It has often been said that no animal uses any tool, but this can be so easily refuted on reflection, that it is hardly worth while considering; for illustration, though, the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks nuts with a stone; Darwin saw a young orang put astick in a crevice, slip his hand to the other end, and use it in a proper manner as a lever. The baboons in Abyssinia descend in troops from the mountains to plunder fields, and when they meet troops of another species a fight ensues. They commence by rolling great stones at their enemies, as they often do when attacked with fire-arms.
The Duke of Argyll remarks that the fashioning of an implement for a special purpose is absolutely peculiar to man; and he considers this forms an immeasurable gulf between him and the brutes. "This is no doubt," says Darwin, "a very important distinction; but there appears to me much truth in Sir J. Lubbock's suggestion,[56]that when primeval man first used flint-stones for any purpose, he would have accidentally splintered them, and would then have used the sharp fragments. From this step it would be a small one to break the flints on purpose, and not a very wide step to fashion them rudely. The later advance, however, may have taken long ages, if we may judge by the immense interval of time which elapsed before the men of the neolithic period took to grinding and polishing their stone tools. In breaking the flints, as Sir J. Lubbock likewise remarks, sparks would have been emitted, and in grinding them heat would have been evolved; thus the two usual methods of 'obtaining fire may have originated.' The nature of fire would have been known in many volcanic regions where lava occasionally flows through forests."
It becomes a difficult task to determine how far animals exhibit any traces of such high faculties asabstraction,general conception,self-consciousness,mental individuality. There can be no doubt, if the mental faculties of an animal can be improved, that the higher complex faculties such as abstraction and self-consciousness have developed from a combination of the simpler ones; this seems to be well illustrated in the young child, assuch faculties are developed by imperceptible degrees. These high faculties are very sparingly possessed by the savage; as Buchner[57]has remarked, how little can the hard-worked wife of a degraded Australian savage, who uses very few abstract words and cannot count above four, exert her self-consciousness or reflect on the nature of her own existence. If there exist a class of people so inferior in their mental faculties as these, it is not difficult for us to understand how the educated animal who possesses memory, attention, association, and even some imagination and reason, can become capable of abstraction, &c., in an inferior degree even to the savage. It certainly cannot be doubted that an animal possesses mental individuality—as when a master returns to a dog which he has not seen for years, and the dog recognizes him at once.
One of the chief distinctions between man and animals is the faculty of language. Let us look at this for a moment. "The essential differences," says Prof. Whitney, "which separate man's means of communication in kind as well as degree from that of the other animals is that, while the latter is instinctive, the former is in all its parts arbitrary and conventional. No man can become possessed of any language without learning it; no animal (that we know of) has any expression which he learns, which is not the direct gift of nature to him." Any child of parents living in a foreign country grows up to speak the foreign speech, unless carefully guarded from doing so; or it speaks both this and the tongue of its parent with equal readiness. A child must learn to observe and distinguish before speech is possible, and every child begins to know things by their name before he begins to call them. "If it were not for the added push," says Prof. Whitney, "given by the desire of communication, the great and wonderfulpower of the human soul would never move in this particular direction; but when this leads the way, all the rest follows." No philologist now supposes that any language has been deliberately invented; it has been slowly and unconsciously developed by many steps.
There can be no question that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and gestures; and this is the opinion of Max Müller. And Prof. Whitney remarks that "spoken language began, we may say, when a cry of pain, formally wrung out by real suffering, and seen to be understood and sympathized with, was repeated in imitation, no longer as a mere instinctive utterance, but for the purpose of intimating to another." Darwin says that "the early progenitor of man probably first used his voice in producing true musical cadences, that is, in singing, as do some gibbon-apes at the present day. It is therefore probable that the imitation of musical cries by articulate sounds may have given rise to words expressive of very complex emotions."
The nearest approach to language are the sounds uttered by birds. All that sing exert their power instinctively, but the actual song, and even the call notes, are learned from their parents or foster-parents. These sounds are no more innate than language is in man, as has been proved by Davies Barrington.[58]The first attempt to sing "may be compared to the imperfect endeavor in a child to babble." Prof. Whitney says, if the last transition forms of man "could be restored, we should find the transition forms toward our speech to be, not at all a minor provision of natural articulate signs, but an inferior system of conventional signs, in tone, gesture, and grimace. As between these three natural means of expression, it is simply by a kind of process ofnatural selection and survival of the fittest that the voice has gained the upper hand, and come to be so much the most prominent that we give the name of language (tonguiness) to all expression." A single utterance or two at first had to do the duty of a whole clause; afterward man learned to piece together parts of speech, and thus arose sentences.
