He had How far Earl Balfour is prepared to accept the doctrine of Evolution it is not easy to say. Years ago, the correspondent in The Times referred to above severely criticized him because he made of the Darwinian hypothesis 'a flying-buttress for his system.' He had no logical right,' wrote the critic, to use this scientific hypothesis as a prop; for not only is it based on a theory of causality which he rejects, but it is essentially a succint summary of evidence accumulated by man's senses'; and, therefore. as Earl Balfour has insisted, that theory cannot possibly have any theory of causality at all. In arguing that he uses it as a 'prop' the critic is mistaking the rock fo the sand.' The following passage from his Foundations of Belie will illustrate the somewhat halting nature of Earl Balfour' views on the subject of Evolution : It may perhaps be thought that in this section I have too confidentl assumed that morality, or, more strictly speaking, the moral sentimen (including among these the feeling of authority which attaches to ethic imperatives) are due to the working of natural selection. I have desire to dogmatise on a subject on which it is the business of th biologist and anthropologist to pronounce. But it seems difficult believe that natural selection should not have had the most importa share in producing, and making permanent, things so obviously usef (page 21). Aesthetic emotions, as being 'quite useless for the pr servation of the individual or species,' may be regarded mere by-products of the evolutionary process,' but sent ments associated with morality are, 'like other evolutiona utilities, in the main produced by the normal operation selection' (page 36), since 'deviations from sound morali are injurious either to the individual or to the community while those who indulge in them are at a disadvanta in the struggle for existence' (page 66). In dealing w the same subject in his Theism and Humanism, he adm that when we come to consider the ethical values of t twentieth century, it is not easy to determine to what extent they have developed under the force of natu selection from the primitive forms of earlier ages; but, 1 is unwilling to regard moral sentiments as purely utilitarian, as a means which Nature has developed for the purpose of maintaining and propagating life; and so he has another suggestion to offer: 'In their primitive forms the products of selection have by a kind of internal momentum overpassed their primitive purpose. Made by nature for a natural object they have developed along lines which are certainly independent of selection, perhaps in opposition to it. And, though not as remote from their first manifestations as is the aesthetic of men from the aesthetic of monkeys, no evolutionary explanation will bridge the interval.' But we cannot be content to regard our highest ethical values as what would seem to be an accident of selection, or the useless excesses of a world system, which in its efforts to adapt organism to environment has overshot its mark.' He, therefore, sets down a succinct statement of what is really the conclusion of the whole of his argument: 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. Thus, and thus only, can moral values, as it seems to me, be successfully maintained.' ' Earl Balfour is a Theist, believing in the existence of God, who takes sides,' or manifests' preferential action.' That ought to mean, at least, as it would seem, that God is interested in His creation, for the welfare of which He legislates. Hence there are physical laws which govern physical movements and moral laws which govern moral beings, but in both cases they are an expression of the divine mind and the divine will. It is this fact which gives the moral law its sanction. Evolutionary utilities thus become an instrument of ethical purpose, though they do not constitute its value. It is one of our common beliefs' that the value of a moral action is of a higher order than that of a physical action. If we cannot trust the intuition 1 Theism and Humanism, p. 119. VOL. XXII-23 • Ibid. 3 Ibid. of the human mind here, we can trust it nowhere; but if we are to make of it merely a by-product or an overproduct of the process of selection it will be impossible to attach to it any higher value than if we were to regard it as a means for the maintenance of the individual and the race. It will be an anomaly with not even utilitarian value. Earl Balfour pointedly remarks that if the rationalist rejects miracles it is not as a result of argument. 