IS THE SUPERNATURAL NATURAL?
ASINGULARLY able essay on " Science and the Super- natural," by Professor A. J. Du Bois, " of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale College," has been republished in England, " at the earnest desire of several College Professors," in the form of a sixpenny pamphlet, by James Clarke and Co., of Fleet Street. It is a pamphlet well worth reading, for Mr. Da Bois knows precisely what he means, and is endowed with the power of very clear exposition. The general drift of his pamphlet is clear enough. Science, he thinks, is quite right in " assuming " "the `methods' or sequences of Nature to be uniform and continuous, so that from a part we can infer the whole." Mr. Du Bois goes further, and asserts that, " when proceeding upon such an assumption we find the results always to coincide with experience as that limited experi- ence enlarges, our initial assumption gains in probability, until the conviction of its truth becomes irresistible, and we accept it as proved.' This, then, is the fundamental basis of all science,—an assumption of uniformity and continuity, the cumulative proof of which has become so strong that it has pro- duced conviction." We shall show presently why we hold that Mr. Du Bois is going far beyond the legitimate range of evidence in asserting that the assumption of " uniformity and continuity " for all departments of life is, in any sense in which the phrase is intelligible at all, we do not say so much as proved, but even rendered probable. But for the moment we wish only to explain Mr. Du Bois's view, not to comment on it. He goes on to state that he accepts this view, but that he regards the theological hypothesis,—the hypothesis of the existence of a Divine will as the ground of the universe,—to be not only not inconsistent, but in the highest degree harmonious with it. Only be does not believe in God as outside Nature, but in God as constituting Nature, in a Divine will in Nature, not above Nature. For Mr. Du Bois, the " supernatural " is a mistaken term, a mere misnomer. " There is a spiritual world," he says,—" we grant it ! But that world, we say, must be a world of law,— a natural, not a supernatural world. The spirit is distinct from matter,'—we grant it ! But it must be subject to law none the less. Let us seek the laws, not shirk the issues. If the law of continuity is true, it is true throughout its whole extent,—the law of laws,— and the spiritual itself is natural, not supernatural ; and of the natural it is given us even in this world to know." Mr. Du Bois goes on to point out that all forces of which we know the method at all, really act at a distance,—the very thing which Newton at first thought so unintelligible and incredible. Not only does the force which we speak of under the name of gravitation connect particles of matter separated by millions and billions of miles, so that unquestionably the matter in the most distant constellation in the universe is at this moment pulling at the pen and the fingers with which I write; but more than this, the force of repulsion which prevents atoms from being concentrated in a point, always acts at a distance too, so that when my fingers appear to clasp the pen, really there is a very small, but a perfectly appreciable, space between the fingers and the pen, the pen re- pelling the fingers and the fingers the pen, so that what we call contact is nothing but infinitesimal distance. Mr. Du Bois uses this law of force that it always acts from a distance to show that there is no breach of analogy, but a perfect fulfilment of analogy, in supposing that the human will really seta the nerves, and therefore the arm, in motion, probably by altering the arrange- ment of the particles of the brain tissue, though an actual contact between a spiritual entity like the will, and the brain-atoms which are supposed to change their relative position in all brain activity, may be inconceivable. Let it be inconceivable; it is quite unnecessary to suppose such actual contact, for even in relation to purely physical forces, if such forces there be, there is no actual contact. The sun which attracts the earth attracts it without touching it. The billiard-ball which is supposed to
strike, and does propel, another billiard-ball, is never in actual contact with it, but only near enough to it to exert the repulsion which very close atoms exercise upon each other. Therefore, the supposed inconceivability of the action of will on particles of matter is no difficulty. It is just as conceivable as the action of one particle of matter over another without touching it. Every particle of matter pulls every other particle, till it is near enough to begin pushing it away again. And true material contact never takes place. Why, then, is it more difficult to suppose that particles in the brain change their position at the command of a spiritual will which cannot really handle them, than to suppose that one particle of matter stretches out into the infinite spaces to pull another, and then pushes it away before they can really unite ? Thus Mr. Du Bois constructs an hypothesis that all Nature is but the framework played upon by the Divine Will, just as the particles in a man's brain are played upon by the human will in ordinary volition :—
" The question of automatonism may still remain open ; we may concede man to be a machine, but one very essential part of our con- ception of a machine, viz., its relation to a contriver and constructor, still remains to be disposed of, and I think I may at this point com sistently refuse to be led astray into debateable land, which lies out- side the domain of the argument. It is a free will exterior to man's that is in question. And the real difficulty—accepting this will as necessarily conscious and intelligent—is to reconcile this with uni- formity of natural law Even man's will would thus be con- sistent with uniformity were man's knowledge complete. How about the freedom of such will ? By freedom we do not mean absence from constraint, but simply and absolutely self-controlled,—not affected by exterior circumstances. Now to such a will as we speak of there could be no exterior circumstances, because all circumstances are due to it. If such a will is free, its invariable action would imply not only complete knowledge but unchanging purpose. Our intelligent conscious will, then, must be complete in knowledge and single in purpose Such an hypothesis or induction, of will based upon complete knowledge of the past, to which past in its entirety it is exterior, and self-controlled by unchanging purpose—to which matter is obedient—accounts for the continuity of causation and of sequence, as well as for the intellectual necessity' which demands such continuity. Incomprehensible discontinuity disappears in the light of this induction, and the circle of the sciences is com- plete. The loop is filled up by its connecting link. While in no degree limiting the field of scientific research, it must ever lie back of and embrace the whole field. In the light of this induction, action at a distance—' the great stumbling-block of science to-day '—stands out as the visible expression, in terms of matter, of underlying will. Not a will apart from Nature—not the supernatural contradicting the unfailing regularity of Nature, interfering' with Nature's laws— but a will in Nature, of which these laws are the unchanging visible expression."