Although no language, as has already been said, has been deliberately invented, "still each word may not be unfitly compared to an invention; it has its own place, mode, and circumstances of devisal, its preparation in the previous habits of speech, its influence in determining the after progress of speech development; but every language in the gross is an institution, on which scores or hundreds of generations and unnumbered thousands of individual workers have labored."[59]
There is no question at all but that the mental powers in the earliest progenitors of man must have been more highly developed than in the ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use; but the constant advancement of this power would have reacted on the mind to enable it to carry on longer trains of thought. "A complex train of thought," says Darwin, "can no more be carried on without the aid of words, whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures in algebra. It appears also that even an ordinary train of thought almost requires or is greatly facilitated by some form of language; for the dumb, deaf, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman, was observed to use her fingers while dreaming.[60]Nevertheless a long succession of vivid ideas may pass through the mind, without the aid of any form of language, as we may infer from the movements of dogs during their dreams."
The struggle for existence is going on in every language; oneafter another will be swept out of existence, and the languages best fitted for the practical uses of the masses of people will alone survive. Max Müller has well remarked: "A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better the shorter; the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue."[61]
It must not be thought for a moment that that which distinguishes a man from the lower animals is the understanding of articulate sounds—for, as every one knows, dogs understand many words and sentences; and Darwin says, at this stage they are at the same stage of development as infants, between the ages of ten and twelve months, who understand many words and sentences, but still cannot utter a single word. It is not the mere articulation which is our distinguishing character; for parrots and other birds possess the power. Nor is it the mere capacity of connecting definite sounds with definite ideas; for it is certain that some parrots, which have been taught to speak, connect unerringly words with things, and persons with events." The lower animals, as has already been stated, differ from man solely in his almost infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and ideas; and this obviously depends on the high development of his mental powers.
We now come to the consideration of a very delicate subject—a subject which is certainly at best very unsatisfactory to handle, as far as popular sentiment is concerned; for, no matter how successfully it may be handled, according to one class of thinkers, to another class of more orthodox thinkers it would be entirely at fault. The subject is,Man's Moral Sense, Belief in God, Religion, Conscience, and Hope of Immortality.
It has been stated by some writers that where "faith commences science ends." How erroneous is such a statement as this! for, as Krauth has said, "The great body of scientific facts is actually the object of knowledge to a few, and is supposed to be a part of the knowledge of the many, only because the many have faith in the statements of the few, though they can neither verify them, nor even understand the processes by which they are reached."[62]
"We believe," says Lewes, "that the sensation of violet is produced by the striking of the ethereal waves against the retina more than seven hundred billions of times in a second. * * * These statements are acceptedon trustby us who know that there are thinkers for whom they are irresistible conclusions." It is evident that it is to faith that science owes, to a very great extent, her progress and development; for it is impossible for man to prove by experimental demonstration all the facts of science, and since a certain number of facts have got to be accepted before a new experiment can be attempted, he has to accept on faith that such and such a statement is a fact, because such and such a scientist has claimed to have demonstrated it. "We are notresponsiblefor the fact," says Krauth, "that under the conditions of knowledge weknow, or in defect of them do not know; we are responsible if, under the conditions of a well-grounded faith, we disbelieve."[63]
Let us look, then, at the belief in God. The question under consideration at first will not be whether there exists a God, the creator and ruler of the universe—for this will be afterward considered—but is there any evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God.
Schweinfurth relates that the Niam-niam, that highly interesting dwarf people of Central Africa, have no word for God, and therefore, it must be supposed, no idea; and Moritz Wagner has given a whole selection of reports on the absence of religious consciousness in inferior nations. The idea that conscience is a sort of permanent inspiration or dwelling of God in the soul, I think, on consideration, any reasonable man will not assume. "It is a purely human faculty," says Savage, "like the faculty for art or music; and it gets its authority, as they do by being true, and just in so far as it is true. Consciousness is our own knowledge of ourselves and of the relation between our own faculties and powers. Conscience is our recognition of the relations, as right or wrong, in which we stand to those about us, God and our fellows.Con-sciois to know with, in relation.
There is such a thing, of course, as afalse conscienceand atrue conscience. All the false "conscientiousness grows out of the fact that men suppose they stand in certain relationships that do not really exist. Thus they imagined duties that are not duties at all." The virtues which must be practised by rude men, so that they can hold together in tribes, are of course important. No tribe could hold together if robbery, murder, treachery, etc., were common; in other words, there must be honor among thieves. "A North-American Indian is well pleased with himself, and is honored by others, when he scalps a man of another tribe; and a Dyak cuts off the head of an unoffending person, and dries it as a trophy. The murder of infants has prevailed on the largest scale throughout the world, and has been met with no reproach; but infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be good for the tribe, or at least not injurious. Suicide during former times was not generally considered as a crime, but rather, from the courage displayed, as an honorable act; and it is still practised by some semi-civilized and savage nations without reproach, for it does not obviously concern othersof the tribe. It has been recorded that an Indian Thug conscientiously regretted that he had not robbed and strangled as many travelers as did his father before him."[64]
See how weak the conscience of even more highly civilized men are in their dealings with the brute creation; how the sportsman delights in hunting-scenes, Spanish bull-fights, cock-fights, etc.; how indignant was the sensitive Cowper, if any one should "needlessly set foot upon a worm"! The rights of the worm are as sacred in his degree as ours are, and a true conscience will recognize them. What, then, is a true conscience? Savage states in a few words, it is "one that knows and is adjusted to the realities of life. When men know the truth about God, about themselves—body and mind and spirit—about the real relations of equity in which they stand to their fellow-men in state and church and society, and when they appreciate these, and adjust their conscience to them, then they will have a true conscience. An absolutely true conscience, of course, cannot exist so long as our knowledge of the reality of things is only partial."
