SCIENTIFIC IDEAS AND THE MASONIC IDEAL

The first article of the Constitution of the Grand Orient of France states that Freemasonry, considering metaphysical ideas to pertain exclusively to the domain of the individual judgment of its members, refuses to make any dogmatic assertions. We do not doubt that such a declaration should have excellent practical results, but from a somewhat less contingent point of view it would have been much better to avoid the expression 'metaphysical ideas', using instead religious and philosophical, or even scientific and social, ideas. This would have been the most rigorous application of the principles of 'mutual tolerance' and 'liberty of conscience', in virtue of which 'Freemasonry admits no distinction of belief or opinion among its adepts,' according to the terms of the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of France. If Masonry is to be faithful to its principles, it must accord equal respect to all religious and philosophical beliefs, and to all scientific or social opinions, whatever they might be, on the sole condition that they be held sincerely. Religious dogmatism or scientific dogmatism: the one is no better than the other; and it is moreover perfectly certain that the Masonic spirit necessarily excludes all dogmatism even when it is 'rationalist', and that by very reason of the particular nature of its symbolic and initiatic teaching. [1] But what has metaphysics to do with dogmatic assertions of any kind? We see no relation between them, and are willing to dwell further on this point. Indeed, in a general sense what is dogmatism if not the purely sentimental and very human tendency to present one's own individual ideas (whether these pertain to a man or to a collectivity), with all the relative and uncertain elements they inevitably entail, as if they were incontestable truths? It is but a short step from this to the desire to impose these so-called truths on others, and history shows well enough how many times this step has been taken; nevertheless, on account of their relative and hypothetical-and therefore in a large measure illusory-character, such ideas constitute 'beliefs' or 'opinions', and nothing more. It becomes clear, then, that where there is a certitude excluding any hypothesis and any sentimental consideration (which so often tend, and always for the worst in this regard, to encroach upon intellectual ground) there can be no question of dogmatism. Such is the case with mathematical certitude, which leaves no room for 'belief' or 'opinion' and is completely independent of all individual contingencies; assuredly, no one would dream of contesting this, not even the positivists. But aside from pure mathematics, does the least possibility of the same certitude exist in the scientific domain? We think not, but it matters little to us, for by way of recompense there still remains everything that falls outside the domain of science, and that constitutes, precisely, metaphysics. Indeed, true metaphysics is none other than the complete synthesis of certain and immutable knowledge, which stands apart from and transcends everything contingent and variable; consequently, we cannot consider metaphysical truth to be anything other than axiomatic in its principles and theorematic in its deductions, and therefore just as rigorous as mathematical truth, of which it is the unlimited prolongation. Understood thus, metaphysics contains nothing that might offend even the positivists, and they in turn cannot without illogicality refuse to admit that there exist outside the present limits of their comprehension demonstrable (and even, for others than themselves, perfectly demonstrated) truths having nothing in common with dogma, since it is on the contrary in the essential nature of dogma to be incapable of demonstration, which is its way of being outside of if not beyond all discussion. If metaphysics is indeed as we have just described it, we are then bound to believe that this could not be what was meant by the phrase 'metaphysical ideas' in the text we initially quoted, a text that F.․ A. Noailles, in an article on 'La Morale laïque et scientifique', published in L'Acacia (June-July 1911), offers as 'incontestable proof of an exclusively secular scientific view of things.' We shall of course not contradict the author on this point so long as he is careful to specify that the view in question must be scientific only regarding what pertains to the scientific domain, but it would be an error for one to wish to extend this point of view and method beyond its particular domain, to things to which it can no longer in any way be applied. If we insist on the need to set forth profound distinctions between the different domains in which human activity, through no less differing means, is exercised, this is because these fundamental distinctions are too often neglected, with the resulting strange confusions, notably in regard to metaphysics. These confusions must be dispelled, together with the prejudices they entail, and this is why we think the present considerations not altogether inopportune. If therefore the expression 'metaphysical ideas' has been applied to anything other than true metaphysics (and this indeed seems to be the case) then we are merely faced with a material error hinging entirely upon the meaning of terms, and we have no desire to imagine it was ever anything more. The mistake is quite easily explained