Chapter XX: Part IX: , p. 475, 1890), Dr. Johnstone Stoney, F. R. S., published an (10)

We do not condemn the work of any mediator; on the contrary, we rather encourage it. We observe with pleasure in the latest phases of the religious evolution of Speculative Theology the prevalence of a more modern spirit, and we follow with a keen interest also the progress of biblical critique in its truly valuable labors: but we do not expect that either the one or the other will accomplish any regeneration of religion.

Professor Jodl knows very well that the editors of _The Monist_ and _The Open Court_ have not undertaken any work of compromising between the errors of the past and the ideal of the future. Our idea of a reconciliation between religion and science is of a different nature. We are not blind to the errors of the old religions, and we do not mean to gloss them over, or to make old-fashioned views acceptable by presenting them in a new garment. We do not even stop to bury the dead, for we have better things to do than to trouble with problems that have been definitely settled. We keep our hands to the plough to accomplish the work needed to-day.

While we are not blind to the errors of the old religions, we recognise at the same time that they contain in the language of parables some great truths which will remain forever. These truths constitute the backbone of religion, and we regard it as a very important duty of ours to preserve them. These truths must be preserved, not because they were believed in by our fathers, nor from any respect for tradition, nor from any regard for our sentiments, but simply because they are truths, because they can be proved to be true according to the methods of scientific inquiry.

What is religion? Religion consists of all those ideas which regulate our conduct. In the savage these ideas are very crude and superstitious, and often self-contradictory. The higher a man rises, the clearer, the more scientific and consistent do these ideas become, until they develop into a systematic world-conception. Every scientific idea that changes our world-conception will change also our religion and with it our rules of conduct. Thus, for example, the idea of evolution has become to us an eminently religious idea.

In order to indicate that the criterion of truth for religion is the very same thing as the criterion of truth for science, we have proposed to call the religion we advocate, “The Religion of Science.” (For details see the editorial of Vol. VII, No. 1, of _The Open Court_.)

Our procedure appears to many as an annihilation of religion in favor of science. But it is not. And why not?

We have learned many truths first from religion, long before science could ever think of proving them. In several respects science took the lead, and religion remained at a long distance behind, awkwardly, very slowly, and unwillingly limping onward on the road of progress. Instances are, the acceptance of the Copernican system and of the evolution theory. But in other respects religion took the lead, and science was unable to follow its ingenious flight. As instances of this we cite such moral truths as the love of enemies, which were not preached by scientists as scientific truths, but by religious teachers, by Confucius, Buddha, and Christ. There are scientists even to-day who regard what we would call “moral truths” as maxims that are contrary to the established views of science. Professor Huxley, for instance, is very emphatic in his declaration that the facts of nature do not teach morality.[61]

This leads us to a point in which we disagree with Professor Jodl. He speaks of the illusion “of mingling together in the idea of God two wholly distinct ideas—the ideas namely of nature and of an ethical ideal”—an illusion to which “even strict monistic thinkers like Spinoza fell victims.”

Professor Jodl’s position reminds us of John Stuart Mill’s “Essay on Nature,” in which he exposes the old doctrine _naturam sequi_ in all its absurd meanings and carefully avoids a discussion of the only rational conception of the precept. Thus his tirades appear most convincing, and to be sure they are quite correct—so far as they go. Says Mill:

“In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or
imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature’s every-day
performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognised by
human laws, Nature does once to every being that lives....

“Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel, casts them
to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death, crushes
them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves them
with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick
or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of other
hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a
Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed.”

Mill must indeed have felt the need of beginning these sentences with the words “In sober truth”; otherwise he might be suspected of humor.

Similarly comical is Mill’s proposition to regard every voluntary action of man as a direct infringement upon nature. Man’s reason in that case would be the most unnatural phenomenon in the world, and the term “nature” would be confined to the lowest realms of existence exclusively. If the usage of reason were indeed an infringement upon nature, man’s appearance upon earth would mark the beginning of a supernatural realm; and Professor Jodl seems to accept this consequence when he says:

“It is not _of_ nature, it is _above_ nature.”

If man’s rationality and his ethics were not born of nature, if their conditions were not founded in the very existence of nature, if they were not the natural product of evolution, then indeed I see no escape from a dualistic world-conception, in which a supernatural God introduces the spark of divinity which appears in the soul of man from spheres beyond.

We have devoted to these vagaries of John Stuart Mill an elaborate discussion in another place and do not feel the need of repeating our arguments in this connection.[62]

We agree with Professor Jodl that no rationalising of old dogmas will help us in the establishment of “a new idealism, formed in harmony with the spirit of science.” We must build our religion anew (as every generation had to build its religion anew) out of the best materials which are furnished by the maturest and most reliable knowledge of to-day. Says Professor Jodl:

“Through _us_ something has come into the world that before
us did not exist—something that the most exuberant creative
magic, or nature’s grandest mechanical dreams, could never
replace. The day on which first a human being pressed his
weaker fellow-man to his breast and said, “Brother, not mine,
but thy will be done; I will give up my desires that thou also
mayst be glad”; the day upon which man first lifted up his head
and said, “Let us make the world _good_ in the likeness of the
picture that has become living in us, just as it should be”;
this is the great and sanctified day in the history of our race
on earth, the Christmas day on which God was born.”

