experiences what was not already in them, Mr. Spencer could make, I
think, but one answer, to wit: that while the operations of the mind are
generally reliable, and while there has been an element in human
experience which seemed to warrant conclusions derived from them,
nevertheless, mankind has egregiously erred in thinking that it had the
power to build up a valid content to Religion, since the very nature of
Religion is such, that the mental operations which are reliable in the
realm of Science cannot be so in the realm of Religion. To answer this,
we must consider the argument for conceivability as the touchstone which
is to separate the "Knowable" from the "Unknowable." Corresponding to
small objects, a piece of rock for example, where the sides, top, and
bottom can be considered as practically all present in consciousness at
once, and large ones, like the earth, where they cannot, our author
divides conceptions into complete and symbolic. Great magnitudes and
classes of objects also produce symbolic conceptions which, while
indispensable to reasoning, often lead us into error. "We habitually
mistake our symbolic conceptions for real ones." The former "are
legitimate, provided that by some cumulative or indirect process of
thought, or by the fulfilment of predictions based upon them, we can
assure ourselves that they stand for actualities," otherwise "they are
altogether vicious and illusive" and "illegitimate" and here belong
religious ideas.
The foregoing is applied by Mr. Spencer in his argument relative to the
origin of the Universe respecting which, he asserts that "three verbally
intelligible suppositions may be made": (1) that it is self-existent,
(2) that it was self-created, (3) that it was created by an external
agency. "Which of these suppositions is most credible it is not needful
here to enquire. The deeper question, into which this finally merges,
is, whether any one of these is even conceivable in the true sense of
the word." He shows that, since the mind refuses to accept the
transformation of absolute vacuity into the existent, the theory of
self-creation forces us back to a potential Universe whose self-creation
was transition to an actual Universe, and that then, we must explain the
existence of the potential Universe and that, similarly, creation by an
external agency demands that we account for the genesis of the Creator,
so that both of these theories involve the self-existence of a
something. Therefore, I shall analyze his presentation of the first
theory only. "Self-existence necessarily means existence without a
beginning; and to form a conception of self-existence is to form a
conception of existence without a beginning. Now by no mental effort can
we do this. To conceive existence through infinite past-time, implies
the conception of infinite past-time, which is an impossibility. To this
let us add, that even were self-existence conceivable, it would not in
any sense be an explanation of the Universe.... It is not a question of
probability, or credibility, but of conceivability."
In making conceivability the supreme test as to what is knowable, Mr.
Spencer sets up a criterion which he himself violates. If it can be
shown that he places at the very foundation of Science a postulate or,
what is generally conceded to be a demonstrated truth, which, equally
with the conception of the Universe as self-existent, involves the
conception of infinite past-time, it is evident that we shall have
broken down the fundamental distinguishing characteristic which
separates his "Knowable" from his "Unknowable," and thus leave Science
and Religion standing upon the same level of validity in their relation
to the human mind. In the second part of "First Principles," which
treats of the "Knowable," Mr. Spencer says (p. 180): "The
Indestructibility of Matter ... is a proposition on the truth of which
depends the possibility of exact Science. Could it be shown, or could it
with any rationality be even supposed, that Matter, either in its
aggregates or in its units, ever became non-existent, there would be
need either to ascertain under what conditions it became non-existent,
or else to confess that Science and Philosophy are impossible. For if,
instead of having to deal with fixed quantities and weights, we had to
deal with quantities and weights which were apt, wholly or in part, to
be annihilated, there would be introduced an incalculable element, fatal
to all positive conclusions" (p. 172). Considering that in times past
men have believed in the creation of Matter out of nothing and in its
annihilation, he points out that it is to quantitative Chemistry that we
owe the empirical basis for our present belief.
