Riddles of the Sphinx/Preface
It is the privilege of a preface that it enables the author to deprecate some misconception of the scope and tendencies of his work by a preliminary explanation. And this privilege is doubly valuable when the author has to excuse himself for writing a book upon subjects of the highest human interest. For he feels that it is no adequate excuse to plead that the condition of philosophy is such that his efforts cannot make it worse, and still less that the conclusions to which he has been led by many years of reflection may present some degree of novelty. He knows that real or apparent novelty is the greatest obstacle to success, even in this most progressive century, and that the mental attitude which was ever eager “to hear some new thing” is as extinct as the “Attic salt” which seasoned the disputations of the ancient philosophers. And the more fundamental the ideas are, upon which change is alleged to be necessary, the more violent is the resistance with which novel doctrines are resented. There is no subject, therefore, on which mankind is more conservative, and more unintelligently conservative, than metaphysics, and a novelty in metaphysics is met as coldly as a novelty in fashions is welcomed warmly. So far, then, from priding himself upon his novelty, the author would rather hope that he has not carried innovation to a pitch too audacious, and has made it sufficiently clear that his principles are either ancient principles which he has revived, or commonly current principles which he has worked out to their logical conclusions, and cleared of the inconsistencies which ordinarily deface them.
It is not upon the ground of novelty that the author would base his appeal for indulgence, but rather upon two wholly different facts.
To the more or less technical public of those who love philosophy for its own sake and study it irrespective of its results, as one of the finest and most salutary disciplines of the mind, he would appeal because he believes that the experience of the last sixty years must have generated in their minds an unavowed but deep-seated and widespread distrust of and disgust with the methods which have starved philosophy in the midst of plenty, and condemned it to sterility and decay in the very midst of the unparalleled progress of all the other branches of knowledge. Can they really believe that a science is on the right path, which in the opinion of its most authoritative exponents “has made no substantial advance since Hegel,” and which meets the advances of the other sciences by an attitude of querulous negation? Our philosophers have given more or less intelligible reasons, mostly in the form of voluminous commentaries on their predecessors, for their inability to accept a scientific interpretation of things which was so unduly neglectful of this or that technical distinction, laid down by Hegel, or Kant, or Thomas Aquinas, or Aristotle. But though they have abounded in endless criticisms of one another and of the scientists, they have not found it possible to inform us what interpretation they themselves would put upon the world in the light of modern discoveries. Where is the cultivated reader to go for a positive statement of the philosophic view of the world, for an exposition of modern metaphysics, and for an explanation of their bearing on the problem of life in its modern shape?
It was the sense of this want, of the absence of any interpretation of modern results in the light of ancient principles, which prompted the author to give what is substantially a philosophy of Evolution,[1] the first perhaps which accepts without reserve the data of modern science, and derives from them a philosophical cosmology, which can emulate the completeness of our scientific cosmogonies. He believes that quite apart from professed philosophers, there exists a large and growing body of men, who are interested to know “what it all comes to,” who are impressed by the mystery of the claim made on behalf of philosophy, and yet repelled by the fragmentariness, the unattractive form and the inconclusiveness of modern philosophy. Thus there exists a great deal of philosophic interest which is baffled by the difficulties of the subject, a great deal of philosophic reflection which comes to nothing, or still worse, leads only to confusion, for lack of the most ordinary facilities for studying the subject. It is with a view to affording these, and in the hope that his book may be found not only a contribution to modern philosophy, but useful also as an introduction to its study, that the author has avoided needless technicalities, and as far as possible explained their use on their first appearance. And to some extent the same motive has led him to treat his subject in the order which it assumes to the individual mind as it sets out on its explorations. By setting out from the anti-metaphysical agnosticism of ordinary men, it starts with a stock of ideas which are more familiar to men than the fundamental conceptions of metaphysics, which come last in the order of discovery. And at the same time this arrangement brings out more clearly the natural dialectic of the soul, and the necessity of the process which impels it, step by step, from the coarsest prejudice and crassest “fact,” towards the loftiest ideals of metaphysics. But an adequate defence of the plan of the book may be made also on its intrinsic merits. It is written not only in the order which is likely to be most palatable to the ordinary reader, but also in the order which is natural both to human thought and to the course of the world, which is required by its inductive method of philosophizing (ch. vi. § 2), the order in which it took shape in the author’s brain, and the order which is most worthy of the dignity of the subject. For by representing the course of the argument as a sort of philosophical Pilgrim’s Progress, it most emphatically asserts the vital importance of the points at issue.
