Mr. A. justly argues against the falsehood that the senses are set for our illusion, and shows that the palate is our veracious alimentary sense, touch mechanical, smell sanatory, hearing social, and sight our cosmic sense. “All and every one, the senses are servants of light for us, not darkness; servants of a King who dwells in light, and not of a grim something which hides among phantasms....... Every sense proclaims its own office to be partial: color is inaudible, sound is intangible, taste is invisible; all objects have properties which elude all the five senses, and yet those which are discovered by them are truly known. 'In part' is inscribed on the dome and the foundations of the temple of knowledge, and covers all its walls.”
Then he asks, “What is a living body? According to the prince of the Positivists a living body is one that absorbs and exhales. This is just what air has always been doing by day and by night; absorbing and exhaling water, heat, and other things as well. According to the prince of Agnostics, a living body is one which effects a continues adjustment of internal relations to external relations.” Now of all things air is just such a body. Its internal relations are those of oxygen to nitrogen and carbon, and these are adjusted to the external relations of heat, light, water, plants, lungs, gills, wings, and hosts of other things. They are ‘continuously' adjusted, with a continuity which makes the adjustments of sleep or nutrition seem intermittent, and with a long-established continuity which makes the oldest animal or even plant appear of low antiquity. Yet neither by its absorbing and exhaling, nor by its continuous adjustment, does air evolve organs of sense and perception
“We say it cannot produce these organs. A stone could do as much towards producing a peacock's voice as can a peacock. A fowl could do as much towards producing for itself human lungs as a man. Yet in man absence of this power to produce living organs is coupled with the power of supplementing with inanimate ones those which have been bestowed upon him, so that he is able to lighten bodily labor, and at the same time to increase the work done. This is a fact so conspicuous and so rich in results that, instead of all notions having mechanical equivalents and effects on a calculable scale, it may be taken as a principle that when the human frame moves under trained intellect, the expenditure of mechanical force lessens in proportion as the power of accomplishing work increases.
“What is involved in the existence of an organ? It manifestly involves a co-ordination in successive stages: first, as between observer and organ; secondly as between observer, organ, and medium; thirdly, as between observer, organ, medium, and object. A failure at any point in this group of co-ordinations, and no knowledge could result. If it is to be a case of sight, no object upon earth can show itself to us. No combination of human powers can show it without light. That medium is both a substance and a motion in that substance, ether and undulation of ether. The undulation has to come far and to cross other substances on its way. It is not one motion, not one rate of motion. All this co-relation has to be sustained at every point on the way up to our atmosphere, and from the time when that is entered upon has to be further complicated by new co-relations,.... It is easy to say that what is objectively motion is subjectively thought. Where is it subjectively thought? wherever the notions strike? Nay! Where is it subjectively human thought? anywhere but in a human mind? What is objectively motion is subjectively thought, hence the distinction between observer and object is needless! Is the motion of the sunbeams ever thought when they light on a stone or a pond?...... Are the motions of sunbeams ever turned into thought when they fall on the plumage of a bird or the fur of a squirrel? They absolutely reveal nothing to the feathers, nothing to the hairs, but when shot against the retina they reveal what makes bird or squirrel glad or fearful... The motions are constituted an object only by the presence of an observer; and, the observer present, the motions are not the principal object, but only a link between him and it. In fact, speaking of what is objectively motion, pre-supposes what it is intended to do away with, mind. No motion is objective to mindless things, nor to anything but mind no mind, no object.”
So it is with the organs of the other senses. “Phenomena are not disguises; and the impressions they give us are not delusions.” The chapter ends with a passage of Mr. Spencer (Princ. of Psych. i. p. 500, § 219), in which he will have the ego to be not a person, but “nothing more than the composite state of consciousness.”
Mr. A.'s next chapter (6.) is on the question of necessity and free will—a delicate subject for one of his peculiar views. He is thoroughly right in exposing the error common to both Positivists and Agnostics, of putting all beings, animated or inanimate, rational or not, under physical laws, and the special inconsistency of one who like Mr. Spencer makes states of consciousness so all-important in making them illusive. Thus is motive confounded with motive power, which Mr. A. uses a donkey and a donkey-cart to disprove. Mr. Spencer as usual stands on his favorite dilemma. “Psychical changes either conform to law, or they do not. If they do not conform to law, this work, in common with all work on the subject, is sheer nonsense. No science of psychology is possible. If they do conform to law, there cannot be any such thing as free will” (Princ. of Psych. p. 220). Mr. A's answer is, some do conform and some do not. Both horns of the dilemma are blunt. If the actions done in England do not conform to law, there can be no good citizens, and if they do, there can be no culprits. Error in thought and feeling, wrong in action, are facts, which all possible metaphysical puzzles will never keep out of sight, even though the dilemma as innocently begs the question as Mr. Spencer's do inordinately often. Law has not the same nature or hence meaning in morals as in physics. It is illogical therefore to reason for men or even brutes from the world of physics and the laws of matter. If things and people, follow an inevitable order by invariable law, where is right and where is wrong? Is the difference between an involuntary and a voluntary deed “nothing else than a nascent excitation of the nerves?” In such a case the Vedic hymn would be true: “It was not our doing, O Varuna! it was necessity.” Mr. Spencer can twit Hume with making a sum total of impressions and ideas; but how can he escape no less censure himself for making man at any given moment only an aggregate of passing states which determine action? The true questions are, Of what is it a. state? and what state is it? Agnosticism thus denies man as well as God any proper intelligence, will, or personality. It is all a waste of blind fatalism.