Certainly the origin of man on earth, and again the evolution of the moral man, is something quite new, which before did not exist. But did humanity originate out of nothing, as sometimes the imaginations of a poet are supposed to be created, or is there a prototype in whose image man has been created? Man’s reason, his ethics, and his humanity are something that did not exist before, but there is a feature in existence which makes it possible that rational and moral beings develop. Should there be sentient beings on other planets, and we have little reason to doubt it, we can be sure that they also will develop rational minds, and that they also will learn, perhaps as we did, through many bitter experiences, the same truths which constitute our main maxims of morality,[63] including such precepts as the love of enemies. And why are we sure that on other planets not only reason, but also the fundamental rules of ethics will be the same as with us here on earth? Simply because we know that there is a certain feature in reality which creates rational beings and moral beings as naturally as it creates rocks and seas on the surface of planets. Man’s reason and also man’s morality are not original inventions of his, but the result of many experiences which he had to learn. And the world in which he lives is such that he can acquire reason and morality, and if a being should acquire a wrong kind of reason or a wrong kind of morality, it will by and by be blotted out of existence. Accordingly there is a prototype of reason and of morality, and this prototype of the humanity of man is exactly that which in the language of the old religions has received the name “God.”

We must make a distinction between ideals and dreams. Those creations of our fancy which are woven without any regard to reality are dreams. They have no value beyond whiling away a leisure hour or pleasing our imagination. But those creations of our mind which construct realisable formations such as machines or clocks or higher conditions of human society, are not mere dreams, they are ideals. What, then, is the difference between a dream and an ideal? A dream is a useless ebullition of an idle brain composed of ideas to which there is no correspondent reality; but an ideal is a potent factor in the living presence to shape the future: it is a combination of ideas which are correct descriptions of actual realities. The moral aspirations of mankind are not empty dreams, they are true and veritable ideals. There are certain qualities in nature which make their realisation possible and these qualities constitute the Divinity of nature.

Professor Jodl speaks of the origin of morality as of the birth of God on earth. Truly that is the meaning of Christianity. But this birth of God into the world of human evolution as “the Son of Man” is possible only because of the existence of the God in nature whom Christian mythology so beautifully calls God the Father. The appearance of the Son of Man upon earth, the birth of morality, is a revelation of the divinity of nature.

True enough, as Professor Jodl says, that we ourselves won the best and highest we have by hard struggles, by terribly severe, self-imposed discipline. As Prometheus says:

“_Hast du nicht alles selbst vollendet,_
_Heilig glühend Herz!_”

That, too, is part of the divinity of nature, that every creature has to work out its very being itself, and that man must search for the way of salvation with great anxiety, under bitter tribulations and through extreme afflictions. But he cannot invent a new way of salvation, he has to find it, and there is but one that is the right one. The nature of morality is such as it is, and no other morality could be invented to replace it. And this feature of existence which makes morality quite a determined thing is a real presence in the world, it is an actual quality of the universe.

Some of our liberal friends, foremost among them Professor Haeckel, deny the existence of a personal God and then proceed to declare that the God of science is nothing but matter and energy. We agree with Professor Haeckel in his rejection of anthropotheism; God is no supernatural being nor is he a huge world-ego. But we cannot accept his view of God as being only matter and energy. The idea of God is and always has been a moral idea. Thus we have come to regard all those features of nature as divine which condition the origin and existence of morality and we define God as the authority of moral conduct. This authority is not a person, not a sentient being, let alone a sentimental philanthropist; but it is, nevertheless, a reality, and, indeed, a stern reality.

Such is the God of science. God is that quality of existence through which we originated as feeling, thinking, and aspiring beings. He is the prototype of the human soul, and the condition under which develop man’s reason and morality. Obedience to him is indispensable for a continued existence, for further progress and a higher evolution of the human soul. That these features of reality can by a great number of keen and fearless modern thinkers be supposed to be a non-entity is difficult to understand. This negation of the reality of qualities of existence which are not individual things but intrinsically inherent in all the individual things, it appears to us, is an old heirloom of nominalism. The nominalistic philosophy represented by Roscellinus was suppressed at the council at Soissons 1092, only to rise more powerfully in the fourteenth century in William of Occam, and finally to exterminate realism with all its rubbish of errors together with the truth contained in these errors. Kant marks in many respects the culmination of the victorious movement of nominalism. With all the benefits modern thought derived from the philosophical work of nominalism, a reaction is needed against its purely negative spirit. There is a truth in the old realism which cannot be neglected with impunity.[64]

God (viz., the name of God) is, as Kant said, a noumenon, a thing of thought, an abstraction. God is not a thing, a concrete object, or an individual person. All the views of God which regard him as an individual being of some kind, or as a person only of infinite dimensions, are, closely considered, pagan notions which belittle God. But the name of God as a noumenon, a thought, an abstract idea, has a meaning. Abstract ideas are not nonentities, they represent some real features, some actual qualities, or properties, or relations; otherwise they would not be ideas, but unmeaning sounds.

