CH. § 6. substances of Nature, and perhaps more especially Book II with that etherial substance, the vibrations of which are the vehicle of light, heat, electricity, and Psychology. magnetism, has presumably a vast field of discovery before it. We can even imagine the possibility of the ether itself becoming vitalised, and acquiring organic structure, from the tissues of the living organisms which it pervades. But apart from any suggestion of this sort, we may well conceive, that special sensibilities may be developed by means of the permeating and co-operating processes which I have indicated; and thus those rare and exceptional experiences, which have till lately been regarded either as supernatural interferences, or as equally inexplicable illusions of the fancy, may ultimately receive a scientific explanation. I mean, that such phenomena as those now studied under the heads of hypnotism, suggestion or thought transference, telepathy, clairvoyance, and prevision, may be brought within the range of theories based on the biological hypothesis. Even the possibility of a future life after death may prove to be not beyond the limits of scientific speculation. It is mainly this last named question, standing as it does in close connection with religious belief, which gives keenness to the interest with which rival theories of psychology are maintained and discussed. It used to be thought that materialism in psychology involved of necessity disbelief in a future life, and a fortiori in immortality. An immaterial soul was held to be a necessary condition of our surviving the death, and expecting the resurrection, of the material body. And, since no intelligible and independent conception of an imma BOOK II. § 6. terial soul could be given, if followed, that belief in an immaterial soul and belief in a future life, or in Psychology immortality, became practically convertible terms; the one meant neither more nor less than the other. Our real and positive knowledge on this subject, therefore, is not affected by the kind of psychological theory which we adopt; on any theory our knowledge of this kind is nil, at least as the case stands at present. And as to knowledge possibly attainable in the future, there is an advantage on the side of the biological hypothesis; for this cannot negative the possibility, while it may conceivably confirm the probability, of a life after death, a probability to be founded, if founded at all, in the knowledge to be attained of living structures and vital processes. CHAPTER III. RESULTS FOR PHILOSOPHY. § 1. We have now seen what the general nature of Science is, to what kind of questions it contains an answer, namely, questions concerning the order of real conditioning, and with what kind of objects it deals,-namely, matter and consciousness, both being taken as real existents. Besides this a survey has been taken of the chief departments into which science is divided, and under which all its special branches may be distributed and classed. It remains to enquire what results are acquired for philosophy by the general facts concerning the nature, problems, and method of science, which have been thus brought out, and what conclusions we may take with us in returning, as it is proposed to do in the following Books, to the special questions of metaphysical philosophy. The harmony between positive science and philosophy, as well as the nature, value, and limits, of the contribution which the former makes to the latter, will thus be made evident. I begin by mentioning some things which science does not and cannot tell us. The first is, How or why Matter comes to exist at all. Matter is the basis of all scientific explanation, and is taken by BOOK II. § 1. The Known and the Unknown. science as a fact which is given and indubitable, but the origin of which is unexplained. Yet inasmuch as it has a complex and analysable nature, and at the same time is not among the ultimate data of experience, it is something concerning which the question of real conditioning, which is the special question of science, cannot fail to arise. But this question, though it must logically be admitted to be inevitable, is always actually admitted to be unanswerable. It is the same, whichever of its specifically different kinds, or the specifically different modes in which it is observed or inferred to exist, we select for consideration, namely (1) its mode of massive aggregation, in which mechanical interaction prevails, (2) its etherial mode, in which it underlies the phenomena of radiant heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, (3) its resoluble mode, in which its smallest known or conceivable particles exhibit the phenomena of chemical affinity, and (4) its organised mode, in which it is dominated by vital energies. True, the theory of Universal Evolution endeavours to prove, that all these different modes and energies of matter are derived, by real historical filiation, from some one fundamental substance and the mode of force or energy which it displays. But granting that this should have been successfully demonstrated, still that one fundamental substance, with its energy, would be as inexplicable as matter itself, being in fact nothing more than the special shape in which matter would have come into existence originally, and in which alone it would have existed for its first historical period. The existence of matter, therefore, must at the best be inexplicable for science, whether we take it as a collection of groups, including all its varieties and modes, or consider it as existing in some initial state, out of which those varieties and modes have been developed subsequently. There is another thing also which science must always find inexplicable, the nature of the other real existent which shares the whole field of positively known real existence with matter, I mean the nature of consciousness taken as a real existent. Whatever may be the case with other forms of existence, and even if vitality should be shown to have been evolved from non-vitalised matter, it is universally admitted that no corresponding evolution or genesis can ever be demonstrated of consciousness. The heterogeneity between vitalised matter and consciousness is a disparity too great to admit the conception that the one is a modification of the other. I say this because, even when taken as an existent, consciousness has a nature of its own; that is, there is some nature which exists; and of this nature I say, that it is unexplained by anything in the nature of matter, though its existence in individual conscious beings, that is to say, the existence of particular consciousnesses, is explained by the existence of matter. Complete explanation consists of two parts, explaining (1) the nature, (2) the existence, of the explicandum; and only a nature can explain a nature, only an existence can explain an existence. For the first, some common feature or community of nature is evidently required, since without it all relation in point of BOOK II. CH. III. § 1. The Known and the Unknown. |