Naturalism and idealism / Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
[1901?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Naturalism and idealism / Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and individuality. Finally he draws the moral: Never let go the concrete for the abstract in speculation. Mechanism thus driven from the field, teleology under the guidance of idealism makes its debut. Why, we are asked, should monotonous uniformity be the only or the highest indication of the spirit of order, since with life and mind enters tele¬ ology where aim, direction, and worth supplant the blind regu¬ larity of mechanism ? Professor Ward sees a teleological prin¬ ciple in vital activity; for all life would long ere now have ceased owing to the action of the second law of thermodynamics, were it not for the existence of a hypermechanical directive agency. He sees another teleological principle in evolution ; for new species have originated because each individual mind of preexisting species has always realized its changing wants, and conceived the means of adapting itself to its altered environment. Of course it is assumed throughout—to be “ not a matter of theory but a matter of fact—that the characteristics of the side of life and mind are prima facie essentially teleological,” that life consists in “the guidance and control of the known forms of energy.” “ The 7rou or Co ” which natural selection “ seems to demand ” is hence furnished by the principles of subjective and hedonic selec¬ tion, where the will to live and the pursuit of happiness and self- interest reign supreme as the teleological directive agency of evo¬ lution. Having thus gained a footing, teleology claims all as its own. Nature, which must conform to human intelligence in order to be intelligible, and is likewise amenable to human ends, is in both these respects teleological. Natural laws are tele¬ ological, in so far as they are hypotheses or postulates, a means of controlling or of interpreting nature. Finally, knowledge itself is teleological, “ since it is prompted and sustained by prac¬ tical motives.” Everywhere, the teleological underlies the me¬ chanical. Everywhere, the reality of activity and choice in the one looms beyond the fiction of inertia and determinateness in the other. The subject takes the lead, mind works upon matter. Thus we arrive at the idealist’s monistic interpretation of the uni¬ verse. For, “ to a monism of some sort we must, no doubt, in the end come,” and a monism, free from the doctrine of psycho-