mm vVnX ^^ WW lUf o%fal ^ x^x^v %4 PRINCETON, N. J. %H Shelf. BL 51 .P57 1878 H Picton, J. Allanson 1832- 1910. I The mystery of matter, and , ■-.ji /^ \-\\c^-*~ cs c* cf ':i XT e* -:—-.^\ \ • ■ /k > » ''J V*-. ^t';.-' :■/:■■ its :^i ;• X*,W.. ....... - . /-y^ij RVc'i«(?3>. r, >j, ■ - ,-. ; ■ fJt^S^-- >:.-'-:.r ♦Ia ■-* '^ -■•■■- ■ ■■' ■ *,--•- 'K'.r ■>■'-' ' ' ~ ';).-ay;.:>^..-; ,, • •'t't «.►.».' M-V ,.; --. »S !• At-I"! * 1.-. - I/ "• .-._ «', *.'■&' 5^: 111' ' ' -■ THE MYSTERY OF MATTER AXD OTHER ESSAYS. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER AND OTHER ESSAYS. BY J. ALLANSON'PICTON, ArXIIOR OF " NKW TIIK0RIE3 AND TIIK OLD FAITH. CllKAPKR ISSUE, WITH A NEW VRhFACE. 31 0 n b 0 w : MACMII.LAN AND CO. 1S78 .1// jii/hli rc»civctt. ROBERT MACLKHOSE, PRIXTF.R, GLASGOW. PREFACE TO THE CHEAPER ISSUE. The five years that have elapsed since the first publica- tion of the following essays have given many indications of the rapid increase of that mood of mind to \yhich it was thought they might possibly give a little help. This mood is not one of irreverence or of unsusceptl- bility to spiritual inspirations. It is rather a painful sense of incongruity between the alleged history of revelation and the actual facts of universal evolution, which, fragmentary though our knowledge be, do more and more impress upon us the conviction that they are " parts and proportions of one wondrous whole." There is no such schism between religion and intellect as that whicli ch.-uacterizc'd the last century. On the contrary, side by side with a growing independence of traditional creeds, tlnTc is a mon^ nuukcd tt'ndciu'y tlian tlu' ii PREFACE TO THE CHEAPER ISSUE. world has ever known before to associate the emotions of reliofion with the discoveries of science. To those whose only notion of alliance between religion and science consists in the futile compromise of a " Bridge- water Treatise " this ma}^ appear a bold assertion. But those to whom the most obvious emotion of religion is reverential awe, and its chief fruits self-subordination, uncompromising truth, and charity, will gladly allow that science, as represented by its most distinguished masters, is increasingly affected by the insj^irations of the spiritual life. This spirit, too, descends upon the undistinguished crowds whose eyes are opened by the teaching of these masters to the actual order of the world. In the col- umns of many periodicals, circulating mainly amongst religious circles, there is unmistakable proof that the two movements mentioned above show themselves, with more or less force, in almost all sects alike. The letters from correspondents reveal a prodigious ferment going on in the minds of a class who twenty-five years ago were, in regard to religious opinion, as placid and clear as one of Pi'ofessor Tyndall's solutions in the germle.ss Alpine air. But some unlooked-for breeze PREFACE TO THE CHEAPER ISSUE. iii has disturbed their serenity. It has borne amongst them the germs floating in another atmosphere, and the inevitable process has begun. Yet this also is to be noted, that very rarely indeed is there any symp- tom of scornful scepticism. These people are not less religious, but much more so than when their cosmo- gony was that of Moses, and their vista of human development was blocked by the deluge. Their con- sciousness of God is not diminished, but enlarged. They find Him where once they sought Him not. Like Jacob, they see in common skies an angels' ladder, and in a mountain boulder an altar of the Eternal. But this new wine of a more spiritual religion can- not be kept in the old bottles manufactured by the early church councils. Sad rents in one and another definition create alarm for all the rest. And many, like the Sanhedrim of old, " wonder whereunto this will grow." That question cannot be answered, as some would have it, by drawing a hard and fast line at some minimum of metaphysical creed. What we want is, some method of interpreting the signs of tlie times which will open our eyes to wliat is in truth not iv PREFACE TO THE CHEAPER ISSUE. an eclipse of faith, but a larger revelation. These essays were intended as a contribution towards such a method; and though the writer feels their imperfec- tions even more deeply than when they were first published, he is led to believe that amongst the class described above, there are here and there those by whom the present issue is desired. Oppidans Eoad, N.W., March, 1878, •^'- PREFACE When a gradual landslip occurs on a great scale, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood are naturally anxious to know how far the movement may possibly extend, and what is likely to be the level of ultimate settle- ment. So, at the present day, when faith's centre of gravity is slowly but surely moving away from tradi- tion and authority to some position of more stable ('([uilibrium, all of us, when not rendered absolutely incoherent by alarm, have a reasonable wisli to fore- cast the final result, or, at all events, to be assured of some limits beyond which the movement cannot extend. Of course, there can be no finality in opinion or knowledge. For even ascertained facts are always showing fresh aspects, or unfolding new meanings. But the (juestion raised by the religious landslip of vi PREFACE. our time is not — or ought not to be — at what sacred opinions will the movement stop ? It rather asks, — are there any fundamentally constituent elements in human nature w^iich must for ever necessitate religion ? And farther, — is there, in the relation of our personal life to the w^orld about us, anything w^hich ensures to religion an adequate scope and a permanent place, under all fairly conceivable revolutions of thought ? The former question was the main topic of a previous volume. The latter question, the larger and the more comprehensive, is dealt with in the following pages. Such an enterprize, unless when undertaken by some recognized leader of thought, might seem self- condemned by its presumptuous ambition; w^ere it not for two or three considerations, which may be urged in arrest of judgment. In the first place, no one expects at present either to receive or to give to such questions an answer which shall be final and ex- haustive. And next, the matters at issue seem to be just at that point where the freest inter-communication of thought by the most ordinary men, if only they have a single eye to truth, appears pre-eminently desirable. After much agitation, some master mind may at length PREFACE. vii arise, who, if he cannot control destiny, will, at all events, make peace between the past and the future. And again, if in our passage so far through the w^orld, any one of us finds some conclusion burnt into him by a fire he has vainly sought to quench, he need not doubt that there will be others, even though they Ije but few, who will find the results of his mental conflict helpful to themselves. Besides, after all, the work must be judged on its own merits. If there is any good in it, that will, in Coleridge's sense of the word, " find " those to whom it can be of service. And if it finds none, no apology can avail it. The essays constituting this volume are not entirely disconnected one from another; yet they are not so closely united as the chapters of a single treatise. They have risen one out of the other, in pursuit of the ])urpose indicated by the second question above raised. The first thouglit tliat occurs to any one now-a-days, in considering tlie relation of our personal life to the world around us, is the plausiltility with which ma- terialism ofil'rs to exj)lain that relation and ])oth its tenns, in expressions of matter and motion. Or if materialism is not always so bold as to prttend now viii PREFACE. to a final explanation, it at least insists that the ex- planation, if discoverable, would be simply the solution of a problem in molecular mechanics. It has long appeared to the present writer, that the spiritual philosophy opposed to materialism often loses much through a faithless hesitancy to admit, in all their fulness, the palpable facts which materialism has to offer in its own favour. The true policy would seem to consist in going the whole length with all the dis- coveries to which the materialistic method of enquiry can fairly lay claim. Our object should be to reduce to terms as precise as possible the uttermost pheno- mena, into which the microscope or chemical analysis converts the general appearances which affect the un- aided senses. We should then find that all physical science, if only followed far enough, has metaphysical issues which are full of the profoundest suggestiveness. The first subject, therefore, in the following series, and that which gives, as it were, the kej^-note of the whole, is " The Mystery of Matter." The only answer that can be made to the suggestions thus obtained is the rejoinder: that what we call the metaphysical issues of physics are only the merging of all articulate know- PREFACE. ix ledge in the noteless and boundless unknown. In the second essay, that on " The Philosophy of Ignorance," an attempt is made to allow full value to this ob- jection, and also to show where and why it fails to arrest the spiritual aspirations of mankind. The faith, however, which prompts these aspirations, is often much misunderstood. It has been thought necessary, therefore, in another essay, the shortest of the series, to discuss the true meaning of " The Antithesis be- tween Faith and Sight." The way is then open for an investigation of " The Essential Nature of Religion," in the course of which it is urged that, though the thing may be called by many names, its essence is recognizable in all the highest activities of human life, even where these have been condemned as irreligious and impious. The subject could not be left here. The signs of the times are too ominous to allow any one writing on such topics to shirk the prospects of th(^ future. And the longest of all the essays is an attem})t to sIkjw how the ex})erieuce of past ages, and the knowledge of the present day, unite in point- inir to some form of "Christian Pantheism" as th«' religion of the future. PREFACE. I cannot send forth the book without further premising that its pre-eminent, almost its sole aim, is to maintain the reality, the power, and the necessity of spiritual religion. Associated from earliest days, and to the present time, with certain sections of the Church, which are generally credited with evangelical feeling, I must profess that, however they may dislike the opinions here set forth, it is a realization of the value belono'ino' to the inmost essence of their faith which has prompted me to this work. I, for one, can- not remain silent while the inevitable task of reform is turned into a work of destruction. The spiritual de- scendants of the ancient saints for the most part fail to see how searching and far-reaching is the disintegrating influence of established scientific conclusions upon the whole framework of theological opinion. On the other hand, the prophets of science, dazzled by the wonders they unfold, have often but little susceptibility to those human feelings of the back- ground of existence, which have formed the noblest inspirations of history. It is a case in which not so much intellectual gifts are needed, as a heart- felt appreciation of the povv^er of religion, combined PREFACE. xi with a simple acceptance of facts as proved by others. Before writing these essays, I had read Mr. Matthew Arnold's papers on " Literature and Dogma " in the Cornhill Magazine; though I had not seen the complete work as it is published in a separate form. To the incidental acknowledgement made farther on, I wish here to add an expression of my general obligation to the papers which formed its germ'. The extent of my disagreement on some points, both of opinion and feeling, in the expanded treatise will be sufficiently apparent in the sequel. Strauss' volume "Der Alte und Der Neue Glaube,'^ I had not seen, until, as was the case with many others, my attention was called to it by Mr. Gladstone's Liverpool speech. Whatever may be the intellectual brilliancy of that book, there is much in the tone adopted, which would have operated rather as a warning than as an example. Since the whole of the essays were in the hands of tlie jtiintei', it lias been my good — or ill fortune to see one point or ancjther which 1 fondly imagined migbt liave some little novelty, most ably advanced by others. Indrt'd, one xii PREFACE. or two coincidences in illustration are so remarkable, that I am only sorry I cannot honestly acknowledge indebtedness to Mr. Thornton, whose clock, in his essay on "Huxleyism," seems to keep the same time with my own in the " Mystery of Matter," or to Mr. Lawrenny, whose experience of wall patterns in a sick-chamber, as mentioned in his paper on " Cause and Design " in the Fortnightly for December, 1872, entirely accords with mine, as referred to in " Chris- tian Pantheism." Stamfoed Hill, February^ 1873. CONTENTS. Pagk I. — THE MYSTERY OF MATTER, . . . . 1 II. — THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNORANCE, . . 61 III.— THE ANTITHESIS OF FAITH AND SIGHT, . 131 IV. — THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF RELIGION, . 173 V. — CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM, . .317 JESS AYS. I. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER. ERRATUM. P. 222, line 1, for M. ArbrouseiHe read M. Arbrousset. THE MYSTERY OF MATTEE. Imagixative children, especially perhaps those whose spirits are quickened by the thronging impulses of town life, but whose finer feelinc^s shrink from its sordid surroundings, are much given to fits of dreaming, such as " suit the shows of thina;s to the desires of the mind." In sunny weather they will sit imprisoned by tall brick walls in a back-yard, where one or two tulips on a window-ledge stare up at the bit of sky, while sparrows wrangle on the eaves above ; and in their day- dreams such young poets will build around them a world which answers to the loni^nn;*' of the heart. It is not pattern goodness, nor is it bold adventure, which forms the motive of the picture that their imaghiation draws ; rather, it is a dim sense of incongruity between that tender winged, fiuttering thing, which they are tauglit to call their soul, and the cruel grimy bars of circumstance which ring it round. It is beauty they want, anlace that knew them can know 4 ^SSA TS. tliem 110 more for ever ; and it is always " the touch of a vanished hand" — always "the sound of a voice that is still," which is above all omnipotent to invest material circumstance with a mysterious spell that holds the heart enthralled. It is no longer fancy, it is the doting love for every link of union with the past, which gives to the most forbidding spot a tenderness and beauty of its own. But farther, this chano-e in the sio-nificance of material surroundings is accompanied by another equally characteristic and more suggestive. For, go where he will, he does not need now to shut his eyes to outward things, or transform them by imag- ination, in order to breathe that air of mystery which so strangely ftiscinates the soul. Whereas at one time brick walls and gloomy courts must be masked by a drapeiy of fancy, before the desires of the mind could have free play ; now the same mind feeds hungrily on commonest things, and dotes upon a worn flight of steps or a dingy door, as though they were luminous with some hallowed light. Things that he had long- forgotten they now bring to mind. Feelings bright and evanescent as cloudland seem to dawn again out of a murky window-pane. And what, he asks, is the mao-ic charm which this dull matter about me wields ? Here have these walls stood motionless, inert, while I was far away. The dust and ruin of life's conflicts fell upon childhood's memories, and buried them out of * sight. Yet after the lapse of twenty years familiar form I. THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 5 and colour stir forgotten places in the heart ; vanished forms look from the window ; voices long silent speak again from the dumb stone. What is the power which these material substances have, to touch in so in- spiring a fashion the immaterial soul ? Association ? Yes, but that is only a name for the fact, another way of saying that the sights and the memories and emotions come back together. To give a name is one thing ; to give an explanation is another. What has happened ? Certain dirty red rays of reflected light, intermingled with some sparkles of undivided beams, have impinged upon my retina, and have caused, I suppose, vibrations, though I should never have known it without being told, in the nerves that run from the back of the eyes to the optic lobes of the brain. These vibrations coursed along through various com})lexities, until they reached some ultimate nerve cells and could wt no further. So f?ir there is nothino- more than vibrations ; but somewhere, — shall we say at the other side of tliese nerve cells? — there comes out some- tliing that I cannot in any way identify or connect with vibrations — a sudden memory, a distinct vision, a revived emotion, in which those dirty red rays are altogetlier forgotten and extinguished. I may be told tliat the two sets of affections, ])liysical and mental, arc associated together in the niunior}', so that the one recalls the othci-. T know it is so as a matter of fact; but tliere is beneath the fact somethinir that I cannot understand. (5 ^>s'>s'.i r>s'. I. Let ine keep distinctly in view the two factors in the phenomenon. There are on the one hand certain reflected rays of light impinging upon the retina in a particular pattern ; and there are on the other hand certain memories and feelino-s, of which an hour ago I was completely unconscious, — that is, they were positively non-existent. For the essential charac- teristic of an emotion is that it is felt, and an emotion that is not felt is nothino; in the world. Now I can account for the vibration in my optic nerves, and even for my recognition of it as a familiar feeling. The possibility of it existed all along in these brick walls. I came here, and the possibility was realized. But where was the memory of the old da3^s ? Where the forgotten emotion ? It could not be in the rays of light, because they would not convey the same im- pression to any one else. They could not be found therefore in the retina or the optic nerve, which answered solely to the vibrations of light. They could not be in the conscious mental side of the ultimate nerve cells, simply because I was not con- scious of them. A man may indeed tell me that there is some infinitesimal speck in a deeply-seated nerve cell, which cherished unknown to me the im- pressions made so long ago; and that when it was stirred up by the old familiar combination of dirty red beams, its vibrations necessarily shook out again, as it were, the old impressions. But I don't think I should learn much from the explanation ; indeed it would THE MYSTERY OF MATTER. appear to me, the word association " writ large," — another mode of stating the inexplicable fact. Thus it comes to pass that while the child's imagination delights in clouds of fancy that veil the stern features of external life, the matured and thoughtful man delights in dissolving them into mystery, and opening through every stone an endless vista. For it is not only in places pregnant with associations that he feels the subtlety of matter. But everything on Avhich he gazes in the vision of the world hints at an essence which he lono-s in vain to grasp. The bit of chalk which he crushes beneath his feet, expands under the microscope into a world of minute organic beauty, whose exquisite perfection delights, while its unutterable profusion staggers the mind. The honest daylight loses its