by the complete ignorance into which the modern West as a whole has fallen in regard to metaphysics. It is therefore excusable on account of the very circumstances that made it possible, circumstances that, moreover, equally provide an explanation for many other related errors. And so we shall leave this point, and return to the distinctions made above. We have already sufficiently explained the subject of religious doctrines, [2] and as for philosophical systems (be they spiritualist or materialist), we believe we have also said clearly enough what we think of them; [3] we shall therefore deal no further with them here, limiting ourselves to that which more particularly concerns scientific and social conceptions. In the article we already mentioned, F.: Noailles distinguishes between truths of faith, which are of the domain of the unknowable, and which as such one can either accept or not, and scientific truths, successive and demonstrable contributions of the human mind, which each man's reason can test, revise, and make his own. First of all, let us recall that if it is indisputable that there are at present things unknown to human beings, we should by no means suppose that they are on that account 'unknowable. [4] For us, socalled 'truths of faith' can only be simple objects of belief, and their acceptance or rejection can consequently only be a result of entirely sentimental preferences. As for 'scientific truths', which are quite relative and always subject to revision inasmuch as they are induced from observation and experimentation (it goes without saying that we exclude here those truths that are entirely mathematical, as these have a wholly other source), we think that by reason of their very relativity such truths are only demonstrable in a certain measure and not in a rigorous, absolute fashion. Moreover, when science claims to depart from the domain of strictly immediate experience, are the systematic conceptions to which it gives rise themselves then fundamentally exempt from sentimentalism? We do not think so, [5] nor do we see that faith in scientific hypotheses should itself be any more legitimate (nor, for that matter, any less excusable on account of the conditions that produce them) than faith in religious or philosophical dogmas. This is because there can indeed also exist veritable scientific dogmas that hardly differ from other kinds of dogma except in the order of questions to which they relate; and metaphysics, such as we understand it (and to understand it otherwise would be not to understand it at all) is as independent of the one as it is of the other. To find examples of scientific dogmas we need only refer to another article recently published in L'Acacia by F.'. Nergal with the title 'Les Abbés Savants et Notre Idéal Maçonnique'. In this article the author complains, though with all due courtesy, of the interference of the Catholic Church, or rather of certain of its representatives, in the domain of the so-called positive sciences, and then discusses the possible consequences of this interference; but it is not this question that interests us. What we wish to note is his manner of presenting mere hypotheses as indubitable, universal truths (though in a restricted sense, it is true) [6] even though the relativity of their probability is itself often far from having been demonstrated; besides, they can in any case only correspond at the very most to special and strictly limited possibilities. This illusion in regard to the range of certain conceptions is not unique to F.'. Nergal, whose good faith and sincere conviction would moreover never be called into question by those who know him; but it is shared (so we might be led to believe) no less sincerely by nearly all contemporary scholars. There is one point, however, on which we are in perfect agreement with F.'. Nergal: he declares that 'science is neither religious nor anti-religious, but a-religious [a privative],' and it is indeed obvious that it could not be otherwise, since science and religion do not apply to the same domain. But if this is so, and if one recognizes as much, then one must not only lay aside any reconciliation of science and religion, which is something that could only be accomplished by a bad theologian [7] or a faulty scholar with narrow views. One must equally renounce the opposition of the two and not find contradictions and incompatibilities between them when they do not exist, since their respective points of view have nothing in common that would allow any comparison in the first place. This would hold true even for the 'science of religions', if such a science really exists, keeping strictly to scientific ground, and above all not serving merely as a pretext for an exegesis of Protestant or modernist tendencies (which, moreover, amount to almost the same thing). Until proof is given to the contrary, we shall allow ourselves formally to doubt the value of its results. [8] Another point on which F.: Nergal is sorely deluded concerns the possible result of research on the 'filiation of beings'. Even were one or another of the multiple hypotheses that have been proposed on this subject one day proved irrefutably and thereby lost its hypothetical character, we do not really see how this could embarrass a given religion (of which we are certainly not a defender) unless its representative authorities (and not only some esteemed individuals who nonetheless