abstraction; that we can define it only by | To say that nothing is, I call the insanity extension and resistance, and that these of metaphysics. Yet if there be nothing are duc to the lowest form of energy- but phenomena, admitted to have no root, inertia. Matter and force are but two and to be changing every moment, where aspects of one reality, distinct in idea if is the difference? Therefore God is the you can make them so, but in themselves postulate of science, though not among identified. The energy that occupies its phenomena; or, in the excellent phrase space is matter; if the unseen created of Mr. Edward Caird, "The highest real force, eo ipso it created matter, for he that ity is the ground of the possibility of all made the inside made the outside, and finite things." Every step forward will matter and force are as the convex and make this clearer. concave of a single arc. The cosmic dust was created. ter. the infinitely great, it remains to take up The development of the not-living, though a problem if so be of molecular Science, then, drives us upon believing mechanics, and plainer now through the that phenomena have arisen out of that correlation of forces and our glimpse into which lies beyond its experience, and that solar chemistries, has not yielded up all the first cause is either mind, or a reality its mystery. We do not know by what as far above mind as mind is above mat- process the energy of motion, in a cannonBut certainly it is no fiction. Al- ball striking on a steel plate, is changed though to describe it were possible only to a flash of blinding light. But the phys per negationem by refusing it phenome- ical problem may be viewed as an im. nal attributes we could as little disbe- mensely intricate re-arrangement of molieve that it exists as we could scrutinize tions. What of the flash? That is not the mode of its action. When we speak | purely mechanical; it introduces probof it we fall into symbolism; our words lems of an order transcending motion. are enigmatic because our conceptions When we have discovered evolution in, are mysterious. Except in and through his effects, the first cause to a mind dependent on the senses is strictly unknowable. But we know that He is, and that in him is the ground, the ideal, and the originating unity of all experience. He exists, though" beyond the reaches of the soul;" and either there is no answer to the riddles of matter and mind, or He is that answer. We are compelled, Mr. Spencer has lately said, to believe that things may be explained, though aware that an explanation is impossible. Does he mean that with our present faculties we cannot get beyond the dependence of mind and matter on eternal energy and transcendental mind? That no formula will enable us to comprehend how there can be energy not acting through space, or mind not taking the matter of its thought from experience? I grant it; but I do not forget that analogies of these mysterious truths exist within ourselves. Let there be an inscrutable enigma of existence, provided that it veils a reality and not a delusion. The danger attend ing these large confessions of ignorance is that they may lead to metaphysical Nihilism, to the monstrous fancy that the figures we see are painted on no canvas and need no background, or that they are not the mere surface of an infinite depth of being, but themselves the omnitudo realitatis. This is to be fooled to the top of our bent: it is to deny the substance because we are moving in its shadow. On the other hand, evolution in its most popular form, as Darwinism, accounts for life by mechanical energies, without the admission of powers latent or active, except such as characterize dead matter. Thus it is said that the grey matter of the brain secretes thought; that consciousness is a function of matter; that scientific problems (biology and psy chology being sciences) are questions of molecular physics. Not only writings like those of Häckel and Büchner, but such serious and valuable contributions to knowledge as Mr. Spencer's "First Principles" abound in reductions of our mental and moral faculties to molecular groupings. It is assumed that "nerveforce" arises out of non-vital energies as light may be derived from heat: and life is then said to be nerve-force combined | this cell is not a crystal either in form or with motion. A like manipulation of the function. It can hardly be said to have a vital powers results in consciousness, and form; its function has no parallel in the thus we rise along the scale of existence, inorganic kingdom. In solving a problem though there be no energy to lift us off both sides of your equation should be the level. It was an axiom that "nothing equal. This cell has the extraordinary can come of nothing." In the popular power of assimilating the unlike, of transconception of Darwinism everything forming dead to living matter, of growing, comes of nothing. This, to my purblind not as a uniform mass, but so as to deview, is creation without a Creator; and I velop organs of which no rudiments exist can imagine a fine treatise on "The Mira- in the cell, but which are necessary as cles of Atheism." But we are coming to parts of a whole that stands in the relation perceive that Darwin's theory of selection to them of final cause or ideal justification. is not the whole of evolution, nor its prin- The cell grows and decays on a plan; the cipal part. When the "Origin of Species" particles that compose it are ever changappeared, many took it for granted that it ing, but the co-ordinating force remains. explained everything and assumed noth- And as the crown of miracles, when thus ing, and annihilated Theism. It does developed to a living individual, it will none of these things. It cannot help us reproduce itself in a germ which unfolds even to that necessary beginning of evo- into a like individual, and so on forever. lution, the origin of life.