region beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as “Nature.” The
process of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the
Divine Thought, or _Logos_, throughout the universe, by the action of
Spirit upon matter. Achievement seems as if irradiated by a certain
Happiness: and thus a poet like Browning is led to speak of the Divine
Being as renewing his ancient creative rapture in the processes of
nature:—joying in the sunbeams basking upon sand, sharing the pleasures
of the wild life in the creatures of the woods,
“Where dwells enjoyment there is He;”
and so to conjecture that
“God tastes an infinite joy
In infinite ways—one everlasting bliss
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds; in whom is life for evermore.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
X
COSMIC INTELLIGENCE
_Q. 10. Are there any beings higher in the scale of
existence than man?_
_A._ Man is the highest of the dwellers on the planet earth,
but the earth is only one of many planets warmed by the sun,
and the sun is only one of a myriad of similar suns, which
are so far off that we barely see them, and group them
indiscriminately as “stars.” We may reasonably conjecture
that in some of the innumerable worlds circling round those
distant suns there must be beings far higher in the scale of
existence than ourselves; indeed, we have no knowledge which
enables us to assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.
* * * * *
CLAUSE X
The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental
element in every religious creed. There is no scientific reason for
imagining it possible that man is the highest intelligent
existence—there is no reason to suppose that we dwellers on this planet
know more about the universe than any other existing creature. Such an
idea, strictly speaking, is absurd. Science has investigated our
ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We
may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are—a
development of life on this planet earth. Science has also revealed to
us an innumerable host of other worlds, and has relegated the earth to
its now recognised subordinate place as one of a countless multitude of
worlds.
Consider a spherical region bounded by the distance of the farthermost
stars visible in the strongest telescope, or say with a radius
corresponding to a parallax of one-thousandth of a second of arc, so
that the time taken by light to travel right across it is 6000
years:—Lord Kelvin, treating of such a portion of Universe, says:
“There may also be a large amount of matter in many stars outside the
sphere of 3×10^{16} kilometres radius, but however much matter there may
be outside it, it seems to be made highly probable, by §§ 11-21, that
the total quantity of matter within it is greater than 100 million
times, and less than 2000 million times, the sun’s mass” (_Philosophical
Magazine_, August 1901).
It does not follow that all this matter is distributed in masses like
our sun with its attendant planets; but, on the average, that is as
likely an arrangement as another, and it corresponds with what we know.
So, given, on this hypothesis, the existence of some thousand million
solar systems or families of worlds, within our ken, and knowing what we
do about the exuberant impulse towards vital development wherever it is
possible, we must conclude that those worlds contain life; and if so, it
is against all reasonable probability that the only world of which we
happen to know the details contains the creature highest in the entire
scale. It would be just as reasonable to imagine, what we happen to know
is false, that our particular sun is the largest, and our particular
planet the brightest of all, as it is to conjecture that this world is
the highest and best, or the only one in existence.
The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind has resented this
negative conclusion, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the
earth was no mere planet among a crowd of others, but was the centre of
the universe; and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it.
A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still—not now as regards the
planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses
only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume—some
of us—to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than
our own. We are accustomed to be careful as to what we assert; we are
liable to be unscrupulous as to what we deny. It is possible to find
people who, knowing nothing or next to nothing of the Universe, are
prepared to limit existence to that of which they have had experience,
and to measure the cosmos in terms of their own understanding. Their
confidence in themselves, their shut minds and self-satisfied hearts,
are things to marvel at. The fact is that no glimmer of a conception of
the real magnitude and complexity of existence can ever have illuminated
their cosmic view.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XI
IMMANENCE
_Q. 11. What caused and what maintains existence?_
_A._ Of our own knowledge we are unable to realise the
meaning of origination or of maintenance; all that we
ourselves can accomplish in the physical world is to move
things into desired positions, and leave them to act on each
other. Nevertheless our effective movements are all inspired
by thought, and so we conceive that there must be some
Intelligence immanent in all the processes of nature, for
they are not random or purposeless, but organised and
beautiful.
* * * * *
CLAUSE XI
ORIGIN
We cannot conceive the origin of any fundamental existence. We can
describe the beginning of any particular object in its present shape,
but its substance always existed in some other shape previously; and
nothing really either springs into being or ceases to exist. A cloud or
dew becomes visible, and then evaporates, seeming to spring into being
and then vanish away; but as water vapour it had a past history and will
have a future, both apparently without limit. In our own case, and in
the case of any live thing, the history is unknown to us; but ultimate
origin or absolute beginning, save of individual collocations, is
unthinkable.
