, whether it be sending fire from heaven, or writing upon stone, or leadings by cloud and fire, or conversations, whether during trance or otherwise, is utterly contrary to the spirit of modern science (let it be clearly remembered how I have defined the phrase " modern science " above) ; and when considered prosaically, much of the record is summarily discredited, even I think by many theologians now. Nor is this acquiescence in negation confined to the leaders. The general religious world has agreed apparently to throw overboard Jonah and the whale, Joshua and the sun, the three Children and the fiery furnace ; it does not seem to take anything in the book of Judges or the book of Daniel very seriously; and though it still clings pathetically to the book of Genesis, it is willing to relegate to poetry, i.e. to imagination or fiction, such legends as the creation of the world, Adam and his rib, Eve and the apple, Noah and his ark, language and the tower of Babel, Elijah and the chariot of fire, and many others. The stock reconciling phrase, with regard to the legend of a six-days' creation, or the Levitican mistakes in Natural History, after the strained " day-period " mode of interpretation had been exploded in " Essays and Reviews," used to be, that the Bible was never meant to teach science ; and so, whenever it touches upon any branch of natural knowledge, it is to be interpreted in a friendly spirit, i.e. it is to be glossed over, and in point of fact disbelieved. But a book which deals with so prodigious a subject as the origin of all things, and the history

IS of the human race, cannot avoid a treatment of natural facts which is really a teaching of science, whether such teaching is meant or not; and indeed the whole idea involved in the word " meant " is repugnant to the conceptions of modern science, which has ousted teleology from its arena.

Moreover, if religious people go as far as this, where are they to stop? What, then, do they propose to do with the turning of water into wine, the ejection of devils, the cursing of the fig-tree, the feeding of five thousand, the raising of Lazarus? Or, to go deeper still, what do they make of the scene at the Baptism, of the Transfiguration, of the signs at the Crucifixion, the appearances after Death, the Ascension into heaven ? May it not be supposed that neither orthodox religion nor orthodox science has said its last word on these questions?

But it may be urged that even these are but details compared with the one transcendent doctrine of the existence of an omnipotent and omniscient benevolent personal God ; the fundamental tenet of nearly all religions. But so far as science has anything to say on this subject, and it has not very much, its tendency is to throw mistrust, not upon the existence of Deity itself, but upon any adjectives applied to the Deity. " Infinite " and " eternal " may pass, and " omnipotent" and " omniscient" may reluctantly be permitted to go with them, — these infinite adjectives relieve the mind, without expressing more than is implicitly contained in the substantive God. But concerning " personal" and " benevolent" and other anthropomorphic adjectives, science is exceedingly dubious ; nor is omnipotence itself very easily reconcilable with the actual condition of things as we now experience them. The present state of the world is very far short of perfection. Why are things still imperfect if controlled by a benevolent omnipotence? Why, indeed, does evil or pain at all exist? All very ancient puzzles these, but still alive ; and the solution to them so far attempted by science lies in the word Evolution, a word in itself not readily applicable to the work of a God.

Taught by science, we learn that there has been no fall of man, there has been a rise. Through an ape-like ancestry, back through a tadpole and fishlike ancestry, away to the early beginnings of life, the origin of man is being traced by science. There was no specific creation of the world such as was conceived appropriate to a geocentric conception of the universe ; the world is a condensation of primeval gas, a congeries of stones and meteors fallen together ; still falling together, indeed, in a larger neighbouring mass (the Sun). By the energy of the still persistent falling together, the ether near us is kept constantly agitated, and to the energy of this ethereal agitation all the manifold activity of our planet is due. The whole system has evolved itself from mere moving matter in accordance with the law of gravitation, and there is no certain sign of either beginning or end. Solar systems can by collision or otherwise resolve themselves into nebulae, and nebulae left to themselves can condense into solar systems, — everywhere in the spaces around us we see a part of the process going on; the formation of solar systems from whirling nebulae lies before our eyes, if not in the visible sky itself, yet in the magnified photographs taken of that sky. Even though the whole process of evolution is not completely understood as yet, does anyone doubt that it will become more thoroughly understood in time? and if they do doubt it, would they hope effectively to bolster up religion by such a doubt? It is difficult to resist yielding to the bent and trend of " modern science," as well as to its proved conclusions. Its bent and trend may have been wrongly estimated by its present disciples : a large tract of knowledge may have been omitted from its ken, which when included will revolutionise some of their speculative opinions ; but, however this may be, there can be no doubt about the tendency of orthodox science at the present time. It suggests to us that the Cosmos is self-explanatory, self-contained, and self-maintaining. From everlasting to everlasting the material universe rolls on, evolving worlds and disintegrating them, evolving vegetable beauty and destroying it, evolving intelligent animal life, developing that into a self-conscious human race, and then plunging it once more into annihilation.