It is evident, then, that the conscience of man depends on his education and environments, and therefore is the subject of improvement. It becomes, then, the duty of every man to search for truth, for his conscience is not infallible, and by so doing he will bring it to accord with the real facts of God. "Throw away," says Savage, "prejudice and conceit, seek to make your conscience like the magnetic needle. The needle ever and naturally seeking the unchanging pole." As conscience, then, is but a faculty capable of development, it is not so difficult to understand a race of people whose conscience was in just the first stages of development; and, finally, a race which did not possess this faculty at all, as in the inferior nations which Wagner speaks of.
Fig.I.—Butcher's Shop of the Anziques, Anno 1598.(From Man's Place in Nature, byHuxley.)
What kind of conscience and intelligence had the people near Cape Lopez, called the Anziques, which M. du Chaillu describes. They had incredible ferocity; for they ate one another, sparing neither friends nor relations. Their butcher-shops were filled with human flesh, instead of that of oxen or sheep, for they ate the enemies they captured in battle. They fattened, slayed, and devoured their slaves also, unless they thought they could get a good price for them; and moreover, for weariness of life or desire for glory (for they thought it a great thing and a sign of a generous soul to despise life), or for love of their rulers, offered themselves up for food. There were, indeed, many cannibals, as in the East Indies and Brazil and elsewhere, but none such as these, since the others only ate their enemies, but these their own blood relations.
There is therefore, combining the fact mentioned by Wagner with the fact that some nations have no idea of one or more gods, not even a word to express it (proving that they have no idea), I say, there is therefore no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with any such belief as the existence of an Omnipotent God; and in this assertion almost all the learned men concur. "If, however," says Darwin, "we include under the term religion, the belief in unseen or spiritual agencies, the case is wholly different; for this belief seems to be universal with the less civilized races. Nor is it difficult to understand how it arose."
The savage has a stronger belief in bad spirits than in good ones. "The same high mental faculties which first led man to believe in unseen spiritual agencies, then in fetishism, polytheism, and ultimately in monotheism, would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to very strange superstitions and customs. Many of these are terrible to think of: such as the sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving god, the trial of innocent persons by the ordeal of poison, of fire, of witchcraft, etc.; yet it is well occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they show us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe to the improvement of our reason, to science, and to our accumulated knowledge."[65]As Sir J. Lubbock has well observed: "It is not too much to say that the possible dread of unknown evil hangs like a thick cloud over savage life, and embitters every pleasure. These miserable and indirect consequences of our highest faculties may be compared with the incidental and occasional mistakes of the instincts of the lower animals."
The belief, then, of the existence of an Omnipotent God came with the development of the mental faculties; and although there does exist such a belief in the minds of men whose conscience is in a normal condition, still there are temptations to unbelief, and these have led men to atheism. I cannot think of an atheist unless I associate in my thoughts the words:
"The ruling passion, be it what it may—The ruling passion conquers reason still."
The atheist has decided not to believe in the existence of a God, unless he can see Him and understand Him; in other words, the finite would comprehend the infinite. Following the logical method of reasoning of an atheist, the simple fact of seeing God in no way ought to prove his existence. For when you say you see a person, and that you have not the least doubt about it, I answer, that what you are really conscious of is an affection of your retina. And if you urge that you can check your sight of the person by touching him, I would answer, that you are equally transgressing the limits of fact; for what you are really conscious of is, not that he is there, but that the nerves of your hand have undergone a change. All you hear and see and touchand taste and smell are mere variations of your own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a hair's-breadth, you cannot go. That anything answering to your impression exists outside of yourself is not afact, but aninference, to which all validity would be denied by an idealist like Berkeley, or by a skeptic like Hume.[66]
Thomas Cooper[67]said:
"I do not say—there is no God;But this I say—I know not."
Mr. Bradlaugh says: "The atheist does not say, 'There is no God'; but he says, I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the word 'God' is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so imperfect that he is unable to define it to me."
Austin Holyoake[68]says: "The only way of proving the fallacy of atheism is byprovingthe existence of a God."
If it is logical proof that is wanted, there is plenty. The following arguments, although not all meeting my approbation, are still of interest:
TheOntological Argumenthas been presented in different forms. 1. Anselm,[69]Archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109), states this argument thus: We have an idea of an infinitely perfect being. But real existence is an element of infinite perfection. Therefore an infinitely perfect being exists; otherwise the infinitely perfect, as we conceive it, would lack an essential element of perfection.
