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From The Contemporary Review.
SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

shibboleth. But suppose it were a superstition too?

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PREACHING on New Year's Day to the Help of an easy, accessible sort in debrethren. in Fleur-de-Lys Court, Fetter ciding this question is given to the many Lane, Mr. Frederic Harrison refreshed not conversant with Kant and Schopenthem with the announcement that " Posi-hauer in a recent work of some preten"Creeds of the tivism" embodies the dominant convic- tions, Mr. H. Coke's tions of our time, and is "in the air," like This is a serious effort to comthe germs, I suppose, of typhoid fever and pare our leading thinkers with one anthe cry of the evening newspapers. "One other and with themselves, the latter no thing," he continued, "that distinguishes holiday task, but exceedingly necessary Mr. Coke has a critical, the present epoch is its revived interest in for these times. religion; another, its submission to the well-informed mind, and the courage of his teaching of science. But to regard reli- opinions. He is candid, good-humored, gion as the mainspring of life is the centre not sentimental, rarely eloquent, an Angloof Positivist doctrine, and the ascendency Saxon disciple of Kant, holding by no of science is also a Positivist doctrine: it creed save the "Critique of Pure Reason," is the basis of our religion." In short, and severely biassed wherever the New there is one true creed, the creed of sci- or Old Testament does not agree with his ence; and M. Comte is its prophet. I ethics or history. His conclusions are in propose to examine this statement in the the main negative. Once, however, in a light, so far as it has dawned on me, moment of exaltation, he speaks of the of modern knowledge, appealing, not to primal mystery wherein he believes as "a saints or metaphysicians, but to the tribu- sphere of dazzling light." Strange words, nal of Mr. Harrison's "science." Does and a proof that it is not easy to stand with the master of antinomies on the edge of a razor! Mr. Coke's reasonings would bring him nearer to Christianity than he thinks. The process whereby we "establish religion everlastingly" may make an end of things ancient, but it reveals the eternal, and though human, is not anthropomorphic. I cite Mr. Coke as a witness, omni exceptione major, to the collapse of materialism and the refutation of the extravagant claims of science by science itself. And now to begin.

it agree with the preacher in Fleur-de-Lys Court or with his dead master? And is science indeed the basis of religion?

That M. Comte was the last of the prophets no one, perhaps, believes in his heart; but the "ascendancy of science," denoted by the unlovely name of Positivism, is a shibboleth of to-day; and vast numbers make it a saving formula. "What are called the truths of science," remarks an author to whom I shall refer again, “are assumed to possess the highest degree of certitude" at which we can arrive, as if strictly infallible and dog. matic. Inherited beliefs have lost much of their authority because they do not repose on lately acquired data, and presume to justify themselves by other than "scientific" methods. If science cannot test or verify them, they are dismissed as the baseless fabric of a vision, beautiful indeed, but imaginary. Mr. Huxley, with grim satisfaction, points to the "extinguished theologians that lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules," and he is thought to be proving that theology, nay, the old religion itself, has expired with its defenders. So great is the charm of a

Science is the modern Prospero. Two hundred years are gone since he found himself floating on a speck of dust through the infinite blue. The earth is his enchanted island; his rod of power has mul tiplied to a thousand instruments, delicate and strong; his books of magic are growing every day; and his sorceries, as was foretold of them, have wrought an immense relief for humanity. He has broken out of school into the fresh air; ranged the stars in their constellations, the flowers in their orders; measured the speed of light, and counted its throbbings; sifted

* Creeds of the Day; or, Collated Opinions of Reputable Thinkers. By H. Coke. London: Trübner.

1883.

the colors of the rainbow as through scientific man, energies moving in time

meshes of crystal; turned solid to fluid
and fluid back again to solid; interpreted
the message of the nebulæ by their glow-
ing flames, and beheld the universe emerg-
ing from the play of its energies as a
symphony from the playing of an orches-
tra. Science, I say it with all reverence
and gratitude, has made a new heaven and
a new earth round about us. Turned back
into the sixteenth century, we should die
for want of air and room. For now the
roof has melted from the sky, and the
nightly horizon is brilliant with countless
suns. We feel ourselves borne through
infinities and eternities: the dream not
only of Prospero, but of Faust is realized:
Ob mir durch Geistes Kraft und Mund
Nicht manch' Geheimniss würde kund,
Dass ich nicht mehr, mit saurem Schweiss,
Zu sagen brauche was ich nicht weiss ;
Dass ich erkenne was die Welt
Im Innersten zusammenhält,
Schau' alle Wirkenskraft und Samen,
Und thu' nicht mehr in Worten kramen.

