< Faith Versus Knowledge (continued from page 7-89) >
I think we should occasionally halt in our career and inquire whither we are tending, for a little calm reflection amidst the sea of Theosophical and Reincarnationist theories with which we are deluged, seems to be necessary to enable us to keep our foothold on what is substantial and verifiable.
Such lofty flights have lately been taken by our French and American friends, that I, for one, have felt quite unable to follow, and have had thrust upon me the necessity of constantly keeping in view the wide and distinct difference between what is on the one hand purely a matter of science and reason, and, on the other, a matter of faith or speculation. It is not sufficiently borne in mind that these two sides of a question can never be usefully associated, and that any attempt at investigation which does not set out with a strictly defined separation of them can only end in confusion.
I think it will be admitted that the literature of Spiritualism affords proof that we have not made that separation; that, with us fact so frequently and imperceptibly shades off into fancy that it is next to impossible to determine where one leaves off and the other begins.
I hold that nothing permanently valuable can be arrived at as long as this is the case, and that until we divide ourselves into two allied camps, one pledged to the self-negation of dry fact and the other permitted as free and unfettered an employment of the emotional side of their natures as they may choose, no good thing will come out of Spiritualism. For is it not the distinctive feature of modern Spiritualism that it claims to have withdrawn the question from the region of faith and to have made it one of provable fact? If so, it would seem clear that the duty which lies nearest to us is to render that proof convincing to everyone, and especially to those whose intellectual eminence would befit them to deal with it. It is on this ground only that the phenomena have interest for me, for I confess that I gain from them no strengthening of any religious conviction I formerly possessed, and that any belief I have in the existence of spirits and of a life after death is not an intellectual conviction arrived at after experiment and research, but a faith which is independent of knowledge, and which I can only justify by saying that I feel it necessary to hold that belief.
This confusion, however, of the intellectual and the emotional is not one of which we are alone guilty; I think the large majority of men are not conscious of the almost invincible tendency that exists to regard subjective as objective truths; a true discrimination in such matters is wellnigh impossible to those whose thoughts range unchecked throughout the whole of their natures. Even the utterances of disciplined men like Tyndall and his fellows are continually marked by precisely the same failure to distinguish between the two; they forget that the premises of science include nothing but what is capable of sensible experience, and that its attitude towards transcendental conceptions must be one of professed ignorance; and thus, when in some purely scientific treatise one comes across a gush of poetic feeling, the effect is supremely ridiculous, when it is not disgusting.
I should wish to urge, then, that every enquiry ought to start upon the lowest ground possible to attain, and that that ground must be one on which the whole human race can be agreed. Such a basis is to be found only in the scientific method of enquiry, which in its simplest form is essentially nothing more than that 2 + 2 = 4.
Science has been ably defined as v Prevision based on quantitative knowledge.” Without this knowledge, that is, without an exhaustive study of the qualities of the matter under investigation, followed by a definition of its quantities, experience has proved that we cannot have the prevision. All speculation which does not recognize and account for every variety of fact which comes within the vision of the explorer, is, as the Positivists would say, metaphysical, inasmuch as it is a personal view supported by a certain number of external phenomena, and not an impersonal conclusion forced upon the enquirer by the order of all the facts concerned. It is most unfortunate that we, who possess materials for obtaining accurate knowledge, should admit so much that is merely empirical opinion, so many hasty generalizations which assume that the part is equal to the whole.
I do not wish to be understood as imposing any restriction whatever on the speculative faculty, which, of course, affords satisfaction to the mental and spiritual needs of a very large class, but I do wish to point out that in this way we cannot hope to arrive at any solution of our difficulties, and that until a firm and verifiable basis has been obtained, speculation only draws us away from the points at issue,
I expect I am venturing on dangerous ground when I say that man’s five senses are the only known avenues of information; but at all events science ca& recognize no others at present; if in process of time other objects in the universe Should develope related perceptions in man, by so much will the field of our knowledge be extended; but I think it will be admitted that, as yet, we possess no organ by which we can recognize spirit as spirit. Our duty, therefore, appears to lie in exhausting all that is now sensible to us, and thus preserve that principle of continuity which doubtless extends throughout the universe, and avoid any sudden and wide jumps at a hypothesis which, however useful as a hypothesis, remains non-proven as a fact.
For let us consider what a fact is. Nothing seems easier to define, until we try; on trial the task is perplexing, because of the ambiguities of language, which imply an antithesis between fact and theory. Facts are commonly taken as relating to phenomena existing externally, per se, while theories relate to consciousness, to the conception we form of external things. Thus facts are said to represent the order of phenomena, and theories our conceptions of that order. The psychologist, however, knows that these pretended limits are shadowy and artificial, and cannot be maintained; he knows that so far from any fact being the unadulterated image of its object, the conditions of our own consciousness are necessarily mingled with it, and that in the very simplest fact there is an inextricable blending of inference with sensation. A fact may be defined as a bundle of inferences tied together by one or more sensations. Take a case so simple as the sight of an apple on the table. All that. is here certified by consciousness is the sensation of a coloured surface; with this are linked certain ideas of roundness, firmness, sweetness, and fragrance, which were once sensations, and are now recalled by this of colour, and the whole group of actual and inferred sensations clusters into the fact which is ex- pressed in “there is an apple.” Yet any one of these inferences may be erroneous. The coloured object may be the imitation of an apple in wood or stone; the inferences of roundness and solidity would then be correct; those of sweetness and fragrance erroneous; the statement of fact would be false. Or the object seen may be another kind of fruit resembling an apple, yet in important particulars differing from it. Or the object may not exist, and our perception may be an hallucination. Thus a case seemingly so simple may furnish us with the evidence that facts only express our conception of the order in external things, and not the unadulterated order itself. Should the accuracy of any particular fact happen to be of importance—and in Science all facts are important—we are bound to verify it before accepting it. How is it to be verified? By submitting each of its constituent inferences to the primordial test of Consciousness. This test with regard to objects within the range of sense is obviously the reduction of inference to sensation. The test with regard to general principles transcending sense is conformity with the laws of thought; when we have thus verified a fact, but not till then, have we attained the highest degree of certitude.
Unless our experiences concur with this definition, they are valueless as sources of knowledge, and if we apply it to the subject which interests us, how small a proportion of our facts can be thus classified.
The necessity for clearing our position is well indicated in a work called the Unseen Universe, by Professors Stewart and Tait, whose little book is a most thoughtful and earnest contribution to the literature of Spiritualism. They say:
“Let us say a few words about modern Spiritualists, in so far as their pretensions have reference to our subject. They assert the presence among them of the spirits of the departed, assuming sometimes a visible shape, and they compare these appearances to those which are recorded in the sacred writings. But there is this prominent distinction between the two: the Spiritualist communications recorded in the Scriptures are represented as made to those who were unprepared to receive them, and also for the most part as taking place in open daylight, or, to speak more properly, having no sort of reference to light or darkness. Whatever be their explanation, they have an open-air look about them, On the other hand, the manifestations recorded by the <... continues on page 7-91 >