reasonable, on a scientific basis, to admit of the existence of another
universe, although it remains unseen to us. One can not 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 called THE
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 about 1/39000th of an inch, that of violet 1/57500th 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 16-1/2 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 27-1/2 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 16-1/2 and 40,000, there is no room to doubt,
as there exist ears 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 contain 1/2000 of a grain (3/400 of 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 earth
Unseen, 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 idea in 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 a spiritual
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, that _matter_, 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. You say, 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 aware of 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:
Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
Numbers enclosed in {brackets} are subscripted in the original text.
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.
Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
paragraph break.
The following misprints have been addressed:
"Hæckel" standardized to "Haeckel" (page 57)
missing "the" added (page 91)
"paleontology" standardized to "palæontology" (page 108)
"cerebelbellum" corrected to "cerebellum" (page 113)
Some quotation marks in the original are not paired. Obvious errors have
been silently closed, while those requiring interpretation have been
left open.
Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.