4. What Lies Behind the Law
Let us sum up what we have reached so far. In the case of stones and
trees and things of that sort, what we call the Laws of Nature may not be
anything except a way of speaking. When you say that nature is governed by
certain laws, this may only mean that nature does, in fact, behave in a
certain way. The so-called laws may not be anything real-anything above and
beyond the actual facts which we observe. But in the case of Man, we saw
that this will not do. The Law of Human Nature, or of Right and Wrong, must
be something above and beyond the actual facts of human behaviour. In this
case, besides the actual facts, you have something else-a real law which we
did not invent and which we know we ought to obey.
I now want to consider what this tells us about the universe we live
in. Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this
universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views
have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People
who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and
always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in
certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce
creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand
something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another
thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right
temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on
this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the
living creatures developed into things like us. The other view is the
religious view. (*) According to it, what is behind the universe is more
like a mind than it is like anything else we know.
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[*] See Note at the end of this chapter.
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That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one
thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes
we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like
itself-I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not
think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other
has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both
views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the
right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It
watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run,
however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the
telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th
and saw so-and-so," or, "I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to
such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so." Do not think I am saying
anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more
scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this
is the job of science- and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But
why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind
the things science observes-something of a different kind-this is not a
scientific question. If there is "Something Behind," then either it will
have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some
different way. The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement
that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can
make.
And real scientists do not usually make them.
It is usually the
journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of
half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is
really a matter of common sense. Supposing science ever became complete so
that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that
the questions, "Why is there a universe?" "Why does it go on as it does?"
"Has it any meaning?" would remain just as they were?
Now the position would be quite hopeless but for this. There is one
thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we
could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not
merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside
information; we are in the know. And because of that, we know that men find
themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite
forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey. Notice
the following point. Anyone studying Man from the outside as we study
electricity or cabbages, not knowing our language and consequently not able
to get any inside knowledge from us, but merely observing what we did, would
never get the slightest evidence that we had this moral law. How could he?
for his observations would only show what we did, and the moral law is about
what we ought to do. In the same way, if there were anything above or behind
the observed facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying
them from outside, could never hope to discover it.
The position of the question, then, is like this. We want to know
whether the universe simply happens to be what it is for no reason or
whether there is a power behind it that makes it what it is. Since that
power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality
which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it. There is
only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely
our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way
round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not
show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe- no more than the
architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in
that house.
The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be
inside ourselves as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in
a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely
this ought to arouse our suspicions? In the only case where you can expect
to get an answer, the answer turns out to be Yes; and in the other cases,
where you do not get an answer, you see why you do not. Suppose someone
asked me, when I see a man in a blue uniform going down the street leaving
little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters?
I should reply, "Because whenever he leaves a similar little packet for me I
find it does contain a letter." And if he then objected, "But you've never
seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting," I
should say, "Of course not, and I shouldn't expect to, because they're not
addressed to me. I'm explaining the packets I'm not allowed to open by the
ones I am allowed to open." It is the same about this question. The only
packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that
particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I
am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain
way.
I do not, of course, think that if I could get inside a stone or a tree
I should find exactly the same thing, just as I do not think all the other
people in the street get the same letters as I do. I should expect, for
instance, to find that the stone had to obey the law of gravity-that whereas
the sender of the letters merely tells me to obey the law of my human
nature, He compels the stone to obey the laws of its stony nature. But I
should expect to find that there was, so to speak, a sender of letters in
both cases, a Power behind the facts, a Director, a Guide.
Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a
hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a
Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law
urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when
I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like
anything else we know-because after all the only other thing we know is
matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions. But,
of course, it need not be very like a mind, still less like a person. In the
next chapter we shall see if we can find out anything more about it. But one
word of warning. There has been a great deal of soft soap talked about God
for the last hundred years. That is not what I am offering. You can cut all
that out.
Note -In order to keep this section short enough when it was given on
the air, I mentioned only the Materialist view and the Religious view. But
to be complete I ought to mention the In between view called Life-Force
philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution. The wittiest
expositions of it come in the works of Bernard Shaw, but the most profound
ones in those of Bergson. People who hold this view say that the small
variations by which life on this planet "evolved" from the lowest forms to
Man were not due to chance but to the "striving" or "purposiveness" of a
Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they
mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then "a mind bringing life
into existence and leading it to perfection" is really a God, and their view
is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense
in saying that something without a mind "strives" or has "purposes"? This
seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative
Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort
of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are
feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the
whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to
think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and
carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something
rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and
no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned
about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can
switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of
religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of
wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