The truth that science teaches, on the one hand, is that everything is a
perpetual flux,
πάντα ῥεὶ ϰαὶ οὐδὲν μένει,
that nothing is permanent and fixed and unchangeable:
“The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.”
On the other hand, we learn that, in its ultimate essence and reality,
everything is persistent and eternal; that it is the form alone that
changes, while the substance endures. No end and no beginning—a
continual Eternal Now—this is the scientific interpretation of I AM.
There are those who think that in the last resort the ultimate reality
will be found to be of the nature of Spirit, Consciousness, and Mind. It
may be so—it probably is so—but that is a teaching of Philosophy, not at
present of Science.
The teaching of religion may be summarised thus:
“All that exists, exists only by the communication of God’s infinite
being. All that has intelligence, has it only by derivation from His
sovereign reason; and all that acts, acts only from the impulse of His
supreme activity. It is He who does all in all; it is He who, at each
instant of our life, is the beating of our heart, the movement of our
limbs, the light of our eyes, the intelligence of our spirit, the soul
of our soul.”—_Fénelon._
MAINTENANCE
So also with regard to maintenance.
The multifarious processes around us—the succession of the seasons, the
flow of sap in trees, the circulation of our own blood, the digestion of
our food—all these things are beyond our power, and are not contrived or
managed by our conscious agency—not even the occurrences in our own
bodies. But by means of such unconscious processes our muscular and
nervous systems are supplied with nutriment, and we thus become master
of a certain amount of energy.
The energy of our muscles, or of some of them, is within our control,
and we can thereby direct other physical energies into desired channels;
but we cannot in the slightest degree alter the amount of that energy.
We utilise terrestrial energy, by directing and controlling its
transformations and transferences, within the limits of our knowledge;
but we do it always by moving material objects, and in no other way. For
instance, we cannot directly or consciously generate an electric
current, or magnetism, or light, or life; for all these things we depend
upon partially explored properties of matter, which we can arrange in a
certain way so as to achieve a desired end.
A multitude of complex processes are constantly occurring in our bodies
without any intervention of consciousness; and though we may make a
study of the functions of the several organs, and gradually learn
something about them, it is a study as of something outside ourselves;
the due performance of bodily function is independent of our volition.
We can interfere with and damage our organs, and with skill we can so
arrange damaged parts that the self-healing process shall have time and
opportunity to act; we can also introduce beneficent agencies and
stimulating drugs; but our power of direct action is practically limited
to muscular and mental activity.
_Digression on Rudimentary Physiology_
It is well for children to have some conception of the complex processes
constantly occurring in their own organisms.
The fact that the heart is a continuously acting pump, urging the blood
along arteries to the tissues,—to places where it picks up nutriment, to
places where the crudely enriched blood is oxidised, to places where the
elaborated material is deposited so as to replenish waste and effect
growth—all this should be known; and the partial analogy with the sap of
trees, rising in the trunk to be elaborated in the leaves by means of
sunshine and air, and then descending ready to be deposited as liquid
wood, can be pointed out.
The function of the lungs, wherein the blood dispersed throughout a
spongy texture is exposed in immense surface to the air, without loss or
leakage other than what properly transpires through the membranes, and
the consequent advantage of deep breathing and of fresh clean air,—all
this has a practical as well as a theoretical interest.
The lungs are more under voluntary control than the heart, but the way
exercise increases the circulation, and generally blows the fires of the
body, is also of practical interest.
Some idea of the processes of digestion can be given, especially the
function of the stomach and the intestines; the liver may be too
difficult, but the salivary glands are fairly simple, and so are the
kidneys and the skin. The way the muscles act as an efficient mechanical
engine, depending on the consumption of fuel and the conservation of
energy, can be superficially explained, with some idea of the
stimulating nervous system and controlling brain cells. The sensory
nerves and specialised nerve-endings demand specific treatment.
These and other physiological details may seem out of place, but they
are strictly appropriate; for the essence of Immanence is that nothing
is common or unclean, until abused: and the nobler the faculty, the
fouler is the degradation caused by its abuse. A sense of the
responsibility involved in the possession or lease of all this intricate
mass of mechanism, intrusted to our care, and the wish to keep it in
good order—without giving unnecessary trouble to others to set it right,
and without blaspheming the Maker by applying it to bad and ignoble
ends—will arise almost imperceptibly, when the body is even begun to be
understood. Many faults originate in ignorance and want of thought.
