Arthur James Balfour

“ I object to it because it talks loudly of experience, yet never faces facts; and boasts its rationality, yet rarely reasons home. These are far graver crimes against the spirit of truth than any condemned in Locke’s pretentious aphorism, and they lead to far more serious consequences.
If you ask me what I have in mind when I say that agnostic empiricism never faces facts, I reply that it never really takes account of that natural history of knowledge, of that complex of causes, rational and non-rational, which have brought our accepted stock of beliefs into being. ”

“ If any man will test this for himself, let him recall the too rare moments when beauty gave him a delight which strained to its extremest limit his powers of feeling; when not only the small things of life, but the small things of Art—its technical dexterities, its historical associations—vanished in the splendour of an unforgettable vision; and let him ask whether the attribution of an effect like this to unthinking causes, or to an artist created and wholly controlled by unthinking causes, would not go far to impair its value. ”

“ If the long-drawn “conflict between religion and science” has robbed us of some illusions which we abandon with regret, the knowledge it has spared us we may hold with assurance. But when we turn to the narrow Theism of these lectures, fittingly couched in the outworn language of the pulpit and the Sunday-school, can we find in it either the glory of metaphysical speculation or the security of positive knowledge? It has not the courage to explore the unknowable, nor the power to add to the known. ”

“ Apart from life and thought, there is no reason to regard one form of material distribution as in any respect superior to another. A solar system may be more interesting than its parent nebula; it may be more beautiful. But if there be none to unravel its intricacies or admire its splendours, in what respect is it better? Its constituent atoms are more definitely grouped, the groups move in assignable orbits; but why should the process by which these results have been achieved be regarded as other than one of purposeless change super-induced upon meaningless uniformity? ”

“ The philosopher refuses—in theory—to assume anything which requires proof. I assume (among other things) the common-sense outlook upon life, and the whole body of the sciences. The philosopher admits—in theory—no ground of knowledge but reason. I recognise that, in fact, the whole human race, including the philosopher himself, lives by faith alone. The philosopher asks what creed reason requires him to accept. I ask on what terms the creed which is in fact accepted can most reasonably be held. ”

“ In Kant’s argument, as I understand it, God was external to morality in the sense that He was not Himself a moral end. It was not our feeling of love and loyalty to Him that was of moment, but His guidance of the world in the interests of virtue and the virtuous. My point is different. I find in the love of God a moral end which reconciles other moral ends, because it includes them. It is not intolerant of desires for our own good. It demands their due subordination, not their complete suppression. It implies loyal service to One who by His essential nature wills the good of all. ”

“ What, in these circumstances, is Locke’s “sincere lover of truth” to do? How is he to avoid “entertaining propositions with greater assurance than the proofs they are built on will warrant”? Where will he find a refuge from the “pure scepticism” which is, in Leslie Stephen’s opinion, the natural result of divided opinions? How is he to get on while he is making up his mind whether any theory of the world within his reach will satisfy unbiased reason? ”

“ If philosophy can speak to him about questions on which science has little to say, he will listen; provided always that the problems dealt with are interesting, and the treatment of them easily understood. He would like, for example, to hear about God, if there be a God, and his Soul, if he has a Soul. But he turns silently away from discussions on the One and the Many, on Subject and Object, on degrees of Reality, on the possibility of Error, on Space and Time, on Reason and Intuition, on the nature of Experience, on the logical characteristics of the Absolute. ”

“ The very essence of the physical order of things is that it creates nothing new. Change is never more than a redistribution of that which never changes. But sensibility belongs to the world of consciousness, not to the world of matter. It is a new creation, of which physical equations can give no account; nay, rather, which falsifies such equations; which requires us to say that, before a certain date in the history of the universe, energy in one shape was converted into precisely the same amount of energy in another shape, and into nothing more ”

“ PERCEPTION, COMMON SENSE, AND SCIENCE I
Nothing would seem easier, at first sight, than to give a general description of the ordinary beliefs of ordinary people about our familiar world of things and persons. It is the world in which we live; it is for all men a real world; it is for many men the real world; it is the world of common sense, the world where the plain man feels at home, and where the practical man seeks refuge from the vain subtleties of metaphysics. Our stock of beliefs about it may perhaps be difficult to justify, but it seems strange that they should be difficult to describe ”

“ They would acknowledge that, in art, origin and value cannot be treated as independent. They would agree that those who enjoy poetry and painting must be at least dimly aware of a poet beyond the poem and a painter beyond the picture. If by some unimaginable process works of beauty could be produced by machinery, as a symmetrical colour pattern is produced by a kaleidoscope, we might think them beautiful till we knew their origin, after which we should be rather disposed to describe them as ingenious. ”

“ A critic examining some artistic whole—a picture, a poem, a symphony—is much occupied in separating out the elements which contribute to the total effect, and in observing their character, value, and mutual relations. But it is only when we cease to analyse, when we contemplate, directly or in retrospect, the whole as a whole, that the problem of origin arises; and even then it need never become explicit. It may remain in the shape of an unsatisfied longing for a spiritual reality beyond the sensuous impression, or of a vaguely felt assurance that the spiritual reality is there. ”

“ But while the value of theology for knowledge is disputed, the value of mathematics for knowledge is indisputable. Its triumphs can be appreciated by the most foolish, they appeal to the most material. If they seem sometimes lost to ordinary view in the realms of abstract infinities, they do not disdain to serve us in the humbler fields of practice. They have helped mankind to all the greatest generalisations about the physical universe: and without them we should still be fumbling over simple problems of practical mechanics, entangled in a costly and ineffectual empiricism. ”