simplicity for him, and becomes an incomjn-eliensible ocean trembling with infinitesimal waves which shake the whole universe with tlieir ethereal tremors. The hair of a nettle assaults him no longer with a merel}" physical sting, but pierces his very soul witli the materialistic suggestions which its protoplasm inspires. For, not through any hostility to science, but just because of his susceptibility to the fascination of its discoveries, such a man will in all probability find the atomic theory of matter a burden and a terror. He has travelled; he has watched the sunset on the sea; he has worshi]»ped, like Coleridge, in the valley of Chamounix; he has found that jiiles of earth and tons 8 ^'S'>S'.4 YS. I. of water can be so arranged as to draw from him tears of longing and rapture ; he has begun to regard material forms no longer as prison-bars shutting in his soul, but rather as organ keys, by means of which some mysterious power calls forth a flood of music to which they have no resemblance. Let any philosopher then prove to him, as indeed it is easy to do apparently and plausibly, that this gloriously-real world, so far sur- passing his childish dreams, is ultimately reducible to little kernels of an insensate substance, which has no attributes whatever except dead impenetrabilit}^, un- loving attraction, stolid repulsion ; and the philosopher will appear to be offering simply the strongest reasons for suicide and a speedy return to the atomic, or at least molecular condition. And if he is strono- enoucrh to face steadily the questions which are now raised, such a doubting soul will feel that there is no return for him to the high a priori road of predisposition* and assumption; there is no retreat for him to his did dual conception of mind and matter, master and slave. There is only one escape possible from the horrible oppression of a universal death. He must go right throuo-h materialism and come out at the other side, where it merges into pure spiritualism. And happy will he be, as well as wise and valiant, if after a dark hour, — the "darkness that may be felt," the darkness of a man who wakes to find himself buried alive, — he sees * Predisposition, however, has its vahie ; see " Antithesis of Faith and Sight." I. THE MYSTKR Y OF MA TTER. 9 at last the whole phantasmagoria of palpable things cleared away, like clouds drunk up by the sun, into the grand and blessed unity of substance, light, and life. This is not the experience of an individual merely : it is the story of the race. For early generations, like imaginative children, veiled the external world in a mist of fancy. Not knowing the true inherent wonder of the world, they adorned it with dreams of gods, fairies, or genii. They crowned the rocks of Olympus with airy palaces. They imputed a personal life and Avill to every stream and every wind. The mind, as it worked, wrought only one result: all its ''makings" •were poetry. There was no perplexity then in- volved in the apparent contrast between mind and matter. For imagination mastered matter, and adapted it to the desires of the mind. And one may well understand how, when philosophy had developed the notion of a matter, — materia — hyle — distinct from and logically opposite to mind, the living spirit of man felt a revulsion from the thing so presented, and often identified it with the very essence of evil. But with the progress of civilization histor}^ the generic memory, arose ; and then, sanctified as the birthplace of wisdom oi' heroism, many a classic ground was exalted beyond any claims that nature had be- stowed ; l)ecause it was transformed bv the toucli of association. To the early settloi*s T supj)ose the land of Egypt was attractive mainly bt'cau.se of the facilities 10 ES^^A YS. which it offered for the supply of their bodily needs. It was the scene of hard labour, too, where each man "cast his bread upon the waters that he might find it after many days," or "sowed his seed and watered it with his foot as a garden of herbs." And they soothed the hardness of their lot with pictured imaginations of the spirit-land, where kings lie in their glory and the slave is free from his toil. But to later generations, notably to the Greeks, Egypt became the land of sacred wonder. Its river was a mystery. Its tombs were as the threshold of eternity. Its temples were homes of divine wisdom. And all its attractions- sprang from this, that it was a land rich in human experiences and sanctified by a thousand memories^ which made the silence of its monuments more eloquent than speech. Homer must needs crowd the plain of Troy with supernatural beings to make it a- fit arena for his imagination. But now its very desolation inspires; and plain and mountain, stream and sea are irradiated by the enthusiastic memories of the beholder. To Homer Scamander was a living power ; and its floods were actuated by angry passion to compass Achilles' death. To the modern traveller it is a puny stream; yet somehow spiritualized into grandeur by its suggestions of a departed world. But this modern traveller, if he sympathizes with the new life as well as the old, has no need of the spell of association to invest matter with fascination. The microscope and the telescope, spectrum analysis and I. THE MYSTER Y OF MA TTER. 1 1 biological research have made it impossible to watch the motes in a sunbeam or the faintest twinkle of a star without a sense of exhaustless mystery. Wlien the Israelites, rising early in the morning, saw the earth covered with strange food from heaven, — ''white like coriander seed," we are told — they were startled like children who look out of their windows and for the first time in their lives see the ground covered with snow. "Man — hu?" What is this? they cried ; and not being able to give any answer, they kept the wondering question for a name. It is not the only case in which a name has been expressive of ignorance rather than of knowledo'e. At least this is, it seems to me, by far the most significant result of all the splendid boasts of modern science. No doubt, after some achievements of knowledge, especially as applied to useful invention, the . first feeling was one of almost contemptuous- triumph. Men talked with pride of the' mastery wielded by mind over " brute matter," which they blasted with gunpowder, and squeezed in hydraulic presses, and welded by steam hammers, and compelled by torture of fire to submit its gigantic forces to their will. And the soul was undisturbed in its com- placency, because every result achieved seemed only to concentrate attention the more on mind and will as the supreme wonder of the world. Ihit of late years a change of tone has been manifest; and matter itself in its ultimate constitution has become the object not (»t' [)hilo.so})hic in([uiry only, but of an 12 ESSAYS. I. enthrallino; interest, in which vague feelino^s of alarm and jealousy add to the keenness of curiosity. For the once despicable element, armed by physical science with weapons of deadly precision, threatens to turn the tables on mind, and to reward hasty contempt with the doom of annihilation. The truth is, that in modern times science and philosophy combine to make impossible that old sword- and-sheath, or shell-and-kernel theor}^ of the world, by which men once expressed the unfathomable contrast of '^within and without." The intimacy of relation- ship which scientific research establishes between soul and body is such, that one feels relationship to be hardly the word to express what looks much more like identit}^ And when once this is realised, it be- comes impossible henceforward to find satisfaction in the ordinary dualistic notion of two ultimate sub- stances fundamentally and essentially distinct. The issue then seems to be blank materialism. But when a steady eflfort is made to follow up materialism to its innermost significance, it is found to be as penetrable as one of Pepper's ghosts : we pass right through it, and come out at the other side, — some say, into the formless void of infinite ignorance, but as others think, into the assured consciousness of eternal, all-compre- hensive, all-pervasive Life, as the only substance. Thus Berkeley's idealism with a diflference, and Spinoza's pantheism with a difference, are pressed on the con- sideration of ordinary readers and thinkers now by T. THE MYSTER Y OF MA TTER. 13 methods which these prophetic minds, far-seeing as they were, could hardly anticipate. It will be a sufficient illustration of these remarks if I refer to the effect produced on the public mind by two celebrated discourses of Professor Huxley — a man who, I venture to think, has rendered services to the Church, if less signal, yet not less valuable than those which he has rendered to science ; for he has not only brought religionists face to face with facts, with a vigour and a clearness almost peculiar to himself, but he has made concerning those facts suggestions of more importance to the future of religion than he himself perhaps would dare to promise. The two above-mentioned Lay Sermons, on "the Physical Basis of Life," and on Descartes' " Dis- course, &c.," have undoubtedly defined the only terms on which an ultimate and thorough reconciliation is possible between physical science and spiritual religion.* Rivalling Berkeley in sparkling distinctness of state- ment, while of course far surpassing him in knowledge of physical phenomena, Mr. Huxley has shown, with a force amounting to demonstration, that by whichever path we set out, whether that of Materialism or that of Idealism, if we only go far enough we are brought to the same point. Whether this great master of fact and language was equally hapj)y in his discussion of Bishop * Mr. Herbert Spencer had done the same thing before, in u different way ; but of course the biological questions treated by Mr. Huxley awakened popular attention, as a work on philo- sophy could hardly l>e e.\j)ected to do. 14 ESSAYS. Berkeley, it would be presumptuous in an obscure critic to offer an opinion. But one cannot help feeling that if the multitudes who read with the eagerness of fear- ful curiosity the "Physical Basis of Life," could have been disabused of their supposed knowledge about certain ultimate properties of matter, they would have ceased to anathematize as a materialist one of the most powerful opponents, and perhaps the most completely armed, that Materialism has ever had. For all that the distinguished speaker did in this discourse, was to call attention to certain indisputable ficts. And perhaps it was the impossibility of denying these facts, which was a main cause of the uneasiness that most of us felt. Thus he told us that all organisations, from the lichen up to the man, are all composed mainly of one sort of matter which in all cases, even those at the extremity of the scale, is almost identical in composition. And the one other fact on which he insisted was, that every living action, from the vibrations of cilia b}^ the foraminifer to the imagination of Hamlet or the composition of the Messiah, is accompanied by, and in a sense finds an equivalent expression in, a definite waste or disinteg- ration of material tissue. Thus it is no less certain that the muscles of a horse are strained by a heavy load, than it is that the brain of a Shakespeare under- goes molecular agitation, producing definite chemical results, in the sublime effort of imagination. Besides these facts there were some few assertions, THE JI YSTER Y OF MA TTEIL \ 5 denials, and inferences, which suggested fair matter for argument, and were accordingly fiercely debated. But I do not at all believe that these more oric^inal elements had very much influence in producing the excitement Avhich followed. The surprise, the shock, and the prolonged uneasiness realized by so many minds were, I think, really caused by the lucid and telling statement of facts already known and indisputable. Many of us perhaps learned a little animal physiology at school. But I venture to think that not one in fifty of the readers of that discourse had ever tried to realize what they meant by the union of soul and body. And if they ever did try to til ink about it, the distinctness of the two was nearer anrl clearer to consciousness than their alliance. Hence when such I'eaders were told that the soul never does one single thing by itself apart from some excitement of bodily tissue, they experienced a shock, which was all the more unpleasant because it was impossible to deny the fact. That thought and love and inrlignation and fear, which in one diiv'ction find their expression in majestic eloquence, should in another direction find their cx[)ression in the production of carbonic acid urea and water, seemed altoi]jether monstrous and terrible. Such a union as this between soul and body seemed locricallv to amount to idcntitv. And vet the poor soul felt that, whatever might be said, still it knew that it was not carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, or nitrogen, nor yet all of them put together, lience 10 ESSAYS. arose an apparent schism between logic and con- sciousness; which was very distressing to many minds. The distracted reader scarcely thought of askino' himself how much he knew about carbon or oxygen or the rest of them. The fact that he could not think about them without producing them was something frightful; and therefore in all probability he betook himself to the usual resource of mental helplessness, whether in ecclesiastical conclaves or pot- house debates — he took to cursing. When, for instance, ordinary men are told that " sooner or later we shall arrive at a mechanical ex- pression of consciousness, just as we have arrived at a mechanical equivalent of heat;""^ and when they hear this assertion illustrated by reference to a pound- weight fallino- throuoii the distance of a foot, and oivino; rise to a definite amount of heat as its equivalent ; such hearers instantly picture to themselves a pair of scales with a man's soul placed on the one side and a pound or a ton weight, as the case may be, on the other. And tlie}^ persist in supposing the sj^eaker to mean that the conscious life of the one is equivalent to, in the sense of being Avorth no more than, the (supposed) uncon- scious mechanical force of the other. They conceive the soul transmuted into a potato-dealer's iron weight, and they shudder with a righteous horror of such a materialistic doctrine. Yet, if they could but realize that all their knowledge of weight is the conscious * Lay Sermons, &c., 1870, p. 372. I. TEE MYSTERY OF MA TTEIL VJ apprehension of force in one form, and that all they know of the desire to lift it is the conscious appre- hension of force in another form, they would themselves feel how possible it is that the one form of force might be expressed in terms of the other. They might or might not agree in the possibility of applying this mode of interpretation to all the subtle variations of conscious energy, but they would at least acquit the proposal of " gross and brutal materialism." The truth is, that in these days of Mudie, and Library Companies (Limited), thousands, if not the million, read much which they have just education enough to misunderstand; and no lucidity of exposi- tion can save us from errors occasioned by inveterate inaccuracy on our own part in regard to the most elementary terms. The rough philosophy of ordinary intelligence recognizes, or fancies that it recognizes, two utterly distinct kinds of existence — one called matter or body, and the other spirit or soul. Such rough philosophy may be sufficient for most practical purposes ; but it is liable to be sorely per- plexed by lectures on " Protoplasm." For in the common view tliese two kinds of existence are so essentially different, that no transition is conceivable from the one to the other, and, indeed, no liiglier generalization can possibly combine them in real unity. To sucii a view the word universe must be a misnomer. Tliere is no ultimate oneness of tilings. And therefoie every approximation to a final general- 15 18 -ESS A VS. ization, whether from the side of science or of relio'ion, excites suspicion and fear just in proportion as its drift is perceived. For the false assumption, like a trivial error in the terms of a calculation, thouo-h of no practical import within a narrow range, becomes more and more perplexing and possibly disastrous, as the magnitude of the problem grows. Tell the believer in two substances that all living organisms, from the lichen up to man, are composed mainly of one sort of matter, which in all cases, even in those at the ex- tremity of scale, is identical in chemical composition, and your hearer may only be interested and surprised. Tell him that every vital action, from the vibration of cilia np to the contemplations of a saint, is accompanied by, and finds an equivalent expression in, a definite waste of material tissue : discomfort and suspicion will be the result. Tell him that all species and all genera- tions of the animal and vegetable Avorld have been produced, under discoverable laws, by gradual modifica- tions of one original and everywhere identical proto- plasm : his face will flush with indignation, and ana- themas will rise to his lips. Certainly the sort of mental anxiety to which I allude has been a good deal aggravated by the increased and increasing hold which the doctrine of development, in one form or another, has indisput- ably taken on most inquiring minds. Natural selec- tion may or may not be regarded as sufficient to account for the origin of species. But I am stating a I. THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 19 mere fact, and not "upholding any theory, when I say that the notion of successive acts of special creation out of nothing, Or out of inorganic dust, has been virtually abandoned by all whose observations of nature have been made on such a scale as to entitle their opinions to any weight. And those ordinary readers who have intellio-ence enougjh to note this fact are usually possessed by the feeling, right or wrong, that if once the doctrine of development be fairly established in reo'ard to the brute creation, the aro-u- ments for extending it to man will be irresistible. Whether that be the case or not, it is certainly true that our interest in the ultimate constitution of matter derives a terrible eagerness from the rapid growth and prevalence of theories founded on the doctrines of continuity, development and the correlation of forces. Now, it is not my business here, nor does it lie Avithin my capacity to u])hold such theories on scientific grounds. But, at any rate, they exist. They rest on large inductions. They arc receiving fresh accessions of evidence every day ; and surely, unless truth ab- solutely re(^uires us to do so, it is not wise to risk popular confidence in the supremacy of s])irit and life in the order of the world on the chance that those theories mav ultimatclv ])rove to be false. For the [iuipose of tlie present argument, however, it matters not wlicther the thcoi-ies referred to are true or not. They assert, at any rate, tliat unity of the world, wliicli in some fjrm or otlier must ultimately 20 ^>S'>S'.4 TS. I. be accepted ; and at which, in any form, believers in two substances must stumble. It is the slow, but most perceptible current of popular thought towards the last generalization, the idea of a iinivevse, which is the real cause of all the perplexing eddies in side channels and private mill-dams of theological vested interests. Suspicion of miracle, impatience of the Athanasian creed, discomfort at the notion of creation out of nothino' all of which are sisfns of these times, — in a sense in which they never were of any other age, — derive their whole force from that sense of a comprehensive unity to which the discoveries of modern science