Some of our abstract ideas are of a very delicate fibre, so that the coarse mental vision of the average Philistine is unable to see them in their reality and potency. But it so happens that exactly they are of a more important, more powerful, and inevitable presence than the simple generalisations of things that visibly and corporeally surround us. This, their peculiar nature, makes such ideas mysterious to those who instinctively feel their reality without being able to point it out and understand it. And the most subtle, imponderous, and sublimated of all ideas is the idea of God.

We have defined God as the ultimate authority of conduct, as the condition of our existence as rational and moral beings, as the all-power that enforces obedience, etc.; but we cannot in any one of our definitions exhaust the significance of the idea. We would by no means exclude from the idea of God anything without which reality would cease to be real. The qualities of matter and energy constitute that element in the God-idea which justify the old religions in speaking of him as omnipotent and everlasting. Thus they ought not to be excluded. But these qualities alone are insufficient to characterise his being. The sum-total of matter and energy as such and as such alone does not constitute any moral authority. Nature in her immeasurable greatness and oppressive vastness affects us with awe; but, after all, we look down upon her massive sublimity. Man is more than the biggest heap of crude matter and unintelligently operating energy. Says Professor Jodl:

“We stand amazed at her might and greatness, at the plentitude
of her powers of creation, at her myriad play of forces, at the
inexhaustible wealth of the relations with which she binds
being to being, creates and mediates contrarieties, and amidst
the most varied change and alternation, ever remains one and
the same! But our prototype, our God, she can never be.”

This grandeur of nature is part of her divinity, but it alone does not constitute the character of God. Yet, observe that throughout nature there is an imponderable quality present which makes every atom move in a definite way, so that the whirl of gaseous masses, apparently a chaos, will be recognised as a cosmic whole developing in a certain way and describable in what is generally called natural laws. This subtle quality is the condition of the regularities which are found in all the infinite varieties and innumerable particularities, and all these regularities conceived in their systematic unity are called the order of the universe.

Man exists as a thinking being only because the immeasurable universe of which he is a part possesses this quality of order, and his reason is closely considered only a copy of it. Man’s reason was shaped into the image of the cosmic order, and suppose—a supposition which is very difficult to make and regarded by many as impossible or inconceivable—yet suppose that the world-order were radically different from what it actually is, man’s reason would accordingly be different too. Further, suppose that the whole frame and fundamental interrelations of the particles of reality were different from what they are, would not correspondingly the basic rules of conduct be changed too?

The author of this article, in the eyes of the so-called orthodox Christian, is most certainly an atheist. And if theism means the belief in a personal or extramundane God he is an atheist indeed. If there is any opprobrium in the name atheism we are willing to accept it; and certainly, we do not reject the label of atheism in order to escape any odium attached to that name. We do reject atheism simply because we see a great and potent truth in the idea of God which is but too often disregarded.

With Professor Haeckel and Professor Jodl we reject the conception of an anthropomorphic Deity. The anthropomorphic idol is doomed before the tribunal of science. But we see a deeper meaning in the idea of God which has formed through millenniums the very centre of the greatest religions on earth. Science has to recognise the reality of an all-presence in existence which is analogous to that which in a religious language is called God.

Considering the fact that humanity owes many great truths to religion, let us not be hasty in condemning the religions of the past as pure superstition. There are valuable seeds in the chaff. If we discard the wheat together with the tares, we shall have to rediscover them, for it is little probable that humanity can for any length of time be satisfied with beautiful phrases or live in its moral aspirations in a realm of mere dreams.

EDITOR.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] For a discussion of this point see _Fundamental Problems_, pp. 219-226.

[62] See the article in Nos. 239, 241, and 242 of _The Open Court: Nature and Morality_. An Examination of the Ethical Views of John Stuart Mill. I. The Meaning of Basing Ethics Upon Nature. II. The Ethics Taught by Nature. III. Intelligent Action and Moral Action. IV. The Anthropomorphic Standpoint of Mill.

[63] I purposely do not say _all_ maxims of conduct, because we can very well imagine that different conditions may produce some very important variations in the rules of conduct; but the main foundation of morality would be the same.

[64] There are two men at present who boldly fly the flag of the old realism again, both having our full sympathy in their aspirations, although we cannot agree with many of their teachings. The one is Mr. Charles S. Peirce, the other Dr. Francis E. Abbot.

