A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN.
A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN.
_1000 copies printed, February, 1888._
_1000 ” ” March, 1889._
_1000 ” ” March, 1890._
_1000 ” ” June, 1890._
_1000 ” ” March, 1891._
_1000 ” ” June, 1892._
_1000 ” ” February, 1893._
_1000 ” ” November, 1893._
A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN
BY
S. LAING,
AUTHOR OF
“MODERN SCIENCE AND MODERN THOUGHT,” “PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE,”
“HUMAN ORIGINS.”
Eighth Thousand.
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD.
1893.
CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.
From some of the criticisms on the First Edition of this work I fear
that the distinction I endeavoured to draw between the use of the term
“polarity” in the inorganic and in the spiritual worlds has not been
made sufficiently clear. I stated in the Introduction “That while the
principle of polarity pervades both worlds, I am far from assuming that
the laws under which it acts are identical; and that virtue and vice,
pain and pleasure, are products of the same mathematical laws as regulate
the attractions and repulsions of molecules and atoms.” But this warning
has been apparently overlooked by some readers who have assumed that
instead of analogy I meant identity, and that it was a mistake to use the
same word “polarity” for phenomena so essentially distinct as those of
the material and the spiritual worlds.
Thus my “guide, philosopher, and friend,” Professor Huxley, for whose
authority I have the highest respect, observed in a recent article, that
he had long ago acquired a habit, if he came across the word polarity
applied to anything but magnetism and electricity, of throwing down
the book and reading no farther. I must confess that I felt a little
disconcerted when I read this passage; but I was soon consoled, for, in a
month or two afterwards, I came across another passage in the same Review
which said, “However revolting may be the accumulation of misery at the
negative pole of Society, in contrast with that of monstrous wealth at
the positive pole, this state of things must abide and grow continuously
worse, as long as Istar (the dual Goddess of the Babylonians) holds her
way unchecked.”
Surely, I thought, here is a case in which the Professor must have thrown
down the Review when he came to these words: but when I came to the
end, I found that it was not the Review, but the pen, which must have
been thrown down, for the article is signed “T. Huxley.” Can there be
a more conclusive proof that there are a vast variety of facts outside
of magnetism and electricity, connected by an underlying idea, which
inevitably suggests analogy to them, and which can be most conveniently
expressed by the word “polarity”? Words after all are only coins to
facilitate the interchange of ideas, and the best word is that which
serves the purpose most clearly and concisely. Thus instead of using
a waggon load of copper, or the verbiage of a conveyancer’s deed, to
express the ideas comprised in such words as “theism,” “pantheism,” or
“agnosticism,” we coin them for general use, as Huxley did the word
“agnosticism,” in order to convey our meaning.
Polarity is such a word. It sums up what Emerson says in his Essay on
Compensation: “Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of
Nature; in darkness and light; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and
female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the
undulations of fluids and of sound; in the centripetal and centrifugal
gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce
Magnetism at one end of a needle, the opposite Magnetism takes place at
the other end. If the South attracts, the North repels. An inevitable
dualism besets nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another
to make it whole: as spirit, matter; man, woman; odd, even; subjective,
objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.”
These, by whatever name we like to call them, are facts and not fancies,
and facts which enter largely into all questions, whether of science,
philosophy, religion, or practical policy. Every one who wishes to keep
at all abreast with modern culture, ought to have some general knowledge
of the ideas and principles which underlie them and which are embraced
in the comprehensive word “polarity.” My object in this book has been
to assist the reader, who is not a specialist, in arriving at some
general understanding of the subjects treated of, and I may hope, in
awakening such an interest in them as may induce him to prosecute further
researches. If I succeed in this, my object will have been attained.
PREFACE.
The reception given to my former work, on ‘Modern Science and Modern
Thought,’ has induced me to write this further one. I refer not so much
to the reviews of professional critics, though as a rule nothing could be
more courteous and candid, but rather to the letters I have received from
readers of various age, sex, and condition, saying that I had assisted
them in understanding much interesting matter which had previously been a
sealed book to them.
If I am good for anything, it is for a certain faculty of lucid
condensation, and I have thought that I might apply this to some of the
less-known branches of modern science, such as the new chemistry and
physiology, as well as, in my first work, to the more familiar subjects
of astronomy and geology; while at the same time I might extend it to
some of the more obvious problems of religion, morals, metaphysics, and
practical life, which force themselves, more and more every day, on the
attention of intelligent thinkers.