2. Descartes[70](1596-1650) states the argument thus: Theidea of an infinitely perfect being which we possess could not have originated in a finite source, and therefore must have been communicated by an infinitely perfect being.
3. Dr. Samuel Clark[71](1705) argues that time and space are infinite and necessarily existent, but they are not substances. Therefore there must exist an eternal and infinite substance of which they are properties.
4. Cousin[72]maintained that the idea of the finite implies the idea of the infinite as inevitably as the idea of the "me" implies that of the "not me."
TheCosmological Argumentmay be stated thus: "Every new thing and every change in a previously existing thing must have a cause sufficient and pre-existing. The universe consists of a series of changes. Therefore the universe must have a cause exterior and anterior to itself.
TheTeleological Argument, or argument from design or final causes, is as follows: Design, or the adaptation of means to effect an end, implies the exercise of intelligence and free choice. The universe is full of traces of design. Therefore the "First Cause" must have been a personal spirit.
TheMoral Argumentmay be thus stated: "In looking at the works of God there is," says Rev. Dr. Hopkins, "I suppose, evidence enough, especially if interpreted by the moral consciousness, to prove to a candid man the being of God." The educated man is a religious being. The instinct of prayer and worship, the longing for and faith in divine love and help, are inseparable from human nature under normal conditions, as known in history.
It is evident from the above that it is not for logical reasoning or arguments that the atheist is led to say, "that up to thismoment the world has remained without knowledge of a God."[73]It is from the folly of his heart; and, as Solomon says, that "though you bray him and his false logic in the mortar of reason, among the wheat of facts, with the pestle of argument, yet will not his folly depart from him."[74]I fully agree with Hobbes when he says, "where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason we should believe," but I think the several arguments given above, which could be greatly expanded, affords sufficient reason for a perfect belief in an Infinite God. For—
"God is a being, and that you may seeIn the fold of the flower, in the leaf of the tree,In the storm-cloud of darkness, in the rainbow of life,In the sunlight at noontide, in the darkness of night,In the wave of the ocean, in the furrow of land,In the mountain of granite, in the atom of sand;Gaze where ye may from the sky to the sod—Where can you gaze and not see a God."
Yes, the infinite God must include all. If he is not in the dust of our streets, in the bricks of our house, in the beat of our hearts, then he is not infinite, but is finite, having boundaries. Yes, God's power it was that set the nebulous mass into vibration, and caused the world to be formed; it was His force which first shaped the atoms into molecules, and then into more complex chemical products, till finally "organizable protoplasm" was reached, which, by evolution, climbed up to man. 'Tis God we see in the family, in society, in the state, in all religions, up to the highest outflowings of Christianity. 'Tis Him we see in art, literature, and science; and so proclaims Evolution. "God is the universal causal law; God is the source of all force and all matter." "For us," says Haeckel, "all nature is animated,i. e., penetrated with Divine spirit, with law, and with necessity." We know of no matter without this Divine spirit.
The "ultimate repulsion, constituting the extension and impenetrability of the atoms of matter," says Dr. Samuel Brown, "could be conceived of in no other way than as the persistent existence of the will of God himself, in whom we live and move and have our being, and which, if but for an instant withdrawn, the whole material universe and its forces in all their vastness, glory, and beauty, would collapse and sink in a moment into their original nothingness."
The advancement of science, instead of depriving man of his God, only deprives men of their earlier and ruder conceptions of Deity, only to impart a larger and grander thought of Him. "It is true, in the educational process some few minds have lost sight of Him altogether, but these are the exceptional, and therefore notable instances; with the great body of men, the conception of God has steadily enlarged with the progress of science."[75]If science can demonstrate that Evolution is true, then it is God's truth, and as such it is man's religious duty to accept it; if he rejects it, superstitiously or unreasonably, he not only defrauds himself but insults the Author of truth.
What, then, has science demonstrated? Science has demonstrated theUnity of the Forces: Light, heat, electricity, magnetism, motion, are all correlated to one another, and are all mutually convertible one into another. Heat may be said to produce electricity—electricity to produce heat; magnetism to produce electricity—electricity, magnetism, and so on for the rest.
Unity of Matter and Force.—"For if matter were not force, and immediately known as force, it could not be known at all—could not be rationally inferred."
Unity of the Life Substance in all Organic and Animal Bodies.—"A unity of power or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition."
Unity of Animate and Inanimate Nature in Matter, Form, and Force.
Unity of the Laws of Development.—Hence we can proclaim the unity of all nature and of her laws of development.
In the beautiful words of Giordano Bruno: "A spirit exists in all things, and no body is so small but contains a part of the divine substance within itself, by which it is animated." Hence we arrive at the sublime idea, since we can in no other way account for the ultimate cause of anything, that it is God's spirit which pervades and sustains all nature. By this admission we are not led to say: "There is no God but force;" but rather, "There is no force but God." God is infinite, and therefore includes nature; but is nature all? It is all that our finite minds can discover, 'tis true; but can there not exist another nature or world unknown to us; and if so, since God is infinite, he will include that world also. Let us look to this and see what science can answer.