THE SUPERSTITION OF NECESSITY.[65]

Lest my title give such offense as to prejudice unduly my contention, I may say that I use the term in the way indicated by its etymology: as a standing-still on the part of thought; a clinging to old ideas after those ideas have lost their use, and hence, like all superstitions, have become obstructions. For I shall try to show that the doctrine of necessity is a survival; that it holds over from an earlier and undeveloped period of knowledge; that as a means of getting out of and beyond that stage it had a certain value, but, having done its work, loses its significance. Halting judgment may, indeed, at one time have helped itself out of the slough of uncertainty, vagueness, and inadequacy on to ground of more solid and complete fact, by the use of necessity as a crutch; once upon the ground, the crutch makes progress slower and, preventing the full exercise of the natural means of locomotion, tends to paralyse science. The former support has become a burden, almost an intolerable one.

The beginning of wisdom in the matter of necessity is, I conceive, in realising that it is a term which has bearing or relevancy only with reference to the development of judgment, not with reference to objective things or events. I do not mean by this that necessity refers to the compelling force with which we are driven to make a given affirmation: I mean that it refers to the content of that affirmation, expressing the degree of coherence between its constituent factors. When we say something or other _must_ be so and so, the “must” does not indicate anything in the nature of the fact itself, but a trait in our _judgment_ of that fact; it indicates the degree with which we have succeeded in making a whole out of the various elements which have to be taken into account in forming the judgment. More specifically, it indicates a half-way stage. At one extreme we have two separate judgments, which, so far as consciousness is concerned, have nothing to do with each other; and at the other extreme we have one judgment into which the contents of the two former judgments have been so thoroughly organised as to lose all semblance of separateness. Necessity, as the middle term, is the midwife which, from the dying isolation of judgments, delivers the unified judgment just coming into life—it being understood that the separateness of the original judgments is not as yet quite negated, nor the unity of the coming judgment quite attained. The judgment of necessity, in other words, is exactly and solely the transition in our knowledge from unconnected judgments to a more comprehensive synthesis. Its value is just the value of this transition; as negating the old partial and isolated judgments—in its backward look—necessity has meaning; in its forward look—with reference to the resulting completely organised subject-matter—it is itself as false as the isolated judgments which it replaces. Its value is in what it rids judgment of. When it has succeeded, its value is nil. Like any go-between, its service consists in rendering itself uncalled for.

All science can ultimately do is to report or describe, to completely state, the reality. So far as we reach this standpoint regarding any fact or group of facts, we do not say that the fact _must_ be such and such, but simply that it _is_ such and such. There is no necessity attaching to the fact either as whole or as parts. _Qua_ whole, the fact simply is what it is; while the parts, instead of being necessitated either by one another or by the whole, are the analysed factors constituting, in their complete circuit, the whole. In stating the whole, we, as of course, state all that enters into it; if we speak of the various elements as _making_ the whole, it is only in the sense of making it _up_, not of causing it. The fallacy of the necessitarian theory consists in transforming the determinate in the sense of the wholly defined, into the determined in the sense of something externally made to be what it is.

The whole, although first in the order of reality, is last in the order of knowledge. The complete statement of the whole is the goal, not the beginning of wisdom. We begin, therefore, with fragments, which are taken for wholes; and it is only by piecing together these fragments, and by the transformation of them involved in this combination, that we arrive at the real fact. There comes a stage at which the recognition of the unity begins to dawn upon us, and yet, the tradition of the many distinct wholes survives; judgment has to combine these two contradictory conceptions; it does so by the theory that the dawning unity is an effect necessarily produced by the interaction of the former wholes. Only as the consciousness of the unity grows still more is it seen that instead of a group of independent facts, held together by “necessary” ties, there is one reality, of which we have been apprehending various fragments in succession and attributing to them a spurious wholeness and independence. We learn (but only at the end) that instead of discovering and then connecting together a number of separate realities, we have been engaged in the progressive definition of one fact.

There are certain points upon which there is now _practical_ agreement among all schools. What one school has got at by a logical analysis of science, another school has arrived at by the road of a psychological analysis of experience. What one school calls the unity of thought and reality, another school calls the relativity of knowledge. The metaphysical interpretation further given to these respective statements may be quite different, but, so far as they go, they come to the same thing: that objects, _as known_, are not independent of the process of knowing, but are the content of our judgments. One school, indeed, may conceive of judgment as a mere associative or habitual grouping of sensations, the other as the correlative diversification and synthesis of the self; but the practical outcome, that the “object” (anyway as known) is a form of judgment, is the same. This point being held in common, both schools must agree that _the progress of judgment is equivalent to a change in the value of objects_—that objects as they are for us, as known, change with the development of our judgments. If this be so, truth, however it be metaphysically defined, must attach to late rather than to early judgments.

