Evolution. F. B. Jevons

real is also our highest ideal.

      We have already remarked that paradoxical though it sounds to say that the ideal is real, the seeming paradox does express a fact—the fact at once of our consciousness of the difference between what is and what ought to be, and of our conviction that what ought to be is no mere illusion. Truth and goodness, wisdom and love, are all at the same time ideal and real. The truth to which it is the ideal of science to approximate is no mere chimera. So far as it is truth, it is not merely man's way of looking at the facts or an interpretation which he puts upon them: it is a statement of the facts, as accurate and precise as science can make it. The ideal, being an ideal, will never be fully attained; but that the truth is there to be found out is proved every time science reaches a new truth, that is to say, a truth which before its discovery was indeed not apprehended by man, but certainly was not therefore either untrue or non-existent. The truth was in the facts; for what man knows of nature he has learnt from nature, and what he finds there is not the projection of human wisdom but the revelation of a more than human wisdom. Man's knowledge is real in proportion as it approaches the ideal. The ideal is not man's surmise, or vague conception, or anticipation of what he may hereafter come to know, for such surmises are always proved to be more or less erroneous. Neither is it man's conviction that the truth exists, if only he could find it out. It is actual truth and knowledge which now exist, and, being truth and knowledge, must exist in some mind, and certainly do not exist in man's mind. Science, so far as it has approached the ideal, has done so not by being anthropomorphic, but by ceasing to be anthropomorphic—that is to say, by casting aside presumptions of what according to man's notions ought to be or a priori must be, and substituting for such preconceptions a patient, reverent study of the facts as they are.

      To regard the knowledge thus gained as being at once purely human and the only reality is to say that the evolution of the universe exists only in the speculation of human thinkers, and consequently that the world as it was before man existed was created by the speculation of minds which were not in existence then and which were only subsequently evolved. How can man have been evolved out of his own speculations? How can his speculations have existed before he did? Man owes his origin to the same Power whose wisdom is revealed in nature to science, and manifested to all in all around us. Of the existence of a Power, not ourselves, we have evidence in everything that affects us. It is a fact of consciousness, but it is a fact which from its very nature does not exist solely in our consciousness. Therein it resembles ideal wisdom or goodness, which exists in us, so far as our wisdom or goodness is real, but is far from being exhausted by its partial presence in us.

      The ideal in morality, again, is not the mere desire to do good or to be good, just as the ideal in knowledge is not the mere desire to know the truth. And if goodness is the object of moral desire, as truth is the object of intellectual desire, in neither case is the object of desire purely imaginary, a mere idea or conception of something which might be, but as a matter of fact is not. We do not desire imaginary pleasures or imaginary goodness, we want the reality; and to tell us that that reality exists only in idea, only in our own imagination, is a misleading half-truth. True, we must have some idea of it, or else we could not desire it. But neither could we desire it if it were presented to us as purely imaginary. In other words, the object of moral desire is apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, as both actual and possible, as existing simultaneously for us and beyond us. The case is the same with ideal truth: we could not desire it, unless we had some conception of it, unless it were to some degree or in some way present to our consciousness; yet, at the same time, the knowledge which we desire to have but do not yet possess is certainly, so far as we do not possess it, beyond our consciousness. It is because we have not got it that we want it. And the object of desire, what we want, is not imaginary truth, but real truth; just as in our better moments we want to do not what we imagine to be right, but what is really right. The Real, therefore—real truth, real goodness—is apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, and desired, at the moment of desire, as existing both for us and beyond us.

      The proviso, "at the moment of apprehension, at the moment of desire," is important, because it strikes at the root of all forms of subjective idealism. They all assume that the only thing directly apprehended is what exists for us; that consequently the supposed existence of any real thing or person beyond us is a mere inference, and an inference the truth of which we have no means of checking, because it is a statement about things of which we have no direct apprehension or knowledge. On this assumption, therefore, the only things man directly apprehends are his own states of consciousness, his own sensations, etc. Are we to call them real or not? If they are not real, his whole life is a dream, his speculations fancies, and his desires illusions. If they are the only reality of which he can be certain, then the only truth is that which man knows, the only good is that which man does, the only world is that which man thinks, the only God is that which man makes, the magnified, non-natural shadow of man projected on to the mists of the Unknowable.

      It is important, therefore, to insist that the Real—the reality of existence, of knowledge, of goodness—is not an inference, but a matter of direct apprehension. It is certain that goodness or knowledge to be an object of desire must be presented to us in idea; but it is equally certain that the mere idea is not what we desire. The object of desire is directly apprehended as in our consciousness and beyond it. The natural world around us is also directly apprehended as at once in our consciousness and beyond it: it is presented to our minds, but it is presented as real.

It is important also to note that the real does not forfeit its reality to our apprehension when and because it takes up its abode in us: goodness does not cease to be good because we do it, nor truth cease to be truth because we know it. It does not follow that because the ideal cannot be fully realised, it cannot be realised at all. On the contrary, the conviction that it cannot be completely attained is itself the guarantee that it can be attained partially. Yet it has been assumed that if a thing is apprehended by us it cannot be real, that real knowledge begins just where our knowledge ends, that the further we push our knowledge forward the further real knowledge recedes from our view. On this assumption is built the theory of the Unknowable, the theory that whatever is known to man is a state of man's consciousness; that states of consciousness are subjective, are merely the appearances of things, not the things themselves; that the real things, the things themselves, are unknowable; their appearances alone can be known to man; therefore the real is for ever unknowable. "The reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown."[4] Consequently, inferences about the Real are valueless and futile. By way of compensation, however, our knowledge of the unreal is, on this theory, varied and extensive: it includes, for instance, the theory of evolution and the whole of science.

      But the assumption which leads to this strange conclusion is opposed to the facts. The fact, as we have contended, is that the real in consciousness is continuous with the real beyond consciousness, and is apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, as being thus continuous, and is not reached by any process of inference. The real is not a matter of inference, but of apprehension. Its existence cannot be deduced from anything else; it is that from which all conclusions must be deduced. I cannot prove that a thing is real any more than I can prove that I have toothache. There is no need.

      FOOTNOTES:

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      [4] Herbert Spencer, First Principles, ch. iv. § 22, p. 69.

V.

       THE REAL

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      We began, at the beginning of this book, by accepting Evolution as a fact, as all ordinarily educated persons in the present state of scientific knowledge are practically bound to do. Accepting it as a fact, we proceeded to inquire what, if anything, it had to tell us about the moral government of the world; and we found that very