" Thou makest thine appeal to me ! I bring to life, I bring to death, The spirit does but mean the breath, I know no more. ..."

But at this point the theologian happily and eagerly interposes, with a crucial inquiry of science about this same bringing to life. Granted that the blaze of the sun accounts for winds and waves, and hail, and rain, and rivers, and all the myriad activities of the earth, does it account for life? Has it accounted for the life of the lowest animal, the tiniest plant, the simplest cell, hardly visible but self-moving, in the field of a microscope?

And science, in chagrin, has to confess that hitherto in this direction it has failed. It has not yet witnessed the origin of the smallest trace of life from dead matter : all life, so far as has been watched, proceeds from antecedent life. Given the life of a single cell, science would esteem itself competent ultimately to trace its evolution into all the myriad existences of plant and animal and man ; but the origin of protoplasmic activity itself as yet eludes it. But will the Theologian triumph in the admission? will he therein detect at last the dam which shall stem the torrent of scepticism? will he base an argument for the direct action of the Deity in mundane affairs on that failure, and entrench himself behind that present incompetence of labouring men? If so, he takes his stand on what may prove a yielding foundation. The present powerlessness of science to explain or originate life is a convenient weapon wherewith to fell a pseudo-scientific antagonist who is dogmatising too loudly out of bounds ; but it is not perfectly secure as a permanent support. In an early stage of civilisation it may have been supposed that flame only proceeded from antecedent flame, but the tinder-box and the lucifer-match were invented nevertheless. Theologians have probably learnt by this time that their central tenets should not depend, even partially, upon nescience, or upon negations of any kind, lest the placid progress of positive knowledge should once more undermine their position, and another discovery have to be scouted with alarmed and violent anathemas.

Any year, or any century, the physical aspect of the nature of life may become more intelligible, and may perhaps resolve itself into an action of already known forces acting on the very complex molecule of protoplasm. Already in Germany have inorganic and artificial substances been found to crawl about on glass slides under the action of surface-tension or capillarity, with an appearance which is said to have deceived even a biologist into hastily pronouncing them living amoebae. Life in its ultimate element and on its material side is such a simple thing, it is but a slight extension of known chemical and physical forces ; the cell must be able to respond to stimuli, to assimilate outside materials, and to subdivide. I apprehend that there is not a biologist but believes (perhaps quite erroneously) that sooner or later the discovery will be made, and that a cell having all the essential functions of life will be constructed out of inorganic material. Seventy years ago organic chemistry was the chemistry of vital products, of compounds that could not be made artificially by man. Now there is no such chemistry ; the name persists, but its meaning has changed.

It may be conceivably argued that after all we are alive, and that if we ever learn how to make animals or plants, they will take their origin from life, just as when we make new species by artificial selection we exercise a control over the forces of nature which in some small way may be akin to the methods of the divine control. And this may possibly be a theme capable of enlargement.

But meanwhile what do we mean by such a phrase as divine control? for, after all, the controversy between religion and science is not so much a controversy as to the being or not being of a God. Science might be willing to concede this as a vague and ineffective hypothesis, but there would still remain a question as to His mode of action, a controversy as to the method of the divine government of the world.

And this is the standing controversy, by no means really dead at the present day. Is the world controlled by a living Person, accessible to prayer, influenced by love, able and willing to foresee, to intervene, to guide, and wistfully to lead without compulsion spirits in some sort akin to Himself?

Or is the world a self-generated, self-controlling machine, complete and fully organised for movement, either up or down, for progress or degeneration, according to the chances of heredity and the influence of environment? Has the world, as it were, secreted or arrived at life and mind and consciousness by the play of natural forces acting on the complexities of highly developed molecular aggregates ; at first lifecells, ultimately brain-cells ; and these not the organ or instrument, but the very reality and essence of life and of mind?

If there be any other orders of conscious existence in the universe, as probably there are, are they also locked up on their several planets, without the power of communicating or helping or informing, and all working out their own destiny in permanent isolation? Everything in such a world would be not only apparently but really a definite sequence of cause and effect, just as it seems to us here; and prayer, to be effectual in such a world, must be not what theologians mean by prayer, but must be either simple meditation for acquiescence in the inevitable, or else a petition addressed to some other of the dwellers in our time and place, that they may be induced by benevolent acts to ease some of the burdens to which their petitioners are liable.