have no mandate) should imprudently and clumsily set forth a position, which no one had asked of them, on the solution to this scientific question that in no way falls within their competence. [9] And even in this case it would always be permissible for their 'faithful', without ceasing to be such, to take no more account of their opinion in this regard than they would of any other individual opinion, since in acting thus the authorities would manifestly have overstepped their prerogative, which relates only to matters pertaining directly to their 'faith. [10] As for metaphysics (and we say this in order to give an example of the complete separation of the two domains, metaphysical and scientific), it does not have to deal with the question at all, as all interest in it is removed in virtue of the theory of the multiplicity of the states of the being, which allows one to envisage everything in an aspect of simultaneity as well as, and at the same time as, of succession, reducing the ideas of 'progress' and 'evolution' to their proper value as purely relative and contingent notions. On the subject of the 'descent of man', the only interesting observation that could be made from our point of view is that if man is spiritually the principle of all of Creation, then materially he must be the result of it, [11] for 'what is below is like that which is above, but inversely so,' (and again it would go beyond and entirely distort our thought to wish to interpret this in a 'transformist' sense). We shall not dwell further on the above, adding only this: F.: Nergal concludes by saying that 'science can only have one goal, a more perfect knowledge of phenomena.' We shall simply say that its goal can only be 'the knowledge of phenomena', without any question of 'more or less perfect'. Science, being thus eminently relative, can of necessity only attain to truths no less relative, and it is integral knowledge alone that is 'truth', just as the 'ideal' is not 'the greatest perfection possible for the human species' alone; it should be the Perfection that lies in the Universal Synthesis of all species, of all humanities. [12] It now remains to clarify the matter of social conceptions, and we shall immediately say that by such an a expression we do not only mean political opinions, which are obviously out of the question. It is not without purpose, indeed, that Masonry forbids all discussion on this subject, and, without being reactionary in the slightest, one is quite able to assert that 'Republican Democracy' is not the social ideal of all Masons everywhere in the two Hemispheres. But in this category of social conceptions we also include here those that concern morality, for it is not possible to consider the latter as anything other than a 'social art', as F.: Noailles so aptly put it in the article already cited; thus we would not, as he does, go so far as to 'leave the field open to all metaphysical speculation' in a domain in which metaphysics has no relevance. Indeed, despite what philosophers and moralists have said, as soon as it is a question of social relations, it can only be a matter of considerations based on interest, and on an interest moreover that resides in a practical and purely material utility, or in a preference of a sentimental order, or, as is in fact most often the case, in a combination of the two. Here, therefore, everything relates solely to individual assessments, and for a given collectivity the question is reduced to searching for and finding a common ground that might reconcile the diversity of these multiple appraisals, which correspond to as many different interests. If conventions are needed to make social life tolerable, or even simply possible, one should at least be frank enough to acknowledge that they are only conventions which in themselves contain nothing absolute, and which must vary incessantly with the circumstances of time and place upon which they entirely depend. Within these limits, which precisely mark its relative character, morality, limited to 'searching for rules of action given that men live in societies' (these rules inevitably being modified according to the form of the society), will have a perfectly established value and an undeniable utility. But it must not claim anything more, just as no religion in the Western sense of the word can boast of establishing anything more than belief pure and simple, on pain of departing from its role, as all too often happens. And in virtue of its sentimental aspect, morality itself, however 'secular' or 'scientific' it may be, will always contain a portion of belief, since in his current state the human individual, with very rare exceptions, is such as to be unable to pass beyond it. But must the Masonic ideal then be founded on like contingencies? And must it depend upon the individual tendencies of each man and each segment of humanity? We do not think so. On the contrary, we hold that in order truly to be the 'Ideal', this ideal must remain outside and beyond all opinions and beliefs, as well as all parties and sects and systems and particular schools, for there is no other way to 'tend toward universality' than to 'lay aside that which divides in order to preserve that which unites'; and this opinion must assuredly be shared by all who intend to labor, not toward the vain raising of a 'Tower of Babel', but toward the effective realization of the Great Work of Universal Construction.