I am fortunate in being able to quote from authors, who may be taken as typical of the two schools. Says Professor Caird in his article upon “Metaphysic,” (lately reprinted, “Essays in Philosophy and Literature,”):

“Our first consciousness of things is not an immovable
foundation upon which science may build, but rather a
hypothetical and self-contradictory starting-point of
investigation, which becomes changed and transformed as we
advance.” (“Essays,” Vol. II, p. 398.)

On the other hand, Mr. Venn writes (in the first chapter of his “Empirical Logic”):

“Select what object we please—the most apparently simple in
itself, and the most definitely parted off from others that we
can discover—yet we shall find ourselves constrained to admit
that a considerable mental process has been passed through
before that object could be recognised as being an object, that
is, as possessing some degree of unity and as requiring to be
distinguished from other such unities.”

He goes on to illustrate by such an apparently fixed and given object as the sun, pointing out how its unity as a persistent thing involves a continued synthesis of elements very diverse in time and space, and an analysis, a selection, from other elements in very close physical juxtaposition. He goes on to raise the question whether a dog, for example, may be said to “see” a rainbow at all, because of the complex analysis and synthesis involved in such an object. The “mental whole” (to use Mr. Venn’s words, the “ideal unity” as others might term it) is so extensive and intricate that

“One might almost as reasonably expect the dog to ‘see’ the
progress of democracy in the place where he lives, of which
course of events the ultimate sensible constituents are
accessible to his observation precisely as they are to ours.”

As Mr. Venn is not discussing just the same point which I have raised, he does not refer to the partial and tentative character of our first judgments—our first objects. It is clear enough, however, that there will be all degrees between total failure to analyse and combine (as, say, in the case of the dog and rainbow) and fairly adequate grouping. The difference between the savage whose synthesis is so limited in scope that he sets up a new sun every day and the scientific man whose object is a unity comprehending differences through thousands of years of time and interactions going on through millions of miles of space is a case in point. The distinction between the respective objects is not simply a superimposition of new qualities upon an old object, that old object remaining the same; it is not getting new objects; it is a continual qualitative reconstruction of the object itself. This fact, which is the matter under consideration, is well stated by Mr. Venn, when he goes on to say:

“The act of predication, in its two-fold aspect of affirmation
and denial, really is a process by which we are not only
enabled to add to our information _about_ objects, _but is also
the process by the continued performance of which the objects
had been originally acquired, or rather produced_” (italics are
mine).

This statement cannot be admitted at all without recognising that the first judgments do not make the object once for all, but that the continued process of judging is a continued process of “producing” the object.

Of course the confused and hypothetical character of our first objects does not force itself upon us when we are still engaged in constructing them. On the contrary, it is only when the original subject-matter has been overloaded with various and opposing predicates that we think of doubting the correctness of our first judgments, of putting our first objects under suspicion. At the start, these objects assert themselves as the baldest and solidest of hard facts. The dogmatic and naïve quality of the original judgment is in exact proportion to its crudeness and inadequacy. The objects which are the content of these judgments thus come to be identified with reality _par excellence_; they are _facts_, however doubtful everything else. They hang on obstinately. New judgments, instead of being regarded as better definitions of the actual fact and hence as displacing the prior object, are tacked on to the old as best they may be. Unless the contradiction is too flagrant, the new predicates are set side by side with the old as simply additional information; they do not react into the former qualities. If the contradiction is too obvious to be overlooked the new predicate is used, if possible, to constitute another object, independent of the former. So the savage, having to deal with the apparently incompatible predicates of light and darkness, makes two objects; two suns, for two successive days. Once the Ptolemaic conception is well rooted, cycles and epicycles, almost without end, are superadded, rather than reconstruct the original object. Here, then, is our starting point: when qualities arise so incompatible with the object already formed that they cannot be referred to that object, it is easier to form a new object on their basis than it is to doubt the correctness of the old, involving as that does the surrender of the _object_ (the fact, seemingly) and the formation of another object.

It is easier, I say, for there is no doubt that the reluctance of the mind to give up an object once made lies deep in its economies. I shall have occasion hereafter to point out the teleological character of the notions of necessity and chance, but I wish here to call attention to the fact that the forming of a number of distinct objects has its origin in practical needs of our nature. The analysis and synthesis which is first made is that of most practical importance; what is abstracted from the complex net-work of reality is some net outcome, some result which is of value for life. As Venn says:

“What the savage mostly wants to do is to produce something
or to avert something, not to account for a thing which has
already happened. What interests him is to know how to kill
somebody, not to know how somebody has been killed.” (P. 62 of
“Empirical Logic.”)

And again:

“What not only the savage, but also the practical man mostly
wants, is a _general_ result, say the death of his enemy. It
does not matter whether the symptoms, i. e., the qualifying
circumstances, are those attendant on poison, or a blow from a
club, or on incantation, provided the death is brought about.
But they do desire _certainty_ in respect of this general
result.” (P. 64.)

