“We know in part,” exclaimed, with burning zeal, the honest man of God
in Holy Scripture, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part.” How true
the first member of this sentence is even in the case of that knowledge
of God which alone deserves the name of knowledge, or repays the trouble
of its acquisition, the previous Lecture must in many ways have served
to convince us. The second member, which will chiefly occupy our
attention in the present discussion, is in an eminent degree applicable
to physical science. For what, in fact, is all our knowledge of nature,
considered as a whole and in its inmost essence, but a mere speculation,
conjecture, and guess upon guess? What is it but an endless series of
tentative experiments, by which we are continually hoping to succeed in
unveiling the secret of life, to seize the wonderful Proteus, and to
hold him fast in the chains of science? Or is it not, perhaps, one
ever-renewed attempt to decipher more completely than hitherto the
sybilline inscriptions on the piled-up rows and layers of tombs, which
as nature grows older convert its great body into one vast catacomb, and
so perchance to find therein the key to unlock and bring to light the
far greater--nay, the greatest of all riddles--the riddle of death? Now
there are undoubtedly, even in nature itself, occasional indications of,
scattered hints and remote allusions to, a final crisis, when even in
nature and in this sensible and elementary world, life shall be entirely
separated from death, and when death itself shall be no more. Gravely to
be pondered and in nowise to be neglected are these hints, although
without the aid of a higher illumination they must forever remain
unintelligible to man. Thus considered, however, the universe itself
appears replete with dumb echoes and terrestrial resounds of divine
revelation. It is not, therefore, without reason and significance, if in
this beautiful hymn the ancient prophetess of nature lends her
concurrent testimony to the promises of the holy seer of a last day of
creation, which nature shall celebrate as the great day of her
renovation and toward which she yearns with an indescribable longing
which is nowhere so inimitably depicted, so strongly and so vividly
expressed, as in Holy Writ itself. Holy Scripture could not and can not
contain a system of science, whether as a philosophy of reason or a
science of nature. Nay, in this form of a manual and methodical
compendium of divine knowledge, it could not inspire us with confidence
either as revelation or as science. Condescending altogether to the
wants of man, both in form and language, it consists of a collection of
occasional and wholly practical compositions derived immediately from,
and expressly designed for, life--in a certain sense it consists of
nothing but the registers and social statutes either of the prophetic
people or of the apostolical community. Accordingly, its contents are of
a mixed nature: historical, legal, instructive, hortatory, consolatory,
and prophetical, together with a rich abundance of minute and special
allusions, while it enters every where into, and with watchful love
adapts itself to, individual wants and local peculiarities. And the form
of these writings, at once so singular in its kind--and in such
marvelous wise, but yet so eminently human--is so far from being
inconsistent with the divine character, that the very condescension of
the Deity constitutes a new and additional but most characteristic proof
of genuine revelation. Only the first foundation-stone and the key and
corner-stone form an exception. Embracing within their spacious limits
the beginning of nature and the end of the world, they form, as it were,
the corner-rings and the bearing-staves of the ark of the covenant of
revelation. And while on the one side as well as on the other, in the
opening no less than in the closing book, which contain almost as many
mysteries as words, the seven-branched candlestick of secret
signification is set up, still all else that is inclosed within the holy
ark receives therefrom sufficient light for its perfect elucidation. In
all other respects the style is that of a plain narrative couched in
very appropriate and simple words; and if the masters of criticism in
classical antiquity have quoted a few passages from the beginning of
Genesis as the most exalted instances of the sublime, still it was in
the very simplicity and extreme plainness of the language that they
recognized this character of sublimity. From these two ends,
moreover--from this first root as well as from the last crown of the
book, there proceeds many threads and veins, which, running through the
tissue, bind it together more closely into a living unity, on which
account, although consisting of so many and such divers books, it is
justly considered as one, being called simply the “Book” (Bible).
Consequently it would, as already said, be foolish to look for a system
of science in the divine book for men. Nevertheless we do meet here and
there with single words about nature and her secrets--hints occasionally
dropped and seemingly accidental expressions--which, giving a clear and
full information as to much that is hidden therein, furnish science
consequently with so many keys for unlocking nature. These, indeed, are
not scattered throughout in equal measure, but here, perhaps, more
thinly, and there again more thickly. In all these passages, and
especially those of the Old Testament, which not only depict the
external beauties and visible glory of nature, but also touch upon its
hidden powers and inmost secrets of life, we may observe a kind of
intentional, I might, perhaps, say, cautious reserve and heedful
circumspection, amounting at times almost to an indisposition to speak
out fully and clearly, lest the abuse or probable misconception of what
should be said might give encouragement to the heathenish and
wide-spread deification of nature.
In the New Testament (if we may venture to speak of these things in the
same natural and human fashion that Scripture itself employs) the Holy
Spirit uses language far more precise and clear. On the whole, the
relation in which Holy Writ and divine revelation stand to nature
itself, and the science thereof, is a peculiar one. It is eminently
tender and wonderful, but not, indeed, intelligible at the first glance,
or broadly definable according to any rigorous and established notion.
It is one, however, capable of being made clearer by means of a simile
borrowed from Scripture itself. Those guileless men whom the Redeemer
chose as His instruments for carrying out His great work of the
redemption of the world, were endued with miraculous powers, which it
was and ever will be apparent, were not of their own strength, but of
His. Now, of the first of these apostles it is narrated that a healing
power, and, as it were, an invisible stream of life proceeded from him,
without his being conscious of, or, at least, without his regarding it,
which healed the sick who were brought out and placed within the range
of his shadow as he passed by.[20] In the same manner the fiery wain of
divine revelation, as it passes on its way, scatters, in single words
and images, many a bright spark. The radiant shadow of the word of God,
as it falls, is sufficient to kindle and throw a new light over the
whole domain of nature, by means of which the true science thereof may
be firmly established, its inmost secrets explored and brought into
coherence and agreement with all else.