We thus return to our original thesis, that the root question or outstanding controversy between science and faith rests upon two distinct conceptions of the universe : — the one, that of a self-contained and self-sufficient universe, with no outlook into or links with anything beyond, uninfluenced by any life or mind except such as is connected with a visible and tangible material body ; and the other conception, that of a universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through and through with a Divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds, acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and love behind the law: a universe by no means self-sufficient or self-contained, but with feelers at every pore groping into another supersensuous order of existence, where reign laws hitherto unimagined by science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by which the material universe is governed.

According to the one conception, faith is childish and prayer absurd ; the only individual immortality lies in the memory of descendants ; kind actions and cheerful acquiescence in fate are the highest religious attributes possible ; and the future of the human race is determined by the law of gravitation and the circumstances of space.

According to the other conception, prayer may be mighty to the removal of mountains, and by faith we may feel ourselves citizens of an eternal and glorious cosmogony of mutual help and co-operation, advancing from lowly stages to even higher states of happy activity, world without end, and may catch in anticipation some glimpses of that " one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves."

The whole controversy hinges, in one sense, on a practical pivot — the efficacy of prayer. Is prayer to hypothetical and supersensuous beings as senseless and useless as it is unscientific? or does prayer pierce through the husk and apparent covering of the sensuous universe, and reach something living, loving, and helpful beyond?

And in another sense the controversy turns upon a question of fact. Do we live in a universe permeated with life and mind : life and mind independent of matter and unlimited in individual duration? Or is life limited, in space to the surface of masses of matter, and in time to the duration of the material envelope essential to its manifestation?

The answer is given in one way by orthodox modern science, and in another way by Religion of all times ; and until these opposite answers are made consistent, the reconciliation between Science and Faith is incomplete. /

THE RECONCILIATION III

It may or may not have been observed, by anyone who has read the earlier portions of this paper, — but in so far as it has been missed, the whole meaning of the paper has been misconceived, — that when speaking of the atmosphere or the conclusions, the doctrines or the tendency of " science," I was careful always to explain that I meant orthodox or present-day science : meaning not the comprehensive grasp of a Newton, but science as now interpreted by its recognised official exponents, by the average Fellow of the Royal Society for instance ; just as by " faith " I intended not the ecstatic insight aroused in a seer by some momentary revelation, but the ordinary workaday belief of the average enlightened theologian. And my thesis was that the attitudes of mind appropriate to these two classes were at present fundamentally diverse; that there was still an outstanding controversy, or ground for controversy, between science and faith, although active fighting has been suspended, and although all bitterness has passed from the conflict, let us hope never to return. But the diversity remains, and for the present it is better so, if it has not achieved its work. Eliminating the bitterness, the conflict has been useful, and it would be far from well even to attempt to bring it to a close prematurely. But yet there must be an end to it some time ; reconciliation is bound to lie somewhere in the future ; no two parts or aspects of the

Universe can permanently and really be discordant. The only question is where the meeting-place may be; whether it is nearest to the orthodox faith or to the orthodox science of the present day. This question is the subject of the present or concluding portion of my article. Let me, greatly daring, presume to enter upon the inquiry into what is really true and essential in the opposing creeds, how much of each has its origin in over-hasty assumption or fancy, and how far the opposing views are merely a natural consequence of imperfect vision of opposite sides of the same veil.

First among the truths that will have to be accepted by both sides, we may take the reign of Law, sometimes called the Uniformity of Nature. The discovery of uniformity must be regarded as mainly the work of Science : it did not come by revelation. In moments of inspiration it was glimpsed, — " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," — but the glimpse was only momentary, the Hebrew " atmosphere " was saturated with the mists of cataclysm, visible judgments, and conspicuous interferences. We used to be told that the Creator's methods were adapted to the stage of His creatures, and varied from age to age: that it was really His actions, and not their mode of regarding them, that varied. The doctrine of uniformity first took root and grew in scientific soil.

At first sight this doctrine of uniformity excludes Divine control, excludes anything in the nature of personal will, of intention, of guidance, of adaptation, of management. The law of evolution proceeds still further in the same direction; it shows that things change and how they change, and it attempts to show why they change. The Darwinian form of it attempts to account for the origin of species by inevitable necessity, free from artificial selection or operations analogous to those of the breeder. Teleology has gone, and guidance and purpose appear to have gone with it.