“ In the sixth and eighth lectures of this course I dealt with two inevitable beliefs which lie at the root of all science and all practice—the beliefs that an independent, or, as it is commonly called, an “external” world exists, and the belief that the world, whether external or internal, has at least a measure of regularity. In the seventh lecture I interpolated a discussion upon probability; and showed, or attempted to show, that we must take account of a kind of probability other than that which, in the hands of mathematicians, has so greatly contributed to knowledge. ”

“ Can we be content to regard the highest loyalties, the most devoted love, the most limitless self-abnegation as the useless excesses of a world-system, which in its efforts to adapt organism to environment has overshot its mark?
I deem it impossible. The naturalistic setting must be expanded into one which shall give the higher ethics an origin congruous with their character. Selection must be treated as an instrument of purpose, not simply as its mimic. Theistic teleology must be substituted for Naturalism. ”

“ I do not quarrel with this; but I ask myself why “energy” should be treated more leniently than “force.” Though force is now known not to be “conserved,” ordinary thought attributes to it a certain continuity of existence even when it does not show itself in motion. Force may be exerted though nothing moves; as, for example, by a book pressing on a table. But this view is profoundly unsatisfactory to many scientific thinkers. For them force is nothing apart from “acceleration”; it does not represent a cause, it only measures an effect. ”

“ I ask him to consider whether his system provides an honourable place for the actual beliefs by which his waking life is ruled; whether all the gradations of intuitive probability, from inevitable compulsion to faint inclination, find house-room not merely in his psychology of belief, but in his theory of knowledge; whether he is satisfied with his logic of science, or can bring into one harmonious scheme his creed regarded as a body of rational conclusions and his creed regarded as a bundle of natural effects. ”

“ It turns the world of common sense into an illusion, and on this illusion it calmly rests its case.
But this is not the only logical embarrassment in which we are involved. When science has supplied us with a description of external things as they “really are,” and we proceed to ask how the physical reality reveals itself to us in experience, a new difficulty arises, or, if you like, the old difficulty with a new face. For science requires us to admit that experience, from this point of view, is equivalent to perception ”

“ Many of those who look at these problems from (what they deem to be) a strictly scientific point of view are not likely to be more favourable. Their loyalty to experience takes the form of supposing that men accumulate knowledge by peering about for “sequences” among “phenomena,” as a child looks for shells upon the beach—equally ready to go north or south, east or west, as the humour of the moment moves him. They would regard any antecedent preference for this or that sort of explanation as a sin against the categorical imperatives of intellectual morals. ”

“ The employer pays the market price for honesty and competence, and has no claim to more. Yet that company is surely either unfortunate or undeserving whose servants are wholly indifferent to its fortunes, feeling no faintest flicker of pride when it succeeds, no tinge of regret when it fails. Honourable is the tie between those who exchange honest wage and honest work; yet loyalty can easily better it. ”

“ The philosopher conceives that within the unchanging limits of his system an appropriate niche can be found for every new discovery as it arises. My view is that the contents of a system are always reacting on its fundamental principles, so that no philosophy can flatter itself that it will not be altered out of all recognition as knowledge grows.
This last statement may look like a truism; but it is a truism which few philosophers are, in practice, disposed to accept; and the generality of mankind are perhaps even less disposed to accept it even than philosophers. ”

“ Art, History, Morals, the Theory of Probability, the Logic of Perception, the presuppositions of Science, have all been touched on. Themes that might fill volumes—nay, that have filled volumes—are made the text for an hour’s discourse. Introduced one after the other with breathless rapidity, each for a moment has been shown under the limelight, and then hurried off the stage to make room for its successor. It seems hard to believe that with such diversity of materials there can be continuity of argument. ”

“ But, in the meanwhile, it may be observed that though no tragic accompaniments attach to the growth of a purely Absolutist philosophy, this by no means implies that metaphysics is better than religion. It is true that, for the sake of a purely logical Absolute, no man has been moved to do what a later and higher morality condemns—to placate it, for example, with bloody rites or obscene revels. But this is because, for the sake of such an Absolute, no man has ever yet been moved to do anything at all. ”

“ Of course, I do not suggest that works of art are useless. A building may be beautiful, although it is also convenient. A sword most delicately damascened may be an admirable engine of destruction. We may even go further and admit that utility unadorned may have about it an æsthetic flavour. Nice adjustment and fitness exquisitely accomplished are without doubt agreeable objects of contemplation. But, in the first two of these cases, beauty is deliberately added to utility, not organically connected with it. An ill-proportioned building might have been equally fitted for its purpose ”

“ As to how the transmission is effected explanations vary with the growth of science. They have been entirely altered more than once since the modern era began, and with each alteration they become more complicated. They depend, not on one branch of science only, but on many. Newtonian astronomy, solar physics, the theory of radiation, the optical properties of the atmosphere, the physiology of vision, the psychology of perception, and I daresay many other branches of research, have to be drawn upon: and all this to tell us what it is we see, and how it is we come to see it. ”

“ In the meanwhile we must, I fear, suffer under a system of beliefs which is far short of rational perfection. But we need not acquiesce, and we should not be contented. Whether this state of affairs will ever be cured by the sudden flash of some great philosophic discovery is another matter. My present aim, at all events, is far more modest. But they, at least, should make no complaint who hold that common-sense beliefs, and science which is a development of common-sense beliefs, are, if not true, at least on the way to truth. ”

“ If, therefore, belief in one’s self was the first of truths, belief in God was the second; and on this second truth all subordinate beliefs, mathematical, physical, and metaphysical, were, in his opinion, ultimately founded. In one sense, and from one point of view, this is no doubt an exact inversion of the argument developed in these lectures. Descartes rests the belief in science on a belief in God. I rest the belief in God on a belief in science. ”