It will be necessary for us to consider before proceeding, what is meant by the term soul; and this becomes a somewhat difficult task, as the term has been variously applied to signify the principle of life in an organic body, or the first and most undeveloped stages of individualized spiritual being, or finally, all stages of spiritual individuality, incorporeal as well as corporeal.[76]The popular belief is, that the soul is not material but substantial, a divine gift to the highest alone of God's creatures; but scientific men, such as Carl Vogt, Moleschott, Büchner, Schmidt, Haeckel, consider the phenomena of the soul to be functions of the brain and nerves. Schmidt says: "The soul of the new-born infant is, in its manifestations, in no way different from that of the young animal. These are the functions of the infantine nervous system, with this they grow and are developed together with speech."
The idea of the immortality of the soul was not aboriginal with mankind, as Sir J. Lubbock has shown that the barbarous races possess no clear belief of this kind, and Rajah Brook, at a missionary meeting in Liverpool, told his hearers there that the Dyaks, a people with whom he was connected, had no knowledge of God, of a soul, or of any future state.
Darwin remarks, that "man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future."
The belief in a future life amongst the civilized race of mankind is almost universally prevalent. The proofs of immortality are various. The desire that man has to live forever and his horror of annihilation is one; the good suffer in this world and the wicked triumph—this would indicate the necessity of future retribution. The infinite perfectibility of the human mind never reaches its full capacity in this life; the faculty of insight which sees in an individual all its past history at a glance is the immortal attribute and is continually on the increase; and it is possible that Aristotle was right so far as he stated that the lower faculties of the soul, such as sensation, imagination, feeling, memory, etc., are perishable. No matter if this be so or not, it is certain that in the next life, where all is perfection, only the fittest attributes will exist, the others would have perished. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has been defended by Marhemeke, Blasche, Weisse, Hinnichs, Fecham, J. H. Fichte, and others.
Let us look for a moment at the visible universe and see if it is not reasonable, on a scientific basis, to admit of the existence of another universe, although it remains unseen to us. One cannot help but be struck with the fact that energy is being dissipated in this visible universe, that the visible universe is apparently very wasteful. Look at the sun which pours her vast store of high-class energy into space, at the rate of 185,000 miles per second. What will be the result of this? The answer is simple: The inevitable destruction of the visible universe. Yes, just as the visible universe had its beginning it will have its end. But there existed a power before the visible universe came into existence, and which is acting in the visible universe as the ultimate cause of all phenomena. "For we are obliged," says Herbert Spencer in his First Principles, "to regard every phenomenon as a manifestation of some power by which we are acted upon; though omnipresence is unthinkable, yet, as experience discloses no bounds to the diffusion of phenomena, we are unable to think of limits to the presence of this power, while the criticisms of science teaches us that this power is incomprehensible." And so we should expect, for a finite cannot comprehend an infinite. It is for this and other reasons one is led to believe that the visible universe is only an infinitesimal part of "that stupendous whole which is alone entitled to be calledThe Universe."[77]As there existed an invisible universe before the visible one came into existence, we can conclude that there still exists an invisible universe now, and that this invisible universe will still exist when the present visible one has passed away. Let us see what light our finite senses can throw on this. It is well known that all our senses have only a certain narrow gauge within which they are able to bring us into sensible contact with the world about us. All outside this range we are unable to reach. For example, we do not see all forms and colors; we do not hear all sounds; we do not smell all odors; we cannot conscientiously touch all substances; we cannot taste all flavors.Vision depends on the wave motion of light. The length of a wave of mean red light is about1⁄39000th of an inch, that of violet1⁄57500th of an inch. But the number of oscillations of ether in a second, necessary to produce the sensation of red, are 477,000,000,000,000, all of which enter the eye in one second. For the sensation of violet, the eye must receive 699,000,000,000,000 oscillations in one second, as light travels 185,000 miles in one second. But when waves of light having all possible lengths act on the eye simultaneously, the sensation of white is produced. So, as has been previously stated, without eyes the world would be wrapped in darkness, there being no light and color outside of one's eye. So we see our sense of sight has its limits, and we know how finite these are. That there are vibrations of the ether on each side of our limits of vision cannot be doubted; and if our eyes were acute enough to receive them, we could have the sensation of some color, which must under present conditions remain forever blank. The owl and bat can see when we cannot; their eyes can receive oscillations of ether, which pass by without affecting us. So with sound, which "is a sensation produced when vibrations of a certain character are excited in the auditory apparatus of the ear."[78]The longest wave which can give an impression has a length of about 66 ft., which is equal to 16½ vibrations per second; when the wave is reduced to three or four tenths of an inch, equal to from 38,000 to 40,000 vibrations per second, sound becomes again inaudible. The piano, for instance, only runs between 27½ vibrations in a second up to 3,520. Sound travels about 1,093 feet per second, and the human voice can be heard 460 feet away, whilst a rifle can be heard 16,000 feet (3.02 miles), and very strong cannonading 575,840 feet, or 90 miles. That there are vibrations above and below 16½ and 40,000, there is no room to doubt, as there existears which can hear them, such as the hare; but to us they are as though they did not exist.