'The odds are strongly in favour of argument and belief having both grown up under the fostering influence of his psychological climate.' It is the authority of his preconceived notions, derived perhaps from his education or his environment. But is there not a possibility that the argument may be used against Earl Balfour's favourite thesis of the paramount value of our common beliefs '-that they are universally accepted just because they have grown up under the fostering influences of the psychological atmosphere in which a man has lived? Ultimately our common beliefs, like our philosophical convictions, must be prepared to submit to the criterion of evidence. Earl Balfour, by putting Authority as antithetic to Reason, would seem to set aside the value of that criterion. The term 'Authority' he uses to describe those causes of belief which are not reasons, and yet are due to the influence of mind on mind. It may be that actually in any particular case, or in a number of cases, they are accepted without question on the authority of others-parents, for instance; but that is because the judgment of parents is implicitly accepted by children. It may be that Reason, which is the moral basis of the authority of our beliefs, may, in particular cases, be wrongly used, but at least it must be amenable to the test of evidence, in order to justify it, even though the range of the power of Authority may cover a generation, an epoch, a whole civilization,'' and even though it be admitted that 'Reason is not necessarily, nor perhaps usually, dominant 1 Foundations of Belief, p. 223. 2 Ibid. p. 218. among the immediate causes which produce a particular psychological climate.' 1 There is much virtue in that word 'immediate.' Enough that ultimately Authority rests upon it. one Earl Balfour's argument of congruous origins,' as I against Naturalism, is excellent in his application of it to the physical order; but Authority is of the moral order, and is therefore of itself, normally at least, rational. To his contention that there can be no scientific truth,' that the root of every rational process lies in an irrational an audacious denial is given by Earl Balfour's anonymous critic. That beliefs are due,' he writes, 'to the operation of non-intelligent forces may account for the fact that no beliefs are wholly false; that, however encrusted with error and misconception, there is some kernel of truth in every belief; for the non-intelligent causes of belief do not and cannot lie.'" Earl Balfour's point is that they cannot give rise to any beliefs at all. They belong to another order of being altogether; so that it is with not a little naïveté that the critic asserts that the fact that these causes are non-intelligent accounts for the truth of some at least of our beliefs. With equal logic he could maintain that all our beliefs must necessarily be true. In his introductory lecture on Theism and Humanism Earl Balfour refers to two types of conceptions about God -the metaphysical and the religious. The metaphysical conception,' he says, emphasises His all-inclusive unity. The religious type emphasizes His ethical personality,' * leading to love and worship of Him as a spirit among spirits. But for the Absolute' of philosophy, no man has ever yet been moved to do anything at all.' So that if the two conceptions are not compatible, on which point Earl Balfour has not made up his mind, it is the God according to religion whose existence it is his object to prove in the course of his Gifford lectures. Yet, though he has 1 Foundations of Belief, p. 225. Ibid. p. 422. ' Mr. Balfour's Apologetics Critically Examined, p. 37. 4 never succeeded in fusing the two conceptions he shrewdly remarks that the mystics have never experienced any difficulty in the matter. So he says that when he speaks of God he means 'something other than an Identity wherein all differences vanish, or a Unity which includes but does not transcend the differences which it somehow holds in solution.' He means a God whom men can love, a God to whom men can pray, who takes sides, who has purposes and preferences, whose attributes, howsoever conceived, leave unimpaired the possibility of a personal relation between Himself and those whom He has created.' 1 That is excellent as a statement of the grounds of Natural Religion. Yet if the value of prayer and of the love of God is paramount, as appears to be assumed, then the Natural Religion which, as experience and history abundantly prove, fosters them only in a comparatively small degree, may well find its place as a foundation for that supernatural religion which makes of the love of God its chief object. Earl Balfour claims to use terms in the particular sense which he attaches to them provided only that he defines what that sense may be. In doing so he is asserting a right to which he has a just claim; but, in departing from the ordinary common use, as his views change (or, may we say, according to the audience which he addresses ?), he may find it advisable to alter his definitions. In his first series of Gifford lectures he writes as follows: We cannot consent to see the only in those religious manithemselves to our conception natural order of the world'; If we are to apply unaltered, in the case of religious beliefs, the procedure already adopted in the case of scientific, ethical, and aesthetic beliefs, and assume for them a Cause harmonious with their essential nature, we must evidently, in so doing, transcend the common division between 'natural' and 'supernatural.' ' preferential working of Divine power' festations which refuse to accommodate (whatever that may be) of the strictly nor can we deny a divine origin to those aspects of religious development which natural laws seem competent to explain. The familiar distinction, indeed, between 'natural' and 'supernatural' coincides neither with that between natural and spiritual nor with that between 'preferential' and 1 Theism and Humanism, p. 21. 2 Ibid. p. 95. |