As in the former work the scientific speculations were linked together by
the leading idea of the universality of law, so, in this, unity is given
to them by the all-pervading principle of polarity, which manifests
itself everywhere as the fundamental condition of the material and
spiritual universe.
For the scientific portion of the work I am indebted to the most
approved authorities, such as Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, and Professor
Cooke’s volume on the New Chemistry in the International Scientific
Series. For the religious and philosophical speculations I am myself
responsible; for, although I have derived the greatest possible pleasure
and profit from Herbert Spencer’s writings, I had arrived at my principal
conclusions independently before I had read any of his works. I can
only hope that I may have succeeded in presenting a good many abstruse
questions in a popular form, intelligible to the average mind of ordinary
readers, and calculated, if it teaches nothing else, to teach them a
practical philosophy which inculcates tolerance and charity, and assists
them in finding
Sermons in stones and good in everything.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Experiment with magnet—Principle of polarity—Applies
universally—Analogies in spiritual world—Zoroastrian
religion—Changes in modern environment—Require corresponding
changes in religions and philosophies 1
CHAPTER II.
POLARITY IN MATTER—MOLECULES AND ATOMS.
Matter consists of molecules—Nature of molecules—Laws of
their action in gases—Law of Avogadro—Molecules composed
of atoms—Proved by composition of water—Combinations of
atoms—Elementary substances—Qualities of matter depend on
atoms—Dimensions and velocities of molecules and atoms—These
are ascertained _facts_, not theories 9
CHAPTER III.
ETHER.
Ether proved by light—Light-waves—Elasticity of ether—Its
universal diffusion—Influences molecules and atoms—Is
influenced by them—Successive orders of the infinitely
small—Illustrated by the differential and integral
calculus—Explanation of this calculus—Theory of vortex rings 21
CHAPTER IV.
ENERGY.
Energy of motion and of position—Energy can be
transformed, not created or destroyed—Not created by
free-will—Conservation of mechanical power—Convertibility
of heat and work—Nature of heat—The steam-engine—Different
forms of energy—Gravity—Molecular energy—Chemical
energy—Dynamite—Chemical affinities—Electricity—Produced
by friction—By the voltaic battery—Electric currents—Arc
light—Induction—Magnetism—The magnetic needle—The electric
telegraph—The telephone—Dynamo-electric engine—Accumulator 36
CHAPTER V.
POLARITY IN MATTER.
Ultimate elements of universe—Built up by polarity—Experiment
with magnet—Chemical affinity—Atomic poles—Alkalies
and acids—Quantivalence—Atomicity—Isomerism—Chemical
stability—Thermochemistry—Definition of atoms—All matter built
up by polar forces 65
CHAPTER VI.
POLARITY IN LIFE.
Contrast of living and dead—Eating and
being eaten—Trace matter upwards and life
downwards—Colloids—Cells—Protoplasm—Monera—Composition
of protoplasm—Essential qualities of life—Nutrition and
sensation—Motion—Reproduction—Spontaneous generation—Organic
compounds—Polar conditions of life 76
CHAPTER VII.
PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—PLANT AND ANIMAL.
Contrast in developed life—Plants producers, animals
consumers—Differences disappear in simple forms—Zoophytes—
Protista—Nummulites—Corals—Fungi—Lichens—Insectivorous
plants—Geological succession—Primary period, Algæ and
Ferns—Secondary period, Gymnosperms—Tertiary and recent,
Angiosperms—Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons—Parallel evolution
of animal life—Primary, protista, mollusca, and fish—Secondary,
reptiles—Tertiary and recent, mammals 92
CHAPTER VIII.
PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—POLARITY OF SEX.
Sexual generation—Base of ancient cosmogonies—Propagation
non-sexual in simpler forms—Amœba and cells—Germs and
buds—Anemones—Worms—Spores—Origin of sex—Ovary and male
organ—Hermaphrodites—Parthenogenesis—Bees and insects—Man and
woman—Characters of each sex—Woman’s position—Improved by
civilisation—Christianity the feminine pole—Monogamy the law
of nature—Tone respecting women test of character—Women in
literature—In society—Attraction and repulsion of sexes—Like
attracts unlike—Ideal marriage—Woman’s rights and modern
legislation 102
CHAPTER IX.