Of all our senses, the sense of smell far surpasses that of the other sense. Valentine has calculated that we are able to perceive about the three one-hundred-millionth of a grain of musk. The minute particle which we perceive by smell, no chemical reaction can detect, and even spectrum analysis, which can recognize fifteen-millionths of a grain, is far surpassed. But this sense in man is far surpassed by the hound.
Our sense of taste is also limited, and as has been already stated, cannot distinguish all flavors. We can recognize by taste one part of sulphuric acid in 1000 parts of water; one drop of this on the tongue would contain1⁄2000of a grain (3⁄400of a grain) of sulphuric acid. The length of time needed for reaction in sensation has been determined by Vintschgau and Hougschmied, and in a person whose sense of taste was highly developed, the reaction time was, for common salt, 0.159 second; for sugar, 0.1639 second; for acid, 0.1676 second; and for quinine, 0.2351 second.
Reviewing, then, the above, it is evident there are eyes which can see what we cannot, there are ears which can hear what we cannot, and there are animals who can smell and touch what we cannot. "For anything we know to the contrary, then," says Savage, "a refined and spiritualized order of existences may be the inhabitants of another and unseen world all about us." As Milton has said:
"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earthUnseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."
If there is a life very much different from and very much higher than our present one, it is not strange we are ignorant of it. It is impossible to make a person understand anything which is entirely unlike all that has ever been seen or heard, for every ideain the world that man has came to him by nature. Man[79]cannot conceive of anything the hint of which has not been received from his surroundings. He can imagine an animal with the hoof of a bison, with the pouch of a kangaroo, with the wings of an eagle, with the beak of a bird, and with the tail of a lion; and yet every point of this monster he borrowed from nature. Everything he can think of, everything he can dream of, is borrowed from his surroundings—everything. "So, if an angel should come and tell of another life, it would mean nothing to us, unless we could translate it into terms of our own experience. We could not understand a 'light that never was on land or sea.' Our ignorance is not even then a probability against our belief."[80]
As has already been stated, the visible universe must have its doom, must end as it began, by consisting of a single mass of matter; but is there not a more primitive state of matter than the matter such as we know it? Yes; and the so-called ether is that matter. It is unlike any of the forms of matter which we can weigh and measure. It is in some respects like unto a fluid, and in some respects like unto a solid. It is both hard and elastic to an almost inconceivable degree. "It fills all material bodies like a sea in which the atoms of the material bodies are as islands, and it occupies the whole of what we call empty space. It is so sensitive that a disturbance in any part of it causes a 'tremor which is felt on the surface of countless worlds.' It exerts frictions; and although the friction is infinitely small, yet as it has an almost infinite time to work in, it will diminish the momentum of the planets, and diminish their ability to maintain their distance from the sun, the consequence of which will be the planets will fall into the sun, and the solar system will end where it begun."[81]
According to Sir William Thompson, the ultimate atoms of matter are vortex rings, which Professor Clifford describes as being more closely packed together (finer grained) in ether than in matter. And he says, "whatever may turn out to be the ultimate nature of the ether and of molecules, we know that to some extent at least they obey the same dynamic laws, and that they act on one another in accordance with these laws. Until therefore it is absolutely disproved, it must remain the simplest and most probable assumption that they are finally made of the same stuff, that the material molecule is in some kind of knot or coagulation of ether."[82]
The molecule of matter such as we know, then, may have been, and very probably was, produced by evolution from the atoms or vortex rings of ether, according to the theory advanced by the authors of the work called the "Unseen Universe," which I have referred to. The world of ether is to be regarded in some sort the obverse complement of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy is dissipated in the one is by the same act accumulated in the other; or, as Fiske describes it, "it is like the negative plate in photography, where light answers to shadow and shadow to light." Every act of consciousness is accompanied by molecular displacements in the brain, and these of course are responded to by movements in the ethereal world. Views of this kind were long ago entertained by Babbage, and they have since recommended themselves to other men of science, and amongst others to Jevon, who says: "Mr. Babbage has pointed out that if we had power to follow and detect the manifest effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter must be a register of all that has happened. * * * The air itself is one vast library on whose pages are forever written all that man has ever said or whispered. There in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with, the earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful will."[83]
So thought affects the substance of the present visible universe; it produces a material organ of memory. "But the motions which accompany thought," say the authors,[84]"will also affect the invisible order of things," and thus it follows that "thought conceived to affect the matter of another universe, simultaneously with this, may explain a future state."[85]
Death, then, is for the individual but a transfer from one physical state of existence to another, according to the "authors'"[86]idea; and so, on the largest scale, the death or final loss of energy by the whole visible universe has its counterpart in the acquirement of a maximum of life, the correlative unseen world. According to this theory, therefore, as the psychical or spiritual phenomena of the visible world only begins to be manifested with some complex aggregate of material phenomena, therefore it is necessary for the continuance of mind in a future state to have some sort of material vehicle also, which the ether is supposed to supply. "The essential weakness of such a theory as this," says Fiske, "lies in the fact that it is thoroughly materialistic in character. We have reason for thinking it probable that ether and ordinary matter are alike composed of vortex rings in a quasi-frictionless fluid; but whatever be the fate of this subtle hypothesis, we may be sure that no theory will ever be entertained in which analysis of ether shall require different symbols from that of ordinary matter. In our authors' theory, therefore, the putting on of immortality is in nowise the passage from a material to aspiritual state. It is the passage of one kind of materially conditioned state to another." This theory, dealing with matter, should receive support by actual experience, as matter is a subject of investigation. To accept it, therefore, as being possible without any positive evidence for its support, it remains but a weak speculation, no matter how ingenious it may seem.