* There is no limit to its fertility. Assimilation, reproduction, the distinction of the sexes, the transmission of parental traits, all the wonders of embryology, histology, heredity, lie hid in this speck of matter. How did it arise? For countless ages after the division of the planets from the sun, life was physi cally impossible. Say that a hundred million years ago it did not exist. And put aside, as an accidental, not a scientific, account of it, the fancy that it was brought hither from a distant part of the cosmos. All life arises by propagation; but this germ, embedded in the Laurentian rocks, did not so arise, since it was the first. Is the cellular tissue a product of inorganic chemistry? Its constituents are inorganic; but their combination is far from simple, and no chemistry of man, having decomposed it, can so reinstate them that the thing shall be alive again. But the chemistry of earth is indefinitely more powerful than ours; and this shred of bioplasm, protein, protoplasm, or what ever in our ignorance we call it, has no elements but the four that we deal with in our laboratories. A question of degree, apparently! Be it so, on condition that in the infinite laboratory you admit an infinite mind. It is the chemist that accounts for chemistry, not carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen left to themselves. Without a mind to impose a tendency on them, how should the infinite clashings and reboundings of chemical molecules have resulted in this triumph of ordered production this primal germ? "It is like crystallization in a liquid," remarks Häckel. Yes; but mechanism, which has not explained electricity, is even more at a loss to explain the selective power of a crystal. And I should be sorry to charge Mr. Darwin with the extravagance of some of his disciples: I know well that as Wilkes was not a Wilkite, so, in the most important issues, Darwin did not own himself a Darwinian. But the "popular conception" remains. Well, read Mr. Coke's criticism of the cell theory as expounded by Darwin, Spencer, and Häckel, if you desire to learn quam parva sapientia mundus doceatur. Here is a specimen. Professor Häckel explains heredity by growth; Mr. Spencer by growth and repair. But what are growth and repair? Mr. Spencer answers, "Organic polarity," which means (I pray you, mark), “the power that certain units have of arranging themselves " into special structures, or the force by which a "pre-existing mass of special units constrains unlike atoms to take their own definite form."* Difficile est satiram non scribere. Compare the Egyptian darkness of this with Mr. Spencer's lucidity when he is really explaining, and not putting us off with an Abracadabra. Call either of the powers denoted "organic polarity;" but the thing we desire to know- viz., what these powers are and whence they arise-will be told us by no change of name, by no analogy that leaves out the essential. "Words, words, words," said the Prince of Denmark. Heredity, so far as physical science can tell, is, like the sensation of sight or hearing, an ultimate. But heredity is bound up with the organizing power of the cell and goes back to it. When we say that it is an attribute of life and never of what is not living, experience has reached the end of her line. But an equivalent of ex Coke, vol. ii., p. 111. pended energy the vital principle is not, nor could be consistently with the law of conservation, as Mr. Herbert has shown in his masterly examination of realism.* myriads of species whereof remembrance holds not in that mutilated record of geology; the groupings so intricate and sug gestive round many a central kind which seem like prophetic hints of an ideal but partially manifested; the connecting lines in all directions, controlled by tendencies they do not, for all their multiplicity, abolish; the gleams of order in this otherwise so much admired disorder, where an idea is everywhere felt, yet always eludes ob servation; the kinship of species now inhabiting the world with species divided from them by glacial epochs; the undeniable stability combined with the inferred and plausible changes, what are these aspects of evolution but tokens and proofs of a wisdom whose riches are infinite as its ways are past finding out? Now, since the organic power appears only in its effects, and these-e.g., the infinite fertility of the species can in no sense be measured by quantity, we must pronounce it a thing transcendental. It is not a phenomenon; it is a postulate of fact and reason, failing which there can be no phenomena of life. Does science deal with it? Yes; biology does when it becomes metaphysics. Here, for the second time, we stand on the edge of experience and gaze into Mr. Spencer's unknowable. We affirm with him, as with Kant, that there is a thing in itself whose effects are likewise its demonstration. But, saying this, are we not be- But natural selection? It has been ginning to discern the unknowable? to well said that "production and reproducshadow forth what it is, by comprehending tion, mobility and sensibility are in full more clearly what it is not; for example, force ere that takes up the game." Mr. that it is not Häckel's "sum of the molec- Darwin, with his fine candor, admits that ular phenomena of motion"? The power heredity is an inherent power of the cell, that created the stars in their courses not due to foreign agencies; that selecelicited afterwards from the elements a tion waits for variety; and that of the fresh energy, we know not how, and the origin of variations we know nothing. So result was a countless multitude of the Mr. Huxley: "Varieties arise we know simplest organic germs. We can, or can- not why," "most varieties come about in not picture the event; but to refer the life a spontaneous