PRIMITIVE POLARITIES—HEREDITY AND VARIATION.
Heredity in simple forms of life—In more complex
organisms—Pangenesis—Varieties how produced—Fixed by law of
survival of the fittest—Dr. Temple’s view—Examples: triton,
axolotl—Variations in individuals and species—Lizards into
birds—Ringed snakes—Echidna 117
CHAPTER X.
THE KNOWABLE AND UNKNOWABLE—BRAIN AND THOUGHT.
Basis of knowledge—Perception—Constitution of
brain—White and grey matter—Average size and weight
of brains—European, negro, and ape—Mechanism of
perception—Sensory and motor nerves—Separate areas of
brain—Sensory and motor centres—Abnormal states of
brain—Hypnotism—Somnambulism—Trance—Thought-reading—
Spiritualism—Reflex action—Ideas how formed—Number
and space—Creation unknowable—Conceptions based on
perceptions—Metaphysics—Descartes, Kant,
Berkeley—Anthropomorphism—Laws of nature 125
CHAPTER XI.
RELIGIONS AND PHILOSOPHIES.
Religions, ‘working hypotheses’—Newman’s illative sense—Origins
of religions—Ghosts and spirits—Fetishes—Nature-worship—Solar
myths—Planets—Evolution of nature-worship—Polytheism,
pantheism, and theism—Evolution of monotheism in the
Old Testament—Evolution of morality—Natural law and
miracle—Evidence for miracles—Insufficiency of evidence—Absence
of intelligent design—Agnosticism—Origin of evil—Can only
be explained by polarity—Optimism and pessimism—Jesus, the
Christian Ormuzd—Christianity without miracles 146
CHAPTER XII.
CHRISTIANITY AND MORALS.
Christianity based on morals—Origin of morality—Traced
in Judaism—Originates in evolution—Instance of
murder—Freedom of will—Will suspended in certain states of
brain—Hypnotism—Mechanical theory—Pre-established harmony—Human
and animal conscience—Analysis of will—Explained by
polarity—Practical conclusion 184
CHAPTER XIII.
ZOROASTRIANISM.
Zoroaster an historical person—The Parsees—Iranian branch
of Aryan family—Zoroaster a religious reformer—Scene at
Balkh—Conversion of Gushtasp—Doctrines of the ‘excellent
religion’—Monotheism—Polarity—Dr. Haug’s description—Ormuzd
and Ahriman—Anquetil du Perron—Approximation
to modern thought—Absence of miracles—Code of
morals—Its comprehensiveness—And liberality—Special
rites—Fire-worship—Disposal of dead—Practical results—The
Parsees of Bombay—Their probity, enterprise, respect
for women—Zeal for education—Philanthropy and public
spirit—Statistics—Death and birth rates 197
CHAPTER XIV.
FORMS OF WORSHIP.
Byron’s lines—Carnegie’s description—Parsee
nature-worship—English Sunday—The sermon—Appeals to reason
misplaced—Music better than words—The Mass—Zoroastrianism
brings religion into daily life—Sanitation—Zoroastrian
prayer—Religion of the future—Sermons in stones and good in
everything 219
CHAPTER XV.
PRACTICAL POLARITIES.
Fable of the shield—Progress and conservatism—English and
French colonisation—Law-abidingness—Irish land question—True
conservative legislation—Ultra-conservatism—Law and
education—Patriotism—Jingoism and parochialism—True
statesmanship—Free trade and protection—Capital
and labour—Egoism and altruism—Socialism and
_laissez faire_—Contracts—Rights and duties of
landlords—George’s theory—State interference—Railways—Post
Office—Telegraphs—National defence—Concluding remarks 227
A MODERN ZOROASTRIAN.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Experiment with magnet—Principle of polarity—Applies
universally—Analogies in spiritual world—Zoroastrian
religion—Changes in modern environment—Require
corresponding changes in religions and philosophies.
Scatter a heap of iron filings on a plate of glass; bring near it a
magnet, and tap the glass gently, and you will see the filings arrange
themselves in regular forms.
If one pole only of the magnet is brought near the glass the filings
arrange themselves in lines radiating from that pole.
Next lay the bar-magnet on the glass so that the filings are influenced
by both poles; they will arrange themselves into a series of regular
curves.