have given so grand an awakening. Whoever then contii- butes a side light, a shade of thought, a suggestive w^ord on the mvsterv of matter, is doino: what he can to hasten that day when " God shall be all in all." Let us try if we cannot conceive clearly the mental condition of a man who feels most acutely the apparent encroachments of materialism. Such a man uses familiarly the word "substance," in what he thinks to be a clear and definite sense; although, ten to one, he has never put his definition into words. Roughly, I think, we may say that anything he can thump or squeeze or crush, anything that resists him, however delicately, like a waft of air, is a substance. Good Dr. Johnson, when bewildered b}^ Berkeleyite subtleties about the non-existence of matter, indignantly thumped his fist on the table and exclaimed, "Here it is, sir! here it is I" I. THE 31 YSTER Y OF 21 A TTER. 9 1 He, evidently, philosopher though he was in Boswell's eyes, shared that position of the common mind which I am now endeavourino- to describe, and reo-arded as substance anything wdiich in any degree withstands the fist. Hence bricks, iron, wood, feather-beds, water and gas are all substances. Fire is doubtful; still, as it swallows up other substances, newspaper reporters may be right in calling it "the devouring element." Electricity is more doubtful still. It may be called "the electric fluid." But there is a mystery about it, which to the common mind is inconsistent with honest substance. LUjld is a puzzle. The ordinary mind does not regard it as a substance, and yet it always streams from a substance; but until attention and reflection are thoroughly excited no inconsistency is felt here. So far, then, all is plain. The common ob- server knows himself to be surrounded by many sub- stances, wliich he is sure are no ])art of himself, and which seem, for the most part, in themselves heavy, stu- pid, inert. There is no mystery at all in this, he thinks. Here is the realm of common sense and tanuible evi- dence. But now, when he comes to think of himself, here he apprehends a mystery. He docs not realize his own existence as he does that of material substances around him. Certainly we have heard of people pincli- ing themselves when confounded by surprise, to con- vince themselves that tliey were really present in the llesh. But as a general rule a man does not come to self-consciousness by feelinu: his rilts, or bv bitinir liid 22 BSSA rs. 1. lips, but by a direct perception, whicli is like nothing but itself. Accordingly the common mind draws a great distinction between its perception of itself, and its perception of substances around. And to that subtle essence, which it feels itself to be, it gives the name of spirit. It would not, I suppose, always call spirit a substance. But whatever names be used, in effect it comes to this, that the rough philosophy of common sense recognizes, or fancies that it recognizes, the existence of two utterly distinct kinds of sub- stance, one which it calls matter or body, and the other spirit or soul. According to this view matter, how- ever ancient, is a new thing in the universe. Spirit alone is eternal. And as matter is utterly and fundamentally different from spirit, with no possibility of a transition from one to the other, it follows that matter must have been at one time called out of pure nothing into sudden being. This, of course, has not been always held. For many of the ancients regarded matter as eternal. Partlv, however, from a natural and proper intolerance of two diverse substances equally eternal, and partly from a forced interpretation of certain passages of scripture, which will fliirly bear a very different construction, the ordinary common sense theory of the world now insists on the creation of matter as well as individual souls out of nothino- at all. Then, of course, matter being solid, inert, incapable of feelinof or consciousness, is associated with clearness, tangibility, mortality, and evil ; while spirit is I. THE MYSTERY OF JAl TTER, 23 mysterious, etherial, the true vehicle of life, the proper and only subject of religion and immortality. Such being the theory of the world as embraced by the common mind, there is little wonder that lectures on protoplasm, especially when combined with theories of development, should cause many a flutter of heart ; which, by the way, is all the more painful because it seems to confirm materialism ; and many a snarl, which according to Dr. Darwin goes far to prove the theory which excited it. For if every possible mental energy fiiids its equivalent expression in mechanical or chemical terms, it is impossible to avoid an uncom- fortable suspicion that the distinction between soul and body is not quite so clear and utter as we had thou!4'ht. And if in the course of the next ij;eneration it should really come to be believed that the whole power and glory of the living forms which throng and adorn, and even subdue the world, have been gradually evolved out of a speck of irritable jelly ; alas, alas, for the noble dream of a God-breathed inspiration and a divine imaixe in man! Alas for the sacred roll of })romises that gleam, and re1)ukes that burn, and living- words that empower the faint! All, all will be gone, but only one doleful utterance — "I said in mine heart concerninLT the sons of men that God miiiht manifest tliL'm, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts," It is evident, then, that the terrible conclusions, too hastily formed by hearers of lectures on Protoplasm, 24 ^>^>S^4r>S'. I. proceed entirely on the common assumption that what we call matter is something fundamentally and essen- tially different from spirit ; something heavy, lifeless, inert; something that lies hid beneath, and is the foundation of the etherial vision of the world. But if that assumption be wholly gratuitous, the mere creation of false analogy ; if, when closeh^ examined, it resolves itself into a tissue of incongruities, mutually destructive, unthinkable, impossible ; we cannot say that such a conclusion solves for us the riddle of the earth; we cannot say that materialism, in a fair sense of the word, becomes impossible; but we can say that materialism and spiritualism w^ould then be felt to exhibit different aspects of the same everlasting fact; and physical research might henceforth unfold to us only the energies of Infinite Life, self-governed by eternal law.* * The oreneral line of arofiiment vrhich follows is of course suggested by Professor Huxley in the two Lectures on Proto- plasm and on Descartes, to wbicli allusion has already been made more than once. Eeaders must judge whether the aim and application are so far identical as to make a re-statement in my own way needless. But the argument has l)een involved in all spiritualistic as distinguished from materialistic philosophy, almost since human thought iirst began to wrestle with tlie enigma of the world. And if in the present age, anything of the kind should be thought new, it is for the same reason that has made assertions about protoplasm or bioplasm seem bold and startling. What was once the property of a few isolated thinkers, has in our time been popularized and made accessible to minds of ordinary intelligence. THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 25 Which amono-st the innumerable facts that store the memory even of the most ignorant, is that of which we are most confidently certain ? There can be little doubt about the answer. Children, fond of emphatic utterance, but innocent of all expletives, will often stren^'then their assertions with the addition ^' as sure as ever I'm alive." And in such words, without knowing it, simple souls of maturer growth often illustrate and endorse the principle of Des- cartes, who reared his system of the universe fi'om the apparently syllogistic, bat really identical pro- position, **I think, therefore I am;" i.e., "I am think- ing, therefore I am a thinker;" or "I am, therefore I am." But the fuller form of the proposition is not wholl}'' unmeaning. For, bearing in mind how Descartes incJudcd under thinkini'- all modes of sentiency, we may say that the fuller form reveals what is true but not generally recognized, that the substantive verb always carries with it the notion of thought ill the subject of whicli it is predicated. This is obvious with regard to the first person, " I am;" for to say that a man can him^^olf separate the notion of liis being from tlie notion of 1 is sentiency is absurd. But surely it is no less true of the second ])erson, "thou art;" lur thougli a poet may address a muuntain or a .statue, l)y the very In-pothcsis of personificati(^n he attiibutes sentiency to the subject. And it can scarcely be contended tliat the intlcctiDii of tlie tliird person \\li()lly clianges the meaning of tlie verb. Jii 26 ^'S'>S'.4 YS. J, other words, our notion of being is always and necessarily that of conscious being. Our first recogni- tion of existence is in the form of life; and we only delude ourselves when we flmcy that we eliminate life from our notion of objects around us. At any rate, this, the knowledge that I am alive, or the fact that I am conscious, is, in the mind of the simplest as well as profoundest, the one point so certain that it serves as a standard by which to judge all others. Now this only amounts to saying that our first and elementary recognition of existence is in the form of life. Ft may be, and doubtless is true, that no baby knows, or can be correctly said to feel that he is alive, until he opens his mouth and is astonished by the noise that he makes, or till he unfolds blank, meaningless eyes to the wonder of lio-ht. But no one will venture to say that in either instance he learns anything whatever of a world outside of him. AVe cannot be far wrong in thinking that he is simply roused to a dim, inarticulate, unrecorded and irrecover- able sense of indefinite life. The feeling, therefore, that we are alive is the prime, continuous, and fundamental perception which gives content to all others. We may talk about eliminating consciousness and forming an abstract idea of being ; but it is only talk, nothino' more. We never use the substantive verb without attributing some sort of life definite, or indefinite, to its subject. The first fact of existence, and the only one of which we have such an iuimediate 1. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER. 27 cognition, that in it subject and object are one, is, if not living substance, at least the phenomenon of life. But how do we know that anything else exists be- yond the life we realize in ourselves ? Says Common- sense "Seein!:c's believino-; but feelincr has no fellow; I see them, and feel them, and hear them, and taste them, and smell them; therefore I know that a world of thinos exists around me." This argument is not to be despised; it is genuine and sound; irrefutable by any amount of metapliysical subtlety. But the question does not concern the existence of those visions, or feelings or sounds, or tastes, or smells. Tliey are indi sputa l)le. Nor, again, does it affect the existence of real causes for them. But what it does touch is the nature of those causes. And if it be said that tliey are caused by an unliving substance, a dead matter, which is fundamen- tally different from tlie mode of existence whicli we know in ourselves, the assertion is one fur wlilch no tittle of j)roof can be found. It may not perhaps be wholly unnecessary here to remind some readers that tlie doctrine of Bishop Berkeley lias been persistently misUiken on this point. For it has been supposed that he denied the existence of the external world, and thus for a })edantic whim insulted the common sense of humanitv. Of course he never dreamt of doing anything of the kind. Indeed, he rather })elievcd it to be his mission to vindicate common sense acrainst the far-fetched explanations of philosuphers. Never did lie for a moment treat the 28 BSSA YS. I. ■external world as an unreal dream. He constantly insisted, rather, that the question he discussed concerned only the underlying basis or cause of the external manifestations that affect us; a question of which com- mon sense is for the most part entirely oblivious; but in regard to which it easily suffers itself to be griev- ously deluded. As a clear understanding of the position thus generally indicated is becoming absolutely essential to any calm estimate of the apparently materialistic bearino-s of recent biological theories, a few words of ex|)osition from one, who has felt the pressure of these questions but who makes no pre- tence to profound or original research, may not be without their use to the class of readers alluded to above. Engaged in my work, and needing to note the pas- sage of time, I look at the clock, and am straightway conscious of a complex sensation, accompanied by cer- tain thouo'hts. I am conscious of a sensation of a cir- €ular form, and of a white surface distinguished by black marks. I am conscious also, ]jerhaps, of an uncomfortable feeling that time is flying rapid!}", and that only a few moments of certain allotted hours are left to me. For I gave myself three hours — from ten to one o'clock — for a particular purpose ; and now the clock tells me that it is half-past twelve. " Tells me ! " I cannot help imputing an intentional meaning to the clock-face ; and the lively figure of speech ordinarily adopted is only a fair expression of I. THE MYSTER Y OF MA TTER, 29 what the clock is generally supposed to do. I can, of course, on reflection, easily convince myself that the whole significance of the object — all notion of the twelve hours, and of the sixty minutes, and of the time that remains to me — is not in the clock at all, hut in myself Yet I find it requires very considerable effort to separate that round white face and those black marks outside of me, from the impression of the time of day which I feel within me. So prone are we to predicate of things outside of us the attriljutes of life, while yet we profess to conceive of them as dead. But let us suppose this error discovered and corrected. In contemplating the clock in itself, then, we have got rid of all notion of time — of all significance, which, on reflection, we find to be due to living association of ideas, and which we are quite sure is in us and not in the clock itself All that is left now is a circular white space with black marks on it. This much, at least, it may be urged, is clearly outside of us. And yet if it is so, the clock must certainly l)e alive. For what du wc mean by " white ? " We mean a certain feelin^-- or sensation which we associate with the word. Thus, if I mention the word, you can recall the sensa- tion; and if I hold iq) a white cloth before you, you may say, " Yes, that is what I mean," because you re- co^niise the sensation of whiteness which is rcn'ived. Ihit if the cloth bo fairly opacjue, and I hold it iq) between you and the sun-light, then it excites no sensatiun of whiteness, but seems as nonrly as possible 80 ESS A YS. 1. black. Yet the cloth itself is the same, and the white- ness or blackness is in the observer. My interlocutor, however, being a man of strong common sense, may .catch me up sharply, and sa}^ " No ; the blackness or whiteness depends on the incidence of the light, and is still at the surface of the cloth." To which I should 3'eply that the cause of the sensation of whiteness may undoubtedly be at the surface of the cloth ; but the very mention of the light shows that the whiteness itself is in our eyes, or rather in the living self at the other end of the optic nerve. And therefore, when we apply the epithet " white " to our clock-face, we de- >scribe not what that object is in itself, but the sensa- tion which it excites in us. In other words, every act of perception involves two factors, — a perceiving subject and a perceived object. But we have no right whatever to invest either of these factors separately with the whole value of the two brought into conjunction. When vre ourselves are gone away from the object, we know that our memory lacks the vividness and "outness" of the present sensation. And if the one factor, when re- moved from conjunction with the other, is modified by the separation, so is the other. We cannot logically leave the object invested with those sensations wdiich it indeed produced in us, but which were a part of ourselves and not of it. For that which is acknow- ledged to be an effect produced on a living suscepti- bilit}^ cannot j^ossibly be left behind when the living I. THE MYHTER Y OF MA TIER. 31 susceptibility is removed. ' Of course, in the language of common sense, the clock-face is white when left alone in the deepest darkness, equally as when, illum- ined by the lamp, it warns us of the flight of time. But then the lan<:(uao^e of common sense is not, and need not be, exhaustively accurate. In the present instance it roughly expresses the indubitable fact, that the clock-face will retain its ])ower of exciting, under certain conditions, the sensation of whiteness in our minds. Yet, for the pjurpose of our present argument, it is of the highest importance to fix in our minds the exact truth, which is this ; that what we leave behind us when we take our candle and go to bed, is not, in the full significance of the words, a white cJock-face, but somethinij: which, if we come back a«^'ain with a lic-ht, will acrain awaken in us the sensation of the present moment. It is obvious that the same reasoninoj would be equally applicable, not onl}^ to the round form and to the black figures, but also to the tick of the pendulum, wliich affects an entirelv different sense. Some diffi- culty may be felt in realizing that the hardness and smoothness which w^e perceive through touch, are just as much in ourselves as is the white colour, and in- ca[)able of existence unles.s in tlie actual contact of our hands. But as tliis would necessitate a discussion of impenetrability, whicli may be better a})pr(jached pre- sently from another })oint of view, I shall best consult economy of space, without injury to ultimate com- 32 FSSAYS. I. pleteness, by assuming now that the argument exem- plified in the above ilhistration is applicable to all the senses alike. Let not the drift, however, be mistaken. The common sense of humanity is right enough in insisting on the reality of the external world. And all that our argument amounts to, so far, is this, — that our sensation is one thing, and its cause or occasion another; and ftxrther, that simple sensation does not tell us what that cause is. If we ask what causes our sensation of whiteness in looking at the clock, we have no right to answer " white colour ; " for the epithet expresses a sensation which must be in us, and cannot possibly be out of us. If, then, the cause be not white colour, what is it ? As simple sensation cannot answer, science has taken the matter in hand. By a minute observation of innumerable sensations, and by elaborate calculations and reasonings founded upon them, physical philoso- phers propose to reduce all our perceptions, and everything else about us, to a system of molecular mechanics. I am not going to complain of this proposal, or to anathematize its materialistic tendency or method. The method ought to be materialistic ; the more so the better ; for that is only another name for precise observation and accurate inference. But as to the tendency, we shall see. To my mind, to accuse molecular mechanics of a materialistic tendency, is about as reasonable as it would have been to accuse the first aeronaut who ventured to explore the clcuds, of a I, THE ^rVSTER Y OF MA TTER. 33 voyage into outer darkness. In good time we shall all come through to the other side. Only let ns go deep enough ; only let us get hold of our molecules and atoms — if we can. There is no fear of the result. But, meanwhile, I venture to suggest as the next stey) in my argument, that while simple sensation has nothing to tell us about its cause ; except that it is not ourselves ; physical research, so far as it has gone, gives us a cause which is not only nothing like the effect, hut totall}^ inadequate to account for it. Let me illustrate what is meant. Looking at the clouds of sunset, what wonderful visions we sometimes enjoy, — castle, and spire, and city, palaces resplendent with gold and purple, fiery caves and gorgeous moun- tains. To the child they present a fairy-land quite sufficient to confirm the adventures of Jack at the top of his bean-stalk. And the little seer ponders how daintily his foot would tread the golden floors, and what supreme lordship he would feel, enthroned on those shining peaks. If then some remorseless iconoclast of romance were to cany him away in a balloon, and, fjivoured by the winds, were to plunge liim into the woild on which he dotes, how bitterlv disappointed the cliild would be to find liis beloved vision melt away into dismal laiiation 34 ESSAYS. 