Next he inquires "whether we have any higher warrant for this
fundamental belief than the warrant of conscious induction," and writes
as follows of logical necessity (pp. 172-179): "The consciousness of
logical necessity, is the consciousness that a certain conclusion is
implicitly contained in certain premises explicitly stated. If,
contrasting a young child and an adult, we see that this consciousness
of logical necessity, absent from the one is present in the other, we
are taught that there is a _growing up_ to the recognition of certain
necessary truths, merely by the unfolding of the inherited intellectual
forms and faculties. To state the case more specifically:--before a
truth can be known as necessary, two conditions must be fulfilled. There
must be a mental structure capable of grasping the terms of the
proposition and the relation alleged between them; and there must be
such definite and deliberate mental representation of these terms as
makes possible a clear consciousness of this relation.... Along with
acquirement of more complex faculty and more vivid imagination, there
comes a power of perceiving to be necessary truths, what were before not
recognized as truths at all.... All this which holds of logical and
mathematical truths, holds, with change of terms, of physical truths.
There are necessary truths in Physics for the apprehension of which,
also, a developed and disciplined intelligence is required; and before
such intelligence arises, not only may there be failure to apprehend the
necessity of them, but there may be vague beliefs in their
contraries.... But though many are incapable of grasping physical
axioms, it no more follows that physical axioms are not knowable _à
priori_ by a developed intelligence, than it follows that logical
relations are not necessary, because undeveloped intellects cannot
perceive their necessity.
"The terms '_à priori_ truth' and 'necessary truth' ... are to be
interpreted," he continues, "not in the old sense, as implying
cognitions wholly independent of experiences, but as implying cognitions
that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of experiences,
received partly by the individual, but mainly by all ancestral
individuals whose nervous systems he inherits. But when during mental
evolution, the vague ideas arising in a nervous structure imperfectly
organized, are replaced by clear ideas arising in a definite nervous
structure; this definite structure, molded by experience into
correspondence with external phenomena, makes necessary in thought the
relations answering to absolute uniformities in things. Hence, among
others, the conception of the Indestructibility of Matter.... Our
inability to conceive Matter becoming non-existent, is immediately
consequent upon the nature of thought.... It must be added, that no
experimental verification of the truth that Matter is indestructible, is
possible without a tacit assumption of it. For all such verification
implies weighing, and weighing implies that the matter forming the
weight remains the same. In other words, the proof that certain matter
dealt with in certain ways is unchanged in quantity, depends on the
assumption that other matter otherwise dealt with is unchanged in
quantity."
In answer to the above it can be said:--
First. The current explanation of the existence of Matter is that it was
created by an external agency. Mr. Spencer's lucid statement of the way
in which Matter has been proved indestructible does not go far enough.
Where he stops, logic might justly pronounce the whole procedure a
fallacious one, a begging of the whole question at issue. The binding
force of the whole argument rests upon a rational principle here
overlooked by Mr. Spencer, the principle of sufficient cause. The
chemist in making the experiment found that certain substances
counterbalanced a given weight; after combustion, the products
counterbalanced the same weight. If the weight did not change during the
experiment, then no matter had been destroyed. The weight is believed
not to have changed, because it existed under ordinary and quiescent
conditions: which, in view of past race experience, rendered it
extremely improbable that any force sufficient to vitiate the result had
come into play during the experiment. _The absence of a sufficient cause
to change the weight_, is, then, the critical point of the argument, and
the perfect trust of the mind in the principle of sufficient cause
forces us to the conclusion that Matter is indestructible.
What has really been accomplished, however, by the experiment? I do not
object to the statement that Matter is indestructible, but the meaning
of this explicitly stated, is that in the light of the present knowledge
of the race, we have experimented with Matter under certain extreme
conditions--some chemical changes seeming, at first glance, to
annihilate it--and have not been able to destroy it, therefore, Matter
is indestructible. While this is true to an extent which preserves the
integrity of the foundation for _our_ Science and _our_ Philosophy, it
is at the same time consistent with the hypothesis that a Being
surpassing man in intelligence and power, may be able to convert Matter
into a not-matter--from the standpoint of present definitions of Matter
and Space--quantitatively correlated with it, or _vice versa_; and this
statement of the case harmonizes Science and Religion. Now, what from
the point of view of Science Mr. Spencer accepts as indestructibility,
is identical with what Religion means when it affirms self-existence,
and as he has demonstrated to his own satisfaction that self-existence
in the abstract is an illegitimate conception, a conception of what by
its very nature is unknowable, because it involves the impossible
conception of infinite past-time, he is logically bound by accepting one
horn of the dilemma, to admit the conception of self-existence into the
realm of the Knowable, or by choosing the other, to transfer his
"Indestructibility," his "possibility of exact Science" into the realm
of the Unknowable! In either event, we place an ultimate religious idea
and a scientific conception whose denial he admits to be the
annihilation of exact Science, upon the same footing, and so reduce the
distinguishing characteristic which he has set up to differentiate the
Knowable from the Unknowable, to zero.