Now it is this “general result,” the net outcome for practical purposes, which is _the_ fact, _the_ object at first. Anything else is useless subtlety. That the man is dead—that is the fact; anything further is at most external circumstances which happen to accompany the fact. That the death is only a bare fraction of a fact; that the attendant “circumstances” are as much constituent factors of the real fact as the mere “death” itself (probably more so from the scientific point of view)—all this is foreign to conception. We pluck the fruit, and that fruit is the fact. Only when practical experience forces upon us the recognition that we cannot get the fruit without heeding certain other “conditions” do we consent to return upon our assumed object, put it under suspicion and question whether it is really what we took it to be. It is, we may presume, the savage who in order to get his living, has to regulate his conduct for long periods, through changes of seasons, in some continuous mode, who first makes the synthesis of one sun going through a recurring cycle of changes—the year.

As time goes on, the series of independent and isolated objects passes through a gradual change. Just as the recognition of incompatible qualities has led to setting up of separate things, so the growing recognition of similar qualities in these disparate objects begins to pull them together again. Some relation between the two objects is perceived; it is seen that neither object is just what it is in its isolation, but owes some of its meaning to the other objects. While in reality, (as I hope later to point out,) this “relationship” and mutual dependence means membership in a common whole, contribution to one and the same activity, a midway stage intervenes before this one fact, including as parts of itself the hitherto separate objects, comes to consciousness. The tradition of isolation is too strong to give way at the first suggestion of community. This passage-way from isolation to unity, denying the former but not admitting the latter, is necessity or determinism. The wall of partition between the two separate “objects” cannot be broken at one attack; they have to be worn away by the attrition arising from their slow movement into one another. It is the “necessary” influence which one exerts upon the other that finally rubs away the separateness and leaves them revealed as elements of one unified whole. This done, the determining influence has gone too.

The process may be symbolised as follows: _M_ is the object, the original synthesis of the elements seen to be of practical importance; _a_, _b_, _c_, etc., to _h_ are predicates of constantly growing incompatibility. When the quality _i_ is discovered, it is so manifestly incompatible with _a_ that all attempt to refer it to the same subject _M_ is resisted. Two alternatives are now logically open. The subject-matter _M_, as the synthesis of the qualities _a_-_h_, may be taken up; it may be asked whether the object is really _M_ with these qualities; whether it is not rather Σ, having instead of the predicates _a_, _b_, etc., the qualities ρα, ρβ, with which the new quality _i_ is quite compatible. But this process goes against the practical grain of our knowledge; it means not only that we do not know what we thought we knew; it means that we did not _do_ what we thought we did. Such unsettling of action is hardly to be borne. It is easier to erect a new object _N_, to which the more incompatible predicates are referred. Finally, it is discovered that both _M_ and _N_ have the same predicates _r_ and _s_; that in virtue of this community of qualities there is a certain like element even in the qualities previously considered disparate. This mutual attraction continues until it becomes so marked a feature of the case that there is no alternative but to suppose that the _r_ and _s_ of one produces these qualities in the other, and thereby influences all the qualities of the other. This drawing together continues until we have the one reconstructed object Σ, with the traits ρα, ρβρ, etc. It is found that there is one somewhat comprehensive synthesis which includes within itself the several separate objects so far produced; and it is found that this inclusion in the larger whole reacts into the meaning of the several constituting parts—as parts of one whole, they lose traits which they seemed to possess in their isolation, and gain new traits, because of their membership in the same whole.

We have now to consider, more in detail, how the intermediate idea of necessity grows up and how it gives away upon the discovery of the one inclusive whole. Let us continue the illustration of the killing. The “general result,” the death of the hated enemy, is at first the fact; all else is mere accidental circumstance. Indeed, the other circumstances at first are hardly that; they do not attract attention, having no importance. Not only the savage, but also the common-sense man of to-day, I conceive, would say that any attempt to extend the definition of the “fact” beyond the mere occurrence of the death is metaphysical refinement; that the _fact_ is the killing, the death, and that that “fact” remains quite the same, however it is brought about. What has been done, in other words, is to abstract part of the real fact, part of _this_ death, and set up the trait or universal thus abstracted as itself _fact_, and not only as fact, but as _the_ fact, _par excellence_, with reference to which all the factors which constitute the reality, the concrete fact, of _this_ death, are circumstantial and “accidental.”[66]