To support an after life, which is not materially conditioned, I agree with Mr. Fiske, that although it will be unsupported by any item of experience whatever, it may nevertheless be an impregnable assertion.
If all were to agree, what we call matter is really force, as it certainly is, for if matter were not force it would be unthinkable, being force it becomes thinkable; this point I have touched on before, but it may be well to elaborate on it a little just here. The great lesson that Berkeley taught mankind was that what we call material phenomena are really the products of consciousness co-operating with some unknown power (not material) existing beyond consciousness. "We do very well to speak of matter," says Fiske, "in common parlance, but all that the word really means is a group of qualities which have no existence apart from our minds." The ablest modern thinkers, then, believe that the only real things that exist are the mind and God, and that the universe is only the infinitely varied manifestation of God in the human conscience. It is evident, then, thatmatter, the only thing the materialist concedes real existence, is simply an orderly phantasmagoria; and God and soul, which materialists regard as mere fictions of the imagination, are the only conceptions that answer to real existence.[87]
For instance, let us see what it is we know about a table. You say you can see it; I can respond that all you are conscious of is that the nerves of your eye have undergone a change. Yousay, I can check my sight of it by touching it; to this I reply, all that you are really conscious of is a sensation, and that something outside of you has produced it. But that all that is outside of me is anything more than the manifestation to me of a power or of God, is an inference and cannot be proven. To constant manifestations of this power, always assuming the same form and characters which can be studied, different names have been given; but that the dust of the street or beat of our heart is anything else but that peculiar manifestation of the infinite God, cannot be contradicted.
Mr. Savage says, "The movement of electricity along a telegraph-line is accompanied by certain molecular changes in the wire itself; but the wire is not electricity, neither does it produce it. Thus modern science has found it utterly impossible to explain mind either as a part or a product of matter. It is perfectly reasonable, then, for any man to believe in a purely intellectual and spiritual existence, apart from any material form or substance."
To comprehend the immortal life is an impossibility; it transcends any earthly experience of man. The caterpillar probably knows nothing about any life higher than that of his toilsome crawling on the ground; but that is no proof against the fact that we know he is to become a butterfly. The boy knows nothing about manhood, and cannot know. Though he sees men and their labors all about him, he has and can have no conception whatever of what it means to be a man; it transcends all experience.[88]"The existence," says Fiske, "of a single soul, or congeries of psychical phenomena, unaccompanied by a material body, would be evidence sufficient to demonstrate this hypothesis. But in the nature of things, even were there a million such souls round about us, we could not become awareof the existence of one of them; for we have no organ or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the material structure and activities in which it has been manifested throughout the whole course of our experience. Even our own self-consciousness involves the consciousness of ourselves as partly material bodies. These considerations show that our hypothesis is very different from the ordinary hypothesis with which science deals.The entire absence of testimony does not raise a negative presumption, except in cases where testimony is accessible."
My object has not been to prove the purely spiritual theory of a future life, but to show that it is a theory that intelligent people can entertain as a foundation for their belief "in the hope of immortality." But that the spiritual life instead of the material life is the state in which we can hope for immortality, I think there can be no question; and such was the opinion of Paul[89]when he wrote: "Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither does corruption inherit incorruption.... So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'
O death, where is thy sting?O grave, where is thy victory?"
Footnotes:
[1]The Law of Disease, in College Courant, Vol. XIV.
[2]Winchell. Evolution, p. 113.
[3]Comparative Zoology, p. 43. 1876.
[4]Huxley. Physical Basis of Life.
[5]Johnson, Ency.
[6]Comparative Anatomy—Orton, p. 32.
[7]Analytical Anatomy and Phys.—Cutter, p. 16.
[8]Biography of a Plant.
[9]See Huxley—Invertebrate Animals, Anatomy of.
[10]Phys. Basis of Life.
[11]Beginnings of Life, p. 104, Vol. I.
[12]Monthly Micros. Jour., May 1, '69, p. 294.
[13]Chem. and Phys. Balance of Organic Nature, 1848, p. 48 (trans.).
[14]Inaugural Address, Aug. 19, 1874.
[15]Haeckel—Hist. of Creation.