1. would enable him to identify in his consciousness the splendid vision either above or below, with the dull molecules of chokins: fo^' into which he had been plunged. So, when science takes us children of a larger growth, and to exhibit to us the secret of colour, plunges us into a mist of vibrating molecules or atoms, we find it impossible to identify in consciousness the notion of vibrations with the phenomena of experience. It may be we shall pass through the mist some day, and know the eternal boundless life which it, so to speak, refracts and reflects. But not in trembling atoms do we, or shall we ever find any adequate ex- planation of the glorious visible world. Suppose yourself to be looking up, not at the clouds, but at a palace ceiling illuminated with brilliant colours. No minute examination at the top of a ladder will do for us here what we supposed the balloon voyage to have affected for the child. However we may fly through the clouds, we are quite incapable yet of carrying our consciousness through a coat of paint. But science professes fully to explain to us the delight of our eyes. We have all heard in these times of the ether and its wavelets, which, vibrating billions of times in a second, carry everywhere the glory of light. We all understand that these ethereal wavelets, im- pinging upon molecules of pigment, have part of their movements absorbed, and part reflected in various degrees, according to the peculiar nature of the pigment employed. But as action and re-action are equal, we THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 35 must suppose the etherial wavelets which are thus turned violently back in their course to affect the molecules with their own motions. And indeed according to this theory, which, so far as it goes, I do not for a moment doubt, the only reason that can be given for the different colours of molecules is their adaptability to absorb or reflect a few billion vibrations more or a few billion vibrations less in any given second of time. We must conceive, then, that the superficial molecules of our illuminated ceiling are kept in a constant state of agitation under the beating waves of the light. Now, as Milton's imagination reduced his unmanage- able host of devils to pigmies in order that they might be squeezed into the Pandemonium, we may venture to reduce our own more estimable persons in thought to a minuteness beyond the range of microscopic per- ception. If, at the inner end of the optic nerve, there are brain molecules capable of marking time to the wavelets of light, we may suppose our whole conscious- ness to be concentrated in such a molecule. Having then reduced ourselves to a size indefinitely smaller than that of the smallest perceptible animalcule, we may insinuate ourselves amongst the agitated particles of our illuminated ceiling, and thus follow up to its last retreat the m3\stery of colour. But it may fairly be ([uestioned whether the result would answer our ex- pectations, any more than the child's investigation of the sunset clouds would be in accordance with his. SG ESSAYS. SuiTouiided on every side by perceptibly dancing mole- cules, of whose actual motions we were conscious, we might feel as though enveloped in a cloud of dust agitated by the wind, or as though rolled amongst pebbles shaken by the beat of waves on the beach, but as to the efficient and formative cause of the brilliant vision we had seen below, we should be as much bewildered as the child plunged into the cloud. This is only one illustration out of innumerable others which might be given to show the impossibility of realizing in consciousness the explanation offered by molecular mechanics of the phenomena of sensation. And nothing is really an explanation which cannot be realized as such in consciousness. What we want is a cause, out of which we can rationall}^ educe the effect. When, for instance, we are told that the perception of distance is given partly by the muscular sense accom- panying the adjustment of tlie axes of the eyes, parth' by association of certain directions of lines and various degrees of dimness or clearness, with experience of touch and motion, this, so far as it goes, is an entirely adequate explanation. No question is here involved of the ultimate constitution of the outer or the inner world. Bat the phenomena being assumed, every one, by the exercise of a little reflection, is able to realize this explanation in his own consciousness, and ration- ally to connect that muscular sense and the experience of touch with his perception of distance. For ever}- one, when his attention is called to it, knows that a I. THE MYSTERY OF MATTER. .ST muscular effort is required for the adjustment of the eyes to various distances ; and even after long experi- ence illusory appearances of distance or nearness occa- sionally illustrate the uncertainty of sight apart from the interpretations of the other sense. This, then, I call an adequate explanation so far as it goes; one which can he reaUzed in consciousness. But with the explanation of sensation by molecular mechanics the case is far otherwise. For physical research, rightly pursuing its materialistic method, Lmds us in a dead, inert substance, called matter, which, though utterly soulless and meaningless in itself, does, nevertheless, by its shakings and rumblings, produce in oui' conscious selves the most Ijeautiful visions and exalted emotions. !No\v, I do not dispute the vilnatory theorv of liijht; and, of course, that of sound is iudis- ])utable. But what does it amount to in either case ? Simply to this, that when we carefully and minutely examine the external phenomena inseparable from our consciousness of siLrht or sound, we find that tliev re- solve themselves into other phenomena having the form uf infinitesimal viltrations, which it is (piite impossible rationally to connect with the consciousness that gives thorn all tlicir inter'.'st.* I repeat then that while simple * l\*rha|>s it may lie tliou^j^lit that in the case <»f .soiiml its identity with vibnitions inav l»f nioie easily realizeil. lUit I nut it to any one to whom tlu* liallehijah Clioiiis utters the j»»y i>f heaven, or fitr wlntni a .scuiata of i>eethoveu"s j^ives a vuiee l»> the uuutteialth', can he make it seem real to liim.self that his mind is invaded l>v mere air waves .' 38 ESSAYS. 1. sensation has nothing to tell us about its cause, except that it is not ourselves, physical research, so far as it has gone, gives us a cause which is not only nothing like the effect, but totally inadequate to account for it. Science has brought us into the cloud, and this is very different from the vision that prompted our voyage of discovery. But we cannot stop here ; and science or something else will ultimately take us through to the other side. Physical research boasts its dependence on observa- tion, which is only another word for the industrious and accurate employment of the senses. And its history has been to a large extent a process of correc- tion, ever approximating to, but, in the nature of the case, incapable of attaining absolute truth. If then the last correction has given me a system of molecular mechanics, have I not a right to speculate on the probability of some further correction still ? My simple senses, for instance, tell me as T look down the road that there is a figure in a red cloak half a mile away. Dr. Tyndall's much more subtle perceptions, aided by prisms, electric lamps, screens, and I know not what, enable him to correct the simplicity of my sensations, and to assure me that, whatever may be the case with the fio'ure and the cloak, the red colour is certainly not half a mile away, but here only, in my eyes or in my optic lobes. He further corrects my observations, if I rightly understand him, by informing me that the presence of this colour here is due to the I. THE MYSTERV OF MA TTER, 39 existence of molecules there which vibrate in such a fashion as to absorb the violet and gold rays while they repel and reflect the red. And, still farther, I learn that the medium of communication between me and those distant molecules is an attenuated "jelly," called ether, which is so extremely subtle that it per- vades all substances, and Avhich is liable to vibrations of a stupendous and unimaginable velocity. It is all, then, a matter of molecules. The cloak, the ether, my retina, optic nerve and lobes — all are reduced to a system of molecular machinery so devised as to reflect, transmit, or receive vibrations of matter which run throu^-hout the whole chain. Now, I do not in the least dispute the correction. I am unable to carry out the investigation for m3'self ; but I am perfectly satisfied with the evidence of eminent men, that when my rough summary of sensa- tion is closely examined, other phenomena unobserved by me are discovered, and that these at length reduce themselves to phenomena of molecular agitation. Farther, at no point in this chain of vibrations, not even the point most deeply buried in the brain, is it possible to conceive this molecular agitation converted into anytliing other than material movement, or resis- tance to movement. Let any one in thought follow up the ethereal vibrations to their last flutter in the inmost recesses of the brain ; and let him try to form a clear idea of what happens there. It is useless to say that he will not try; that it is a mystery which ho 40 FSSAY.^. I. leaves alone. Because in the very act of refusing, he does conceive the chain of vibrations to come to a dead stop, and something infinitely different, utterly incom- mensurahle with them to take their place. For my part, having submitted so far to the teaching of physical philosophers, I am constrained to go farther, and admit, that to my mind, material movement can produce nothing but material movement ; that the feeling produced by molecular vibration must itself be a form of molecular vibration ; and, in fine, I must concede to Professor Huxlev, that " thouo-ht is as much a function of matter as motion is." But then the whole significance of the concession depends upon the meanino- that we attach to the word 'matter.' For if anv one should straio-htwav convict me of " oToss and brutal materialism," I would hez him to remembej" that tliis conclusion is only an approximate correction of the A'ao-ue notions with which we beo-an. My ''simple senses" informed me incorrectly about their method of operation. They told me of a red colour half-a-mile distant across a vacant interval. But the more cultivated senses of scientific people, aided by delicate instriunents, resolve these appearances into phenomena of agitated molecules. I am thankful for the correction ; l)ut if too much should be made oi these molecules, I have a right to urge that there is no fin.ilitv here. This correction mav need correctinoj; and these vibrating molecules may turn out to be something: very different from what thev seem. In I. THE MYSTER Y OF JA 1 TTER. -i 1 fact, they must do so ; fur the common notion enter- tained of them, even hy some scientific men, compresses a whole world of absurdity and contradiction into every point of space. But if so, it is conceivable that tlirough the word " matter " in the above assertion of Professor Huxley's, we may find an issue into the clear upper air beyond the cloud of materialism. Let us try to tliink what we mean by matter, or at an}^ rate what Ave suppose ourselves to mean. When speaking above of the clock, and of the absence of any information in sensation itself as to the nature of its own cause, we observed that to most minds touch would seem to be an exception to the other senses, and to give an immediate perception of its cause. The reason is that impenetral,)ility and matter seem almost conveitible terms. But let us ask what we mean b\' im])enetra]jility. If I tliuni]) tlic table at A\'hich I am writing-, sometliini^ resists me, and my fist can i-o no farther. If I ])ush an oar through water, I feel the .'^ame thiuLf in a less dei-ree ; but the water as a mass is certainly not impenetrable. If I wave my liaiids in the air, I experience a slight di.-turl>ance around them, though there is no sensible impediment to their iiio\ement. But of coin"S(,', the propeity of impene- tral»ility belongs to all tlnt'c fbrms of matter alike. Tlie only difl'erencc whieli we recognize, lies in the degree of ])Ossiblc Hux or mol»ility characterizing tlie molecules in relation to one anotlier. Thus tlie tablr is so compact tliat no pai t <•!" it w ill piTci-pt ibl\ ni"»\f 42 ^>S'>S'^ r>s'. out of the way to make room for my fist. But water and air are so constituted, that the parts which I push jaeld their place with more or less readiness to make room for me. And why do they move away ? The property of impenetrability supplies the reason ; be- cause no two particles of matter can occupy the same place at the same time. In the mass all matter is penetrable ; for the table, or for that matter solid stone, would yield to a sledge-hammer or a saw. But still no part of the hammer or saw would ever occupy the same space as any portion of wood or jstone at the same moment of time. We shall get a better notion then of the one property generally regarded as essential to our hypothetical " matter," if we call that property, not impenetrability, but the exclusive occupation of space. Besides, the former term prematurely raises the question as to the nature of the difference between the plainly penetrable mass, and the supposed impene- trable molecule ; while the exclusive occupation of space is a notion which we easily attach to all quantities of matter, great or small. Extension or occupation of space is in fact the only property which Descartes allowed to be essential to matter. And extension of course implies exclusive occupation ; for if two portions of matter could be packed into space of the dimensions of one only, it is clear that one of them, or portions of each would occupy no space at all; that is, would lose the essential property of matter, or in other words, would be annihilated. While, there- I. THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 43 fore, various kinds of matter may differ iii shape, colour, weight, smell, taste and feeling, everything which can be regarded as matter at all, must occupy some space. Descartes went farther, and maintained that all space was occupied by matter of some kind, or in other words, that matter was infinitely extended. And it must be confessed that the progress of astro- nomical discovery has gone far to confirm his view. For, to say nothing of the revelations which more powerful telescopes have made of the unimagined vastness of the universe, the vibratory theory, which best explains the phenomena of light, and also the slow retardation in the movements of the heavenly bodies would certainly imply the existence of subtle ether diffused through space. Assuming then that the one essential property of matter is its exclusive occupation of space, we have to choose between two alternative opinions, one or other of which is absolutely involved in the definition we have thus laid down. For matter must be either continuous and s'^ y^^' formed of finer elements constituted by the attrition of the vortices, and finding their way to centres, where they are gathered into orbs of light or the candescent germs of planets ; and a third kind arising out of the accretion of these finer elements into coarser particles, which, being thrown out to the surface of each fiery, revolving mass, are either dissipated, and return to their original state, as at the surface of the sun ; or revolve in dark clouds which are hardened into a solid encasement, as in the planets. His endeavour to show how these different kinds of material would be ground out and assorted in the revolutions of his vortices is no doubt a wonderful efibrt of imagination ; yet the very notion of particles, to say nothing of their finer division, or coarser accretion, is quite inconsistent with the continuity of matter. For particles imply division, and division means discontinuity. Again the degrees of tenuity or density, for which Descartes' theory provides by the pulverization or accretion of the vortical matter, are a contradiction to the fundamental assumption of the inseparable conjunction of matter and space. Take, for instance, his idea of the accretion by pressure of his most subtle and luminiferous par- ticles. This either means that those particles were squeezed closer together so as to adhere ; or it means nothing. But since they were already in actual contact, each point of space being occupied by a point of matter, the supposed process is simply inconceivable. The subtlest ether, if it is continuous, occupies the I. THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 47 whole of the space in which it lies ; that is, there is no point of the space which is not occupied by a point of matter. But the hardest iron or steel can do no more than this ; and, therefore, on such a theory, it is impossible to give any account of its superior density. The more favoured doctrine in modern times, how- ever, accepts the other alternative mentioned above ; and teaches that matter is ultimately constituted of minute indivisible particles, which are separated one from another by spaces immeasurably small, yet still definite and real. The attraction or repulsion of these atoms between themselves is supposed to explain the phenomena of chemical combination. Their agitation in their narrow orbits constitutes heat ; the repulsion occasioned by this agitation explains expansion ; and the same agitation, if sufficiently intense, may be communicated to the atoms of the ether, thus creatinf; light. There is, of course, very much to be said for such a theory. In particular the doctrine of chemical equivalents, and the curious fact that when bodies unite in more than one proportion these proportions rise by exact multiples of the first, would certainly appear to point to the atomic theory in some form. But in ■what form ? That is precisely the (piestion at issue. When I find that Nitro<:jen beinic Ik the successive proportion-s of Oxygen wliich will unite with it are rces and forms, so far from lending them- selves to "gi'o.ss materialism," i-ather fascinate us with their shadowed hints oi' a mystery behiiul them Itoth, far iiiiLrhticr tlian our will, ami I will tlare to ad«l, more keenly living tlian nnr lite. Some' of the threads which \\ii\\\i from manv a ragged end of thought in the present essay we shall 52 ^>S',S'.ir>S'. endeavour to take up hereafter. Meantime we have seen how that strange, keen evanescent spark of Hfe which burns within can play as fantastic tricks with sordid surroundings as the gleam