I have already more than once called your attention to the method which
all the philosophers of reason, without exception, pursue. In different
ways, according to the special objects they have in view, they all alike
presumed to set certain absolute and impassable limits to human reason
(which, however, by some slight turn or other, they soon dextrously
contrive to transgress) in order to bring within their system of
absolute science--which is at best but a dead semblance--all that it
will hold, and even what it can not contain. Quite different, however,
is it with the truth, and with that living science which we take for the
basis of our speculations. For from it it appears that the soul of man,
however liable it may be to manifold error, is, nevertheless, capable of
receiving the divine communications. Since, then, man can possess as
many of these higher branches of knowledge, and can learn as much of
divine things as it is given to him to know, and since, at the same
time, it is God himself who is the primary source from which all man’s
knowledge flows, and his guide to truth--who shall determine the measure
and fix the limits--who shall dare to say how much of knowledge and of
science God will vouchsafe to man?--who shall venture to prescribe the
limits beyond which His illumination can not pass? This, it is evident,
is illimitable. It may go on to an extent which, at the beginning, man
would not have believed to be possible. In a word, though of himself,
and by his own unassisted reason, man is incapable of knowing any thing,
yet through God, if it be his will, he may attain to the knowledge of
all things. And yet it is true, though in a very different sense from
that intended by these philosophers of reason, that man’s knowledge is
in reality limited. No absolute limit, indeed, is set to it. Yet because
it is a mixed knowledge, composed of outward tradition and inward
experience, and is founded on the perceptions of the external and
internal senses, therefore is it made up of individual instances,
extremely slow in its growth, and in no respect perfect and complete,
and scarcely ever free from faults and deficiencies. Consequently, when
considered in its totality, and as pretending to be a whole, it is
invariably imperfect. But this character of imperfection belongs, in
fact, to all real science, as derived from the experience of the senses.
Seldom, indeed, is the first impression free from the admixture of
error; numberless repeated observations, comparisons, essays,
experiments, and corrections, which must often be carried on through
many centuries, not to say many tens of centuries, are necessary before
a pure and stable result can be attained to. In this way all truly human
knowledge is imperfect, and “in part;” and although, on the contrary,
the false conceited wisdom may parade itself from the very first as
fully ripe and complete, yet in a very brief space indeed will its
imperfection and rottenness appear.
And, indeed, the character of imperfection shows itself, as in all other
human things, so also in the science of nature. From its birth among the
earliest naturalists of Greece to its boasted maturity among ourselves,
it counts an age of two millenniums and a half of unbroken cultivation.
But now if, looking beyond the explanation of single isolated facts, we
consider rather our knowledge of nature in its universal system and
internal constitution, can we say that physical science has, during the
time, made more than, perhaps, two steps and a half of progress? And
this slow and toilsome advance which, in a certain sense, never arrives
at more than “knowing in part,” is the law of every department of human
science. Consequently it may be justly said of the development of man’s
science, that with God a thousand years are as a day, and one day as a
thousand years.[21] All knowledge drawn from the senses and experience
is bound by this condition. It may, no doubt, apply immediately and
principally to external experience, which is dependent on the lower and
ordinary senses, whether we reckon them according to the number of their
separate organs as five, or as three in compliance with a more
scientific classification. But it also holds equally good of those which
we pointed out and described in the last Lecture as being the four
superior scientific senses, the organs of a knowledge founded on a
higher and internal experience, the sense, viz., of reason, the sense of
understanding, the sense for nature or fancy, and the proper sense for
God, which lies in the inmost free will of man. Not merely as the
faculty of suggestion [_Ahndungsvermogen_], is fancy to be regarded as
the higher and internal sense for nature, or because it is from this
side that the affinity of man, and of man’s soul with nature, is most
distinctly revealed, but it also exhibits itself as such in the
scientific apprehension of natural phenomena. That dynamical play of the
inner life, that law of a living force which constitutes the essence of
every phenomenon of nature, is a something so fleeting and evanescent
that it can only be seized and fixed by the fancy alone, since, as is
now pretty generally allowed by all profound observers of nature, in the
abstract notion life eludes the grasp, and nothing remains but a dead
formula.
The apprehension of a living object in thought, so as to seize and fix
it in its mobile vitality and its fluctuating and fleeting states, is an
act of the imagination, which, however, is naturally of a peculiar kind,
and entirely distinct from artistic or poetical fancy. It is, in this
respect, worthy of remark, that all the most characteristic and
felicitous terms which are employed to designate the great discoveries
in modern times of the profounder secrets of nature are, for the greater
part, boldly figurative, and often even symbolical. Here, therefore,
also, we have a manifestation of that affinity which subsists between
nature and the faculty of fancy, by which alone its ever-stirring
vitality is scientifically apprehended.
I formerly observed that, in the outer senses, as faculties of the soul
subordinate to the fancy, a higher intellectual endowment, as a special
gift of nature, is occasionally found to exist, namely, the sense of
art, or the eye for beautiful forms, and the ear for musical sounds. But
even the lower sense, the more purely organic feeling, is often evolved
to higher degrees of susceptibility, which, however, do not fall within
the sphere of the feeling for art, but form, as it were, a peculiar and
special sense of nature. To this class belong those indescribable
feelings of sympathy and inward attraction--the many vivid presentiments
of a strange foreboding--traces of which may be observed among many
other animals besides man, just as, in the case of musical tones and
emotions, a light note of remote affinity seems to bring the soul of man
in unison with a correspondent nature soul in the higher members of the
brute creation. Numberless are the instances of such forebodings (among
which we must reckon also the significant vision or dream) recorded of
all times, countries, and spheres of life. No doubt, from their strange
nature, and from the manifold difficulties with which man’s mode of
observing and narrating these phenomena perplexes the consideration of
them, it is any thing but easy, in any individual case, to arrive at a
pure result, and to pass a final and decisive sentence. Still, on the
whole, the fact can not well be denied, as, indeed, it is not even
attempted, by any unprejudiced and profound observer of nature in the
present day. But now, if such an immediate feeling of invisible light
and life does freely develop and clearly manifest itself as an
indubitable faculty and a perfectly distinct state of the consciousness,
then assuredly we have herein a new organ of perception and a new
natural sense. Though not, indeed, more infallible than any other of the
senses, it may, nevertheless, be the source of very remarkable
phenomena, which, perhaps, above all others require investigation, in
order that their distinctive character may be precisely and accurately
determined. It is, however, necessary to remember that the latter is not
to be determined by any side-blow of caprice, any more than the electric
phenomena of nature and the atmosphere, when they are actually lowering
there, are to be got rid of by any such expedient.
