“Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits—and then Re-mould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”
These lines well express the sharpness of Renouvier’s own feelings, and he claims that, such a conspiracy being impossible, the belief in Immortality becomes a necessary moral postulate or probability.
The grounds for such a postulate are to be found, he claims, even in the processes of nature itself. The law of finality or teleology manifests itself throughout the universe: purpose is to be seen at work in the Cosmos. It is true that in the lower stages of existence it seems obscure and uncertain, but an observer cannot fail to see “ends” being achieved in the biological realm. The functions of organisms, more particularly those of the animal world, show us a realm of ends and means at work for achieving those ends. This development in the direction of an end, this teleology, implies, says Renouvier, a destiny. The whole of existence is a gradual procession of beings at higher and higher levels of development, ends and means to each other, and all inheriting an immense past, which is itself a means to their existence as ends in themselves. May one not then, suggests Renouvier, make a valid induction from the destiny thus recognised and partially fulfilled of certain individual creatures, to a destiny common to all these creatures indefinitely prolonged?[11]
[11] _Psychologic rationnelle_, vol. 2, pp. 220-221.
The objection is here made that Nature does not concern herself with individuals; for her the individual is merely a means for the carrying on and propagation of the species. Individuals come into being, live for a time and pass away, the species lives on perpetually; only species are in the plan of the universe, individuals are of little or no worth. To this Renouvier replies that species live long but are not perpetual; whole species have been wiped out by happenings on our planet, many now are dying out. The insinuation about the worthlessness of individuals rouses his wrath, for it strikes at the very root of his philosophy, of which personality is the keynote. This, he says, is to lapse into Pantheism, into doctrines of Buddhists and of Spinoza. Pantheism and all kindred views are to be rejected. It is not in the indefinable, All-existing, the eternal and infinite One, that we find help with regard to the significance of ends in nature. Ends are to be sought in the individuals or the species. But while it behoves us to look upon the world as existing for the species and not the species for the sake of the world, we must remember that the species exists for the sake of the individuals in it. It is false to look upon the individuals as existing merely for the sake of the species.