In other words, the Chaos of a confused heap of inert matter has become a
Cosmos of harmonious arrangement assuming definite form in obedience to
law.
As the old saying has it, that ‘every road leads to Rome,’ so this
simple experiment leads up to a principle which underlies all existence
knowable to human faculty—that of Polarity. Why do the iron filings
arrange themselves in regular curves? Because they are magnetised by
the influence of the larger magnet, and each little particle of iron is
converted into a little magnet with two opposite poles attracting and
repelling.
[Illustration]
What is a magnet? It is a special manifestation of the more general
principle of polarity, by which energy, when it passes from the passive
or neutralised into the active state, does so under the condition of
developing opposite and conflicting energies: no action without reaction,
no positive without a negative, and, as we see it in the simplest form in
our magnets, no North Pole without a South Pole—like ever repelling like
and attracting unlike. The magnet, again, may be considered as a special
form of electricity, for if we send an electric current through a coil of
copper wire encircling a bar of soft iron, the bar is at once converted
into a magnet; so that a magnet may be considered as the summing up,
at two opposite extremities or poles, of the attractive and repulsive
effects of electric currents circulating round it. But this electricity
is itself subject to the law of polarity, whether developed by chemical
action in the form of a current or electricity in motion, or by friction
in the form of statical electricity of small quantity but high tension.
In all cases a positive implies a negative; in all, like repels like and
attracts unlike. Conversely, as polarity produces definite structure, so
definite structure everywhere implies polarity.
The same principle prevails not only throughout the inorganic or world
of matter, but throughout the organic or world of life, and specially
throughout its highest manifestations in human life and character, and
in the highest products of its evolution, in societies, religions, and
philosophies. To show this by some familiar and striking examples is the
main object of this book.
But here let me interpose a word of caution. I must avoid the error
which vitiates Professor Drummond’s interesting work on ‘Natural Law in
the Spiritual World,’ of confounding analogy and identity. Because the
principle of polarity pervades alike the natural and spiritual worlds,
I am far from assuming that the laws under which it acts are identical;
and that virtue and vice, pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty, are
products of the same mathematical changes of sign and inverse squares
or cubes of distances, as regulate the attractions and repulsions of
molecules and atoms. All I say is, that the same pervading principle may
be traced wherever human thought and human knowledge extend; that it is
apparently, for some reason unknown to us, the essential condition of all
existence within the sphere of that thought and that knowledge; and that
what lies beyond it is the great unknown, behind the impenetrable veil
which it is not given to mortals to uplift. In like manner, if I call
myself ‘a modern Zoroastrian,’ it is not that I wish or expect to teach
a new religion or revive an old one, to see Christian churches dedicated
to Ormuzd, or right reverend bishops exchanging the apron and shovel-hat
for the mitre and flowing robes of the ancient Magi; but simply this.
All religions I take to be ‘working hypotheses,’ by which successive
ages and races of men try to satisfy the aspirations and harmonise the
knowledge which in the course of evolution have come to be, for the
time, their spiritual equipment. The best proof of any religion is, that
it exists—i.e. that it is part of the same evolution, and that on the
whole it works well, i.e. is in tolerable harmony with its environment.
When that environment changes, when loftier views of morality prevail,
when knowledge is increased and the domain of science everywhere extends
its frontier, religions must change with it if they are to remain good
working, and not become unworkable and unbelievable hypotheses.
Now of all the religious hypotheses which remain workable in the present
state of human knowledge, that seems to me the best which frankly
recognises the existence of this dual law, or law of polarity, as the
fundamental condition of the universe, and, personifying the good
principle under the name of Ormuzd, and the evil one under that of
Ahriman, looks with earnest but silent and unspoken reverence on the
great unknown beyond, which may, in some way incomprehensible to mortals,
reconcile the two opposites, and give the final victory to the good.
Oh! yet we hope that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill.
So sings the poet of the nineteenth century: so, if we understand his
doctrine rightly, taught the Bactrian sage, Zoroaster, some forty
centuries earlier.
This, and this alone, seems to me to afford a working hypothesis
which is based on fact, can be brought into harmony with the existing
environment, and embraces, in a wider synthesis, all that is good in
other philosophies and religions.