[16]See Haeckel—Evol. of Man.
[17]Evolution of Man, Vol. II, p. 445.
[18]Johnson's Cyclopedia, Article "Evolution."
[19]Sumner, in Johnson's Cyc.
[20]Christian Union, Vol. XIII, No. 17, p. 322.
[21]Gen. i. 1.
[22]St. John i. 1.
[23]St. John i. 3.
[24]Hist. of Creation, p. 8.
[25]Ibid., p. 324.
[26]Heb. xi. 3. Revised English Ed.
[27]Loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 323.
[28]Loc. cit., Vol. I, p. 324.
[29]Indications of the Creator.
[30]Evolution and Progress, p. 26, Rev. Wm. I. Gill.
[31]Natürl. Schöpfungsgesch., pp. 643-5.
[32]Paget, Lectures on Surgical Pathology, 1853, Vol. I, p. 71.
[33]Ueber die Richtung der Haare am menschlichen Körper.
[34]Pop. Sci. Monthly, June, 1879, p. 250.
[35]See Sci. Am., May 18, 1878.
[36]Source of Muscular Power, Proc. Roy. Inst., June 8, 1866. Am. I. Sci., II, xlii, 393, Nov. 1866.
[37]Comparative Zoology, p. 45.
[38]Correlation of the Vital and Physical Forces, p. 54.
[39]On the time required for the transmission of volition and sensation through the nerves, Proc. Roy. Inst.
[40]Comparative Zoology, p. 165.
[41]Sci. Amer., Nov. 13, 1876, p. 328.
[42]Marshall, Outline of Physiology. Amer. Ed., 1868, p. 227.
[43]Macmillon's Magazine, Pop. Sci. Monthly, April, 1876.
[44]"Principles of Psychology," 1869, No. 20, p. 24.
[45]J. S. Lombard, N. Y. Med. Jour., Vol. V, 198, June, 1867.
[46]Loc. cit., p. 23.
[47]The apparatus employed is illustrated and fully described in Brown-Sequard's Archives de Phys., Vol. I, 498, June, 1868. By it the 1-4000th of a degree Centigrade may be indicated.
[48]L. H. Wood, "On the influence of mental activity on the excretion of phosphoric acid by the kidneys." Proc. Conn. Med. Soc., Nov., 1869, p. 197.
[49]Loc. cit., p. 24.
[50]Address of Dr. F. A. P. Barnard, as retiring president, before the Am. Ass. for Adv. of Sci., Chicago meeting, Aug. 1868. "Thought cannot be a physical force, because thought admits of no measure."
[51]Derivation hypothesis of life and species, forming fortieth chapter of his Anatomy of Vertebrates, republished in Am. Jour. Sci., II, xlvii, 33, Jan. 1869.
[52]Prehistoric Times, p. 354, by Lubbock.
[53]Madness in Animals, Jour. Mental Sci., July, 1871. Dr. W. L. Lindsay.
[54]Facultés Mentales des Animaux, 1872, Tom. XI, p. 181.
[55]Primeval Man, 1869, pp. 145-147.
[56]Prehistoric Times, 1865, p. 473.
[57]"Conferences ser les Théorie Darwinienne," 1869, p. 132.
[58]Philosoph. Trans., 1773, p. 262.
[59]Prof. Whitney, p. 309.
[60]Phys. and Pathol. of Mind. Dr. Maudsley. 3d ed., 1868, p. 199.
[61]Nature, January 6, 1870, p. 257.
[62]Problems i. 21.
[63]Johnson's Cyc. Article "Faith." C. P. Krauth.
[64]Darwin's Descent of Man, p. 117.
[65]See Descent of Man, p. 96.
[66]See Tyndall's Belfast Address.
[67]Purgatory of Suicides.
[68]Thoughts on Atheism, p. 4.
[69]Monologium and Proslogium.
[70]Meditations de Primaphilosophia Prop. 2, p. 89.
[71]Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God.
[72]Elements of Psychology.
[73]Thoughts on Atheism, by Holyoake, p. 4.
[74]Proverbs xvii. 22.
[75]Henry Ward Beecher.
[76]See W. T. Harris. Johnson's Encyc. "Soul."
[77]Unseen Universe.
[78]Rood. "Sound," Johnson's Encyc.
[79]See R. G. Ingersoll's Lecture on Hell.
[80]Savage.
[81]"The Unseen World." John Fiske, p. 21.
[82]Fortnightly Review, June 1875, p. 784.
[83]Ninth Bridgewater Treatise.
[84]Of the Unseen Universe.
[85]Anagram. Nature, Oct. 15, 1874.
[86]Of the Unseen Universe.
[87]Fiske. Unseen World, p. 52.
[88]Savage. Relig. of Evol., p. 246.
[89]1 Corinthians, xv., verses 50-54 (Part of).Revised English Ed., 1877.
Transcriber's Notes:
Some quotes in the original are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors have been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have been left open.
Other than the corrections noted by hover information, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.
Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.