Second. We come now to the statement of some of the consequences which
follow from Mr. Spencer's view--already explained--as to how the higher
warrant, by which we know the Indestructibility of Matter to be an
axiom, a self-evident truth, originated. In his chapter upon "Ultimate
Scientific Ideas" he says that Space and Time are "wholly
incomprehensible," and that "Matter ... in its ultimate nature, is as
absolutely incomprehensible as Space and Time." He affirms, as pointed
out, that no experimental verification is possible without assuming what
we set out to prove. If the chemical balance cannot demonstrate this
truth, how, then, can we know it? It is, we are told, an _à priori_ or
necessary truth which arises in our consciousness through the
"cognitions that have been rendered organic by immense accumulations of
experiences, received partly by the individual, but mainly by all
ancestral individuals whose nervous systems" we inherit. This is Mr.
Spencer's answer. This commits us to the absurdity, that the truth of
the doctrine of the Indestructibility of Matter has come to be accepted
as axiomatic by the repetition of cognitions of an inconceivable
"absolute uniformity" of things, by an indefinite series of ancestors,
in the face of the fact that the present development of Science does not
_now_ permit us, with the aid of all its apparatus, to receive a single
logically valid cognition from the same phenomenal world which supplied
all the others; _ergo_, add together a sufficient number of cognitions
of the inconceivable, and you arrive at an axiomatic truth! To lift a
ton weight, apply a vast number of forces of one ounce intensity, acting
_successively_ in time, and the thing is done!
Mr. Spencer cannot point out the characteristics which separate those
inconceivable things and qualities which may legitimately furnish the
raw material for the development of axioms, from those which cannot,
since this would at once remove them to the category of the conceivable,
and he cannot exhaustively catalogue the axioms, since the process of
evolution which he puts forth as the sole and sufficient explanation of
their origin and growth is still going on. We therefore see that we are
justified in saying that conceivability is worthless as a test as to
whether an object of thought lies within the domain of the Knowable or
Unknowable. Further, should a theologian say to Mr. Spencer "To me, the
existence of God and his Infinite Love, Wisdom, and Power rank as
axioms," I do not see how, consistently with the above, he could deny
that these truths were valid to the theologian, even if they were not so
to his own mind. How completely we have placed Religion and Science upon
the same level is evident from our author's statement that "a religious
creed is definable as a theory of original causation" and from the fact
that a self-existent Universe is one of the three possible hypotheses
which he mentions in his argument.
Space forbids the criticism of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the relativity
of knowledge and of the speculations concerning the Infinite and
Absolute based upon the writings of Hamilton and Mansel. I have been
restricted, also, to the negative side of the question, but so far as
inconceivability enters as a factor into the argument against Religion,
I contend that it has broken down; that so far as that element affects
the problem, Religion has as high credentials as Science.
THE BETTER PART.
BY WILLIAM ALLEN DROMGOOLE.
Some barks there are that drift dreamily down stream, ever near to the
shore where the waters are shallow. Some catch the current and go
bounding on with sweep and swirl until the river, placid at last, slips
into the tideless Everlasting. Some, alas! commanded by iron-hearted
Fate, are headed _up_ stream to fight--who dares call it Folly's
battle?--against the current which yields only to the invincible will
and the tireless arm. They lie who swear that life turns on mere
accident. There are no accidents in fate. The end is but a gathering of
the means; the means but byways to the end; and at the last fate is
master still, and we its victims are, as was _she_, my Claudia.
I am an old woman, childless and loveless; I know what it is to stand
alone with life's hollow corpses,--corpses of youth, and love, and hope.