MIND AND MATTER
Among the material objects we move are the parts of our own bodies;
indeed, it is through muscular intervention or agency that we act on
bodies in general. We know of no other method. Even when we _speak_ we
are only moving certain face and throat and chest muscles, so as to
generate condensations and rarefactions in the air; which, travelling by
dynamical properties, excite corresponding vibrations or movements in
the ear drum of our auditor;—vibrations not in themselves intelligible,
but demanding interpretation from the recipient. So also it is with the
traces of ink left on paper by our muscular action when we write. Only
to a perceptive eye, and informed and kindred mind, have they any
meaning.
It is probable that even when we think, some special atomic motion goes
on in the brain cells, though this is an example of _unconscious_
movement, of which there are many examples in bodily function; but
directly we begin to attend to mental processes we leave the physical
region as understood by us, and enter a more deeply mysterious psychical
region. Unknown as this is for purposes of analysis, from the point of
view of experience it is more immediately familiar than any other; since
it is through the activity of mind that every other kind of existence is
necessarily inferred. Thought is our mechanism or instrument of
knowledge—through it we know everything—but thought is not what we
directly know. Primarily we think of _things_, not of thought itself. So
also sight is our instrument of seeing—through light we see—but it is
not light that we perceive, rather it is the objects which send it in
certain patterns to our eyes.
Whereas we can act on the external world only through our muscles; in
ourselves we are aware of things belonging to a totally different
category, with which muscle and movement and energy appear to have
nothing to do,—such things as thought, purpose, desire, humour,
affection, consciousness, will. These mental faculties seem intimately
associated with, and are displayed by, our bodily mechanism; but in
themselves they belong to a different order of being,—an order which
employs and dominates the material, while immersed or immanent in it.
Every purposed movement is preceded and inspired by thought.
Such reasoned control, by indwelling mind, may be undetectable and
inconceivable to a low order of intelligence, being totally masked by
the material garment; and the purpose underlying our activity may have
to be inferred, by such intelligence, with as great difficulty as we
feel in detecting indwelling Purpose amid the spontaneous operations of
Nature.
Nevertheless, whenever our movements are not controlled by thought and
intelligent purpose, but are left to chance and random impulses, like
the actions of a man whose reason has been unseated, nothing but error
and confusion results;—quite a different state of things from anything
we observe in the orderly and beautiful procedure of nature.
It is sometimes said that the operations of nature are spontaneous; and
that is exactly what they are. That is the meaning of immanence.
“Spontaneous,” used in this sense, does not mean random and purposeless
and undetermined: it means actuated and controlled from within, by
something indwelling and all pervading and not absent anywhere. The
intelligence which guides things is not something external to the
scheme, clumsily interfering with it by muscular action, as we are
constrained to do when we interfere at all; but is something within and
inseparable from it, as human thought is within and inseparable from the
action of our brains.
In some partially similar way we conceive that the multifarious
processes in nature, with neither the origin nor maintenance of which
have we had anything to do, must be guided and controlled by some
Thought and Purpose, immanent in everything, but revealed only to those
with sufficiently awakened perceptions. Many are blind to the meaning—to
the fact even that there is a meaning—in nature; just as an animal is
usually blind to a picture, and always to a poem; but to the higher
members of our race the Intelligence and Purpose, underlying the whole
mystery of existence, elaborating the details of evolution—and
ultimately tending to elucidate the frequent discords, the strange
humours, and puzzling contradictions of life—are keenly felt. To them
the lavish beauty of wild Nature—of landscape, of sunset, of mountain,
and of sea—are revelations of an indwelling Presence, rejoicing in its
own majestic order.
πάντα πλήρη θεῶν.
“Earth’s crammed with Heaven
And every common bush afire with God.”
The idea that the world as we know it arose by chance and fortuitous
concourse of atoms is one that no science really sustains, though such
an idea is the superficial outcome of an incipient recognition of the
uniformity of nature—a sequel to the perception that there is no
capricious or spasmodic interference with the course of events, and no
changes of purpose observable therein, such as we are accustomed to in
works of human ingenuity and skill. We are accustomed to associate
“will” with the degenerate form of it called caprice, and to consider
that “purpose” must be accompanied by changes of purpose; so that a
steady, uniform, persistent course of action is puzzling to us, and
wears the superficial aspect of mechanism. An omnipresent, uniform,
immanent Purpose, running through the whole of existence without break
of continuity or change of aim, is beyond our experience; and, like
every other uniformity, is difficult to detect or realise. As an
instance of this difficulty, I need only cite the long-delayed discovery
of an all-embracing medium-like the terrestrial atmosphere. An
intelligent deep-sea creature would find it most difficult to become
aware of the existence of water. Similarly humanity has existed all
along in a pervading and interpenetrating ether, of which to this day
men have for the most part no cognisance; although it is probably the
fundamental substratum of the whole material world, underlying every
kind of activity, and constituting the very atoms of which their own
bodies are composed.