of a torch with the shadows of a cave. The soul is creative in very early days ; and whatever it may gain from the outer world it returns a hundi^edfold in the dreams and affections and ideals which it projects. Objective circumstances there must be, to awaken the energies of the soul. But those cii'cumstances, when association has en- deared them, are no longer merely a blank array of mechanical forces. They are enriched and brightened, irradiated with many an eloquent suggestion of half- forgotten joys and sorrows, which are the result of ex- perience, indeed, but an experience in which the elaborating and transforming powers of mind play far the largest part. But when the leaders of modern thought, tired of the bewilderment in which poetic sentiment and mystical imagination ended, abandoned all assumptions and set themselves to note precisely what could be seen and felt and heard, with a \dew to marking the connections between phenomena thus ascertained; it seemed to many that the d&js of mystery and romance were gone, and that the grand invariable order revealed must compel the dethrone- ment of will and spirit and life beneath the apathetic rule of mechanical law. Yet increased powers of ob- servation showed the hardest external facts to be merely a series of dissolving views. In geological I. THE MYSTER Y OF MA TTER. 53 perspective granite mountains melted into a fiery mist ; to the astronomer's eye the steadfast order of the heavens became an unbeginning and endless evolution; and all the once inscrutable wonders of light and heat and organic life, followed up with eager determination, were lost in the infinitesimal vibrations of a molecular world. Is this the end ? Do we not in the emotional, imaginative, and moral wealth of human life, get out of the universe immeasurably more than can be potentially contained in mere mechanical movement ? Granting the formal coiTect- ness of every result, have we not to correct some fundamental error in the significance we assigned to the original terms of the problem ? If self be living and not-self dead, we are brought to a dead lock. But if the life, in which we come to know ourselves and the world, embrace both self and not-self too; and if the uhimate elementary })henomena of nature be the simplest subjective forms through which the objective j)hase of Universal Energy is translated into our con- sciousness ; it may be perfectly true that the reality of existence is inexpressible ; but worshi}), spiritual asj)ir- ation, and that loyalty of soul to Infinite Power which is the true essence of faith, are still, and nuist be for ever, the noblest energies of man. It is impossible to justify, as I ho|)e to do hen-after, the view which 1 would venture to take ol" the bearing of these conclusions on the future of religion. If by substance we mean that whieh is and must be, then we 54 ^'^SA YS. know that life is ; but we do not know that anything else is. And the phenomena of the physical world are at least conceivably explicable on the hypothesis of ulti- mate centres of energy ; which centres may, for aught we know, be, to our consciousness, the elementary phenomenal definition of a universal spiritual Power, Life we know ; Force we feel ; nothing more. The notion of a dead substance is an idolon of sense, engendered by the resistance of phenomena to our will. For we cannot help feeling that immateripd angels, — if we may be allowed the conception, — or any forms of finite con- sciousness, if they were made by Infinite Power ta move, or have tlie idea of moving, in definite paths, — • say in straight lines or circles, — would inevitably think of the limiting forces about them, as solid walls shutting in their wa3's. And so, it may be that the physical laws which bound the efi'orts of our will engender in our minds the notion of a dead substance, foreign to, and incommensurable with, spiritual being. Farther, if this notion, when closely examined, turns out to be not only incapable of proof, but self-contra- dictory and absurd, I am not much troubled by the impossibility of propounding, at present, on the basis of a spiritual substance, any comprehensive and en- tirely adequate theory of the universe. Nor do I share the sublime indifference of " know-nothino-s " in philosophy, for whom the end of inquiry is the demon- stration of ignorance, and who, like the disagreeable operative in " Hard Times," are perpetually remarking I. THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 55 that existence is " aw' a muddle." I know that I live ; I am sure that death never engendered life. That I move in the midst of a world which is not myself, hut infinitely greater and better than myself, I am com- pelled, whether I will or not, to believe. I only resist the invasion of that divine world of w^ill, feeling, beauty and power, in which I live, and move, and have my being, by the spectre of a dead abomination which is entirely the creation of false inference. If we can prove nothing, we can at least disprove what threatens the annihilation of faith. True, the faith that we save may be no sectarian's creed. Yet surely it is something dearer far to every sect alike ; the loyalty of the soul to that inspiration from the Unsearchable, which is the ultimate motive power of progress. What, then, I gain by the view for which I earnestly contend is this : that no material phenomena, be they what the}' may, can shame or fright those sentiments of Divine Life and Love which are en- gendered throuiih the heart. All forms of finite exist- encc may, for aught I care, be reduced to modes of motion ; but motion itself has become to me only the phenomenal manifestation of the energy of an infinite Life in which it is a joy to be lost. To me the doctrine of an eternal cuntinuity of develoj)ment has no terrors; for, believin;r matter to be in its ultimate essence s[)iritual, 1 see in every cosmic revolution a " change from glory to glor}', as by tlie S[)irit of the Lord." 1 can look down the uncreated, unbeginning past witli- 56 ^SSA YS. out the sickness of bewildered faith. I want no silent dark eternity in which no world was; for I am a disciple of One who said, "My Father ivorheth hitherto.'' My sense of eternal order is no longer jarred by the sudden appearance in the universe of a dead, inane substance, foreign to God and spiritual being. And if, with a true insight, I could stand so high above the world as to take any comprehensive survey of its unceasing evolutions ; here a nebula dawning at the silent fiat "be light," there the populous globe, where the communion of the many with the One brings the creature back to the Creator ; I am sure that the one- ness of the vision, so far from degrading, would un- speakably elevate my sense of the dignity and blessed- ness of created being. I have no temptation, therefore, to join in cursing the discoverer who tracks the chain of divine forces b}^ which finite consciousness has been brought to take its present form ; because I know he can never find more than that which was in the beginning, and is, and ever shall be — the " power of an endless life." Finally, the strange tearful longing with which the heart is touched by the majesty or tenderness of nature, finds, on this view, not only a worthier, but a more real explanation than is possible on any other. Music is no longer mere inanimate air ; mountains no longer heaps of stupid stone. The vibrations, whether of air or ether, are to me but the form in which the power and s^mipathy of creative life are phenomenally mani- I, THE MYSTERY OF MA TTER. 57 fested to me, as the ripple lapping on the sand brings near the ocean beyond. For, if the earth were only- spiritless matter, and our bodies are only spii'itless matter, while the soul is something imported into them for the purpose of galvanizing them into seeming life ; then surely there is neither reason nor signifi- cance in the power which is exerted over us by natural scenery. I remember standing in the land of ^dl liquid splendours — Norway — beneath a glorious waterfall, where the mountain weaves out of ten thousand tons of water a fluttering veil to deck its rocky hardihood with intangible grace. I see the sinuous motion of the rocket-like patterns which shoot downward over the airy texture. I mark the diamond spangles which work strange wonders with the simple sunbeams. I hear the crash and shout that greet the rocks belovv. I watch the headloni:^ rush of the tumb- ling billows, — like madness, like mirth, like laughter, like rage, — uttering all human passions with the voice of a thousand trumpets in the leap from tlie crag to the lake. Is there not Romethini,^ of a universality, an infinity here, which at (mce baftli's and fascinates the mind ? Why do your eyes fill with tears as you gaze? and why is your heart drawn out with un- utterable desire ? ^^^ly do you turn back again and a^'ain, as thou«rh it were better to plunire into the wild water and bo dissolved in its great joy than to pass ;iway and foriret ? 58 FSSATS. Why ? I turn to where a mountain flower trembles tearfully in a cranny of the rock. Mechanicall}^ my hand is raised to seize it ; and there float into my mind the words — " Flower in tlie crannied wall, I plnck you out of the crannies ; Hold you there, root and all in my hand, Little flower ; hut if I could understand "What you are, root and all, — and all in all, — I should know what God and man is." II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNOPv-ANCE. 11. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNOEAXCK Arguments such as that of the preceding essay are commonly met with the remark, that they prove too much for the purpose of those by whom they are most frequently urged. It may be easy to shew that the notion of a material substance, as commonly under- stood, involves self-contradictory absurdities ; but the substitution of centres of force does little to enli£,diten us. Nor is the suggestion of a Universal Life a spell sufficiently potent to clear up the mystery of existence. For if by Life we mean Mind as known to us, Mind, whose consciousness is generated by experience of the contrast between self and not -self, we are s])cedily landed in contradictions, compared with which even the atomic theory is rational and consistent. To talk of an Omnipresent Mind seems very mucli the same as thougli we were to speak of a Universal Man, — an idea whicli indeed some profess to entertain ; ])ut which, when the limitations necessarily involved in 62 ^'^>S'^1 TS. II. personality are remembered, is seen to be no more rational than the notion of an infinite triangle. Of course, if we choose to attach to the word infinite a modified significance, and consider it as meaning greater than an}^ known quantity, in that case we may speak of infinite mind, and of infinite triangles as well ; but the latter would hardl}^ be a more incon- gruous conception of the plan of the universe in space than the former would be of its ontological essence. But if, on the other hand, in suggesting a universal Life as the substance of all things, we do not mean mind as we know it; is not the phra>se an unnecessary and deceptive substitute for the Universal Unknown ? Such, at least, are some of the objections most likely, to occur to many who would readily agree with the main argument of the preceding pages, — objections not so much against the reasoning as against its useful- ness; protests, not against the destructive analysis, but against the constructive theory hinted. The in- tangible mystery which hides the essence of matter would be granted ; but it would be insisted that the real issue is simply a despair of any knowledge beyond that of phenomena, with their relations of co-existence or 'succession. On the other hand, there are always those who too readily imagine that when the professed knowledge of their opponents turns out to be ignorance, their own ignorance is thereby proved to be knowledge. For to their thinking, contending schools of philoso2)hy are II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGXO RANGE. 03 like children playing see-saw at opposite ends of a plank, so that whatever depresses the one necessarily exalts the other; whereas the true point of analogy may be only this, — that both extremes are supported by the same plank, and when this breaks both alike come to the ground. Atheistic positivism and theo- logical dogmatism, though they are at opposite poles, go through the same motions. Each rests on a mis- taken interpretation of human nature ; and each is weak through a defective philosophy of ignorance. The object of the present essay is to shew what is the relation of the views advanced concerning the mystery of matter to both extreme positions ; and also what seems to the writer the true bearini]^ on reli^^'ious faith of any fair appreciation of man's inevitable ignorance. In pursuit of this purpose, we shall endeavour to find out, first of all, in what direction the Unknown lies, and Ijy what faculties we approach it nearest. We shall then be al)le to shew that the nature of our ignorance is itself suggestive, and makes a way for the practical power over our hearts of a mystery tliat is confessedly unknown. We must leave to future pages any indication of tlic manner in Asliicli tliat practical power lias been, and may continue to be, the most })eiieticent and ennobling inlluence in the history of man. Speaking generally, the attitude of contemporary science im])lieM a strong confidence tliat the whole a})[)arent universe is linally intcrpretable in terms of 64 FSSAYS. II. two ultimate phenomenal categories, — matter and motion. And this attitude is supposed, for the most part by unfriendly critics, but occasionally by physic- ists themselves, to be equivalent to the assertion of materiahsm. Now, it is not very easy to define materiahsm. But what I understand by it is a system of thought which assumes that, at any rate if we could carry our inquiries far enough, the universe is finally explicable on mechanical principles. Or, if this de- finition be erroneous, it may safely be assumed at' the outset, without danger to the following argument ; because if mechanical principles are not supposed finally to explain the world, materialism also has its fundamental mystery, which is by hypothesis not mechanical, as otherwise it would be explicable. And it is with this fundamental mystery that the philo- sophy of ignorance has to deal. But assuming for a moment that there are extreme materialists, who would avow the position just defined, it is clear that this is something very different from any demonstrable conclusion of science. For it is one thing to say that special and complex phenomena may be interpreted ; that is, may have their laws of coin- cidence and succession stated in terms of more general and simpler phenomena. But it is altogether another and a different thing to say that these latter are the final and only reality involved in existence. If I have a complex algebraical equation presented to me, in- volving several unknown quantities ; by a sufficiency II. THE rillLOSOPIlY OF IGNOliASCE. 05 of mathematical skill I may shew that it is ultimately reducible to terms of x and y. But that would not at all show that the significance of the equation is merely alphabetical. The values of x and y may be at present unknown, and are perhaps undiscoverable ; yet this umch, at least, is known, — that those values represent much more than the printed signs. In the complex problem of the universe, matter and motion are our X and y. But those only can be called materialists, who say that these terms have no further significance, oY that they are of such a nature as to exclude the possibility of any transcendental value. It is against this i^osition that such arguments as those already advanced ai-e usually urged by the adherents of a spiritual philosophy. And though the result, if any, as yet established, amounts sim})ly to a demonstration of ignorance ; it is an ignorance welcome as the vast- ness of an unknown sea in the S'. II. atheism. For, taking the words "matter" and "spirit" in their ordinary conversational meaning, there are four theories as to their relations, one of which must needs be adopted, because they exhaust the possi- bilities of thought on the subject. Thus, (1.) we may regard matter and spirit as two separate and distinct substances, capable of mutual relations, but entirely incommensurable. This is the popular view, — tolerable only so long as the word substance is loosel}^ under- stood. But (2.) we may suppose spirit to be a gene- ralization of certain phenomena of matter ; or (3.) we may treat matter as a phenomenon of spirit. Finally, we may insist (4.) that matter and spirit are equally phenomenal manifestations of one unknown sub- stance."^ * By matter, in the ordinary use of the word, I suppose we mean whatever is cognizable by the senses, or would be so if their susceptibility were sufficiently inci'eased. Molecules and atoms are not separately perceptible ; but it is supposed they would be so if sight or touch were sufficiently acute. The lumi- niferous ether is not cognizable except in the form of vibrations of extreme intensity. But the material conception of it neces- sarily implies that if susceptibility of touch were indefinitely in- creased, ether might be (in a so-called vacuum, for instance) at least as palpable as air is now. By spirit, again, in ordinary speech, we mean the mode of existence which is directly perceived in consciousness, apart from any intervention of the senses. The difference between the words sjDirit, mind, and soul, according to general usage, is aj)- parently this, — the first suggests merely the notion of immaterial existence, while the second calls up more distinctly certain II. THE PIITLOSOrnY OF IGNORANCE. G7 Of these positions, the first alone necessarily involves the metaphysical idea of creation, that is the production < >f a positive something out of absolute nothingness ; and this, which is its chief i-econmiendation to those who think the life of Christianity to be essentially Lound up with a pseudo-ontology, forms its hopeless condemnation in the eyes of most others. No one would now pretend to believe in the eternal existence of two fundamentally different and mutually ex- clusive substances. If therefore matter and spirit are erpially substantial, and ultimately different in essence, one of them, and necessarily that one which is supposed to be in itself inert, must have been created out of nothing. But not only is such a conception, a,s has often been shown, incapable of realization in thought ; it is, so far as it can be represented at all, inconsistent with devoutest Christian feeling concern- ]xj\ver.s of that existence, — as perception, judgment, ttc. ; and the third presents immaterial existence as the essential germ of individual cliai*acter, and is therefore peculiarly connected with religious {us.sociatious. Force is a sort of amphibious word hoveriug between spirit and matter ; but Jis its meaning to us is detenuined bv the view which we atlopt concerning the relations of these two, no dis- S. II. ing the relation of the creature to the Creator. The time is sui'ely now gone by for insisting that rightful Christian sentiment on such a subject must needs be conformed to the records of an ancient Hebrew generation. The happy spiritual influences which we trace up to the religious life of that divinely-gifted people are indeed of priceless value. But the questions which perplex modern faith would have been to them more impossible of apprehension than their unpro- nounceable shades of guttural aspiration are to us. On the other hand, in the history of the Church, those most sacred records which perpetuate, not theological wi'angies, but phases of divine life, show that apostles, saints, and poets, have joined in ascribing to God alone true being and essential substance. From St. Paul who proclaimed to the Athenians that in God " we live and move and have our being," to Wesley who tauo'ht his conoTes^ations to sino' — " 111 Thee we move ; all things of Thee Are full Thou source and life of all, the language of devotion has always been more or less inspired by a mystic sense that the creature exists from moment to moment only by the continual exertion of divine power. But such a feeling is entirely incongi^uous with the attribution of any essen- tially separate being to the creature. Yet what we mean by substance, so far as we mean anything at all, is that which has its being in itself, so as to need no further II. THE PHlLOSOPIiy OF IGNORANCE. 