Perhaps this is why my heart turned to her in her sweet youth and
guileless innocence. I used to fancy, when I saw her, a child under the
old-fashioned locust's shade that fell about her father's modest place,
that she was unlike other children. She had a thoughtful face--not
beautiful, but soulful. I thank God now that the child was spared that
curse. Fate set snares enough without that deadliest one of beauty. Yet
she had soul; her eyes betrayed its strength and mirrored its deep
passion,--that mightiest, holiest passion which men call _genius_. Her
genius merely budded; fate set its heel against the plant and crushed
it.
I knew her from her birth; knew her strong-hearted mother, and her
gentle father, who slipped the noose of life when Claudia was a tiny
thing, too young to more than lisp his name. Yet, with his last breath
he blessed her, and blessed the man into whose arms he placed her, and
left her to his care.
"You have said you owe me something," said the dying man; "if so, pay it
to my child, my girl-babe, in fatherly advice and guidance."
That man had been a felon and would have met a felon's doom but for the
friend whose child had been confided to his guidance. He had saved him
by silence and by loans which had beggared him in lending. He was a
strong man, and left his daughter something of his strength for
heritage, and that was all. But from her mother, her great-souled
mother, the child received enough of courage, and of hope, and faith,
and energy, to make her life a _sure_ thing at all events.
I lost her 'twixt the years of girl and womanhood, for both of us were
poor, and I took such scanty living here and there as offered. But one
day she found me out, and begged me to go with her to her old home under
the locust trees. All were dead but her; she was alone; needed me for
protection, and I, she argued, needed part of the old roof, too large
for one small head.
"There's a mortgage on it, dear," she told me, "but I am young and
strong, and have some education and some little energy; and,--" she
laughed, "the note is held by that old boy-friend of my father who
promised to look out for me, you know. So I have no fears of being
turned out homeless, Gertie."
So I went, and tried to be to her a friend. Instead, I was her
lover--her worshipper. Her soul, as it opened to me day after day,
expanding under the _visé_ of poverty, took on such strength, such
grandeur, that I almost stood in awe of her. She was so young, too, yet
strong--strong as God, I used to think--and full of hope, and courage,
and ambition. Ambition! that isn't a word often applied to women; yet I
say Claudia was ambitious. I upbraided her one day for this. She winced,
and came and knelt down at my feet, her face upon her hands, her arms
upon my knees, her sweet soul seeking mine through her eyes.
"Gertie," said she, "I wonder why God made me a woman and fixed no place
for me in all the many niches of creation. There is no room for such
women as I am; women with bodies moulded for womanhood, and souls
measured for man's burdens."
The words had a solemn sound--a solemn meaning likewise. I had no answer
for such awesome words, and so the child talked on.
"I had a mother once," she said, "who loved me, and who unfitted me--God
rest her sainted memory--for my battle with adversity. Nay, dear, don't
look so shocked. I say that she unfitted me by instilling into my heart
her own great grandeur, and her own grand courage. There is no room for
such, I tell you. As a frail female weakling the slums would have
cradled me; as a wife the world would have respected me; as a toiler for
honest bread there is _no place_ for me. My mother was to me a creature
next to God, and I have sometimes dared to put her first when I have
felt most deeply all her nobleness. My father died, then came our
struggle, hers and mine. I was her idol, she my God. We clung as only
child and parent can. I could have made good money in the shops or
factories. The neighbors said so, and advised that I be 'put to work.'
"'What need had paupers of such training as she was giving me? Poverty
was no disgrace, so it be honest poverty.'
"Aye, that's it. How long will poverty be honest in children's untrained
keeping? My mother understood, and knew my needs, as well.
"'The child is what the mother makes it,' was her creed. And so she set
her teeth against the factory and its damning influence, and she bade me
look higher, teaching by her own life that hunger of body is better than
a starved soul.
"Ambition was the food she gave my young life; that she declared the one
rope thrown by God's hand to the rescue of poor women. At last my soul
took fire with hers; my heart awoke.
"My struggles for opportunities tortured her. She sold her thimble
once,--a pretty golden one, my father's gift--that I might have a book I
needed. She did our household drudgery that the servant's wage might go
for my tuition in a thorough school. Oh, how we labored, she and I
together, cheating night of many hours o'er books and study that were to
repay us at the last with decent independence.