It is only just and right, and not inconsistent with true human
knowledge, if physical science should commence with the study of man.
Still, if we would contemplate man from the side of nature, it seems the
safer course to endeavor, first of all, to obtain a clear and leading
idea of the whole of his constitution in this respect, rather than to
lose ourselves in the contemplation of the special phenomena of a
particular sphere. Now, with regard to the whole of man’s organization,
the organic body as the third constituent of human existence, I will
merely remark that, just as the triple principle of body, soul, and
spirit is repeated in the special and narrower spheres of the senses,
the instincts, and the passions, and even in the different forms in
which a disordered intellect usually manifests itself, so also it admits
of a further application to the organic body in general. That most
wonderful organization, the marvelous structure of bones and muscles,
the outward organic frame, is, as it were, the body in a narrower sense,
the pre-eminently material constituent of living bodies. The soul of
man--here consequently the organic soul--is in the blood and in the five
or six organs whose functions are first of all to elaborate the blood
and afterward to provide for its circulation--or perhaps by maintaining
a perpetual interchange of the breath and the external air, to keep the
vital flame constantly burning on the hearth of life within. A third
element--and, indeed, the principal one of the three, though only
noticeable in its effects on the brain--exists within the higher senses
and functions--in short, in the whole nervous tissue. But it lies not in
the nervous filaments themselves: anatomy can not detect it, for it is
not visible to the eye. On this account some have called it the æther of
the nerves to indicate its incorporeal nature--incorporeal, _i.e._,
relatively to, and in comparison with, the other two constituents of
man--the blood-soul, and the external frame--as being the spirit of life
in the organic body. Strictly and sharply enough does Holy Writ
distinguish this spiritual body (as it calls it) of man from the body of
the soul, or the organic blood-soul, considering the former, as it were,
the seed of the resurrection, even because at the moment of death this
ethereal body-of-light leaves its terrestrial veil to be in due time
reunited to it after a more glorious fashion. And death itself is even
nothing else than its total departure and painful emancipation from the
organic body, on which the features, one might almost say, the
physiognomy of corruption stamps itself, immediately that the immortal
Psyche, the invisible seed of light and eternity, has put off the
tabernacle of this body.
This internal, invisible body-of-light [_Lichtkorper_] is also the organ
and the center of all the higher and spiritual powers of the human
organization. For it is easily conceivable that a partial projection of
this life of light which is latent in the sound organic body should
produce such phenomena, while its complete projection, or rather total
separation, would have death for its result, or rather would itself be
death. A truly scientific view of nature can easily enter into or allow
the legitimacy of this idea. The true rule, however, and standard for
the right decision of phenomena of this kind can only be found in a
higher region, even because they themselves lie on the extreme limits of
nature and life, and in part also pass beyond them.
We therefore prefer to follow the more slow but sure course of
development pursued by physical science itself, as commenced nearly
twenty-five centuries ago by the Greeks. On the whole it began even
there with the cognition of man--of his diseases and their cure. The
naturalists, indeed, of the present day are in general disposed to
laugh at the ideas of nature which were advanced by the first
philosophers of Greece, and to despise the hypotheses of water, or air,
or fire, as being the essence of all things, which, nevertheless, as the
first beginnings of a clearer contemplation and of a higher view of
nature, greatly recommend themselves by their extreme simplicity. But
however modern observers of nature may be ready to hand these systems
over to fancy as so many purely poetical cosmogonies, yet, on the other
hand, the present masters of medicine, with greater gratitude and fuller
acknowledgment of his merits, reverence Hippocrates as the founder of
their art. For, indeed, as such, and not properly as a science, or at
any rate as an art far more than as a science, was medicine regarded by
its founder and the great masters who came after him. They looked upon
it as the art of the diagnosis and treatment of disease, in which the
unerring tact of a practiced and happy judgment is of primary
importance, and where the rapid and searching glance of genius into the
secret laboratories of life or into the hidden sources of disease is,
and ever will be, the principal and most essential point. The mere
historical acquaintance with the different forms of diseases and their
remedies, with botany, and the anatomy of the human body, with the
number and structure of its organs, forms merely the materials, the
external sphere of medical practice; while the essential qualification
is even this penetrating glance which searches out the inmost secrets of
the bodily temperament. But now those who have been most richly gifted
with this peculiar gift have ever been the last to believe themselves
possessed of a perfect science. And yet, inasmuch as that physical
knowledge which, by attaining to a complete understanding of life, shall
be able to comprehend and explain the mystery of death would alone
deserve the name of the science of nature; inasmuch also as the
searching glance of the true physician arrives the nearest to such a
point, penetrating, as it does, deep into the manifold fluctuation and
struggle between the two, and into the secrets of their conflict, this,
therefore, is perhaps to be considered as the first germ of life for a
future science of nature, which, however as yet undeveloped, has for
more than twenty centuries been slumbering on, hidden, as it were, in
embryo, in the womb of medical art and lore. The physical, geographical,
and astronomical observations of this whole period of gestation, form,
it is true, a rich treasury of valuable materials, but they do not give
us that profound knowledge, of which alone the physician’s penetrating
glance into life and its constitution furnishes the first commencement
and essay, however weak.
