Part 20 (1/2)
At the same time the _unprepossession of this science_ will be made clear.
”A feeling of degradation pervades the German university circles,” so the learned _Mommsen_ expressed himself some years ago when Stra.s.sburg was to get a Catholic chair of history; therefore a Catholic who takes his Catholic view of the world as his guide cannot be unprepossessed, hence cannot be a true scientist. We have become used to this reproach; nevertheless it is very painful to a Catholic, especially when he devotes his life to scientific work. The other side claims very emphatically to have a monopoly on unprepossession and truthfulness; it gives most solemn a.s.surances of not desiring anything but the truth, of serving the truth alone, with persevering unselfishness, unaffected by disposition and party interest, and that it has its unbia.s.sed spiritual eye turned only to the chaste sunlight of truth. Hence, we may be permitted to inquire whether these a.s.surances square with the facts. As they demand belief, we may also demand proofs; and if those a.s.surances are accompanied by sharp accusations, the accused will have even a greater right to examine the deeds and records of this a.s.sertive science.
What about the unprepossession of liberal science, especially in the province of philosophy and religion? It cannot be our intention to explore the whole territory in every direction. We shall keep to the central and main road, the road to which chiefly lead all other roads of life, we mean the att.i.tude of this school of research towards the world beyond. We find this att.i.tude to be one of persistent ignoring! Science cannot acknowledge the supernatural; this presumption, unproved and impossible of proof, it never loses sight of, it is even made a scientific principle, which is called:
The Principle of Exclusive Natural Causation.
This principle demands that everything belonging to nature in its widest sense, consequently all objects and events of irrational nature and of human life, must be explained by natural causes only; supernatural factors must not be brought in. To a.s.sume an interposition by G.o.d, in the form of creation, miracle, or revelation, is unscientific; he who does so is not a true scientist. A presumption, a mandate of truly stupendous enormity! How can it be proved that there is no G.o.d, that creation, miracles, the supernatural origin of religion, are impossible things? And if they are possible, why should it be forbidden to make use of them in explaining facts which cannot otherwise be explained?
However, it is readily admitted that the principle is merely a postulate, an _unproved_ presumption.
”The postulate of exclusive natural causation tells us that natural events can have their causes only in other natural events, and not in conditions lying outside of the continuity of natural causality”; so _W. Wundt_. This is a ”postulate, accepted by modern natural science partly tacitly, partly by open profession.”
”Even where an exact deduction is not possible, natural science nevertheless acts under this supposition. It never will consider a natural event to be causally explained, if it is attempted to derive that event from other conditions than preceding natural events.”
Professor _Jodl_ protests against alliance with the Catholic Church, for the reason that the latter does not acknowledge the fundamental presumption of all scientific research, namely, the uninterrupted natural causation, and because the Church is essentially founded on supernatural presumptions. Prof. _A.
Messer_ thinks he has proved sufficiently the untenableness of the Catholic faith by the simple appeal to this presumption: ”Natural sciences rest upon the presumption that everything is causally determined. This means, that the same causes must be followed by the same effects, and all natural events take their course according to invariable laws. It is against this presumption that the Church exacts a belief in miracles, in immediate divine manifestations, not explainable by natural causes. _G.o.d_ is not a causal factor in the eyes of natural science, because everything, and for that very reason, nothing, could be explained through Him.” We see that the principle is expressly admitted to be a mere presumption. ”I concede readily,” says _Paulsen_, ”that the law of natural causation is not a proven fact, but a demand or presumption with which reason approaches the task of explaining natural phenomena. But this postulate ... is the hard-fought victory of long scientific effort.... Gradually there were eliminated from the course of nature demoniacal influence and the miraculous intervention of G.o.d, and in their stead the idea of natural causation was installed.”
It is merely another expression for the same thing if one calls, with _Paulsen_, the unbroken causal connection ”the fundamental presumption of all our natural research”; or concludes, with _A. Drews_, that the a.s.sumption of a transcendental G.o.d, beyond the visible, and in causal relation to the world, destroys the universal conformity to laws in the world, the self-evident presumption of all scientific knowledge; or one may say, with _F. Steudel_, ”The theory of unbroken causal connection has become the fundamental presupposition of all philosophical explanation of world happenings. This finally disposes of a transcendental G.o.d, together with his empiric correlative, the miracle, as a philosophical explanation of the world.” The same result is achieved by declaring evolution from natural factors as the universal world-law.
”_I Know not G.o.d the Father, Almighty Creator of Heaven and of Earth_”
With inexorable persistency this principle is now applied wherever science meets with G.o.d and the world beyond. Hence, let us proceed on our way and halt at some points to watch this science at work.
The unbia.s.sed reasoning of the mind shows that this world, limited and finite, in all its phenomena accidental and perishable, cannot have in itself the cause of its existence, hence, that it demands a supernatural creative cause. This solution of the question is by no means demonstrated by liberal science as untenable, it is simply declined.
”Natural science, once for all, has not the least occasion to a.s.sume a supernatural act of creation”; this we are told by the famous historian of materialism, _F. A. Lange_. ”To fall back upon explanations of this sort amounts always to straying from scientific grounds, which not only is not permissible in a scientific investigation, but should never enter into consideration.” And _L. Plate_ states: ”A creation of matter we cannot a.s.sume, nor would such an a.s.sumption be any explanation at all; at most, it would be tantamount to exchanging one question mark for another. We natural scientists are modest enough, as matters now stand, to forego a further solution of the question.”
