Chapter III: The Variousness of Man

SOME time ago the place of honour in the Literary Supplement of The Times was given to an article on the Variousness of Man. According to the writer of the article, it used to be thought that man is endowed with a faculty called Reason. This faculty, it was said, is in all men, and in all men it is the same. By its help man comes to the knowledge of certain necessary truths which are valid for all mankind and, indeed, for God and his angels as well. Reason also manifests certain moral truths, it was said, which are also valid for all mankind. In order to acquire any plausibility, this theory was compelled to admit that all men did not possess this faculty of reason in an equal degree. The variety of opinions held by men on the most ordinary subjects obliged philosophers to admit that. But in recent years the theory has lost all the plausibility which it once possessed. Non-Euclidean geometry has shown the true status of the necessary truths or axioms on which Euclid’s geometry rests. Sincere examination of the way in which men do actually think has revealed the fact that they think in a great variety of ways. A French writer has shown this to be true of the simplest concepts. He takes the idea of a triangle and shows that Euclid, Schopenhauer, Duns Scotus, Spinoza, and Goethe had quite different notions about so simple a concept as that of a triangle. No wonder that men’s judgements and theories differ widely when their thoughts are not the same about so elementary a thing as a triangle. The old psychology split up man’s mind into separate and distinct faculties, which it named the intellect, the emotions, and the will. It is more true to say that man thinks as a whole, that his conclusions are the product of the whole of his being, but as such they must only be given a personal and local validity. This is true of the moral as well as of the intellectual order.

A uniform code of morality ignores individual and specific differences as much as a uniform diet would do. In order to be judged fairly the conduct of each man should be judged with reference to the nobility of which he is capable. The points of a prize pig are not the same as the points of a prize dog. There is no one ideal of moral conduct, no one ideal of artistic achievement, no one ideal of thinking. Everyone should aim at being true to himself, and for the rest—tolerance.

And so, according to the writer whose article I have summarized, if there be such a thing as universal, objective truth, man’s faculties do not enable him to attain to it. As each one is differently constituted, each one thinks differently, the conclusions at which each one arrives are different. It would be the height of presumption for anyone to claim that his own particular opinions were true.

Universal scepticism, intellectual, moral, and artistic, is the only sound philosophy. This is the view taken by many modern philosophers. In a recent book on Contemporary British Philosophy, Mr. Bertrand Russell writes:

“If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but as far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical.”

Mr. Carveth Read writes:

“Every student of the history of philosophy must have learnt that whatever he thinks, it is probably wrong.”

Mr. Schiller affirms:

“No truth is eternal; every truth has its day. But this does not matter so long as sufficient for the day is the truth thereof.”

This universal scepticism is the only possible philosophy if the current theories of evolution are true. According to those theories the whole universe is in a perpetual process of change. If our minds for an instant could grasp the whole process, they would no sooner have succeeded in the task than the perception would have ceased to correspond with the facts. It would no longer be true, the facts would have changed. But not only the facts change, the observing mind of man changes, too. It, too, is subject to the process of evolution. And thus we are incapable of attaining to universal, objective truth because it does not exist, and because our faculties are perpetually changing, and giving us perpetually different views of things.

All this adds greatly to the significance of the views expressed by the writer in the Literary Supplement of The Times. It shows that those views are in harmony with modern thought and with modern science, that they are the outcome and the expression of modern thought and modern science. The splendid philosophic achievements of ancient Greece and Rome ended in Scepticism.

Scepticism sapped the springs of effort, chilled the mind and heart with doubt, and led the nobler minds to sullen despair. The people interpreted the conclusion otherwise; they said: “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” It looks as if the modern world were faced with similar conclusions.

Jesus Christ did not base his teaching on human reason. He claimed to be the truth, he came to give testimony to the truth, and he demanded absolute, unflinching faith in his person and on his word. Still Christian faith cannot ignore reason, nor is Christian faith indifferent to the claims of human reason.

Reason keeps the outworks of the faith, and Christian writers have ever shown themselves valiant defenders of the legitimate claims of human reason. They refuted scepticism with this simple but adequate argument. You sceptics, they said, strive to show that no certainty can be attained in anything, that everything is doubtful. Then, your arguments and your conclusion are doubtful, and we refuse to accept them.

The theory of evolution that man is of animal origin and only differs accidentally from the lower animals is responsible for much of the modern scepticism. Instead of concentrating the attention on what man is supposed to have been a hundred thousand years ago, it is better to consider what he is now. We have within ourselves and under our eyes undeniable facts of the greatest significance. We may concede to the writer in the Literary Supplement of The Times that men differ much among themselves. It is probable that as no two leaves in the forest are precisely alike, so there are no two men precisely alike. One man differs from another in capacity, in experience, in knowledge, in quickness, and in many other ways. Still, in spite of individual differences, men are alike in some things. All men have a language by means of which they can communicate to each other their thoughts and judgements. No - animals have a language like those of men. To have a language by which we can communicate to others our thoughts and judgements implies the power of forming concepts or universal ideas. The concept or universal idea of a triangle is not different in different men, as the writer quoted above maintains. Euclid and Goethe may indeed have looked at the triangle from different points of view. Euclid probably knew more about the triangle than Goethe did. But both Euclid and Goethe agreed that a triangle is a three-sided figure with three angles. And when they agreed that such a figure is a triangle, they both had the same and the true concept of what a triangle is. They formed a phantasm in their imaginations when they mentioned a triangle. But the concept of a triangle was not the same thing as the phantasm of the triangle. The concept was of no definite size; it was neither plane nor spherical; it had angles, but the angles were neither acute, nor obtuse, nor right angles; it was simply a figure enclosed by three sides and having three angles. Every figure that had those characteristics was a triangle, and no figure could be a triangle without them. In spite of his mysticism Goethe was as clear about that as Euclid was. In other words, Euclid and Goethe had the same concept of a triangle in spite of what the recent French writer quoted in the Literary Supplement of The Times says to the contrary.

Different men, then, form essentially the same universal ideas, and they could not communicate to each other their thoughts and judgements by means of language unless they did, for they would not understand one another. What appeared to one to be true, would not be true to another.

The power of forming universal ideas which are the same for all men shows that man has a faculty called intellect, common to all men, but not shared by the brutes.

Before taking the next step in our demonstration it should be observed that by a triangle Euclid did not understand a mere abstraction expressed by its definition, as the writers quoted above suppose. For Euclid geometry was a practical science. He did not think that universals exist in the concrete, but he knew that in all real triangular figures there is something which more or less corresponds with the universal idea; that all triangular figures have the essential characteristics expressed in the idea.

Having the same concept of a triangle as Goethe, Euclid could deduce certain properties of the figure and convince Goethe of their truth. He could show him, for instance, that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. In doing so he would deduce one truth from another, he would use reason, and Goethe would readily assent to the validity of the demonstration. He would say, Yes, it must be so. The conclusion is true, in fact it is a necessary truth. And all men who are normal would say the same. Even the sceptics would agree in their lucid intervals. Hence a conclusion of no slight importance. Man is an animal endowed with reason quite different from the irrational brute. Man by using his reason rightly can arrive at the knowledge of certain necessary truths of the intellectual and moral order. On them he can raise an enduring structure; he cannot build on the quicksands of scepticism.