69 explanation. Now, whatever may have been the case with meta})hysical theology, the language of the most fervent piety has always, by a true inspiration, denied thisto everything l)ut God. And therefore the existence of more than one substance, in any true sense of the word, is opposed not only to sound philosophy, but to devout feeling. This conclusion can only Ije evaded by the self- contradictory supposition of two different orders of substance, the one being eternal and self-s.uT>sistent, the other de})endent, and conditioned on the existence of the former. But of course this is only a disguised denial of any real substance, except that which is eternal. For that which subsists in something else is phenomenal, not sul)stantial at all. On the creation theory, was matter at its first appearance an aildition to the sum of being or was it not? If it was, then thonL>]i by the hy[)othesis it was called into existence, and can be ])ut out of existence by an almighty fiat, yet between tin- two periods of creation and annihilation it stands l.y itself, an«l has a beiuiT which is not in Crod, but is beyond and pea!'anc(; was not an addition to the sum of 70 £'.S'>S'^J^>S'. II. being, then it was only a different mode of that which existed before ; and though new phenomena were manifested, no new substance was created. My object now is not to suggest what our true position with regard to those unanswerable questions should be; but only to show that the ordinary notion of creation, instead of being essential to Christianity, is really inconsistent with its spirit ; and that religion has no interest in maintaining, what science and philosophy unite in condemning as irrational and absurd. But whatever view be taken of the interests of religion, no one, who with any discernment watches the signs of the times, can possibly suppose that the dooma of creation out of no thin o- will lono- survive the establishment of scientific doctrines like those of " continuity," or the correlation and conservation of forces. Ever since the days of Anaxagoras and Empedocles, the principle that out of nothing nothing can be made has been felt by most earnest thinkers to be a self-evident truth, which no hj^pothesis of miracle can over-ride. But now scientific teaching is bringing it home to every ordinary reader ; and the time is not far distant when all will acknowledge that to say of the Eternal, to whom there is no before or after, that He made the earth out of nothing is as much a contradiction in terms, nay, is precisely the same contradiction, as though we should say of any- thinc'- that it is and is not, in the same moment of time. II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNORANCE. 71 Yet the impossiVjility of maintaining this theory, if indeed that can be called a theory wliicli is a mere expedient of thought, should not be any grief to the religious sentiment. For the deepest instincts of that sentiment point in a far different direction. The case however becomes very much more serious, if the real issue is the adoption of the second opinion mentioned above — that what we call mind is phenomenal, and only matter substantial. The form wliicli this view generally takes at the present day is the atomic theory concerning the ultimate constitution of the world ; a theory which was conceived long ago in the fruitful womb of Greek antiquity ; which was chanted forth with strange wild beauty by the portentous genius of Lucretius ; and then slumbered in compara- tive neglect for more than a thousand years, until a Manchester chemist declared it the master-key to the mystery of matter. Tlie convenience of this atomic theory as an expedient of thought has been fully admitted in the previous essay, where I have also insisted on the ignorance wliicli it veils. And they, who think that little is done if only ignorance is established, would do well to reflect on what, if it were anything more than an exptMlicnt ot" thought, the theory would really mean. It is not often that any definiU' and real issue aris(.'.s in the so-called conflict between reliirion and science. l''<>r Oeology, IMiysiology an«l Historical Criticism have threateuetl or destroyelac(' in an essay like tlie present to enlarge farthci- upon the untenable char- act(?r of this doctrine of creation. To anv one who has Mr. H. S|)encer's "First Principles" at hand, it would be needless or else useless. But if tlieie are those who fancy they can conceive tlmt (1' aii eternitv, and that then 74 ^.S',s'.4r^. II. " in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye " He called forth a new substance which was not contained in the resoiu'ces of His nature ; if there are those who think that Infinite Being could keep a corner in the uni- verse for something which is not itself; if there are those whose faith contradictorily demands that matter should have its being in itself and not in God ; they must at any rate acknowledge that the dogma of a creation out of nothing is left more and more in those un visited wastes of unlovely sediment which mark the receding tide of thought; just as impracticable mud- banks make lonely deserts in an emptied estuary. And if the atomic theory in its materialistic realism be maintained while the impossibility of creation is felt, blank Atheism is inevitable. Of course if Atheism be the final issue of legitimate thought we are bound to acquiesce. But the doctrine of Philosophical Ignorance has at least this value ; that it shows the course of thought just glanced at to be essentially illegitimate, inasmuch as it utterly trans- cends our knowledge. The fond idea that the sub- stance of the world may be tracked to its indestruc- tible elements in atomic points of matter has been shown, by the contradictions in which it lands us, to be an enthusiastic delusion of minds intoxicated by the rapidity with which vista beyond vista is opened through the phenomenal world by the talisman of science. But the arguments of which a brief summary has been given show, with a force amounting to de- II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGXORAyCE. 75 iiionstration, that at the end of the farthest perspective which microscope or telescope aided hj imagination can give, we are still in the dreamland of phenomena, and that the elements of our ultimate analvsis are, like our first impressions, " such stuff as dreams are made of" This conclusion does not in the least invalidate the reality of the external world. As I shall endeavour to show in a succeeding essay, we believe in that be- cause we cannot help it ; because a predisposition t* > distinguish under the influence of various impressions between self and not-self is a constituent element of our nature. And obedience to that predisposition is strictly an effort of faith, of loyalty to the harmony of thinf^s as we find them ; l)ut it has no o-rounds what- ever in logical proof, and, if possible, even less in any discovery of the actual substance composing the external world. The case then stands tlius. There seems to be con- siderable reason for l)elieving that the whole pheno- menal universe may be ultimately (not explained but) expressed in terms of molecular mechanics. So much light may be translated into so many \ibi-atiniis of ether; so much ht-at into a crrtain amount of agitation amongst the molecuh'S of the heated mass ; so much eht'mical action signifies thr transition of atomic com- binations fi-oni one state of apparent (M|uilil»riuni t«> another; and even so much thought nu-ans a possibly a.scertainabl<' amount of disintegration in the tissues of tile bi-jiin. This miinitf inechanical action is of two 76 ESS A VS. 11. kinds ; molecular disturbance as in heat, and atomic re-arrangement as in cliemical action. If then by some surprising refinement of scientific appliances we were enabled to watch the ultimate atoms in their gyrations ; and some enthusiastic physicists have believed this possible ; it is supposed by many that we should have pierced to the secret of the world. But to say nothing of the alternatives of continuous or discontinuous sub- stance, either of which has been shown to be impossi- ble ; to say nothing of the dissociation of matter and force which the atomic theory pure and simple first denies and then is compelled to assert ; it is clear that this dance of atoms, which we are asked imaginatively to observe, is as purely phenomenal as those grosser forms of which it is the last analysis. It is only to sie:ht that it could even conceivablv be manifested. But sight being the compound result of a conjunction between subject and object, we should have no right whatever to take that conscious impression which arises out of a relation between the two, and to assert that this represents the object pure and simple. What that o]:)ject is essentially in itself, when dissociated from the reaction of the subject upon it, would be just as unanswerable a question if we could look at a molecule, as it is when we look at a mountain. All om' knowledge of the former, as of the latter, must consist in the mental impressions which it might make upon us. And if we tried to identify the cause of these impressions with a material basis or residuum II. THE PIllLOSOPIlY OF IGXORAXCE. / / unconditionally cliaraeteiized by impenetrability, we should be immediately involved in contradictions which would prove the whole course of our reasoning to have been a mere argument ad ahsurdum In the i)hysical universe the indefinitely gTeat and the indefinitely little alike have a background of unexplored and un- searchable infinity. And the whirl of atoms, could it be made discernible, would be like the march of the stars, a vision of glittering points which, Ijy their ineffectual light, only awaken the dim consciousness of an unutterable abyss. Thus we disi)Ose of the second hypothesis mentioned above concerning the relations of mind and matter. It is impossible to maintain that mind is a mere phenomenon of matter, Ijecause all we know al)Out the second is given us in forms of the first. For our world is made up of conscious impressions, some of which seem to arise s])ontaneously within us, we know not how ; while (jthers we are compelled to regard as occasi(jned (lirectly by something outside ourselves. Then classing togethci- all the latter imjjressions we call tlieiii the' material world. But wlien we ask what that something is, which makes these imj>ressions upon us, we are compelled to ackncjwledge that we do not know, and have no means of ascertaining, any- thing at all al»out it, except the fact that oiir conscious- ness is atiectey an attentive examination; tliat is, the impressions olitained i»y the latter are more distinct 7cS ESSAYS. II. and congruous than those obtained by the former. Aided by a telescope or microscope, we get more numerous and detailed impressions. However far this process were carried out, even to the molecules or atoms themselves, still our gain would consist solely in more particular mental impressions. And any definite hypothesis which we may form as to the substantial outward cause of this mental experience lands us at once in absurdity. To say, then, that mind is a phenomenon of matter amounts to much the same as saying that mind is a phenomenon of x, which no one need be concerned to deny. Who shall say that x is dead and not living 'i Philosophical ignorance at least makes determined Atheism impossible. It might be argued indeed that all the real meaning of Materialism remains ; because this does not signify that we know what matter is, but only that the phenomena which we call mind are uniformly associated with phenomena which we call matter, and so associated that the latter always precede the former. This, however, is an argument with which we may deal better presently, when we consider the fourth and final hypothesis that may be held as to the relations of mind and matter. Mean- while it has a certain bearing as against the third possible position, according to which it might be maintained that matter is a phenomenon of mind. By this is not meant here the pedantic and paradoxical notion that there is no real existence outside of self; II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGXORAXCE. 79 but simply the idea that true substance is of the nature of mind, and manifests itself })henomenally in matter. It is obvious however that such a state- ment has no definite meaning. It does not C(mvey nearly so clear an impression as d(jes the atomic theory. We can certainly form a conception of little incompressible points of matter endowed with forces of attraction and repulsion. But when we try to think of mind as the substance underlyino- all ])henomena we are at a loss. We recur instinctively to our own ex})erience, and try to think of our (nvn minds as the substance })henomenally manifested by our bodies. The attempt however is in vain. For both body and mind ])resent themselves to us as a series of impressions ; and though we distinguish these impressions as cori)oreal and mental, it is im})ossible to regard the one set as more or less ])henomenal than the other. What we mean Ijy our hands and feet is a certiiin set of visual and muscular feelings which ex})erience associates together. And if we try to realize what we mean by our mind, we call up a series of vague meminies strung toguthur by a scnso of identity in the living susce})til)ility to which they hav(; appealed. ]>ut these memories and that seii.se of identity an* manifestly (juite Jis phenomenal as the other impressions which \\e call hands and fuel. There is only this to be said, jteihaps; that this scn.«?o of identity ftssures us in a dim snii ..f way <'f some reality immediately buneatli it, whieh reality amnot 80 ESSAYS. II. be presented in consciousness, precisely because it is not phenomenal, but hyj^o-plienomenal, and suggestive of substance. No mystery of the external world can be compared for intensity of interest to that which every act of reflection presents to us within. The command " know thyself" is, notwithstanding the grim laughter of a great philosophical humourist, most truly the voice of heaven. For that which forms the fascination of this inward pondering is no mere arrogant assumption that our personal life is the central and supreme existence ; l)ut rather the feeling that the deepening darkness, with which the eye of reflection struggles, is the portal guarding the infinite reality of being. And never are we so humbled, never so utterly overwhelmed with adoring wonder, as when we recognise the vast- ness of the abyss beneath, into which our trembling spark of consciousness scintillates with rays at once so eager and so brief When astronomy and geology unfold to us the enormous tracts of space and time, if they touch us with awe, they also excite an exhilar- ating pride in the intellectual force which has made so small a creatui'e as man master of so gigantic a vision. In some dark moods, indeed, looking to the stars we may think them " Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cokl fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man," But such moods are for the most part slwrt-lived. II. THE PHILOSOPHY dF IGSO RANGE. 81 And while they last it is reflectiou, not observation, which gives them all their power. The question, What am I ? is pressed home by the " pitiless, passionless " persistency with which the stars shine on, for ever compelling consciousness and thought. Meantime the eye is not in reality turned upward, but downward, and beholds the heavens reflected on_ a deeper abyss within. So the midnight sky seen pictured in a deep lonely mountain tarn, has something weird about it, which is never felt in the broad expanse above. In oui- more familiar contemplations of nature, the be- wilderinii- multitude of li vino- forms, and the enthrallincc per[)lexity of the problems they suggest, may at times strike us with a sense ut yet when our cont»'mplation is out- 82 ESSAYS. II. ward only, untouched by the shadows of the mystery within, we are too prone to swell with pride in the accumulated mental wealth which is ours. As some luxurious heir of struggling forefathers might survey from a turret of his own erection the dominions they had won, and wrapping his soft garments about him congratulate himself on the happy chance which had dropped him on peaceful times ; so we " the heirs of all the ages " learn but little reverence or loyalty to eternal Power through gloating over " the march of civilization." " Knowledge puffeth up," says St. Pa.ul; and the knowledge he meant was surely this hard objective knowledge which does not feel how near our consciousness is to the infinite unknown. " If any man thinheth he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he oi'ght to knoiv it!' It is when a man tries to know himself that he is brought most directly face to face with the mystery of life. And as Socrates supposed the oracle to have declared him to be the wisest man in Greece, only because he alone knew his own ignorance; so perhaps we may believe this voice, " know thyself" to be an oracle of heaven, because by the effort of obedience we are soonest convinced, noo onlv that we ourselves are " unknowable individuals," but tliat much else is un- knowable besides. And never is humility, sacred lo^^alty, or even true knowledge possible, until we feel how our relationship to the unknown pervades every act of consciousness and observation. Let any man II. THE nilLOSOPHY OF IGNORANCE. 83 ask himself what he means by that little monosyllable " I," the most intense, and most undefinable of words. And while the one side which is defined l>v the ap],)arently sharp l)Oundary of the senses may seem at first sight clearly marked enough, the merest t}TO in thinking must feel that the other and inner side, so to speak, has no Ijoundary; but is shaded gradually off into depths which consciousness cannot sound. Again, the limit that seems so clear gives a negative definition only. " I am not wliat I see, And other tlian the things I touch." In other words, I am all that is left after subtracting the not-me, or what strikes me as such, from the sum- total of perceived existence. But no definition can be satisfactory \N'hich is not positive as well as negative. For indeed it is not so much what I am not, as what I am, that I want to understand. Now, just in ])ro- j)ortion to the intensity of the etibi-t with which I try to realize myself ])Ositively, I find my field of inward vision receding from the shining barriers of the senses, and becoming more and more lost in the gathering dark- ness ]>eyond which nothing but infinity can lie. Tliere is no hard and fast line here. I am dimly aware of some depth below consciousness, out <.