A fragment of the whole reality, of the actual fact individualised and specified with all kind of minute detail, having been thus hypostatised into an object, the idea of necessity is in fair way to arise. These deaths in general do not occur. Although the mere death of the man, his removal from the face of the earth, is the _fact_, none the less all _actual_ deaths have a certain amount of detail in them. The savage has to hit his enemy with a club or spear, or perform a magic incantation, before he can attain that all-important end of getting rid of him. Moreover, a man with a coat of armor on will not die just the same way as the man who is defenseless. These circumstances have to be taken into account. Now, if the “fact” had not been so rigidly identified with the bare practical outcome, the removal of the hated one, a coherent interpretation of the need for these further incidents would be open. It could be admitted that the original death was a highly complex affair, involving a synthesis of a very large number of different factors; furthermore, the new cases of murder could be employed to reconstruct the original analysis-synthesis; to eliminate supposed factors which were not relevant, and to show the presence of factors at first not suspected. In other words, the real fact would be under constant process of definition, of “production.” But the stiff-necked identification of the fragment, which happened to have practical importance with the real object, effectually prevents any such reaction and reconstruction. What is to be done, however, with these conditions of spear, of stone, of armor, which so obviously have something _to do_ with the real fact, although, as it would seem, they are not the fact? They are considered as circumstances, _accidental_, so far as death in general is concerned; _necessary_, so far as _this_ death is concerned. That is, wanting simply to get the net result of the removal of my enemy, so that he will no longer blight the fair face of nature, it is accidental how I do it; but having, after all, to kill a man of certain characteristics and surroundings in life, having to choose time and place, etc., it becomes necessary, _if_ I am to succeed, that I kill him in a certain way, say, with poison, or a dynamite bomb. Thus we get our concrete, individual fact again.

Consider, then, that tortuous path from reality to reality, _via_ a circuit of unreality, which calls the thought of necessity into existence. We first mutilate the actual fact by selecting some portion that appeals to our needs; we falsify, by erecting this fragment into the whole fact. Having the rest of the fact thus left on our hands for disposal, when we have no need of the concrete fact we consider it accidental, merely circumstantial; but we consider it necessary whenever we have occasion to descend from the outcome which we have abstracted back to the real fact, in all its individuality. Necessity is a device by which we both conceal from ourselves the unreal character of what we have called real, and also get rid of the practical evil consequences of hypostatising a fragment into an independent whole.

If the purely teleological character of necessity is not yet evident, I think the following considerations will serve to bring it out. The practical value, the fruit from the tree, we pick out and set up for the entire fact so far as our past action is concerned. But so far as our _future_ action is concerned, this value is a result _to be_ reached; it is an end to be attained. Other factors, in reality all the time bound up in the one concrete fact or individual whole, have now to be brought in as means to get this end. Although after our desire has been met they have been eliminated as accidental, as irrelevant, yet when the experience is again desired their integral membership in the real fact has to be recognised. This is done under the guise of considering them as means which are necessary to bring about the end. Thus the idea of the circumstances as external to the “fact” is retained, while we get all the practical benefit of their being not external but elements of one and the same whole. Contingent and necessary are thus the correlative aspects of one and the same fact; conditions are accidental so far as we have abstracted a fragment and set it up as the whole; they are necessary the moment it is required to pass from this abstraction back to the concrete fact. Both are teleological in character—contingency referring to the separation of means from end, due to the fact that the end having been already reached the means have lost their value for us; necessity being the reference of means to an end _which has still to be got_. Necessary means _needed_; contingency means no longer required—because already enjoyed.

Note that the necessity of the means has reference to an end still to be attained, and in so far itself hypothetical or contingent, while the contingent circumstances are no longer needed precisely because they have resulted in a definite outcome (which, accordingly, is now a fact, and, in that sense, necessary) and we begin to see how completely necessity and chance are bound up with each other.

Their correlation may thus be stated: _If_ we are to reach an end we _must_ take certain means; while so far as we want an undefined end, an end in general, conditions which accompany it are mere accidents. Whichever way the relationship be stated, the underlying truth is that we are dealing with only partial phases of fact, which, having been unduly separated from each other through their erection into distinct wholes, have now to be brought back into their real unity.

In the first place, then, _if_ I am to reach an end, certain means _must_ be used. Here the end is obviously postulated; save as it is begged (presupposed), the necessity of the means has no sense. If, when starving, I am to live I must steal a dinner, but, having stolen, the logical but unsympathetic judge may question the relevancy (that is, the necessity) of my end, and thus cut the ground out from under the necessity of my means. My end requires _its_ justification, the establishing of its validity, before the necessity of the means is anything more than hypothetical. The proximate end must be referred to a more ultimate and inclusive end to get any solid ground. Here we have our choice: we may deny the existence of any organic whole in life and keep chasing in a never-ending series, the _progressus ad infinitum_, after an end valid in itself. In this case we never get beyond a hypothetical necessity—something is necessary _if_ we are to have something else, the necessity being relative to the implied doubt. Or, being convinced that life is a whole and not a series merely, we may say there is one comprehensive end which gives its own validity to the lesser ends in so far as they constitute it. While, on the other alternative, we reach only a hypothetical necessity, on this we reach none at all. The comprehensive end is no end at all in the sense of something by itself to be reached by means external to it. Any such end would be simply one in the infinite series and would be itself hypothetical. Whenever minor ends cease to be in turn means to further ends it is because they have become parts, constituent elements, of the higher end and thus ceased to be steps towards an end and beyond and outside of themselves. Given a final (i. e., inclusive) end, eating and drinking, study and gossip, play and business, cease to be means _towards_ an end and become its concrete definition, its analytic content. The minor activities state the supreme activity in its specific factors.