Such is Mr. Du Bois's theory of the reconciliation of science with theology.
There is a good deal in his view which appears to us not only ingenious, but true, and especially the remark that action at a distance being now proved to be the general law of all force,— though sometimes the distance is infinite and sometimes in- finitesimal,—there is no more mystery in attributing the action of the brain to the will, than in attributing the attraction or repulsion of one particle by another to a cause which is always separated from the effect by an intermediate space, either large or small. But when Mr. Du Bois goes on to say that his sup- position that all physical change in Nature is a natural outcome of the spiritual force of God, reconciles science with theology, we must remark that he succeeds only either by giving up " uniformity" in the only sense in which science cares for the word, or else 'by giving up theology in the only sense in which theologians care for the word. Science means by uniformity a uniformity such that, given precisely the same physical antece- dents, the physical consequent must be identical. If that be Mr. Du Bois's own view, the universal knowledge which he imputes to the underlying Will at the back of the universe does not in the least ensure this kind of uniformity, for to such supreme knowledge the difference in the condition of human minds and characters may,—and as we should have said, must, —involve the profoundest differences in the resulting volition, and not unfrequently in the resulting physical event. Let us push the analogy from the best-informed human will. A good father will not always make even the same physical arrange- ments in his household for a child of one type of faults and virtues, which he would make for a child of very different faults and virtues. If the Divine Will be perfect in its know- ledge, and perfect in its beneficence, it will not make the physical order the same for all, without regard to the moral order. But if Mr. Du Bois only means that the same antecedents, spiritual, moral, and physical antecedents being all equally included, will, with a perfect Will at the foundation of the uni- verse, result in the same consequents, then that is not enough for the purpose of the scientific man. What he maintains is some- thing very different—namely, that the physical antecedents taken alone, being absolutely the same, the physical consequents must always be the same, however vast the difference between the moral requirements of different men. And this, very far from being in any sense proved, is not even sufficiently within the range of our observation to be rendered probable. As Mr. Da Bois very justly says, there are various different levels in the upward progress of life, at which the links between different species of phenomena are utterly wanting. No one has been able to detect the causal link between the inorganic and the organic world ; no one has been able to detect the causal link between physical life and mental consciousness ; no one has been able to detect the causal link between automatic consciousness and deliberate volition. At all these different stages there is a great chasm between the antecedents and the consequent, and at all these stages, therefore, there is ample room for the habitual inter- position of spiritual and moral influence from above, without even the possibility that men should be startled by the appear. ence of discontinuity or miracle, to say nothing of those cases where there seem to be real deviations from customary order,- -deviations which men have usually recognised as miraculous. It is utterly unjustifiable, in the present state of our know- ledge, to deny, as if they were irreconcileable with science, those startling phenomena which are, ordinarily at least, called miraculous. And Mr. Da Bois's theory must break down either on the physical side, and be rejected by the world of science, or on the moral and spiritual side, and be rejected by the theologians.
Moreover, as we ventured to hint at the opening of our article, a view which concedes to the man of science that human freedom is a dream, and man really an automaton, is simply incompatible with any view of human character which the Christian theology assumes or can tolerate. The doctrine of sin loses all its meaning under the light of such an assumption, and the doctrine of redemption with it. It will be found that the very essence of theology consists in the revelation of a Will that desires human righteousness and that hates human iniquity. If this Will be denied, what has always been implied in super- naturalism—namely, that God adapts his rule to the exigencies of human limitation, and seeks to reclaim man by using not merely the moral but the physical world in the work of reclaiming "him, by adapting his government in all spheres to the necessities and frailties of our race,—then surely, all the qualities for which the Christian theology contends, are denied to God. With all our admiration for Mr. Du Bois's ability, we cannot admit that he has succeeded in the task that he set himself. But he has undoubtedly achieved something in the way of lightening the difficulty in the supposition that material nature .corresponds to the constancy of the Divine volition, much as the human body corresponds to the inconstancy and fickleness of human volition.
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