With respect to natural science in general, and the possibility of our
attaining to it, the case stands thus:--If nature be a living force--if
the life which reigns within it be in a certain though still very remote
degree akin to the life of man and the human soul--then is a knowledge
of nature easily conceivable, and right well possible (for nothing but
the like, or at least the similar and cognate, can be known by the like)
even though this cognition may still be extremely defective, and at best
can never be more than partial. But if nature be a dead, stony mass, as
many seem to suppose, then would it be wholly inconceivable how this
foreign mass of petrifaction could penetrate into our inmost Ego; then
at least would there seem to be good grounds for the idealistic doubt
whether ultimately this external world be any thing but a mere phantom,
having no existence save in our own thoughts--the outward reflection of
ourselves--the pure creation of our own Me.
The question of innate ideas has been often mooted in philosophy. As,
however, the essential functions and different acts of thought, together
with its several notions, are, properly speaking, nothing but the
natural division of man’s cogitative faculty, it is not on their account
necessary to suppose such a preliminary intercalation of general ideas
into the human mind. And as little necessary is it, in order to explain
the universal belief in the existence of a Deity, to suppose that there
is in the minds of all men an implanted idea of God; for this would lead
to the purely arbitrary hypothesis, of that which is so difficult to
conceive--the pre-existence of the spirit or soul of man. And as no
created beings can have an idea of God, but those to whom He vouchsafes
to communicate it, and to accord a knowledge of His existence, so can He
bestow this privilege the very instant He pleases, without the
intervention of any innate idea expressly for that end. And yet I am
disposed, and not, I think, without reason, to assume that man, as at
present constituted, does possess one, though only one, species of
inborn ideas, viz., an innate idea of death. This, as a false root of
life, and a true mental contagion, produces a dead cogitation, and is
the origin of all dead and dead-born notions. For this idea of death,
whether hereditary or inoculated in the soul, is, as its peculiar but
fundamental error, transferred by the mind of man to every object with
which it comes in contact. And thus, in man’s dead cogitation, the
surrounding world and all nature appears to him a similar lifeless and
inert mass, so long as sitting beneath this shadow of spiritual death,
his mind [_geist_] has not sufficient strength to work its way out of
its dark prison-house into the light. For not at all without higher aid,
and even with it only slowly and tardily, does man discover that all
that is really and naturally dead is within himself, or learn to
recognize it for what it truly is, a something eminently null and
naught. Another species of this false and dead conception of nature
presents itself under the form of multiplicity. In this view nature is
represented as forming something like a vast sandhill, where, apart from
the pile they thus form together and their aggregation in it, the
several grains are supposed to have no connection with each other;
while, however, they are so diligently counted, as if every thing
depended on their right enumeration. But through the sieve of such an
atomistic, which would break up the universe into a number of separate
and absolute individualities, the sand will ever run, however often and
painfully man may strive to reckon or to measure the infinity of these
grains of nature. Mathematical calculation and measuring hold the same
place in physical science that is held in every living language by
conjugating and declining, and other grammatical rules, which, in truth,
are but a species of mathematical formulæ. In learning a foreign and
especially a dead language, these are indispensable and necessary aids,
which greatly promote and facilitate its acquisition; so also
mathematics furnish indispensable helps and a most valuable organon for
the cognition of nature. But with them alone man will never learn to
understand even a word, not to talk of a whole proposition, out of
nature’s strangely-sounding and most difficult hieroglyphics.
Somewhat different is it, when man seeks to understand the true living
geometry in nature herself, _i.e._, attempts to discover the place which
the circle and eclipse (passing from these up to the spheres in their
sidereal orbits), or which the triangle, the square, the hexagon, and so
forth, assume in the scale of its creations--or when, in a similar
spirit, he investigates and ascertains the really dominant rule in the
arithmetic of life; those numbers which the physician observes in the
periodic developments of life, and which, in the fluctuating states of
an abating and heightening malady, enable him, under certain conditions,
to predict the moment of its crisis. Of a still higher kind is that
spiritual, we might almost call it divine chronology, which, in
universal history, marks out definite epochs of the mental development
of the human race, and traces therein the influence of certain grades of
life, or ages of the world, and the alternating phases of disease in
whole communities, and those decisive moments and great critical
emergencies in which God Himself appears as the healing Physician and
Restorer of life. It was, in all probability, in reference to such an
arithmetic, or in some similar sense, that Pythagoras taught that
numbers are, or contain the essence of things. For such an arithmetic of
life and geometry of nature do afford a positive cognition and a real
knowledge. As commonly understood, however, mathematics are nothing more
than a formal science--in other words, they are simply a scientific
organon, rather than a science. But now, if nature be not regarded as
dead, but living, who can doubt that it--or, as we are now speaking of
man’s nearest neighbor--that the earth is akin to man? Was he not formed
out of the dust of the earth, and is he not therefore the son, nay, in
truth, the first-born of the earth?--does he not receive from it food
and nourishment? and when the irrevocable summons goes forth from above,
does he not give back again to its bosom the earthly tabernacle of his
flesh? Do not chemists tell us that the principal constituent of the
purest wheat-corn has a great affinity to the substance of man’s blood?
and does not the blood, moreover, derive one of its ingredients from
iron--the principal among the metals of the earth? And are not gold and
other metallic substances either wholesome medicines or deadly poisons?