Our dilemma is the choice between an end which itself has no existence save upon presupposition of another end, (is contingent,) and an end which as an end in itself simply _is_.

The externality of means to end is merely a symptom of lack of specification or concreteness in the end itself. _If_ I am going to invent some improvement in a type-writer, the necessity of going through certain preliminary steps is exactly proportionate to the indefiniteness of my conception of what the improvement is to be; when the end is realised, the operations which enter into the realisation cease to be means necessary to an end and become the specific _content_ of that end. The improvement is a _fact_, having such and such elements defining it. If I simply want, in general, to get my mail I _must_ take this path (there being but one road); but if my end is not thus general, if it is individualised with concrete filling, the walk to the office may become a part of the end, a part of the actual fact. In so far, of course, it loses all aspect of necessitation. It simply _is_. And in general, so far as my end is vague, or abstract, so far as it is not specified as to its details, so far the filling up of its empty schema to give it particularity (and thus make it fact) appears as a means necessary to reach an end outside itself. The growth in concreteness of the end itself is transformed into ways of effecting an end already presupposed. Or, to state it in yet one other way, determination in the sense of definition in consciousness is hypostatised into determination in the sense of a physical making.

The point may come out more clearly if we consider it with the emphasis on chance instead of upon necessity. The usual statement that chance is relative to ignorance seems to me to convey the truth though not in the sense generally intended—viz., that if we knew more about the occurrence we should see it necessitated by its conditions. Chance is relative to ignorance in the sense rather that it refers to an indefiniteness in our conception of what we are doing. In our consciousness of our end (our acts) we are always making impossible abstractions; we break off certain phases of the act which are of chief interest to us, without any regard to whether the concrete conditions of action—that is, the deed in its whole definition—permits any such division. Then, when in our actual doing the circumstances to which we have not attended thrust themselves into consciousness—when, that is to say, the act appears in more of its own specific nature—we dispose of those events, foreign to our conscious purpose, as accidental; we did not want them or intend them—what more proof of their accidental character is needed? The falling of a stone upon a man’s head as he walks under a window is “chance,” for it has nothing to do with what the man proposed to do, it is no part of his conception of that walk. To an enemy who takes that means of killing him, it is anything but an accident, being involved in _his_ conscious purpose. It is “chance” when we throw a two and a six; for the concreteness of the act falls outside of the content of our intention. We intended _a_ throw, some throw, and in so far the result is not accidental, but this special result, being irrelevant to our conception of what we were to do, in so far is contingent. The vagueness or lack of determinateness in our end, the irrelevancy of actual end to conscious intent, chance, are all names for the same thing. And if I am asked whether a gambler who has a hundred dollars upon the outcome does not _intend_ to throw double sixes, I reply that he has no such intention—unless the dice are loaded. He may _hope_ to make that throw, but he cannot intend it save as he can define that act—tell how to do it, tell, that is, just _what_ the act is. Or, once more, if I intend to get my mail and there are four paths open to me it is chance which I take, just in proportion to the abstractness of my end. If I have not defined it beyond the mere “general result” of getting mail, anything else is extraneous and in so far contingent. If the end is individualised to the extent, say, of getting the mail in the shortest possible time, or with the maximum of pleasant surroundings, or with the maximum of healthy exercise, the indifferency of the “means,” and with it their contingency, disappears. This or that path is no longer a mere means which _may_ be taken to get a result foreign to its own value; the path is an intrinsic part of the end.

In so far as a man presents to himself an end in general, he sets up an abstraction so far lacking in detail as (taken _per se_) to exclude the possibility of realisation. In order to exist as concrete or individual (and of course, nothing can exist except as individual or concrete) it must be defined or particularised. But so far as consciousness is concerned the original vague end is _the_ reality; it is all that the man cares about and hence constitutes his act. The further particularisation of the end, therefore, instead of appearing as what it really is, viz., the discovery of the actual reality, presents itself as something outside that end. This externality to the end previously realised in consciousness is, taken as mere externality, contingency, or accident; taken as none the less so bound up with the desired end that it must be gone through before reaching that end, it is necessary. Chance, in other words, stands for the irrelevancy as the matter at first presents itself to consciousness; necessity is the required, but partial, negation of this irrelevancy. Let it be complete, instead of partial, and we have the one real activity defined throughout. With reference to this reality, conditions are neither accidental nor necessary, but simply constituting elements—they neither may be nor must be, but just are. What is irrelevant is now not simply indifferent; it is excluded, eliminated. What is relevant is no longer something required in order to get a result beyond itself; it is incorporated into the result, it is integral.