>f wliicli consciousness emerges, like shapes that rise through a clear deep sea, now dreani-likc in thiij- shadowy outline, now more tfingibly distinct, then suddenly Hashing into the upper light. But wlimce they spring I eannot tell. 84 ^'S'>V.4 r>S'. II. M}?' deepest self is beyond luy sounding-line. Or we may put the same exj^erience in another way. I may say my positive notion of my personal self is this, that I am all that I realize directly without the intervention of eyes or ears, or other avenues of external perception. Of course, apart from the .past awakening and educa- tion of consciousness b}' perception this would be absolutely nil. There would be nothing to realize. But this consideration does not in the least interfere with the distinction between that which I now realize without any direct intervention of the senses, and the new impressions which I continue to receive through them. The question then occurs, ivliat do I thus realize I And I find the answer to be a more or less confused medley of reproduced impressions, which have come in formerly through the doors of sense, and seemed to have passed into oblivion ; but which ever and anon return, sometimes through obvious association of ideas, sometimes with apparently spontaneous suddenness. Within the curtain of the eyelids, in utter silence, the ghosts of forgotten sights and sounds and feelings flit, perhaps in an order marshalled by imaginative purpose, perhaps in a chaos growing more and more fantastic as the will subsides in sleep. Here then is the domain of my personal life. This is my first positive conception of myself. But on reflection, this is not enough. For I am surely more than a bundle of old memories. In fact, I must be ; for the memories change, while I recognise II. THE PHTLOSOPJIY OF lOXOBAXCE. 85 — — — . — -« in self a continuous identity. No doubt the flickering forms and colours, the fugitive snatches of thought, are inseparable from that consciousness which feels its own identity beneath them. But inseparable though they be in fact, they are yet as really distinct therefrom as are the flitting figures of the camera obscura from the canvas which sup|)orts them. True, I cannot prac- tically abstract those reproduced impressions, and realize my mind as a blank. But still, when I try to form a positive conception of that self in which personal identity consists, I am obliged to admit that to this true self those fleeting impressions are but chanii:eful accidents, no more essential to it tlian wind- breathed ripples to the sea. I am compelled then, in theory at least — theory which means a beholding of the truth, — to abstract the changeful contents of the mind Ijefore I can get that positive conception of which I am in search. T do not want the pictures ; I want the material on which they ai'e traced. I do not want my thoughts ; I want myself Eyes and eai-s, and all the senses being closed, what is that w hicli sustains and frames the accidents of iniaL,nnation and memory? We are now, 1 liojn*, in a position to estimate the significanc(^ of the hint given above* as to the oflice ol" reflection on self in the genesis of the idea of substance. For. asking oursolv(»s wliat is meant by self, we get oui* answer in tlie tbrm of a vague series of memories oi- impn-ssions, strung * Sec- i)|.. 71), 80. 86 ^>SSA VS. ir. together by a sense of identity in the living suscepti- bility to which they have appealed. That those memories or impressions are phenomenal only is perfectly clear. Then, abstracting these, we have left only a background of continuous susceptibility, con- cerning which nothing articulate can be said, except that it generally maintains its own -identity under every variety of impression. But farther, the consciousness of identity, although it necessarily involves and suggests a substantial and constant background, is itself pheno- menal also. Nay, like all other impressions, it may be lost through disorders of the mind. I do not believe that it disappears in sleep.* But it would appear that cases do undoubtedly occur in which the continuous sense of personal identity is lost. Nay, people have even been known to live in alternate periods two separate lives. And in such cases the memory belonging to each life has passed over the period occupied by the other, as thouoh the latter had been an utter blank. The patient, after a crisis, would not recognize any identity with the self of yesterday; but the self of a month ago, which yesterday seemed to have been utterlv effaced and annihilated, would now rise ao-ain and assert an unbroken continuitv with the self of to- day. The sense of identity is therefore, it must be confessed, like all other feelings, phenomenal only. But I urge that it necessarily suggests to us some- * There is no really dreamless sleep, and we always keep our identity in dreams. II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGyOIlAXCE. 87 thing beneath consciousness that is not phenomenal only, but real and substantial. True, when in fixed and determined reflection we try to grasp that hypo- phenomenal reality, we lose ourselves in darkness; but it is a darkness that opens out into infinity. For no distinct boundary can be discerned to limit our personal life on the inward side; and, however deeply we may reflect on that constancy in variation which makes our identity, we are always dimly aware of a lower depth, which, while it is continuous with our consciousness, is utterly beyond sounding or measure- ment. Thus we get an idea — vague, it may be, but unsi)eakably impressive and real to those who feel the ultimate oneness of all existence — of a measureless ocean of living energy, which rolls its tide, as it were, into the little creek that is bounded by our senses, there to take the form of finite personal life. This flowing tide ripples on the .shore of the objective world, and toys with pebbles, and drinks the scent of flowers; but, behind, is the bi-oadenino; flood whicli widens out ])eyond vision or sounding-line into the inconceivable grandeur of God. No doubt there are those who, witli a set of anato- mical diagrams, W(juld speedily cut short any such speculations on the mystery of mind. In their view thu only substance which can underlie the sen.se of pei*sonaI iy energies which stream momcn- tiirily IVom unfathomable .sources, must surely have the Ijauiitinir sense of some tianscondcnt Whole, of whi<-h lie is :in inliniU'simal part. Thus the oracles tliat imiiiiiur tVoni i\\r abyss within pix'pare us t<» int<'ipirt the dream^ «•!' p«>i'tiy and the liints 92 ^.S'*s'.ir>s'. II. of science concernino- the ultimate oneness of all thino's. It is time now to turn to the only remaining alternative mentioned above concerning the relation- ship of spirit and matter. For since it is no longer possible to regard them as distinct and independent substances, and since, as we have seen, they are insuperable difficulties in the way of our thinking either to be the phenomenon of the other, we are forced by the necessities of thought to betake our- selves to the only hjq^othesis left, and to look upon both mind and matter in all their forms as phenomenal manifestations of one substance equally underlying both. It is likely enough, indeed, that by some this necessity of thought would be denied. Why use the word substance, — they would ask— Avhen what you mean is the neo'ation of thouo*ht ? We recooiiize — O O O they would urge, — equally with any adherent of your dreamy philosophy, the entirely phenomenal nature of our sensations and reflections. We know that every sensation, when analyzed, resolves itself into something different from what it seems; and chano-es Proteus-like its forms as it flies before the searching microscope or scalpel. We are glad to hear you acknowledge the same to be the case with every form of consciousness as well. But now, why should we trouble ourselves about anything more, when you confess in effect that the realms of knowledo^e can be extended no farther ? II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGXORAXCE. 93 We agree that our knowledge is phenomenal only ; hut we altogether deny the necessity for making any assumptions with regard to unknowable substance. Such is in reality the positivist attitude. It is a mis- take to regard positivism as necessarily materialistic in the ordinary sense of the word. For what is generally meant by materialism involves a theory about matter as the ultimate basis and explanation of everything. But to positivism, properly understood, such a theory is entirely foreign, and indeed hostile ; for its strength lies in its acceptance of all phenomena distinctly realized, without making any attempt to give an ultimate account of them. Impressions, and the classification of impressions it knows; but it abjures all desire to know anything more. Substance, cause (in the ordinary sense), the absolute, the infinite, God, are therefore to the positivist perhaps venerable idola, interesting and pathetic monuments of liuman illusion, but nothing more. Now it always seems to me that this attitude of minat it. In the tii*st cjtse, 1 may be very certain that the fact exists; l»ut because I do not know its nature or relations, that very cerbiiuty e.xcites in me the sense rather of ignorance 94 ESSAYS. II. than of knowledo-e. In the other case, when I have been enlightened to any extent as to the nature and relations of the fact, my attention is so concentrated upon the change from obscurity to distinctness, that I am conscious rather of knowledo-e than of ioiiorance. Thus, when on a dark night, I am suddenly aware of an object some few yards off, concerning which I can form no opinion whether it is a bush, or a group of men, or a heap of stones, the sense of ignorance awakened bv it is much more strikino- than the knowledge which I realize. If however a flash of lightning shows me that it is a heap of stones in the middle of the road, I seem to mvself now to know all about it. In reality, I know very little more than I did. I am still quite ignorant of the nature of the stones, of the purpose for which they were placed in such a position, and of much else on which I should begin to speculate if I suffered my thoughts to dwell upon the subject for an}" length of time. But, at the moment, the chano'e fi'om obscuritv to distinctness is so marked, that my knowledge is more apparent than my ignor- ance. It is obvious then that io-norance does not always mean that we know absolutely nothing. It may mean that we know something in such a manner as to excite a sense of ig-norance rather than of knowledge. And this is true, not only in cases of obscure presentation to the senses, such as in the instance supposed above, but also in cases where the existence of an object is necessarily implied in legiti- 11. THE PHILOSOrilY OF IG^rjliASCE. 95 mate processes of thought; or, in other words, where its non-existence is unthinkable. Tliere is an ignorance which consists in the total absence of any conscious relationship between the mind and the ol )ject concerned ; as if we should say of a baby that he is ignorant of the Emperor of China. Here there is absolutely no relation in existence such as that of subject and object. But there are also cases in which iiiuorance means rather the indefinable darkness that han^-s over the bounds of thoui>ht, a darkness which does not diminish the cei-tainty, but only obscures the nature, of some vaguely presented reality. Such ignorance has in it a positive element. It is not the mere ne<:(ation of thought. It does not (M)nsist in any uncertainty whether in that impene- trable darkness somethinf^ or nothing^ exists. It consists rather in the impossibility of definite thought about something, the non-existence of which is yet even more unthinkable.* For instance, it was im- po.ssible for the ancients to help thinking that there must ]je another side, or, at all events, an end somehow, to the Atlantic Ocean. Thcv rnii^ht indL'cd refuse to consider the subject at all. ]>ut if they did think about it, tlieir very ignorance contjiined w positive element, the as.sertion of the existence of sometliini;, the nature uf which they did not know. That there must be sS'.4 YS. II. water was a positive necessity of thought. That other side might be only the sharp edge of the world over- lookino- the infinite void ; it mio-ht be the blessed Atlantis ; it mioht be an iron barrier frownino- down the presumption of adventurous mortals. But this very ignorance of what it was set at work a law of the mind which concentrates attention on unsatisfied thirst for knowledge ; and contained an assurance of the certain reality of something, the nature of which was unknown. On what does the world rest ? asked the Hindoo pupil. On a white elephant ; answered the teacher. And on what does the elephant stand ? pursued the scholar. On the back of a great tortoise ; replied the philosopher. But what does the tortoise stand on ? persisted the inquirer. Here, however, the line was to be drawn betvv^een ingenuous receptivity and impious presumption. Yet the very cessation of thought along such a line necessarily implied the reality of some final support for the world. The pupil did not know what that was ; but his very sense of ignorance carried with it an assurance that the thing he did not know really existed. And he was right. He was indeed utterly wrong as to the particular form in which the universe satisfied the necessities of thought. But that something existed, which justified his irresistible certainty ; or, in other words, that the stability of the world was maintained by something much more fundamental than a great tortoise, was per- fectly true ; though hoiv it was true he could not know. ir. THE nilLOSOPIIY OF IGyCjRASCE. 97 Similarly our ignorance of wliat underlies phenomena is only another name for the necessity of thought which obliges us to believe that sonudlthifj underlies them. Thus the earliest races, of whose emotions in contemplation of the heavens we have any trace, rejoicing in the bright blue canopy above them, imputed to it by a sublime instinct an expansive life, and called it Dyaus, the Shining One. But the Hebrews, the very intensity of whose religious life narrowed the area of their world, exr)lained the reason of the appearance to be a sap])hire vault, which sustained the burden of an unknown ocean above. Now when such explanations were felt to \)Q irrelevant or contrary to fiict, it was impossible for the human mind to rest satisfied with the appearance itself as its own ex}»lanation. There must be some reason under- lying it. And here again the ignorance associated with wondt'i- was also an assertion of the adequAcy of the cause for wonder, if only known. So, when we are told that underlying the a})pearancL' are innuinerable infinitcsimMl particles suspeiuh^tl in the air, which are a<'it{ited bv the smallest and most rajiid vibrations in tlie ether, so that tliey ])ropagate as from fresh centres the lilue rays of light, we feel tiist a .^onso of intense satisfaction, anii tlien a ficsh acc(»ss of loii<»"in'f desire f'»r farther knowK'articles tossetl ]»y impinL,nng waves of ether may he fairly reirarded as an iiitiTestiui; stji«'e in the reduction of this ])art of the universal problem; but t«» think of 98 i:SSA vs. n. it as the final stage is simply impossible. Whence is all this endless eager movement ? How is it generated and how for ever sustained ? The sun may seem an exhaustless reservoir of force ; but it is not infinite ; and how are its energies renewed ? I may be told that its energies are slowly exhausted; and that the Titan is not now what he was in the days of his youth. Yet the universe is never exhausted. The fires that pale in one centre of power burst forth afresh in another. " The Everlasting fainteth not neither is wear}^" And even if the stars too wither like leaves of the forest, yet Eternity never loses one pulse of enerofv, but for ever sustains undiminished the wealth of power which is now beating in waves of light on the firmament above. It is impossible, therefore, to arrest thought at the limit which the science of the day prescribes. Every profounder interpretation of ap- pearances awakens thought of yet another depth below ; and unless I am prepared to treat apparent existence as merely illusive and dissolving views of an " unsubstantial pageant " I am compelled to think of some ultimate reality instinct with immortal power, of which all that I see and know are so many frag- mentary gleams. To tell me then that I do not and cannot know what substance is, that I never can know anything but phenomena, neither convinces me of illusion, nor drives the thought of ultimate eternal reality from my mind. My ignorance is pre- cisely of that kind which asserts its own object. The If. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNORANCE. 99 more I reflect upon my impotence to grasp substance or conceive its connection with phenomena, the more assured I feel that every passing phase of existence testifies to some abiding reality. " Since the only possible measure of relative validity among our beliefs," says one of the gi'eatest among modern philosophers,* " is the degree of their persis- tence in ojjposition to the efforts made to change them, it follows that this," — i.e. the consciousness of absolute being — " which persists at all times under all circumstances, and cannot cease until consciousness ceases, has the highest validity of any." Similarly that, to which every process of thought leads up, and before which no resting place is found, must be a reality. We are sure of the being of ultimate sub- stance ; thuUL^h we do not know about it. It must be; or else all processes of thoughts are utterly untrust- worthy. But when we try to convert this notion of ultimate being into positive knowledge, that is, the knowledge of ascertained relations, l)y rangnig it witli familiar impressions which it resembles ; we find that it is foreign to thorn all, or at least only shows an atlinity for the dim sense of something below tht* surface of consciousness, and in which our personal life is ruoUMl, Yet that dim sen.se is itself phenomenal only. And so the notion of substiince, while its reality is necessarily implicil in our ii^aiorancc. remains out.sidt» the domain of knowlee without practical import. This point cannot be cleared up apart from the; doftrine of faith, to bo submitted in a succeeding essay, which treats of the inherent pre- disposition which impels human aspiration after the eternal and complete. Meantime, while heartily 10-i ESSAYS. ir. acknowledging that far more is needed to give to religion the glow of devotion, we insist only that in the darkness which broods about the mysterious bases of our own personal life, we attain at least such an indefinite nearness to the substance of all being, as forbids our thinking the latter to be a mere aggre- gation of physical forces. The certainty that we ourselves and all we see and know are "parts and proportions of one wondrous whole " not only gives all interest to knowledge and all sublimity to contem- plation, but carries with it the assurance that the Power in which all things are one, is not to be identi- fied with any one of its manifestations; and in par- ticular neither with mechanical force nor individual mind. Here we may conveniently recur to an objection which we supposed to be made as to the value of our conclusion that mind cannot be regarded as a pheno- menon of matter. This objection was to the effect that "all the real meaning of materialism remains; because this does not signify that we know what matter is, but only that the phenomena which we call mind are uniformly associated with the phenomena which we call matter^ and so associated that the latter always precede the former."