manner." Mr. Mivart urg. thus manifested to an eternal life on which ing that indefinite variation will never it depends is to give it the only intelligi- issue in an ordered universe, he is anble position it can take in the cosmos. swered that "variations are limited by the Here are three attributes of the unknow- general character of the type," and that able-energy, life, and mind. And here Darwinism does not exclude a higher teleis a mode essential to them all, to be un-ology. The teleologist, says Mr. Huxley conditioned, or to act out of time and in a remarkable passage, may defy the space. The new theology is not so unlike the old. When once it is realized that evolution takes us to the verge of the transcendental, and there surrenders to metaphysics, we shall have Mr. Spencer crying to the president of the Royal Society, "Doctor, the thanes fly from me." There will come a great revolt of the materialists from natural selection and the survival of the fittest, when these are seen to be minor elements in a theory, which, instead of turning all things to stone like another Medusa's head, does but postulate a grander life in the universe. From that battle theism is emerging, not victorious only, but purified. The majestic reason ableness of evolution, encompassing such orbits of space and time, may well lift our science till it becomes adoring wonder. The vanished worlds; the myriads on Modern Realism Examined, passim, a striking essay to which Mr. Coke is much indebted. machinist to disprove that the primordial arrangement was not intended to evolve present phenomena. I cannot forbear adding, at this stage, that the teleologist need not confine himself to a defiance; he can show, as Mr. Mivart does, that the guiding principle away, we shall have a fortuitous concurrence of atoms from which it is in the highest degree unreason. able to look for cosmic harmonies. Again, Natura non facit saltum is the device of Darwinism; and Häckel, of course, out-Darwins Darwin. The modification of species under external agencies, changed environment, and the laws of heredity, is slow and imperceptible, corresponding to the slow processes of geology. But if this be the origin of spe cies, there is no time for it according to astronomers. In a hundred million years Darwinism will not have accomplished a tithe of its task. And Mr. Huxley, recog. nizing a difficulty here, allows that "Nature does make bounds now and then." This, observes Mr. Coke with great composure, is disposing of objections by nearly disposing of the doctrine itself. Professor Tait adds that the sudden emergence of a new species from an old would not differ much from that "special creation" which Darwinism was invented to supersede. Certainly it brings it into close neighborhood with its rival. Thus far, evolution appears to be a fruitful but mysterious idea, falling in with the scientific bias rather than demonstrated by an array of facts and figures. We cannot but hope that it corresponds with the facts; but, except in a phenomenal sense, we are destitute of a clear notion as to its meaning. Phenominally, it means that existing species are derived through intermediate species from others unlike them. It maintains the real physiological kinship of organisms denied by "special creation;" it raises natural history to the rank of a science; and in attributing to the same organism a power not only of propagating like from like, but of varying in definite directions and developing into higher species, it gives us an insight into the deeps of being, and proclaims an ordering intelligence more loudly than the vague belief that "species were created we know not how" could ever have done. But this is not making an end of theism. Matter is all surface; break and break it forever, you will only cleave it into surfaces; it seems to have no inside. But we can pass inside the universe through doors that unlock of themselves, and lo the object over which. science tyrannizes, has become the subject of which science does not even know the existence. Consciousness alone makes the world real; apart from it things are dark and blind. "Light," said Schelling, "is the thought of nature." Yes, and thought is the light of nature. Here, materialism with its maze of "forthrights and meanders" is utterly at fault. I understand always by matter energies acting in and through space, and measurable or quantitative: I do not understand a something endowed with physical qualities plus other unknown qualities coming in as they are called. Paganini is not his violin, nor his violin Paganini. Will then time, space, and motion, however combined, account for feeling? Why, it is precisely feeling that accounts for them! Matter, define it as we may, is known to us in terms of energy, and in no other terms whatever. The persistence of matter is taught by the balance, which appeals to weights that again are portions of matter and need verifying in their turn. But, at all events, weight is due to gravitation, and gravitation is a form of energy. Again, space or extension is ascertained by muscular pressure; and motion by comparison of positions in space. Therefore, our last appeal is to energy. But how do we perceive energy ? By feeling. Thus matter and motion instead of explaining the world, cannot be themselves explained, or known even to exist, save by the higher faculties. Feeling is the whole and sole guarantee for them. If objects are material, by feeling alone do we know that there are objects. But are there objects? Are space and time anything except modes of feeling? Do not some senses perceive that which to other senses is not? How distinguish between waking dreams and sleeping dreams, with eyes open and with them shut? Excite the nerve and a vision ensues, though there be no object to justify it. The senses are constantly deluded; perhaps