_The Eternal Source of Phenomena._
We have seen that before men could arrive at the idea of God, before
out of the old crude and fragmentary polytheisms there could be
developed a pure and coherent theism, it was necessary that physical
generalization should have advanced far enough to enable them, however
imperfectly, to reason about the universe as a whole. It was a faint
glimpse of the unity of Nature that first led men to the conception
of the unity of God, and as their knowledge of the phenomenal fact
becomes clearer, so must their grasp upon the noumenal truth behind it
become firmer. Now the whole tendency of modern science is to impress
upon us ever more forcibly the truth that the entire knowable universe
is an immense unit, animated throughout all its parts by a single
principle of life. This conclusion, which was long ago borne in upon
the minds of prophetic thinkers, like Spinoza and Goethe, through
their keen appreciation of the significance of the physical harmonies
known to them, has during the last fifty years received something like
a demonstration in detail. It is since Goethe's death, for example,
that it has been proved that the Newtonian law of gravitation extends
to the bodies which used to be called fixed stars. That such was the
case was already much more than probable, but so lately as 1835 there
were to be found writers on science, such as Comte, who denied that
it could ever be proved. But a still more impressive illustration
of the unity of Nature is furnished by the luminiferous ether, when
considered in connection with the discovery of the correlation of
forces. The fathomless abysses of space can no longer be talked of as
empty; they are filled with a wonderful substance, unlike any of the
forms of matter which we can weigh and measure. A cosmic jelly almost
infinitely hard and elastic, it offers at the same time no appreciable
resistance to the movements of the heavenly bodies. It is so sensitive
that a shock in any part of it causes a "tremour which is felt on
the surface of countless worlds." Radiating in every direction, from
millions of centric points, run shivers of undulation manifested in
endless metamorphosis as heat, or light, or actinism, as magnetism or
electricity. Crossing one another in every imaginable way, as if all
space were crowded with a mesh-work of nerve-threads, these motions
go on forever in a harmony that nothing disturbs. Thus every part of
the universe shares in the life of all the other parts, as when in the
solar atmosphere, pulsating at its temperature of a million degrees
Fahrenheit, a slight breeze instantly sways the needles in every
compass-box on the face of the earth.
Still further striking confirmation is found in the marvellous
disclosures of spectrum analysis. To whatever part of the heavens we
turn the telescope, armed with this new addition to our senses, we find
the same chemical elements with which the present century has made us
familiar upon the surface of the earth. From the distant worlds of
Arcturus and the Pleiades, whence the swift ray of light takes many
years to reach us, it brings the story of the hydrogen and oxygen, the
vapour of iron or sodium, which set it in motion. Thus in all parts
of the universe that have fallen within our ken we find a unity of
chemical composition. Nebulæ, stars, and planets are all made of the
same materials, and on every side we behold them in different stages
of development, worlds in the making: here an irregular nebula such as
our solar system once was, there a nebula whose rotation has at length
wrought it into spheroidal form; here and there stars of varied colours
marking different eras in chemical evolution; now planets still partly
incandescent like Saturn and Jupiter, then planets like Mars and the
earth, with cool atmospheres and solid continents and vast oceans of
water; and lastly such bodies as the moon, vapourless, rigid, and cold
in death.
Still nearer do we come toward realizing the unity of Nature when we
recollect that the law of evolution is not only the same for all these
various worlds, but is also the same throughout all other orders of
phenomena. Not only in the development of cosmical bodies, including
the earth, but also in the development of life upon the earth's surface
and in the special development of those complex manifestations of life
known as human societies, the most general and fundamental features of
the process are the same, so that it has been found possible to express
them in a single universal formula. And what is most striking of all,
this notable formula, under which Herbert Spencer has succeeded in
generalizing the phenomena of universal evolution, was derived from
the formula under which Von Baer in 1829 first generalized the mode of
development of organisms from their embryos. That a law of evolution
first partially detected among the phenomena of the organic world
should thereafter not only be found applicable to all other orders of
phenomena, but should find in this application its first complete and
coherent statement, is a fact of wondrous and startling significance.
It means that the universe as a whole is thrilling in every fibre with
Life,--not, indeed, life in the usual restricted sense, but life in
a general sense. The distinction, once deemed absolute, between the
living and the not-living is converted into a relative distinction; and
Life as manifested in the organism is seen to be only a specialized
form of the Universal Life.
The conception of matter as dead or inert belongs, indeed, to an order
of thought that modern knowledge has entirely outgrown. If the study
of physics has taught us anything, it is that nowhere in Nature is
inertness or quiescence to be found. All is quivering with energy.
