Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/401

 HINTON'S LATER THOUGHT. 389 phenomena to, say to force, that force, is not an absolute existence, but only a symbol, an x. " To science the world is no more mechanical than it is coloured or warm ; as colour is an idea derived from a mode of our sensation, so also is force or mechanical necessity." Therefore both science and the religious emotions demand, in the thought of the uni- verse that is to satisfy us, freedom and a necessity not mechanical. Now it is, says Hinton, that we perceive we have before us a problem which we need the aid of our emo- tions to solve. It is the " moral Emotions " only which can give us such a thought, call it love, or Tightness, or what we will. It is only love, rightness, that is at once free and necessary ; and it is that, therefore, which we must regard as the existence which presents to us the phenomena of Nature. In other words, and translated from terms of metaphysics into less questionable terms of psychology, we find that what we have been seeking is intellectual truth viewed emotionally, that is to say, imaginatively ; that, pre- cisely as the intellect satisfies itself by using the data of sense, so the emotions find their legitimate satisfaction in using the data of the intellect. He gives an example : " ' Cause and effect ' is an universal condition of the pheno- menal. Now cause and effect is the name we give to the ceasing of one thing coincidently with the occurrence of another ; it has been described sometimes, even in the lan- guage of scientific men, as ' one thing merging itself in ano- ther ' ; as if it were even when looked at from without and in mere appearance the visible image of the giving up of one life for another's being. Now if the order of Nature truly were mechanical this would of course be a merely inaccurate expression, as implying spontaneous action where there can be none. But if material Nature be but the appearance of an. existence not mechanical, but acting in ways to be truly grasped only with the aid of the Emotions, then the expression is more than justified. So far, at least, the appearance may be rationally referred to the fact ; for what appearance could more truly represent an act of ever- lasting ' merging self into another ' than this perpetual flux of cause and effect which Science presents to us?" If, therefore, we wish to find legitimate satisfaction for the religious emotions it must be by exercising them on the truths of science. Without the aid of the emotions truth never has been seen vividly or truly at all. That seems to be the substance of Hinton' s argument, and it is a fine and subtle effort towards the solution of that great " problem of problems". It is an attempt to find a stable basis for the 27