And is there not also an inexhaustible store of both in the wonderful
varieties of herbs and plants? Do not invigorating and healing springs
burst from numberless rocks and fissures of the earth? Is not--to speak
only of the heavenly bodies nearest to and immediately connected with
our globe--is not the sun’s heat so specifically different from every
other kind of warmth, the quickener of all that lives and moves, and for
man under a milder clime, as it were, a soft renovating bath? And is not
the other and lesser light--earth’s mighty satellite and companion, the
moon--the cause of all those changes in the weather and atmosphere,
which, from the earliest times, have been acknowledged to be most
serviceable and highly beneficial to agriculture? Is not the great pulse
of the ocean, in its ebb and flow, measured by it, as well as many
periods, of the development of life? And is it not, when its operation
is too powerful or violently exciting, the cause of a peculiar disease
among men? As, therefore, the musical unisons in the melodious songs of
birds, both find and wake a concordant echo in the heart of man, so,
too, in a larger scale, the blood-soul of man, with its living pulsation
and organic sensibility, is most nearly akin to and sympathizes with the
earth and the whole earthly frame. And is not, in all probability, this
sympathetic influence between the earth and man reciprocal? Must not,
for instance, the respiration of nine hundred millions of human beings
have affected the atmosphere? Has not the very air degenerated with the
human race, and like it become corrupt and deteriorated? Are not certain
pestilential diseases propagated by the air alone, being carried in
fixed telluric directions, without material contact or pollution? And
if, in answer to the inference which we would draw from these facts, any
one should sit down to calculate the number of cubic miles in the
atmospheric belt, and argue that the breath and evaporation from ever so
many myriads of human beings would be insufficient to have any effect
thereon, we might easily retort upon him the equally vast reckoning of
the millions of seconds which make up a hundred and more generations,
and by which these respirations must be counted. But, however this may
be, it does appear that the air must, in primitive times, have been far
more pure and balsamic, and more vital and more nutritive, than at
present. For before the Flood men required neither flesh nor wine to
recruit their strength, and yet, in duration of life and bodily vigor,
and above all in energy of will and powers of mind, they far surpassed
the sons of a later age; and it was even by the misuse of these great
gifts and endowments that they brought down the divine vengeance on
their sinful generation. And, lastly, if the earth were wholly without
life, how could it, at the creation of the animals of this planetary
world, have yielded obedience to the behest of the Creator, as it went
forth on the sixth day, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature
after its kind?” Highly important, moreover, as regards the true
estimate of the whole realm of nature as contemplated by the Divine
mind, and deeply significant, is the wide interval which, in the Mosaic
history of the creation, separates the bringing forth of the beasts by
the earth at the command of the Almighty, from the making of man,
whereof it is written, “Let us make man in our own image.”
Physical science having thus sluggishly advanced through a definite
period and number of centuries--having lived through almost two
millenniums in little better than an embryo state--made at last the few
steps of progress that it has yet taken. By a more rapid march of time,
it hastened to suit itself to the riper age of man, and to come forth
itself, as it were, mature, although, in many respects, this is even yet
very far from being the case. The principal of these advances of
physical science is the invention of the compass. For, in the first
place, the phenomenon of magnetism presents a remarkable manifestation
of the universal life of the world, which eludes all mathematical
calculations of magnitude, while the little piece of this wonderful iron
balances by its living agency the whole globe itself. And, in the second
place, the results to which it has led have been no less important and
marvelous. The magnetic index pointed the way to the discovery of the
New World, and to a more perfect acquaintance with the figure of the
earth, and thus, through an enlarged observation of geographical and
astronomical facts, opened out a grander and more extensive view of the
whole planetary system. Of the new world in the other hemisphere, a
trace unquestionably is to be found in antiquity in the legend of the
island of Atlantis. The general description of this island, as equal in
extent to both Asia and Africa together, agrees remarkably with the size
of America. But the fable contains the additional circumstance, that,
having existed in the Western Ocean in very ancient times, it was
subsequently swallowed up by the waves. From this circumstance I am led
to infer, that the legend did not, as is generally supposed, owe its
origin to Phœnician navigators, who, even if it be true that they did
succeed in sailing round Africa, most assuredly never ventured so far
westward. Like so much besides that is equally great and grand, and,
indeed, far grander, the main fact of the legend seems to be derived
from an original tradition from the primeval times, when,
unquestionably, man was far better acquainted with his whole habitation
of this earth than in the days of the infant and imperfect science of
Greece, or even of the more advanced and enlightened antiquity. A vague
traditionary notion of its existence lived on from generation to
generation. But afterward, when even the Phœnician sailors, however
far they penetrated into the wide ocean, were unable to give any precise
information about, or adduce any proof of, the fact, the hypothesis was
advanced, and finally added to the tradition, that the island had been
swallowed up by the sea.
Modern astronomy, at its first rise, was extremely revolting to man’s
feelings, which had become, as it were, habituated to the olden theory
of the world’s shape. The system of Ptolemy, indeed, with its narrow
egotistic conceit of making man the center of the sidereal universe, was
as unsatisfactory as it was absurd, and little was lost when it was
exploded. But, on the other hand, it was startling, and still has a
staggering effect on our minds, to be told, that, when measured by the
mathematical standard of the vast distances and periodic times of the
planetary system, the earth, for which the Almighty has done such
incalculably great things, and on which He has bestowed such high and
precious gifts, is, as it were, but a little and insignificant splinter
in the vast regions of infinite space. A true and profound science of
nature, however, does not allow of the validity of mathematical
magnitude as an exclusive standard of the value of things. Whether in a
greater or less sphere of existence, it sees and discovers in far other
properties the true center of life. If, even in our globe, the living
magnetic pole does not coincide with the true mathematical north pole,
but lies a considerable distance on one side of it, may it not, without
prejudice to modern astronomy, be also the case with the whole planetary
system? The first conceptions of nature are rarely, if ever, free from
mistakes, and oftentimes, together with great truths, contain also great
errors. And while the first fresh impression, the living intuition, ever
recommends itself to the general feeling of mankind, and takes deep root
therein, the notions, on the other hand, which new discoveries of nature
introduce, not unfrequently do violence to the prevalent views as to the
shape and form of the old world. Often, indeed, the former run directly
counter to what we might call the old family feelings of mankind, which,
transmitted through generations from father to son, have become, as it
were, a custom of life, a holy habit. Afterward, however, as the new
scientific discovery is more perfectly developed, it gradually
conciliates the old hereditary and customary feeling of nature. The two
at last fall into friendly relations with each other.
