If the reality of the one is to cease with
human existence, so must the reality of the other. On the other hand, if
either is to exist when mankind is no more, it is only in some mind that
it can exist. It is only for a person that anything can be right or
good. It is only a person that can see the past summed up or the future
contained in the present. If it is legitimate and logical to infer that
what is will continue to be after man's disappearance from the earth, so
it is to draw the same inference with regard to what ought to be. If
science is true really, and does not merely appear so to man, it must be
true for some mind other than human: by an intelligence alone can truth
be apprehended, or the right approved. But if truth is limited to the
human mind, and ceases with it, then evolution must cease to be true
when men cease to exist. Nay, in that case it cannot claim to be true at
all, or rather does not claim to be true, but only seeming. On the other
hand, if the law of gravity, for instance, was true before man's
appearance, its truth must have dwelt in some mind. If it was not true
then, we have no better reason for believing it to be true now. In fine,
truth and right, what is and what ought to be, must either be dismissed
as mere human imaginings, or be accepted as everlasting facts of an
Eternal Moral Consciousness.
Shall we, then, say that the description which science gives of the
constitution and working of the universe is indeed consistent and
coherent enough with itself, and is a logical deduction from its
premises, but to assert that it expresses or even corresponds to any
reality beyond itself is a statement which we have no right to make? To
take up this position is simply to maintain that science is consistent
and logical, but that we have no reason or right to believe that it is
true. If our accounts are based on imaginary figures, they may be kept
as strictly as you please, but they will never show us our true
position. Indeed, if our premises are incorrect to start with, the more
logical our inferences are, the more certain our conclusions are to be
wrong.
Shall we, then, say that the account which science gives of the cosmic
process is not only consistent and logical, but expresses or corresponds
to a reality? Then in that case the cosmic process, so far as it is
truly expressed by science, is a logical process. But it is only a mind
which can be logical or can go through a logical process. Once more,
therefore, the facts of science as much as the facts of morality imply
that the real is an Intelligence. In fine, the truth of science and the
truth of morality are bound up together and have the same basis. If the
one is valid for facts beyond the range of human observation, so is the
other. If the one implies a consciousness other than human, equally so
does the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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