and space are all there is or can be; and we know already the message they bring. The ultimate reality is matter; and matter is that which can be weighed. Science is content when it has registered the molar and molecular phenomena at which analy sis arrives, and from which constructive chemistry sets out. It is held to explain everything, because it makes visible to the eye or the imagination how the new comes out of the old. Saith Mephistopheles, who has seen deeply into modern methods:

Encheiresin Naturæ nennt's die Chemie, Spottet ihrer selbst, und weiss nicht wie. But the fiend is a licensed jester. Certain it is that scientific men claim infallibility because they appeal to facts; and they mean that the microscope, the scalpel, or the balance brings them home to our senses. Science if made "the basis of religion" is metaphysics in masquerade; but Positivism denounces metaphysics, and will have no à priori methods. Fara day surmised that inertia may be the essence of matter. Now, if science be the explanation of all things and if it can but divide or combine inert particles

it follows that thought, volition, and all their forms, including religion, must be referred to that plain and simple thing which is subject to the law of gravitation, or has weight.

By what methods, then, have these speciosa miracula been wrought? By methods, I answer, not in the least recondite, nor, though asking a delicate touch, of enormous difficulty. Keener eyes, and finger-tips made sensitive; weighing, measuring, counting: these are the meth ods and the tools of science, and when we have carried them to perfection, its boundary is reached. The near explains Listen to Mr. Huxley: "If there be one the distant; large and small are relative thing clear," he says, "about the prog to the glass through which we view them.ress of modern science, it is the tendency The man of science, if Mr. Arnold will to reduce all scientific problems, except excuse me, is a "magnified, non-natural those which are purely mathematical, to man," whose eyes, ears, and fingers have been stolen from the thief in our fairy tales. He stands up between heaven and earth, a good-natured Briareus, touching, tasting, and experimenting at large in the zodiac, as though he were the mildest of apothecaries, and the universe his back parlor. He has a hundred arms, as many eyes as there are in a peacock's tail, and the clearest of spectacles; but at last he can only see and feel. Some day he will be perfect master of time, space, and motion the slaves of his lamp; he will walk to the edge of the world, or not think it worth the trouble. For to the merely

questions of molecular physics; that is to say, to the attractions, repulsions, motions, and co-ordinations of the ultimate particles of matter."* Religion is not "pure mathematics," I presume; therefore, if its foundation be science, we must reckon it among the problems that are solved by "attractions and repulsions." Mr. Huxley believes that "consciousness is a function of matter, when matter has attained a certain degree of organization." But, evidently, religion is a function of consciousness; and to account for one is

Lay Sermons, p. 183.

to account for the other. Dr. Maudsley see? By evolution, we are told; and of again declares that "matter rises in dig- this the conditions are an indestructible nity and function until its energies merge matter, the conservation of energy, and insensibly into functions which are de- the mobility and homogeneousness of the scribed as mental." And Physicus, in his elements at starting. All which conceded, "Candid Examination of Theism," bluntly we stand face to face with the nebular concludes that "the hypothesis of mind hypothesis. Now the question I ask is, in nature is as certainly superfluous to whether we can accept this as a final exaccount for any of the phenomena of na-planation; whether in the "primordial ture, as the scientific doctrine of the per- arrangement," to quote Mr. Huxley, of sistency of force and indestructibility of the "cosmic dust," we have reached that matter is certainly true." * On the same Tоν σт whence we may build up the unipage, dismissing God from the universe, verse, material, mental, and spiritual. I, he says, "There is no need of any such for my part, believe that no elephant and hypothesis at all, cosmic harmony result- tortoise arrangement is more inadequate ing as a physically necessary consequence to explain the statics of the world than this from the combined action of natural laws, to explain its dynamics. Here are some which in turn result as a physically neces- of my reasons: sary consequence of the persistence of force, and the primary qualities of matter." Physicus would agree with Mr. Tyndall in tracing the genius of Shakespeare and Raphael to the fires of the sun. Grant the law of gravitation, and, according to him, "the final mystery of things is abolished." There is nothing left to explain: if we feel dissatisfied, the reason must lie in us. 66 "How," it is asked, can you get beyond an ultimate fact?" An ultimate fact - in other words, a phenomenon of which you render no account is your only Q.E.D. I call this bold and clear; if science be the application of physical methods, where they stop science stops; nor can they transcend an ultimate sen sible fact. But silence may instruct as well as speech, and the impotence of our methods may be due to an infinitude in nature. Telescopes are not fresh senses; spectrum analysis registers color but is not a power added to the spirit. And a fact without explanation is a dead wall, were it lofty as the Alps.

So, then, let the whole glorious panorama, the constellations, galaxies, and nebulæ, stretching outward into the unknown, the bewildering maze of star systems, and the ether in which they move, send back a uniform message, combine into one immeasurable fact, and that fact be matter. By what process, according to what law, does it become the things we

A Candid Examination, p. 109.