Now, in the article of the stars, the cherished creed of nature,
professed by all ancient peoples, insisted, perhaps, on no one dogma so
earnestly as that there are seven planets. That this deeply-rooted and
habitual feeling of men was not uninfluenced by the general
consideration of the number seven, is only natural to suppose. For not
only does it comprise the three dimensions of time, together with the
four cardinal points of space, but it is also found entering, under a
variety of combinations, into the life, the thought, and history of men.
And in the new astronomy, though the sun and moon have been ejected from
the number of the planets, yet the earth has entered into the list, and
the deficient member of the system having been discovered, we have again
seven planets, as in the olden belief. For it is, to say the least,
highly improbable that any new planetary body will ever be discovered
beyond Uranus,[22] and as for the small bodies which are situate between
Mars and Jupiter, it is pretty generally acknowledged that they are not
properly to be counted as planets, from which they are even
distinguished by their very names by some astronomers.
And as little ground is there to take exception or offense at modern
astronomy, even on that side of it where difficulties were originally
most felt and mooted. For Holy Writ was neither written exclusively nor
designed pre-eminently for astronomers. In these matters, therefore, as
in all others, it speaks the ordinary language which men employ among
themselves in the business of daily life.
Now we know that in the pulse of the organic body its regular beating is
occasionally interrupted by a hurried circulation or a momentary
stoppage. Is it not in the same way possible that the pulsatory
revolutions of the great planetary world do not observe, like a piece of
dead clock-work, a mechanical uniformity, but are liable to many
deviations and irregularities? If, then, a similar stoppage to that
which sometimes occurs in the pulse of man, be here also supposable, as
produced by a superior power and external influence, then in the case of
such an extraordinary interruption, it is a matter of indifference
whether it be said of this wonderful moment that the sun stood still, or
(as seems to be the fact) that the earth was held in check and rested in
its orbit. And, in like manner, for the changing phenomena of the
astronomical day, the common expressions are equally true with the
scientific, and equally significant. The sun’s rise, the morning dawn,
is, for all men, a figure, or, rather, a fact of pregnant meaning, while
the setting sun fills all hearts with a melancholy feeling of
separation. Equally true, however, is it, and in a symbolical sense it
conveys perhaps a still more serious meaning, when we say, in scientific
language, “The earth must go down before the sun can rise;” or, “When
the earth goes up, then is it night, and darkness diffuses itself over
all.” Or if, perhaps, in the new and quickening spring, instead of the
old phraseology, “The sun has returned, has come near to us again,” we
were to say, “The earth, or at least our side of it, is again brought
nearer to the sun,” would it not be as beautiful and significant a
description? And happy, indeed, are those periods of the world wherein,
to speak in a figurative but moral sense, that earth-soul which rules in
the changes of time--the so-called public opinion, has declined toward,
and approached more nearly to, its sun.
It is a remarkable, not to say wonderful, fact, that in ancient times
the Pythagoreans held the same system of the universe which modern
astronomy teaches, though, perhaps, they were not acquainted with the
mathematic calculations of its distances. But still more surprising is
it, that while they were thus perfectly acquainted with the number of
the planets, and even arranged them in the same order that they are
placed by modern astronomers, they admitted into their system two stars
which we have not. One of these, as the sun of the gods
[_Geister-sonne_],[23] they placed high above the visible sun. The
latter, which they named the “counter-earth,” (αντἱχθν) was
placed directly opposite to the real earth. It would seem, therefore,
that they regarded these two bodies as the invisible centers of the
whole sidereal universe, and, as it were, the choir-leaders or _choragi_
of the apparently orderless and scattered host of heaven. Are these two
stars now extinct? or is their light too pure and ethereal to penetrate
our dense and thickened atmosphere; or, like so much besides, was it
little else than a still surviving tradition from the primitive world?
This, however, must ever remain conjectural. As for the fact itself,
that the Pythagoreans did so teach, and understood by these names, not
merely figurative symbols, but real stars, has been placed beyond doubt
by modern investigations into the Pythagorean doctrines. At any rate,
their knowledge of these stars must have been acquired by some other
means than the telescope of modern astronomy, with which, in fact, they
were not acquainted, and nothing but some new observation or phenomenon
in the sidereal heavens can ever throw light on this matter. And who
shall say that even our present astronomical science shall not advance
still further, and that it has not closed too soon, and been in all too
great a haste to sum up its doubtless most elaborate and complicated
calculations?
