The Relations Between Religion and Science | Page 6

of reason. It assumes that
there is a demonstrative science of Mathematics quite independent of
experience, and that there are necessary principles of Physics equally
independent of experience. And it accounts for the existence of these.
With Mathematics we are not now concerned, and I will pass them by
with only one remark. The ground on which Kant's theory stands is not
sufficient, for this simple reason. It accounts for one fact; it does not
account for another fact. It accounts for the fact that we attach and
cannot help attaching a conviction of necessity to all mathematical
reasoning. We not only know that two straight lines cannot enclose a
space, but we know that this is so and must be so in all places and at all
times, and we know it without any proof whatever. This fact Kant
accounts for. Space is according to him a part of our kaleidoscope; you
can always look into it and see for yourself what are the laws of it. But
there is another fact. This space of which we are speaking is
unquestionably to our minds not a thing inside of us but outside of us.
We are in it. We cannot get rid of a sense that it is independent of
ourselves. We can imagine ourselves non-existing, minds and all. We
cannot imagine space non-existing. If it be a part of our minds, how is
it that we can picture to ourselves the non-existence of the mind which
is the whole, but not the non-existence of space which, according to the
hypothesis, is the part? For this fact, which we commonly call the
objectivity of space, Kant's theory does not account. In fact Kant

appears to have no escape from assigning this objectivity of space to
delusion. But a theory which requires us to call an ineradicable
conviction of consciousness a delusion cannot be said to explain all the
facts. John Stuart Mill maintains that the other fact, namely, the
conviction of the necessity of mathematical truth, is a delusion. And his
account also must be pronounced for that reason to fail in accounting
for all the facts.
But our present concern is not with Mathematics but with Physics. And
here Kant fails altogether to convince; for, taking Time and the
Perceptive Powers of the Understanding as parts of the human mind, he
shows, what indeed is clearer and clearer every day, that the principles
(so called) of Physics are indispensable Postulates, not indeed of
observing with the senses, but of comprehending with the
understanding, whatever happens. In order to give anything that can be
called an explanation of any event we must show that it falls under the
general rules which constitute the uniformity of Nature. We have no
other meaning for the words understanding or explaining an event.
Thinking, when analysed, is found to consist in bringing all that
happens under universal laws, and no phenomenon can be said to be
explained in thought except by being so related to all other phenomena.
But it does not by any means follow that events cannot happen or
cannot affect our senses without being susceptible of such explanation.
To say that an event cannot be understood, and to say either that it
cannot happen or that it cannot be observed by the senses, are two very
different things. The fact is that Mathematics and Physics do not, as
Kant assumes, present the same problem for solution, and do not
therefore admit of one solution applicable to both. It is not the case that
there is a science of abstract Physics corresponding to the science of
Mathematics and sharing in the same character of necessity. In
Mathematics we have truths which we cannot but accept, and accept as
universal and necessary: in Physics we have no such truths, nor has
Kant even endeavoured to prove that we have. The very question
therefore that we are asked to solve in regard to Mathematics does not
present itself in Physics. I am constrained to believe that two and two
are four and not five; I am not constrained to believe that if one event is
followed by another a great many times it will be so followed always.

And the question is, why, without any constraint, I nevertheless so far
believe it that I require special evidence in any given case to convince
me to the contrary. And Kant's answer is irrelevant. He says that we
cannot think the sequence of events unless they fall under the
postulates of thinking, that is, the postulates of science; but this is no
answer to the question. Why do we believe that, unless the contrary be
proved, everything that is observed by the senses is capable of being
reduced under these postulates of thinking? The sequence of things