At first sight, but at first sight only. So might a spectator, witnessing some great and perfect factory, with machines constantly weaving patterns, some beautiful, some ugly, conclude, or permit himself to dream at least, after some hours' watching, during which everything proceeded without a hitch, driven as it were by inexorable fate, that everything went of itself, controlled by cold dreary necessity. And if his inspection could be continued for weeks or years, and it still presented the same aspect, the dream would begin to seem to be true : the perfection of mechanism would weary the observer: his human weakness would long for something to go wrong, so that someone from an upper office might step down and set it right again. Humanity is accustomed to such interventions and breaks in a ceaseless sequence, and, when no such breaks and interventions occur, may conclude hastily that the scheme is self-originating, self-sustained, that it works to no ultimate and foreseen destiny.

So sometimes, looking at the east end of London, or many another only smaller city, has the feeling of despair seized men : they wonder what it can all mean. So, on the other hand, looking at the loom of nature, has the feeling, not of despair, but of what has been called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, arisen : atheism never fully realised, and wrongly so called ; recently it has been called severe Theism indeed; for it is joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, exultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied with the perfection of the mechanism, content to be a part of the self-generated organism, and endeavouring to think that the feelings of duty, of earnest effort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously persist in spite of all discouragement, are on this view intelligible as well as instinctive, and sure that nothing less than unrepining, unfaltering, unswerving acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man.

The law of evolution not only studies change and progress, it seeks to trace sequences back to antecedents : it strains after the origin of all things. But ultimate origins are inscrutable. Let us admit, as scientific men, that of real origin, even of the simplest thing, we know nothing; not even of a pebble. Sand is the debris of rocks, and fresh rocks can be formed of compacted sand; but this suggests infinity, not origin. Infinity is non-human and we shrink from it, yet what else can there be in space? And if in space, why not in time also? Much to be said here, perhaps, but let it pass. We must admit that science knows nothing of ultimate origins. Which first, the hen or the Ggg? is a trivial form of a very real puzzle. That the world, in the sense of this planet, this homely lump of matter we call the earth — that this had an origin, a history, a past, intelligible more or less, growingly intelligible to the eye of science, is true enough. The date when it was molten can be roughly estimated ; the manner and mechanism of the birth of the moon has been guessed : the earth and moon then originated in one sense ; before that they were part of a nebula, like the rest of the solar system ; and some day the solar system may again be part of a nebula, by reason of collision with some at present tremendously distant mass. But all that is nothing to the Universe ; nothing even to the visible universe. The collisions there take place every now and again before our eyes. The Universe is full of lumps of matter of every imaginable size : the history of a solar system maybe written — its birth and also its death, separated may be by millions of millions of years; but what of that? It is but an episode, a moment in the eternal cosmogony, and the eye of history looks to what happened before the birth and after the death of any particular aggregate; just as a child may trace the origin and destruction of a soap bubble, the form of which is evanescent, the material of which is permanent.

While the soap bubble lived it was the scene of much beauty and of a kind of law and order impossible to the mere water and soap out of which it was made, and into which again it has collapsed. The history of the soap bubble can be written, but there is a before and an after. So it is with the solar system ; so with any assigned collocation of matter in the universe. No point in space can be thought of " at which if a man stand it shall be impossible for him to cast a javelin into the beyond " ; nor can any epoch be conceived in time at which the mind will not instantly and automatically inquire, " and what before," or " what after " ?

Yet does the human mind pine for something finite : it longs for a beginning, even if it could dispense with an end. It has tried of late to imagine that the law of dissipation of energy was a heaven-sent message of the finite duration of the Universe, so that before everything was, it could seek a Great First Cause ; and after everything had been, could take refuge once more in Him.

Seen more closely, these are childish notions. They would be no real help if they were true ; they cannot be true, no more than any other fairy tale suitable for children.

In the dawn of civilisation, God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. Down to say the middle of the nineteenth century He brought things into existence by a creative Fiat, and looked on His work for a time with approbation ; only to step down and destroy a good deal of it before many years had elapsed, and to patch it up and try to mend it from time to time.

All very human : the endless rumble of the machinery is distressing, perfection is intolerable. Still more intolerable is imperfection not attended to ; the machinery groans, lacks oil, shows signs of wear, some of the fabrics it is weaving are hideous ; why, why, does no one care? Surely the manager will step down and put one of the looms to rights, or scold a workman, or tell us what it is all for, and why he needs the woven fabric, der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid y before long.