Thus did the mind of man advance the first step toward the maturity of
physical science, by attaining to a more comprehensive survey of the
mundane system, and a more accurate knowledge of his own habitation, of
this earthly planet. The next step in this sluggish progress was made by
the chemical discoveries of modern times, and especially of the French
chemists. In a merely negative point of view, these have been important,
as establishing the fact that the old elements, water, for instance, and
air, which had long been regarded as simple, are themselves decomposable
into other constituents and aeriform parts. And, indeed, that such great
powers of nature as these are, and must ever remain so long as the
present constitution of the world shall last, could only subsist in the
reciprocal dynamical relation of several conflicting forces, a
profounder glance at nature would of itself have conjectured and
presupposed. But in a positive sense, this second step has carried us
very far toward the understanding of the hieroglyphics of nature. Those
primary elements of things discovered and numbered by that chemical
analysis which has subjected to its experiments almost every form and
species of matter, constitute, as it were, the permanent material
letters and consonants of the natural world around us. On the other
hand, the vowels of human language are represented by the fundamental
facts of the magnetism of the earth, together with the phenomena of
electricity, the decomposition of light, and the chemical chain of the
galvanic pile, in which the inner life of the terrestrial force, and of
the eternally-moving atmosphere, as well as the soul whose pulse beats
therein, finds an utterance, like a voice out of the lowest deep. And
thus, by means of an alphabet of nature, which, however, is still most
imperfect, we may hope to make a beginning, at least, and to decipher
one or two entire words. But modern chemistry has made a more important
advance toward a right understanding of nature as a whole. By analyzing
and decomposing all solid bodies, as well as water itself, into
different forms of a gaseous element, it has thereby destroyed forever
that appearance of rigidity and petrifaction which the corporeal mass of
visible and external nature presents to our observation. Every where we
now meet with living elemental forces, hidden and shut up beneath this
rigid exterior. The proportion of aqueous particles in the air is so
great, that, if suddenly condensed, they would suffice for more than one
flood. And a similar deluge of light would ensue, if all the luminous
sparks which are latent in the darkness were simultaneously set free;
and the whole globe itself would end in flame, were all the fiery
elements that are at present dispersed throughout the world to be at
once disengaged and kindled. The investigation of the salutary bonds
which hold together these elementary forces in due equilibrium,
controlling one by the other, and confining each within its prescribed
limits, does not fall within the scope of our present inquiries, as
neither does the question, whether these bonds be not of a higher kind
than naturalists commonly suppose? More immediately connected with, as
also more important for our general subject, is the result which
chemical analysis has so indubitably established, that in the natural
world every object consists of living forces, and that properly nothing
is rigid and dead, but all replete with hidden life. This colossal
mountain range of petrified mummies which forms nature on the
whole--this pyramid of graves, piled one over the other, is therefore,
it is true, a historical monument of the past--of all the bygone ages
of the world in the advancing development of death; but nevertheless,
there is therein a latent vitality. Beneath the vast tombstone of the
visible world there slumbers a soul, not wholly alien, but more than
half akin to our own. This planetary and sensible world, and the
earth-soul imprisoned therein, is only apparently dead. Nature does but
sleep, and will, perhaps, ere long awake again. Sleep generally is, if
not the essence, yet, at least, an essential signature and
characteristic of nature. Every natural object partakes of it more or
less. Not the animals only, but the very plants sleep; while in the
vicissitudes of the seasons, and of their influences on the productive
surface of the earth, and, in truth, on the whole planet, a perpetual
alternation is perceptible between an awakening of life and a state of
slumbering repose. Whatever, consequently, partakes, and requires the
refreshment of sleep, belongs, even on that account, to nature.
Painters, indeed, have given us pictures of sleeping angels or genii;
but the pure spirits sleep not, and stand, in truth, in no need of such
rest, and their activity is not subject to this necessity of alternate
repose.
The comparison of a sentence in the Mosaic history of the creation, with
a passage in the Hindoo cosmogony, somewhat similar in kind, but most
different in the application, will serve, perhaps, to place this fact in
the clearest light. In the former it is said, “God rested on the seventh
day.” Now, in this expression there is nothing to startle us. In
explaining it, there is no need to have recourse to a figurative
interpretation. It does not allude to God’s inmost nature (which admits
not of such alternation of states or need of rest), but simply to His
external operations. For in every case where an operation of the Deity
takes place, whether in history or nature, an alternation between the
first divine impulse, and a subsequent period of repose, is not only
conceivable but actually noticeable. For the divine impulse or hand is,
as it were, withdrawn, in order that this first impulse of the Creator
may fully expand itself, and that the creature adopting it, may carry it
out and develop his own energies in accordance therewith. But instead of
this correct statement, we have, in the Hindoo cosmogony, that “Brahma
sleeps.” While he thus slumbers, the whole creation, with its worlds and
mundane developments, is said to collapse into naught. Here, then, a
single word hurries us from the sure ground of truth and divine
revelation into the shifting domain of mythology. Of Him indeed, who is
higher than the angels and created spirits, it is no doubt assumed
throughout the New Testament that, while on earth, He slept like other
men. Once, too, it is expressly stated, that during a great storm, while
His disciples were filled with alarm, He was asleep in the hinder part
of the ship; but that when He awoke the winds ceased. But here, also,
the case is different. While implying many a great object and
instructive lesson besides, this passage, like several others, seems
designed to prove that our Lord’s body was no mere phantom; but that He
took upon Him a real human form, and was, in truth, a man who stood in
need of sleep. And from this we may infer, that sleep is so
indispensable a condition of natural existence, that even God Himself,
as soon as He condescended to enter its limits by taking upon Him a
human body, became subject to nature’s essential law of sleep.
The important part which sleep plays, not only in nature, but also in
man, her first-born son, appears from the earliest event that is
recorded of his history, even in Paradise. God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon Adam, and out of his opened side took of his vital substance
to invest it with a bodily veil and shape, and to present it before him
on his awaking as the gentle helpmeet of his existence. Extremely
significant also is the difference in the accounts of man’s and of
woman’s material formation. Man is formed of the dust of the earth, and
therefore shortly after invested with the dominion of the whole earthly
globe as the deputy and vicegerent of Him from whom cometh all lordship
and authority. But woman is taken and created out of the bosom or heart
of man. Would human wit have ever invented, or even conceived the
possibility of this great marvel of creative omnipotence?
This was in Paradise--but with the loss of it man was deprived, in a
great manner, of those higher powers of life and those secrets of nature
which he had previously possessed and understood. For even in the body
of his earthly tabernacle, which had fallen a prey to death, he had
become deteriorated, and his organic constitution, as is expressly
intimated, fell considerably lower in the scale of sensible existence,
and sunk nearer to the level of the brute creation. On this account the
cherubic sentinels, with the flaming sword, were placed at the gate of
Paradise, that man might not stretch forth his hand to seize again the
rights and privileges which he had formerly enjoyed. For now they would
only have led to more mischievous abuse and deeper corruption. But since
then, many great days of creation have come and gone. Again has the
great relation between God and man been restored, and that also between
man and the sensible world with the spirits and forces that rule
therein, has changed and become new. And now that the beginning is made,
and the foundation laid for the Redemption of the world, no man, no one
at least who will loyally join the banner of the Redeemer, is forbidden,
but every one has freely offered to him the divine, flaming, two-edged
sword of the Spirit--or of the Word, and of the thoughts of the heart
united to Him, enlightened by Him, and emanating from Him. This fact of
itself furnishes at once the answer to the question concerning the
secrets of nature, whether, since they are no longer to be kept close
from man, impure and wicked hands may drag them to the light, or whether
it be not better that they should be touched by the holy and
conscientious alone, and faithfully guarded with a pious reserve and
religious delicacy.