They will subscribe to _Du Bois-Reymond's_ ”ignoramus” rather than a.s.sume the only solution of the question, an act of creation. This scientist, asking himself the question, from where the world-matter received its first impulse, argues: ”Let us try to imagine a primordial condition, where matter had not yet been influenced by any cause, and we arrive at the conclusion that matter an infinite time ago was inactive, and equally distributed in infinite s.p.a.ce. Since a supernatural impulse does not fit into our theory of the universe, an adequate cause for the first action is lacking.”
Thus they frankly violate the scientific method that demands acceptance of the explanation demonstrated as necessary, and violate it only for the reason to dodge the acknowledgment of a Creator. This is not science, but politics.
But let us ask, Why should it be against science to reckon with supernatural factors? Is it because we cannot disclose with certainty the other world? Are they not aware that such a principle is opposed by the conviction of all mankind, that always held these conceptions to be the highest, and therefore not to be considered illusions? Do they not see, moreover, how they involve themselves in flagrant contradictions? Does not science by means of its laws of reasoning, especially on the principle of causality, constantly infer invisible causes from visible facts? From physical-chemical facts ether and physical atoms, which no man has ever seen, are deduced: from falling stones and the movement of astral bodies is inferred a universal gravitation, undemonstrable by experience; from an anonymous letter is deduced an author. The astronomer deduces from certain facts that fixed stars must have dark companions, visible to no one; from disturbances in the movements of Ura.n.u.s _Leverrier_ found by calculation the existence and location of Neptune, then not as yet discovered. Hence, what does it mean: ”to fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from scientific ground”? Let us imagine a n.o.ble vessel on the high seas to have become the victim of a catastrophe. It lies now at the bottom of the sea. Fishes come from all sides and stop musingly before the strange visitor. Whence did this come? Was it made out of water? Impossible! Did it creep up from the bottom of the sea? No! At last a fish reasons: ”What we see here has undoubtedly come down to us from a higher world, far above us, and invisible to us.” The speech meets with approval. But another fish objects: ”Nonsense! To fall back upon explanations of this sort always amounts to straying away from the scientific grounds on which we fish must stand. We cannot a.s.sume such a world to exist, because this would offend against the first principle of our science, the principle of the exclusive natural causation of sea and water.” With these words the speaker departs, wagging his tail, his speech having been received with stupefaction rather than with understanding.
To this philosophy may be applied the word of the Apostle: ”Beware lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit” (Col. ii. 8). No, it is not the spirit of true science that opposes the belief in supernatural factors, but it is the desertion of the traditions and the spirit of a better science. To the representatives of paganism, to _Plato_ and others, the highest goal of human quest of truth was to find G.o.d and to wors.h.i.+p Him. For the great leaders in recent natural science, _Copernicus_, _Kepler_, _Newton_, _Linne_, _Boyle_,_ Volta_, _Faraday_, and _Maxwell_, the highest achievement was to point to G.o.d's wisdom in the wonderful works of nature; their science ended in prayer. A principle of unbroken natural causation, as a boycott of the Deity, was to them not a postulate of science but an abomination. They were carried by a conviction expressed by a later scientist, _W. Thomson_, in the following words: ”Fear not to be independent thinkers! If you think vigorously enough, you will be forced by science to believe in a G.o.d, Who is the basis of all religion”; and expressed by _R. Mayer_ in the following words: ”True philosophy must not and cannot be anything else but the propaedeutics of the Christian religion.”
But let us proceed. We have before us an astonis.h.i.+ng _order_, we behold uncounted wonders of well-designed purpose in the world. The question suggests itself: Whence this Order? The watch originates from the intelligence of a maker, an accident could not have produced it; hence also the great world-machine must have had an intelligent maker. This is the logic of unbia.s.sed reason. But the principles of liberal research object to the acceptance of this explanation. What is theirs?
There have been some scientists endeavouring to discover the purposeless in nature, and they have gleaned various things.
_Haeckel_ invented for them the name Dysteleologists; and this is now the name they go by. Why the destruction of so many living embryos? What is the purpose of pain, of the vermiform appendix?
”To what purpose is the immense belt of desert extending through both large continents of the Old World? Could the Sahara not have been avoided?... Indeed, numerous forms of life we cannot look at but with repugnance and horror; for instance, the parasitical beings.” ... (_F. Paulsen_). Hence the order claimed for the world does not exist, on the contrary, ”it is beyond doubt that the most essential means of nature is of a kind which can only be put on a level with the blindest accident” (_F. A. Lange_). But they do not feel satisfied with this. They feel that even if all these things were actually purposeless, they would amount only to a few drops in the immense ocean of order which still has to be explained. At most, they would form but a few typographical errors in an otherwise ingenious book,-errors that evidently are no proof that the whole book is a ma.s.s of nonsense and not dictated by reason.
There appears to them, like a rescuing plank in a s.h.i.+pwreck, _Darwin's_ Natural Selection. The artistic forms in the kingdom of plants and animals arose, says _Darwin_, by the fact that, among numerous seemingly tentative formations, there were some useful organs or their rudiments which survived in the struggle for existence and became hereditary in the offspring, while others disappeared. It was seen very soon, and it is even better understood to-day, that this enormous feat of ”natural selection”
is contrary to the facts, and would be, above all, an incredible accident.