When I talk of our new environment, it requires one who, like the author,
has lived more than the Scriptural threescore and ten years, and has, so
to speak, one foot on the past and one on the present, to realise how
enormous is the change which a single generation has made in the whole
spiritual surroundings of a civilised man of the nineteenth century.
When I was a student at Cambridge, little more than fifty years ago,
Astronomy was the only branch of natural science which could be said to
be definitely brought within the domain of natural law. And that only
as regards the law of gravity, and the motions of the heavenly bodies,
for little or nothing was known as to their constitution. Geology was
just beginning the series of conquests by which time and the order
and succession of life on the earth have been annexed by science as
completely as space by astronomy; and theories of cataclysms, universal
deluges, and special recent creations of animals and man, still held
their ground, and were quoted as proofs of a universe maintained by
constant supernatural interference.
And when I say that space had been annexed to science by astronomy, it
was really only that half of space which extends from the standpoint of
the human senses in the direction of the infinitely great. The other
equally important half which extends downwards to the infinitely small
was unknown, or the subject only of the vaguest conjectures.
Chemistry was, to a great extent, an empirical science, and molecules and
atoms were at best guesses at truth, or rather convenient mathematical
abstractions with no more actual reality than the symbols of the
differential calculus. The real causes and laws of heat, light, and
electricity, were as little known as those of molecular action and of
chemical affinity. The great laws of the indestructibility of matter, the
correlation of forces, and the conservation of energy, were unknown, or
only just beginning to be foreshadowed. As regards life, protoplasm was
a word unheard of; scientific biology, zoology, and botany were in their
infancy; and the gradual building up of all living matter from a speck of
protoplasm, through a primitive cell, was not even suspected. Above all,
the works of Darwin had not been published, and evolution had not become
the general law of modern thought; nor had the discovery of the antiquity
of man, and of his slow development upwards from the rudest origins,
shattered into fragments established beliefs as to his recent miraculous
creation.
Science and miracle have been fighting out their battle during the last
fifty years along the whole line, and science has been at every point
victorious. Miracle, in the sense in which our fathers believed in it,
has been not only repulsed, but annihilated so completely, that really
little remains but to bury the dead.
The result of these discoveries has been to make a greater change in the
spiritual environment of a single generation than would be made in their
physical environment if the glacial period suddenly returned and buried
Northern Europe under polar ice. The change is certainly greater in the
last fifty years than it had been in the previous five hundred, and in
many respects greater than in the previous five thousand.
It may be sufficient to glance shortly at the equally great
corresponding changes which this period has witnessed in the practical
conditions of life and of society. If astronomy and geology have extended
the dominion of the mind over space and time, steamers, railways, and
the electric telegraph have gained the mastery over them for practical
purposes. Commerce and emigration have assumed international proportions,
and India, Australia, and America are nearer to us, and connected with
us by closer ties, than Scotland was to England in my schoolboy days.
Education and a cheap press have even in a greater degree revolutionised
society, and knowledge, reaching the masses, has carried with it power,
so that democracy and free-thought are, whether for good or evil,
everywhere in the ascendant, and old privileges and traditions are
everywhere decaying.
With such a great change of environment it is evident that many of the
old creeds, institutions, and other organisms, adapted to old conditions,
must have become as obsolete as a schoolboy’s jacket would be as the
comfortable habiliment of a grown-up man. But as a lobster which has cast
its shell does not feel at ease until it has grown a new one, so thinking
men of the present day are driven to devise, to a great extent each
for themselves, some larger theory which may serve them as a ‘working
hypothesis’ with which to go through life, and bring the ineradicable
aspirations and emotions of their nature into some tolerable harmony with
existing facts.
To me, as one of those thinking units, this theory, of what for want
of a better name I call ‘Zoroastrianism,’ has approved itself as a
good working theory, which reconciles more intellectual and moral
difficulties, and affords a better guide in conduct and practical life
than any other; and, in a word, enables me to reduce my own individual
Chaos into some sort of an intelligible and ordered Cosmos. I feel moved,
therefore, to preach through the press my little sermon upon it, for the
benefit of those whom it may concern, feeling assured that the process of
evolution, by which
The old order changes, giving place to new,
can best be assisted by the honest and unbiassed expression of the
results of individual thought and experience on the part of any one of
those units whose aggregates form the complicated organisms of religions
and philosophies, of societies and of humanity.