* Here, of course, so far as the * P. 78. This is not what is usually meant by materialism. In- deed, I do not see what object a man can have in calling himself a materialist, unless it be to avow his belief that all phenomena, mental or physical, are ultimately and adequately explained by II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF lOyORAXCE. IQo observed connection of matter and spirit is concerned, is a mere statement of facts which every one is com- pelled to acknowledge. But the statement is made in such a way as to suggest a conclusion the grounds of which do not lie within it. For it is tolerably clear that the force of the objection lies in the suppressed assumption, that we know more about the ultimate meaning of pliysical phenomena than we do in regard to those we call mental. Otherwise there would be no point in the argument at all. Thus it amounts in effect to this — that mind is no doubt a great mystery, but we are sure it is never manifested except as the result of the preceding physical phenomena, about which we know at least this much — that there is nothing underlying them except molecular mechanics. Strike out the last assum})tion, and then what is the objection worth ? Permit us to doubt or deny the finality of molecular mechanics ; which a true philo- sophy of human ignorance not only allows but compels us to do; and there remains to us just as before, the possibility that in molecular mechanics we have only the phenomenal mode in wliich eternally living substance emerfjes into the world of sense, as or<'anic or personal life. It is vain to insist that the beginning uf liuniaii life, CMpially with the germinati(»n of a luoleciilar inecliHiiics. But if he ailmits lliat lie does not know what njoleciilcs are, nor wliat force i.s, lie nii;,'lit i\» well <'all him- self a Hiiiritualirtt at ouce : i.e. one name is as a|>]»licable or inaj»|»licaljle as the other. 106 ESSAYS. II. cabbage, present no sign of anything but molecular changes. No doubt ; yet, as we have seen, molecular mechanics regarded as an ultimate explanation soon land us in sheer absurdity ; and we are compelled to regard the last results obtained in this direction, either by experiment or by scientific imagination, as the phenomena of a deeper reality. Suppose that reality to be symbolized by life rather than by death ; and materialism becomes impossible in any form but one which might with equal propriety be called S[)iritualism. In the preceding essay on the " Mystery of Matter," this association of true substance with life rather than with dead atoms or mechanical force was treated only as the one postulate of rational religion, the one branch from the tree of knowledge by which, if there were only a true prophet to use it with confident faith, the bitter watei-s of controversy might per- chance be healed. But we are now brouoht fece to fiice with the inevitable objection that such an as- sumption has nothing to do with knowledge in any practical sense of the word; that, in foct, at best it is only a sentimental dream. Granted that we are obliored to think of some ultimate reality as closins: the series of phenomenal metamorphoses which baffle analysis; yet, it may be urged, this only means that through its very imperfections thought comes to a dead halt, and this negation of thought we dignify with the name of substance : now to associate a mere II. THE PHriOSOPJIY OF IGSOllA SCE. 1()7 negation with any such positive notion as that of life is about as reasonable as to connect the square root of minus one with human truth and love. But, we reply, this sucrscestion that substance means only the nejxation of thought will not bear a moment's examination. We find, for instance, that the appearance which pre- sents one form to the naked eye yields another to a microscope with a power of a hundred diameters; a third under a five-fold power; and a fourth under the most perfect instrument which we can use. Always fresh forms come into view; that is, new" constituent parts are revealed which were unseen before. Are we then to believe that, if we could f^o on raisin^j the power indefinitely, we should always obtain new re- sults ? This would be equivalent to an assertion of the infinite divisibility of matter. Now, apart from the incongruities involved in such an asseition, it would necessarily confound molecular mechanics; be- cause there would be no ultimate centres for the elementary forces. Here, then, at once is the notion of somethin'^ that does ijositivclv exi.st; and vet about the nnxle of its existence, or how it is ultimately difierentiatcd IVdiii sj)a('e fif it is so at all), it is impossilile for us to form any idea. It is not a mere negation of thouglit. It is the one positive element tliat remains the same t])rough all the supposed iii- tinite changes of microscopic vision. ( )r, it" we are to suppose; that in sucli a pi'ocess a stage must be reached at whicli tlie pl<»y of apparent atoms or monads K\i 108 ^-S'.S'.i r>S'. II.. force would come into view, we should still have, as we have seen elsewhere, only an extremely recondite phenomenon, which certainly would not explain itself; and which would, therefore, be felt positively to imply some underlying m3^stery of being. Now, the two alternatives just put are not merely ideal. If the material universe has any existence at all, — and that is here throughout assumed, — tliese are alternatives of fact, not of thought. The notion, then, of an un- known substance is not a mere negation of thought. It is rather the one positive element which forms the foundation of all our clearest and most distinct per- ceptions, while it survives the abstraction of every definition. The utmost that can, with plausible force, be urged is that, beyond the fact of its existence, we know nothino' whatever. And yet we may venture to offer some reasons why it should seem more rational to think of that ultimate reality of being as Infinite and Eternal Life, than to leave a void in the soul which must instantly be occupied with the vapid and inane idea of a universal mechanical action. Indeed, no one who feels himself driven to choose between the two alternatives will hesitate for a moment. For it seems impossible to believe that any one ever faced fairly the idea of a Universe dead and cold at the heart, witliout feeling that sickness of soul which seizes upon us in the apprehension of an abysmal falsehood. Lucretius might have atoms and death on his lips, but the II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNORANCE. 109 pathetic eagerness of his devotion, and the grand enthusiasm, the almost prophetic awe, which tremble through every line in his largest contemplations of the universe, show plainly enough that the power of nature's eternal life possessed his heart. He was no Atheist in spirit, though the ghastly phantom of oj^pressive superstition excited him to a proud defiance; which, for want of a better, assumed outwardly that guise. If it be not inconsistent with religious aspir- ation to see the majesty of nature and of God as one — if scorn of spiritual cowardice is often fiercest in the truly spiritual mind — if the longing to scatter light shows the burning spark of divinity within — it is not impossible that Lucretius had the most profoundly relif^ious natvire that ever existed amongst the Latin race till Augustine arose. But there are many like him, who do not fairlv face that notion of a dead Universe which their words would describe If asked, they would, perhaps, say that they know nothing of any life or death beyonute life to the eternal mystery of being, \ve always add to that spontaneity a sense of its own existence. That is, life is never so much life to us as when it most intensely realizes that it is spontaneous or free, 'i'liis does not im{)ly ar))itrariness, or caprice, or self-will ; ratlicr tlie reverse. I'or iKVtr do we feel our energy so sjKJutaneous, and never do we so keenly nalizo life, as when we are possessed l»y some noble passion, wliicli bears us, as we say, beyond ourselves; wliich niaki's us, in tact, the centre of a power that is far grander than self-will. 112 £SSAYS. II, and that radiates from us with as little effort as heat from bnrnino; flame. AYhen Ave love with self-foro-etful devotion, or hate w^ith rio-hteous indio-nation, Ave have no feeling of labour, and just as little suspicion of compulsion : life flows like an impetuous river, with no thouo'ht of the heights from which it falls, nor of the broad levels that it seeks. Our moral ideas also modify the sense in which we speak of life. For selfishness seems self-consumed by introverted energies, like a decaying corpse ; and so we liken it to death. While generosity and loyalty seem to live the more intensely through their self-expenditure, just as exercise imparts a glow of health. This explanation itself ma}' suggest some reasons why we should associate the final mystery of Being wath life rather than with death. For the lowest deoTee of meanino- which we attach to the word, that of spontaneity, must necessarily be attributed to the source and substance of all things. So far as pheno- menal existence is concerned, we may, at least conceivably be mistaken: even the secondary originality which we associate wdth created life, the power of modifying or diverting, of storing up and emitting at pleasure derived force, may be the effect of illusion. But whatever may be the case with phenomena, the substance manifested by them must contain within itself, or rather, must be the original fountain of all force. This, of course, is not to be taken as im- plying that any force has ever been newly created. II, THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGNORANCE. 113 It is at most an apparently fresh modification of an eternal energy. But that energy, inherent in everlast- ing Being, cannot be traced to any farther source, and inevitably conveys to our minds the impression of self- oi'igination or spontaneity. In this sense therefore we are compelled to attribute life to the unknown. The unbefjinninor and unendino; vibration of ultimate atoms is usually so presented to us that the eye of imaii'ination runs from one link to another in the chain of causation until the mind is bewildered, and no hint of spontaneity is perceived. But when we remember that succession is after all only a subjective form impressed upon the outer world, and that all these ripples of causation which pass before the eye are more really consentaneous manifestations of one energy, the .sense of spontaneity is at once given: and it is inseparable from some dim sense of life. Nay, farther, as in the nature of things, we must be far more certain of the spontaneit}' of eternal energy than we can possibly be of the free impulses of created life ; and as the originality which we associate with that enerLry has infinitely more of reality about it; so the life which even in this lowest deirree of siur inevitable H 114 ES.SAYS. II. assumption of a true substance underlying phenomena. But when we join to that sense of self-subsistent being the notion of an all-embracing unity which it suggests, and the glorious cosmic order by which that unity is figured forth, it does seem disloyal to resist the impulse that carries us on to the imagination of an infinite thought, and of a self-contained harmony, which to us are wisdom, goodness, and love. But here let us pause. These words we have used are not and never can be justified by the line of arofument which we have followed. We canuot think the Universe dead. There is a sense in which we are sure it far more truly lives. But that sense is utterly inadequate to the majesty of the subject with which we deaJ. And when we strive to expand that sense, we must beware lest, like climbers of the misty Brocken, we only throw the shadow of self upon the clouds. It may be that this sense of the unknown and unknow- able was intended, if the expression be allowed, to arouse faculties which owe but little to the in- tellect, save only chastening and restraint. Some reasons have already been urged for regarding the background of our personal life as being to our consciousness the true threshold of the Infinite. And the recollection of these may, it is hoped, give more significance to the apprehension of a universal life. Owning most devoutly — the word is surely applicable — that all our thoughts, imaginations, hopes, and fears are as little substantial in themselves as sunbeam II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGXORAXCE. 115 or shadow, we yet feel that the indubitaljle phenomena of our own consciousness do most of all assure us of that which for ever is. For, notwithstanding high authority on the other side, we know more of ourselves than we can possibly know of the world about us. True, I cannot mark so well the laws which govern the sequences of ])henomena within me, as I can the laws of outward nature. But sequences after all are not much, apart from a sense of power ; and that arises only within. There is an enormous difference between our knowledo'e of self, and our knowledi^e of the not- self; a difference which separates the two by a whole heaven. Other things I know only as they affect me ; they are like the moon which presents only one face, and is utterly unknown on the other side. But my- self I know as an effect or ettiuence of something l)e- hind and beneath me, greater than all thought. The mystery of matter is never realized until we have felt the mystery of mind. For when I reflect on my own personal life, I cannot affect to regard it as self-support- ing. I feel its basis deepening down into something more than self, yet continuous with my life. But I cannot put myself inside anything else and realize by reflection the sacred shadow that shrouds its inner side. It is a necessity of tlunight that I should believe every ])henomen()n to have that inner side; but 1 realize it onlv in in\silt". For it is throu'di the end- less vistas of retieetion that the secret of i't<'rnal being liints itself to us, as the spiritual substance in wliicli 110 ^>s'>s'.i r,s'. II. our own life inheres, and with which it is continuous. This may not, and indeed does not justify us in attri- buting to the Infinite that personal mode of existence which we know in ourselves, and of which certain limitations constitute the formal essence. But it certainly forbids our identifying it with inanimate, that is, derived and successional force. It should never be forgotten that our first and fundamental notion of existence is life. The other idea of inanimate mechanical force is an inference from our observation that the energies suggested by material motion do not o[)erate after the manner of the power which we ex- ercise in voluntary effort. Yet in the last result eternal energy must be spontaneous ; and is therefore best thought of as a Universal Life. If it be asked what is the use of a notion so vao-ue as this is admitted to be,'^ the answer must be gather- ed from experience rather than from theory. Human nature is so constituted that confidence, and peace, and unwavering devotion are impossible, unless the order and the ideals, wdiich attract the contemplative eye, are felt out to their uttermost foundation or perfec- tion in somethino' unalterable or eternal. The refusal, for instance, to recognize in causation anything more than invariable antecedence, is felt to be unworkable in practice. For the notion of mere sequence is not a true representation of the impression inevitably made * That is iu itself ; apart from the warmth and fulness which spiritual experience and imagination can legitimately give. II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGSORA SCE. \ \ 7 upon our minds by the succession of phenomena which we link together as cause and effect. This invariaVjle sequence within the limits of experience is not all that we mean by the order of nature ; nay, it lacks precisely that element which invests law with gi^andeur, and inspires our loyal confidence in its abiding reign. Philosophers little to be suspected of any meta- physical leanings have therefore felt themselves compelled to add to our experience of invarialjle sequence, the recognition of the persistency of force. It is only this which leads us to regard any cause in nature as "more permanent than its existing and known effects, extending further, and about to produce other and more instances besides what it has produced already."* But when once this element is admitted, it is impossible to stop short of a self-existing and suit- consistent Power, as the guarantee of universal order. For all known forms of force are so correlated that each will, under certain conditions, occasion the mani- festation of any other. Thus the ra})id chemical union of carbon nnd oxygen occasions heat; heat begets mechanical movement ; this may be so directi'd as to excite electricity; and electricity will produce magnet- ism; while in every case just so much of the one force dis- a]>})ears as is represented by its equivalent in the new force evoke mI. Tlie correlation of these furci's will Ini ♦ 8ee MuzU-y's ]>aiii)>toii LectiiifH. He denie.s that we have .iiiy '' r:iti(»n:il f^ntiiiuls " for sucii an exiKJctation. This |M»iiit will Ix* (li.sc'ii.s.seil in tiie next EsHJiy. 118 US SAYS. II. found as certain and invariable, as are their several connections with their own phenomenal effects. Here again in such regular transmutations, we are obliged to recoo'nize the existence of a sufficient reason. "Whether we regard those forces as varying forms of one energy, or as entirety different energies the re- lations of which are embraced and controlled by a comprehensive law, in either case our idea of order and our confidence in its continuance implies some fundamental Power, whose omniprescence and perman- ence makes the Universe. It is impossible to separate the emotion of triumphant confidence, which the stedfiist order of the world excites, from this recog- nition of the substantial reality of ultimate Power. Take that recognition away and the emotion dies. The fortuitous concurrence of atoms, were such a thing conceivable, even though it should present the same patternsa thousand times in succession, couldnever beget that confidence, nor awaken that sense of grandeur, which we associate with the order of the world. Again, apart altogether from the question of personal immortality, it does seem that some dim notion of eternity is needed for the distinctive dignity of man. The clear, tangible, present time with the long perspective of the past, and the shining mist of the future, makes up to our minds one whole thought, which stretches indefinitely beyond our powers of conception, but still is felt to be a unity. There lie all purposes and acts in orderly succession, a succession II. THE PHILOSOPHY OF IGSORAXCE. 119 which at the same time gives a dreamy sense of co-existence. And it is the assurance of law and order there, in other words of eternal self-consistent power, which gives to our lives a feeling of continuity with all activity, past or to come, and so makes it worth our while to strike our little stroke with all our might before we die. Without some such element of eternity in our consciousness, there would hardly be any hold for the bond of interest which binds us to the apparent beo-innin'^'"S of human activity on the one hand, or to their remote and unimaginable issues in the future. Apart from the sense of some strong basis in which their connection is assured, memory and foresight could not raise us so far as they do above the level of the beasts. And here, more even than in contemporary phenomenal order, we realize the use and practical power of our inarticulate assurance that one life under- lies, pervades and coinjjrehends all. Stronger still, and of more solemn import, is the practical intiuence which this vague idea uf the eternal exercises on the nature of moral sanctions. For if th(» sense of intinite sub.stance and power imparts to our perceptions of jihysical ord«M' the notion of some im})eri.shable grandeur; much niuie dous the feeling that the moral law evinces sonio everlasting self-consis- tency at the heart of the univei-se give to moral commands their indefinit<', ininieasureable awe. It may very well l>u that ,sbnnhir