From particle to particle without cessation the movement passes on,
reappearing from moment to moment under myriad Protean forms, while
the rearrangements of particles incidental to the movement constitute
the qualitative differences among things. Now in the language of
physics all motions of matter are manifestations of force, to which
we can assign neither beginning nor end. Matter is indestructible,
motion is continuous, and beneath both these universal truths lies
the fundamental truth that force is persistent. The farthest reach in
science that has ever been made was made when it was proved by Herbert
Spencer that the law of universal evolution is a necessary consequence
of the persistence of force. It has shown us that all the myriad
phenomena of the universe, all its weird and subtle changes, in all
their minuteness from moment to moment, in all their vastness from age
to age, are the manifestations of a single animating principle that is
both infinite and eternal.
By what name, then, shall we call this animating principle of the
universe, this eternal source of phenomena? Using the ordinary language
of physics, we have just been calling it Force, but such a term in no
wise enlightens us. Taken by itself it is meaningless; it acquires
its meaning only from the relations in which it is used. It is a mere
symbol, like the algebraic expression which stands for a curve. Of
what, then, is it the symbol?
The words which we use are so enwrapped in atmospheres of subtle
associations that they are liable to sway the direction of our thoughts
in ways of which we are often unconscious. It is highly desirable
that physics should have a word as thoroughly abstract, as utterly
emptied of all connotations of personality, as possible, so that it
may be used like a mathematical symbol. Such a word is Force. But what
we are now dealing with is by no means a scientific abstraction. It
is the most concrete and solid of realities, the one Reality which
underlies all appearances, and from the presence of which we can never
escape. Suppose, then, that we translate our abstract terminology into
something that is more concrete. Instead of the force which persists,
let us speak of the Power which is always and everywhere manifested
in phenomena. Our question, then, becomes, What is this infinite and
eternal Power like? What kind of language shall we use in describing
it? Can we regard it as in any wise "material," or can we speak of its
universal and ceaseless activity as in any wise the working of a "blind
necessity"? For here, at length, we have penetrated to the innermost
kernel of the problem; and upon the answer must depend our mental
attitude toward the mystery of existence.
The answer is that we cannot regard the infinite and eternal Power as
in any wise "material," nor can we attribute its workings to "blind
necessity." The eternal source of phenomena is the source of what we
see and hear and touch; it is the source of what we call matter, but
it cannot itself be material. Matter is but the generalized name we
give to those modifications which we refer immediately to an unknown
something outside of ourselves. It was long ago shown that all the
qualities of matter are what the mind makes them, and have no existence
as such apart from the mind. In the deepest sense all that we really
know is mind, and as Clifford would say, what we call the material
universe is simply an imperfect picture in our minds of a real universe
of mind-stuff.[22] Our own mind we know directly; our neighbour's mind
we know by inference; that which is external to both is a Power hidden
from sense, which causes states of consciousness that are similar
in both. Such states of consciousness we call material qualities,
and matter is nothing but the sum of such qualities. To speak of the
hidden Power itself as "material" is therefore not merely to state
what is untrue,--it is to talk nonsense. We are bound to conceive
of the Eternal Reality in terms of the only reality that we know,
or else refrain from conceiving it under any form whatever. But the
latter alternative is clearly impossible.[23] We might as well try to
escape from the air in which we breathe as to expel from consciousness
the Power which is manifested throughout what we call the material
universe. But the only conclusion we can consistently hold is that this
is the very same power "which in ourselves wells up under the form of
consciousness."
In the nature-worship of primitive men, beneath all the crudities of
thought by which it was overlaid and obscured, there was thus after
all an essential germ of truth which modern philosophy is constrained
to recognize and reiterate. As the unity of Nature has come to be
demonstrated, innumerable finite powers, once conceived as psychical
and deified, have been generalized into a single infinite Power that
is still thought of as psychical. From the crudest polytheism we have
thus, by a slow evolution, arrived at pure monotheism,--the recognition
of the eternal God indwelling in the universe, in whom we live and move
and have our being.
But in thus conceiving of God as psychical, as a Being with whom the
human soul in the deepest sense owns kinship, we must beware of too
carelessly ascribing to Him those specialized psychical attributes
characteristic of humanity, which one and all imply limitation and
weakness. We must not forget the warning of the prophet Isaiah: "My
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith
the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Omniscience, for example, has been ascribed to God in every system of
theism; yet the psychical nature to which all events, past, present,
and future, can be always simultaneously present is clearly as far
removed from the limited and serial psychical nature of Man as the
heavens are higher than the earth. We are not so presumptuous,
therefore, as to attempt, with some theologians of the anthropomorphic
school, to inquire minutely into the character of the divine decrees
and purposes. But our task would be ill-performed were nothing more
to be said about that craving after a final cause which we have seen
to be an essential element in Man's religious nature. It remains to
be shown that there is a reasonableness in the universe, that in the
orderly sequence of events there is a meaning which appeals to our
human intelligence. Without adopting Paley's method, which has been
proved inadequate, we may nevertheless boldly aim at an object like
that at which Paley aimed. Caution is needed, since we are dealing with
a symbolic conception as to which the very point in question is whether
there is any reality that answers to it. The problem is a hard one, but
here we suddenly get powerful help from the doctrine of evolution, and
especially from that part of it known as the Darwinian theory.