CONTINUED EXISTENCE
DIFFICULTY OF BELIEF IN CONTINUED EXISTENCE
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to
give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever
and to whatsoever abysses Nature leads."--HUXLEY.
People often feel a notable difficulty in believing in the reality
of continued existence. Very likely it is difficult to believe or
to realise existence in what is sometimes called "the next world";
but then, when we come to think of it, it is difficult to believe in
existence in this world too; it is difficult to believe in existence
at all. The whole problem of existence is a puzzling one. It could
by no means have been predicated _a priori_. The whole thing is a
question of experience; that is, of evidence. We know by experience
that things actually do exist; though how they came into being, and
what they are all for, and what consequences they have, is more
than we can tell. We have no reason for asserting that the kind we
are familiar with is the only kind of existence possible, unless
we choose to assert it on the ground that we have no experience of
any other. But that is becoming just the question at issue: have we
any evidence, either direct or indirect, for any other existence
than this? If we have, it is futile to cite in opposition to it the
difficulty of believing in the reality of such an existence; we
surely ought to be guided by facts.
At this stage in the history of the human race few facts of science
are better established and more widely appreciated than the main
facts of Astronomy: a general acquaintance with the sizes and
distances, and the enormous number, of the solar systems distributed
throughout space is prevalent. Yet to the imaginative human mind the
facts, if really grasped, are overwhelming and incredible.
The sun a million times bigger than the earth; Arcturus a hundred
times bigger than the sun, and so distant that light has taken two
centuries to come, though travelling at a rate able to carry it to
New York and back in less than the twentieth part of a second,--facts
like these are commonplaces of the nursery; but even as bare facts
they are appalling.
That the earth is a speck invisible from any one of the stars, that
we are on a world which is but one among an innumerable multitude of
others, ought to make us realise the utter triviality of any view of
existence based upon familiarity with street and train and office,
ought to give us some sense of proportion between everyday experience
and ultimate reality. Even the portentous struggle in which Europe is
engaged--
"What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a
million million of suns?"
Yet, for true interpretation, the infinite worth and vital importance
of each individual human soul must be apprehended too. And that
is another momentous fact, which, so far from restricting the
potentialities of existence, by implication still further enlarges
them. The multiplicity, the many-sidedness, the magnificence, of
material existence does not dwarf the human soul; far otherwise: it
illumines and expands the stage upon which the human drama is being
played, and ought to make us ready to perceive how far greater still
may be the possibilities--nay, the actualities--before it, in its
infinite unending progress.
That we know little about such possibilities as yet, proves
nothing;--for mark how easy it would have been to be ignorant of the
existence of all the visible worlds and myriad modes of being in
space. Not until the business of the day is over, and our great star
has eclipsed itself behind the earth, not until the serener period of
night, does the grandeur of the material universe force itself upon
our attention. And, even then, let there be but a slight permanent
thickening of our atmosphere, and we should have had no revelation
of any world other than our own. Under those conditions--so barely
escaped from--how wretchedly meagre and limited would have been our
conception of the Universe! Aye, and, unless we foolishly imagine
that our circumstances are such as to have already given us a clue to
every kind of possible existence, I venture to say that "wretchedly
meagre and limited" must be a true description of our conception of
the Universe, even now,--even of the conception of those who have
permitted themselves, with least hesitation, to follow whithersoever
facts lead.
If there be any group of scientific or historical or literary
students who advocate what they think to be a sensible, but what
I regard as a purblind, view of existence, based upon already
systematised knowledge and on unfounded and restricting speculation
as to probable boundaries and limitations of existence,--if such
students take their own horizon to be the measure of all things,--the
fact is to be deplored. Such workers, however admirable their
industry and detailed achievements, represent a school of thought
against the fruits of which we of the Allied Nations are in arms.
Nevertheless speculation of this illegitimate and negative kind is
not unknown among us. It originates partly in admiration for the
successful labours of a bygone generation in clearing away a quantity
of clinging parasitic growth which was obscuring the fair fabric of
ascertained truth, and partly in an innate iconoclastic enthusiasm.
The success which has attended Darwinian and other hypotheses has
had a tendency to lead men--not indeed men of Darwinian calibre, but
smaller and less conscientious men--in science as well as in history
and theology, to an over-eager confidence in probable conjecture
and inadequate attention to facts of experience. It has even been
said--I quote from a writer in the volume _Darwin and Modern
Science_, published in connexion with a Darwin jubilee celebration at
Cambridge--that "the age of materialism was the least matter-of-fact
age conceivable, and the age of science the age which showed least of
the patient temper of enquiry." I would not go so far as this myself,
the statement savours of exaggeration, but there is a regrettable
tendency in surviving materialistic quarters for combatants to
entrench themselves in dogma and preconceived opinion, to regard
these vulnerable shelters as sufficient protection against observed
and recorded facts, and even to employ them as strongholds from which
alien observation-posts can be shattered and overthrown.