Looking at the truths of geometry, the laws of nature, and the beauty
and organisation of the visible world, it is as impossible rationally to
suppose that they arose by chance, or by mere contentious jostling, as
it is to suppose that a work of literature or a piece of music was
composed in that way.
The process of evolution appears to us self-sustained and self-guided,
because the guidance is uniform and constant.
In nature, heredity and survival will explain the persistence of a
favourable variation when once originated, but the origin of variations
is still mysterious, and the full meaning of heredity is not yet
unravelled.
The struggle for existence has been one of the means whereby animal life
has been developed and perfected; but now that it has become conscious
and purposeful, in humanity, the apparently blind struggle is suspended
at the higher level, and the weak and suffering are attended to and
helped—not exterminated. There must always be disciplinary effort: but
it can be effort for something better than bare subsistence; it can
conduce to evolution of character, and development of soul. Mere
struggle and survival is an inferior instrument of progress, and it can
be superseded wherever it has done its necessary preliminary work. The
Divine purpose is fulfilled in many ways; and far more can be expected
of self-conscious evolution than of the long slow process which has
rendered it possible.
The kind of selection actually or best known to us is that which has
been directed by human beings; and inasmuch as the highest human beings
are themselves conscious of help and guidance, it is to be assumed that
such help and guidance has been in constant activity all along,
operating on, or rather in, the refractory materials, so as slowly to
develop in them the power of manifesting not only life and beauty, but
also consciousness, spiritual perception, and free will.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XII
SOUL AND SPIRIT
_Q. 12. What is to be said of man’s higher faculties?_
_A._ The faculties and achievements of the highest among
mankind—in Art, in Science, in Philosophy, and in
Religion—are not explicable as an outcome of a struggle for
existence. Something more than mere life is possessed by
us—something represented by the words “mind” and “soul” and
“spirit.” On one side we are members of the animal kingdom;
on another we are associates in a loftier type of existence,
and are linked with the Divine.
* * * * *
CLAUSE XII
The highest of those who have walked the earth reveal to us what we,
too, may some day be: they link us with the Divine, and teach us that,
however pathetically defaced by our infirmities and distorted by our
imperfections, we may yet reflect the image of God.
[_Part of the following explanation is based upon a study of certain
facts not yet fully incorporated into orthodox science, nor fully
recognised by philosophy: it must therefore be regarded as
speculation._]
This idea, which permeates literature—that man has a spiritual as well
as a material origin—emphasises from another point of view the doctrine
of the Fall. For the utilisation of a material body, of animal ancestry,
exposes the individual to much trial and temptation, and makes him aware
of a contest between the flesh and the spirit, or between a lower and a
higher self, which constitutes the element of truth in the otherwise
mistaken doctrine of “original,” or inherited, or imputed sin. Vicarious
sin is a legal fiction: so is vicarious punishment; vicarious suffering
is a reality. The mother of a ne’er-do-well knows it: it is undergone by
the children of vicious parents; the highest souls have felt it on
behalf of the race of man; but it is not artificial or imputed
suffering, it is genuine and real; and experience shows that it can have
a redeeming virtue.
The double nature of man,—the inherited animal tendencies, and the
inspired spiritual aspirations, if they can both be fully admitted,
reconcile many difficulties. Our body is an individual collocation of
cells, which began to form and grow together at a certain date, and will
presently be dispersed; but the constructing and dominating reality,
called our “soul,” did not then begin to exist; nor will it cease with
bodily decay. Interaction with the material world then began, and will
then cease, but we ourselves in essence are persistent and immortal.
Even our personality and individuality may be persistent, if our
character be sufficiently developed to possess a reality of its own. In
our present state, truly, the memory of our past is imperfect or
non-existent; but when we waken and shake off the tenement of matter,
our memory and consciousness may enlarge too, as we rejoin the larger
self of which only a part is now manifested in mortal flesh.
The ancient doctrine of a previous state of existence, of which we are
now entranced into forgetfulness, is inculcated in the familiar lines—
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home,”
the idea being that the forgetfulness is not complete, especially during
infancy; nor need it be complete in moments of inspiration. Myers’
doctrine of the subliminal self is an expanded and modified form of this
idea, and is to a large extent apparently justified by a certain range
of psychological inquiry: though Myers lays stress, not on memory of a
past, but on a present occasional intercommunication between the part
and the whole.