no two persons ever see the same thing. There may be hallucination once; why not always? How does the material. ist say that, in spite of these things, there must be an objective world? Where does the must come from? It is no phenomenon; and if a necessity of thought, materialism was devised to get quit of necessities of thought. Yet it cannot be saved now without them. The instant we perceive that materialism is a theory of metaphysics, we perceive, too, that it is false. Nor can it rescue time and space from the dissolving spell of idealism. We have the power of perceiving that which outside the brain is nothing; the world may be a dream by day since dreams make our world at night. Molecular phenomena may be rolled up like a scroll or dismissed as an insubstantial pageant, for all that materialism can say. And the "physical basis" of consciousness takes the soil of things for their root. A striking transformation, when matter is perceived to rest on consciousness! But the scene-shifters are physiologists no less than metaphysicians. Among them Helmholtz is as conspicuous as Berkeley, Bain and Müller as emphatic as Kant and Hume. The physiology that aims at "elaborating consciousness" out of matter, tells us with incredible naïveté that consciousness knows nothing but its own impressions. "The central connec⚫ tions of the nerves," not the nature of the object, determine, according to Helmholtz, the difference in our sensations. Mr. Spencer lays down that most of the ele ments in an observed object are known we know of ourselves, and by this neby "unconscious ratiocination." The re- science measure that. Yet I know that I ceived view in psychology agrees with am not a dream; my thought is its own this; and in Mr. Coke's phrase, "the evidence in the twofold order of knowlentire process of perception is inferen- edge and being. If, because it is my tial." And thus, the indestructibility of thought, it cannot be true; if the subject matter, conservation of energy, and all simply because it is a subject, and so the other summings up of experience, depend only thing that can know, is, on that very for their validity on the laws of thought. account, incapable of knowing; then, perBut of mind, say Mr. Coke and his haps, since I am a delusion to myself, God authorities, "Science " can make nothing. may be a delusion to me. When thought If it were a product of molecular phenom- grows illusory, being is made bankrupt; it ena, energy would be expended in produc- is a dream with no one to dream it; and ing it, and by it energy might be elicited. the insane conclusion of all our science Materialism can accept neither of these is, "There is nothing: there can be nothinferences. The conservation of energy ing." moves in a phenomenal circle; to admit But if the necessities of thought are that a given quantity of electricity had the laws of things; if reason distinguishes disappeared as thought and was not recov-between sense and madness, and corrects erable, would break the circle and stultify the illusions of phenomena; if states of physics. It would be taking from the consciousness imply a persistent Ego; if weight in a scale, not by lessening the the will acts upon matter, though inscrumatter, but by thinking about it. Science tably, and may be free because not in dare not play fast and loose with weight. time and space; if we know each other, Nor can thought or volition produce yet know not how we know, and exert our energy, for this would be to enlarge a faculties though we cannot analyze them, closed circuit. Where could the energy-surely the mysterious may be real and come from? On the other hand, if mind enter into communion with us, and be is a product of matter, why does not this appear in the equation of forces? Why do the physical antecedents and consequents of thought make an equation into which thought never enters? Says Mr. Huxley: "It is a collateral product of them." But where energy is concerned, a product even if collateral implies expended energy. How, therefore, is it not expended? Evidently, the relations of mind and matter cannot be expressed by mechanics; they belong to a region where its laws are transcended. Volition may direct and redistribute the forces of the organism, but not as a power equivalent to so many foot pounds. The process is inscrutable; the fact, which overthrows materialism, should be the cornerstone of any treatise on miracles. The supreme force is volition: whatever it is that thinks and wills is the thing in itself. It exists neither in time nor space; its effects are phenomenal; its act is nöumenal. Thus, in spite of ourselves, are we brought back to mystery and metaphysics. Thought is boundless in all directions; and there must exist an eternal consciousness within and around the universe of spirit. That consciousness is the imma nent and transcendent God, whose perfection comprehends our infinities and eternities, but cannot lapse into them. He is in this sense omnitudo realitatis. What do we know of him? Consider how little something more than the unknowable. What wonder should the highest reality, which is the heart of things and their abiding cause, be in his nature an unfath omed mystery, yet known to us in his effects? He dwells in eternity; what wonder that whilst we affirm of him the best we know our speech betrays its imperfection, and our thought grows dark with excess of bright? Such darkness is not ignorance; it is enlarged knowledge. To know that we cannot comprehend him; that he extends everywhere and is com prehended nowhere; that he stands be hind all mysteries, and is the key to all enigmas; that man may be like God, and yet God not like man; to catch a glimpse of his perfection and lose it: Brief as the lightning in the collied night, And ere a man hath power to say, "Behold!" these are things that have long been famil |