And here the very context suggests naturally the consideration of the
last of the three steps which, following the course marked out for it by
God, the human mind has at last made in very modern times toward a true
physical science, and a right understanding of the most inmost secrets
of nature. It consists in a closer observation and a commencing
recognition of a sacred thread of ensouled life--of an internal
soul-like link which holds together the whole frame of nature. The thing
and force itself are as old as the world and every sphere of
existence--all the leaves of tradition and history are full of its
manifestations and effects. But the methodical observation and treatment
of these phenomena (in which alone the true scientific character
consists) dates its commencement within little more than half a century
ago. To speak, therefore, agreeably to the measure of time in the slow
development of science, it is of yesterday or the day before; and it is
even on this account also that I have been constrained to count this
third and last advance toward a higher science of nature, as nothing
more than a half-step. For it is only a beginning which as yet has
gained no firm footing in the minds of men, and, moreover, besides the
right and direct road, it has already opened many by-paths of possible
error. This only direct road, that higher standard of correct judgment
which at the very commencement we alluded to as the guiding rule in
these matters, must be sought by philosophy in that divine sword of the
Spirit which pierces even to the marrow of life, dividing soul and
spirit, and which also is a discerner of spirits. But, if another
standard and a higher tribunal is to be set up, then I must leave it to
others who, perhaps, know more about the matter than I do, and are
better qualified to decide upon it. This spiritual warfare, at any rate,
can not be much longer eluded or avoided. O that men would take therein
Holy Writ exclusively for their guide! For it, indeed, regards the whole
of life, and every important moment of it, as a conflict with invisible
powers; as also it tacitly implies, or expressly intimates that the
whole sensible world is to be looked upon as nothing else than an almost
transparent, and, at all events, a very perishable veil of the spiritual
world. To the leader of the rebel spirits the Bible ascribes so great an
influence in creation, that it calls him the prince, nay, even the god
of this world--the ruler of its principalities and powers. And in order
that this might not be taken in a mere figurative sense, and be
understood only of a race of men morally corrupt and depraved, these
spiritual potentates are in other places expressly called the elementary
powers of nature--powers of the air, which in this dark planetary world
of ours is compounded of light and darkness, and ever struggling between
life and death. The true key and explanation of the whole may, however,
lie in the simple sentence--“Death came into the world by sin.” As,
then, by the death of the first man, who was not created for, nor
originally designed for death, death has passed upon the whole human
race; so by the earlier fall of him, who had been the first and most
glorious of created spirits, death passed upon the universe--that
eternal death whose fire is unquenchable. Hence it is written: “Darkness
was on the face of the deep, and the earth”--as the mere grave of that
eternal death--“was without form and void;” but the “spirit of God moved
on the face of the waters,” and therein lay the first germ of life for
the new creation. We here see the difference between all heathen systems
of natural philosophy and a divine knowledge of nature, _i.e._, one
acquired in and by God, and also the key for a right understanding of
the latter.
If now the dynamic play of the living forces of nature, which is
unquestionably a living entity, and has a life in itself though not
indeed of and from itself--if this dynamical alternation between life
and death be regarded as a simple fact, and man is content to rest
there, without seeking to explain it by a higher principle, then will he
have ever the self-same One--an all-producing, all-absorbing, ruminating
monster, whether we express it poetically, as in mythology, or in the
scientific formularies of physiology. Quite different is it, however, if
this great pyramid has been built upon the foundation of eternal death.
Then is the whole creature of this earthly planet and sensible world
merely a commencing life which, so long as the pyramid is still
unfinished and incomplete, is, in parts, perpetually relapsing into
death--into actual death, or at least into diseases and fractures of
various kinds, which are only so many _principia_ or germs of death.
Then is nature itself nothing less than the ladder of resurrection,
which, step by step, leads upward, or, rather, is carried from the abyss
of eternal death up to the apex of light in the heavenly illumination.
For, understanding it in this sense, it is impossible to think of nature
without remembering at the same time the divine hand which has built
this pyramid, and which, along this ladder, brings life out of death.
This view, moreover, accounts for the fact, that a state of slumber is
essential to nature, and furnishes an explanation why that
perpetually-recurring collapse into sleep, which to us appears so near
akin to death, should be nature’s proper character. And just as the
consuming fire of death appears in the more highly-organized beings to
be somewhat subdued and restrained--mitigated or exalted into the
quickening warmth of life--so also sleep is only the more than
half-enlightened brother of death. And indeed as such, and the lovely
messenger of hope to immortal spirits, was he ever regarded and
described by the ancients; but that which for them was little more than
a beautiful image of poetry is for us the profoundest of truths.
An exalted view and understanding of nature consists, then, in its being
contemplated not merely as a dynamical play of reciprocal forces, but
historically in its course of development, as a commencing life,
perpetually relapsing into death, ever disposed to sleep, and only
painfully raising itself, or, rather, raised and lovingly guided through
all the intermediate grades into the light. But beneath the huge
tombstone of outward nature there sleeps a soul, not wholly alien, but
half akin to ourselves--which is distracted between the troubled and
painful reminiscence of eternal death, out of which it issued, and the
flowers of light which are scattered here and there on this dark earth,
as so many lovely suggesters of a heavenly hope. For this earthly
nature, as Holy Writ testifies,[24] is, indeed, subject to nullity, yet,
without its will, and without its fault: and consequently in hope of Him
who has so subjected it, it looks forward in the expectation that it
shall one day be free, and have a part in the general resurrection and
consummate revelation of God’s glory, before which both nature and death
shall stand amazed--and for this last day of a new creation it sighs
anxiously, and yearns with the profoundest longing.