And yet, of course, the author is well aware that his order is not devoid of countervailing disadvantages. It makes him liable, e.g., to verbal contradictions between the earlier and more imperfect adumbrations of a conception, and the clearer and more perfect grasp which is possible only later on, i.e., it renders it necessary to read the earlier to some extent in the light of the later assertions. This danger it has been attempted to minimize by a frequent use of cross-references. And, secondly, it was unfortunately impossible to avoid a good deal of technical discussion in chapters ii. and iii., in the refutation of Agnosticism and the establishment of Scepticism: all that could be done was to warn the non-technical reader of what to omit by means of the analysis of the argument.
As to the remaining points which might seem to require explanation, the author must refuse to apologize for what may seem the romantic character of some of his conclusions. For romance is a relative term, and for his part he would often be inclined to agree with the uninitiated public in looking upon some of the most ordinary assertions of the dullest every-day philosophy as the wildest and most pernicious romance. And in any case, no apology should be needed for the romance of philosophy in an age which has rightly learned to appreciate “the fairy tales of science.” If truth seems stranger than fiction, it is because we have previously abased our minds to the level of superstitions none the less fictitious for being unpoetical.
The attitude of “Riddles of the Sphinx” to the established religion is a subject more important and more difficult, and it would be presumptuous to attempt any forecast of its reception. But its author may sincerely claim that its relation to Christianity is one of complete independence, and even that it was intended rather for the deniers and doubters of religious truth. And this was all the more possible that on the whole the discussion dealt with subjects upon which religious tradition was silent, or discussed them on planes so different that their respective assertions could hardly come into contact. Nevertheless, whenever the conclusions arrived at coincided with those of religion, this has been frankly admitted. But in no case has this coincidence been quoted as an authority, or taken the place of independent argument. Neither, on the other hand, has the author concealed his disagreement with certain widely prevalent religious views, such as, e.g., that as to the infinity of the Deity. But he has been at pains to point out that the views he combats have not been unambiguously asserted by the Christian Church, and that they are incompatible with the spirit of all religion. He trusts, therefore, that rather than impugn the orthodoxy of a philosophy which contains no doctrine inconsistent with the principles of religion, theologians will find it possible to put such an interpretation upon the dogmas in question as will at length reconcile faith with reason.
Instead of hastily condemning verbal divergencies from the wording of the Athanasian Creed, let them reflect rather whether it is not wiser to meet in a conciliatory spirit the well-meant efforts of a philosophical theory which may sincerely claim that its metaphysics enable it to grant to religion the substance, though not the shadow of its demands, and which challenges careful consideration of the question whether all the alternative systems do not do just the reverse, and sacrifice the substance to the shadow. Certainly religion can still less afford to quarrel needlessly with philosophy than science; but even the votaries of the physical sciences may find it growing more and more impossible to disavow their metaphysical basis, and more and more needful to recognize that the problems of philosophy concern the first principles of all knowing and all living. Hence it was with the idea of diminishing this estrangement between philosophy and “science,” that the author has attempted to bring out the metaphysical conclusions implied in the frank and full acceptance of the methods of modern science, and in the hope that both parties might discover in them some possibility of composing their differences in a manner equally advantageous and honourable to both.
But though the shock of diametrically opposed views is generating in many thoughtful minds, the conviction that their common ground and reconciliation must be sought deeper down than has been the fashion, the anti-metaphysical surface current is still sufficiently violent, both in religion and in science, to render discretion the duty of all who do not covet the barren honours of a useless martyrdom. Hence it would be needless to assign any further reason for the last point it is necessary to allude to, viz., the anonymity of the Riddles of the Sphinx, even if the professional position of its author were such that he could afford to disregard men’s intolerance of real or seeming innovation. For the splendid satire of Plato is unfortunately still too true to the spirit of men’s treatment of those whose souls have risen by rough paths of speculation to the supernal spheres of metaphysics, and who return to tell them that the shadows on the walls of their Cave are not the whole truth, nor precisely what their nurses have taught them, and such as they have learnt from their grandmothers. In their wrath “they would, if perchance they could lay their hands upon them, verily put them to death;” for their first impulse is still to stone the prophets, whose spirit their bootless reverence will afterwards oppress beneath the burden of memorial sepulchres. Who then will take it upon him to blame a philosopher if he wraps his mantle closely around his face?
Note
[edit]- ↑ Of course, in speaking of the attitude of the philosophers proper towards scientific data, writers like Mr. Herbert Spencer are excluded. For he is just a typical representative of modern ideas which have failed to obtain due notice at the hands of the metaphysicians. In von Hartmann’s case there is indeed no disputing the reality of the old metaphysics, but their juncture with the new ideas of Evolution is too superficial, and the latter have not been able substantially to affect the character of the former (cp. ch. x. § 11, note).