"The school days ended, the neighbors urged again the _shops_. But 'no'
again. She had not spent her strength to fit me for the yard-stick and
the shop-girl's meagre living. She read the riddle of my being as only
mothers can; saw the stamp upon my soul and fondly called it genius.
Pinned her faith upon that slumbering curse, or blessing, as we choose
each to interpret it.
"I had a little school some sixty miles from home. She had agreed that I
might teach; that was in the course in which she wished my life to go.
The schoolhouse was a cabin in the wood, through which flowed a river.
We cannot tell the route by which we run to fame, and mine lay through
this cabin in the woods. I scribbled bits of rhyme and broken verse,
constantly; and found it fame enough if in the hurried jingle my mother
detected 'improvement,' 'promise.'
"But one day when the river burst its banks, the cabin, deluged, lay
under water for ten days, and I became a temporary prisoner in my
miserable boarding-house, I wrote a story, a simple, earnest little
story. It sold, and more, it won a prize. Two hundred and fifty
dollars,--it would take ten months of the little school to make so much.
When it came--Gertie, I cannot tell you how I felt!--I thought that
somehow in the darkness I had reached my hands out and found them
clasped in God's; held tight and fast, and strong and safe. I kneeled
down in that cabin schoolroom, with the awe-struck children gathered
round me, and choked with sobs and happy tears, thanked God who sent the
blessed treasure.
"I had but one thought--Mother. I sent the children home--my work with
them was done. Now I could go to _her_, and with a sprig of laurel to
lay upon my brow, could silence stinging tongues while I worked quietly
on at home. Home! never would I leave its blessed roof again. Oh, how my
longing heart hurried my laggard feet. I did not write; no pen should
cheat my tongue of the blessed story. I wished to feel her arms, see her
smile, catch her heart-beat while I told her. God! I whispered His name
softly in gratitude and love. I planned my surprise well, but I was
doomed to disappointment. It was midnight when I reached the town; the
streets were silent and no one spoke to me. 'Some one must have told
her,' I said, as the hack in which I rode drew up before the door, and I
saw the house was lighted; every window was wide open; and her room,
where I, a child, had learned my woman's lesson, was filled with people.
Solemn, sitting folk; it was not a jubilee at all. 'She is sick,' I
gasped, as my trembling fingers sought the gate latch. No, I saw her
bed, the bed where I had nestled in her arms for eighteen years. It was
white and stiff in its familiar drapings. I tore the gate ajar and
bounded up the steps. My youngest sister met me in the doorway, weeping.
I brushed her aside and passed in among the friendly neighbors who had
hurried out on my arrival. I felt, but scarcely saw them as I said: 'I
want my mother.' Then some one burst in tears and pointed to the open
parlor door. Merciless heaven! resting upon two chairs stood a long,
brown box; a coffin. I gave one shriek, so wild, so full of agony that
not one who heard it stayed to offer the hollow mockery of comfort.
'Merciful God! not my mother?'
"But it was. I never saw her face again. I would not look on it in
death; that face which had been my life. But I love to think I have her
presence with me here, together with her teaching, in my bosom. And with
her help, for the dear dead always help us, I am working out my destiny
after the pattern she set me. It is a _hard_ task; grows harder every
day; but I am young yet, and strong."
Poor child. She did not know the _dangers_ of the road she travelled;
she only knew its hardships. Day after day she toiled, hopeful even in
failure. The bloom left her cheek; but faith still fired her eye. One
day she put away her manuscript, and left the house. The next day she
returned. She had been to ask for her old place in the cabin
schoolhouse. Too late; the place was filled. She sought one of her
mother's friends and asked for work, copying. She returned with white
face and set lip, and a look of horror in her eyes. I understood. God
help the poor, the respectable poor, those starvelings who cannot rise
to independence and cannot sink to vileness. And oh, I prayed, God pity
her,--my Claudia.
I watched her struggles with my own power palsied by that same old
curse, poverty. She did her best; her struggles were torture to me even
when she smiled and met them with sweet faith in her own strength and
God's goodness. She never once murmured, although I knew that many a
night she had gone hungry to her desk, and rose from it, hungry still,
at dawn.