The "primordial arrangement" of the nebula is either an absolute beginning or it is not. Say it is not. Then it is the result of a previous state in which its forces were subject to the law of the conservation of energy.* Those forces were either exhausted by the work done, or they were not. The state of homogeneous diffusion, or equally balanced inaction, proves that exhausted they were. As little can we suppose a sheet of water on which there is no ripple under a breeze, as a state of homogeneous diffusion whilst a particle of energy is unexhausted. But from exhausted energies nothing can be drawn, much less sun and planets in persistent motion. If the cosmic dust be homogeneous, it is the end, not the begin. ning, of a universe. And if it be not homogeneous, we are in the middle of things, and not at the starting-point. We cannot, even to please M. du BoisReymond, begin with "like and unlike energies."

That, however, has been suggested. The forces are conceived to have been latent and then to have come into play. Upon the homogeneous particles many writers would bestow unlike energies by way of launching them on their voyage. But have they reflected on the consequence? For this would violate the law of the conservation of energy; it would allow motion to arise from absolute rest,

* Coke, vol. ii., p. 119.

and energies to emerge solely out of the potential. It would be what moderns term a miracle, letting in creation by the postern gate whilst thrusting it away from the grand entrance. For, in respect of this new energy to which it contributes nothing, the nebula may as well be nonexistent.

Thus, either a beginning is impossible, or it involves the creation of energy. The homogeneous nebula is in no case a beginning; for unless energy come into it, no start can be made. But that which produces energy cannot be another form of energy in time and space, else the wheel is set rolling again, and our beginning is a make-believe. Now, science with its conservation of energy, protests that of a form of force not existing in time and space it knows nothing: such an agent is beyond phenomena is transcendental. If any science transcends time and space it is no longer physics but metaphysics. Apparent diræ facies! The beginning of things of which the mode to strictly measuring science is inconceivable, must be denied, or the existence of the Creator admitted. The nebular hypothesis will not work without God. Such was the conviction of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas; the first cause, they said, is movens non motum: an energy not in space or time.*

pull the primary atoms in numberless directions. There is a flux of all things and all their particles, and the result would be instant chaos, were not that flux regulated by the nature of the energies, according to which they build compara. tively stable compounds. Forces are related in an order which cannot be broken; as Mr. Clerk Maxwell said, "The world is not a reversible engine." This correlation may be expressed by numerical formula; nor is an energy conceivable in space and time unless it admit of measurement. Matter and force, did numerical distinction cease, would disappear. The physical universe is nothing but numbers endowed with energy, or units that are capable of doing so much work, and neither more nor less. All matter gravitates inversely as the square of the distance, and this law alone makes the heavens intelligible. The stars are concrete mathematics. As an effort of genius the Newtonian theory is equal or superior to the tragedies of Shakespeare and the frescos of Michael Angelo. But the mathematics lay objective in the solar system before Newton, before any human consciousness was there to discern them. The law of gravitation is not mere movement: it is presupposed by motion, and is purely intellectual. Now can we believe in the intellectual and deny the intellect? "Let us then," say some, "deny a begin- The primordial structure is no more ning, rather than transcend physical sci-thinkable without a mind to determine it ence." But this, too, would run counter to physics, which will no more allow that the stars have been burning from eternity -I mean the stars now kindled in the heavens than that a clock which is half run down has been ticking forever. The various-colored suns are a graduated scale on which is marked their distance in time from the parent nebula. Vast as may be the energy in these great fires, it was never infinite. We are taken back to the homogeneous dust, and there compelled to meditate on the source of its activity. Evidently that source was in a higher, nonphenomenal sphere, yet did and does exist. "We are offered," says Mr. Coke, | "a theory of evolution, when what we need is a theory of involution." Through such a gateway do we pass into the unseen. But now it is possible to take a further step.

In the eyes of science, the world is a combination, endlessly complex and nec essarily unstable, of forces that push or

Summa Theol., P. I., Qu. 2, Ar. 3: and Arist. Phys. vi., etc.

than without a mind to understand it. If the law of gravitation governed the nebula myriads of ages ago, there must have been a consciousness there, a mind controlling all the forces within it. That is why the primary atoms have been termed "manufactured articles." Were it not so, there would be nothing for science to grasp in them. But a mind that in one formula contains all laws and energies and their smooth and endless interaction proves that to one formula they are reduciblea mind wherein the eternities and infinities are one sole harmony, who can realize that such there is and not be overwhelmed? The light of law spreads like a boundless sky wherever we gaze; and at every luminous point the mind (not the telescope) perceives a mind eternal. Nature reposes on thought it is the expression of thought. There must be an intelligent Creator, though not existing in time and space, since he is everywhere manifest in the intelligible structure of energy.

But what of the cosmic dust itself? I reply, that matter apart from energy is an

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