But dismissing this folly and evil, is it true that “free” is consistent with “will”? or are they not as inconsistent as “Catholic” with “Roman,” or Protestant rights with Christian obedience? Is there will till a man is determined?
When man was set innocent in Eden, he had a sphere placed under him and was free to act there as lord of all given him by God, his obedience tested by a single restraint, which thrown off brought in death on him and all his subjected realm. It was no question of the knowledge of good and evil in a fallen world, with all the moral play which this involves. Conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity, I am begotten again by the word of truth, and now live of a divine life, to do God's will, not mine. The Christian has a nature corresponding with the order in which he stands, and owns gladly his obligation to do God's will. This is the law of liberty of which the Epistle of James speaks. The believer is free to serve God, delivered from his old bondage whatever it might be; yet is he brought and bound to do, not his own will, but God's, which is ever the will of the new man. Free to choose is all false. It was not Adam's case, where there was no conflict of evil with good; it is not in ours. Fallen unconverted man has a will of his own to act independently of God and His word: this is sin. It is lawlessness, law or no law. In Christ was no sin: not only He did and knew no sin, but there was none in His humanity. Indeed He was born “holy,” as Adam even when freshly created was not, but only innocent. When fallen, and not yet born of God, man determines without reference to God, which is nothing but sin, and, for those under law, transgression. In such circumstances the pretension to independency is the rejection of God and of His authority. When converted, the will is set right, though lusts remain, and deliverance in power is needed: life alone is not enough, as Rom. 7 teaches. But the renewed “I” always seeks to please God; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Natural man is Satan's bondman this is not freedom; and one's own will is evil continually, because it is never obeying God.
Freedom from compulsion is of course allowed on all hands, save by infidel minds. Indifference is not truly the state of man, either natural or renewed, and indeed would mean no will: the one is inclined to evil, the other to good. Conscience is not will. It may warn, but is powerless. Grace alone acts effectually by faith.
In God only can we rightly speak of free will. He is absolutely free to do as He sees fit, and never pleases to do save what is good and holy. With the creature it is wholly different; his only place is obedience. God can create, the creature is acted on by motives. It is true that God never hindered his choosing the good, or compelled his choice of evil, any more than He made it impossible for him to fall. It is one thing to be free from external restraint, another to be free internally, which no sinner is. Man indeed never was the blank sheet which the speculative imagine: innocent, he was inclined to good; fallen, to evil. When converted and delivered in Christ, there is not only life, but power.
We need not dwell on Mr. Spencer's view of the origin of the Universe, which Mr. A. discusses in his chapter 7. Creation out of nothing does not mean by nothing, which is truly unthinkable, but by God, the Everlasting Being; and this alone satisfies. Even Mr. S. confesses “It is impossible to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere.” Just so; reason shows there must be God; revelation, Who and what He is, as well as that He is. And who could reveal God but Himself, directly or indirectly? It is ridiculously false to say that this is impossible in thought or fact. To treat matter and mind as practically identical is irrational to the last degree, which is eluded, not faced, by calling these “proximate activity,” though the phenomena are essentially diverse. Alike from God, they are totally different in themselves. It is here that Mr. Spencer's “illusion” enters, which, if true, would make all science impossible. Mr. A.'s conclusion is: “The supposition of an Eternal Nothing which produced both mind and matter is unbelievable and inconceivable. The supposition of Eternal matter which produced mind is unbelievable. The supposition of Eternal Mind which produced both matter and finite mind is conceivable and believable, according to reason by infinite weight and probability.” It may be well to add that reasoning can only give us a conclusion. Observation gives facts, as in this case divine testimony alone presents the truth to faith. “By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear.”
Chap. 8. Mr. A. entitles “Mr. Spencer's replacement of God.” Of this unascertained Something (says Mr. A. p. 479), Mr. Harrison says it is impersonal, unconscious, unthinking and unthinkable; while Sir James Stephen calls it a barren abstraction. Whatever else it is, it is neither God nor man. When Mr. Spencer is on his defense, his struggles to escape from the effect of these negations have no other result than that of working him into positions impossible to be held except on the ground of faith in a living God. A self-evolved universe is the theory of Mr. Spencer. His illustration of mist forming in a clear sky in no true way helps self-evolution, as Mr. A. shows; for it takes for granted water, air, heat, &c. It pre-supposes the concurrent action of heaven and earth. It is the result of a change effected by sundry agents external to itself. What is self-evolved must find within itself the impulses the agents, and the materials of its evolutions. A: self-evolved universe is simply another form of the self-existence of matter. Now we come to the old point in the circle—Given matter, force, and motion, then we begin. Now, who gives the three finites? Finites cannot be self-originated.
The last chap. (9) is “Mr. Spencer's Substitute for Christianity,” He confesses religion indestructible, but reduces it to curiosity about the Ultimate Cause, and awe before it. It has neither God to love us, nor love to man. Praise is unknown, as gratitude and service are impossible, and all the springs of moral action—a religion worthy of unbelief.