Part 19

Matter is not that empty capacity which philosophers and theologians have pictured it, but the universal mother, who brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb. Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously, without the meddling of the gods. (Ib., p. 193.) Matter I define as that mysterious thing by which all that is, is accomplished. How it came to have the power which it possesses is a question on which I never ventured an opinion. (Ib., p. 193.) I discern in matter the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. (Ib., p. 251.)

Does life belong to what we call matter, or is it an independent principle infused into matter at some suitable epoch? (Ib., p. 131.) There does not exist a barrier, possessing the strength of a cobweb, in opposition to the hypothesis which ascribes the appearance of life to that "potency of matter" which finds its expression in natural evolution.... Divorced from matter, where is life? (Ib., p. 192.) To man, as we know him, matter is necessary to consciousness. (Ib., p. 192.) Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious control of mind by matter. (Ib., p. 50.)

If these statements startle, it is because matter has been defined and maligned by philosophers and theologians, who were ignorant alike of its mystical and transcendental powers. (Ib., p. 51.) Two courses, and two only, are possible: either let us open our doors freely to the conception of creative acts, or, abandoning them let us radically change our notions of matter. (Ib., p. 191.) Without this total revolution of the notions now prevalent, the evolution hypothesis must stand condemned. (Ib., p. 133.)

If we look at matter as defined by our scientific text-books, the notion of conscious life coming out of it cannot be formed by the mind. (Ib., p. 191.) Spirit and matter have ever been present to us in the rudest contrast: the one as all noble, the other as all vile. But is this correct? Upon the answer to this question, all depends. (Ib., p. 133.) #/

Physiology proves Materialism to be true, and the following testimony to that fact by eminent scientific men is only a small part of what might be quoted of similar tenor:

Bain tells us: The most careful and studied observations of physiologists have shown beyond question, that the brain as a whole is indispensible to thought, feeling, and volition.

Dr. Ferrier says: The brain is the organ of mind, and that mental operations are possible only in and through it. This fact is so well established that we may start from it as we should from any ultimate fact.

Prof. Virchow, of Berlin, says: Every one must admit that without a brain, nay, more, without a good and well developed brain, the human mind has no existence.--Man has a mind and rational will only in as much and in so far as he possesses a brain.

Huxley says: What we call the operations of the mind are functions of the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral activity. Sensations are products of the inherent properties of the thinking organ.

Tyndall says: We believe that every thought and every feeling has its definite mechanical correlative in the nervous system; that it is accompanied by a certain separation and remarshalling of the atoms of the brain.

Dr. Maudsley says: I do not go beyond what facts warrant, when I say that, when a thought occurs in the mind, there necessarily occurs a correlative change in the gray matter of the brain. Without it, the thought could not arise; with it, it can not fail to rise.

What is matter! I take a handful of earth in my hands, and into that dust I put seeds, and arrows from the eternal quiver of the sun smite it, and the seeds grow and bud and blossom, and fill the air with perfume in my sight. Do you understand that? Do you understand how this dust and these seeds and that light and this moisture produced that bud and that flower and that perfume? Do you understand that any better than you do the production of thought? Do you understand that any better than you do a dream? Do you understand that any better than you do the thoughts of love that you see in the eyes of the one you adore? Can you explain it? Can you tell what matter is? Have you the slightest conception? Yet you talk about matter as though you were acquainted with its origin; as though you had compelled, with clenched hands, the very rocks to give up the secret of existence. Do you know what force is? Can you account for molecular action? Are you familiar with chemistry? Can you account for the loves and hatreds of the atoms? Is there not something in matter that forever eludes you? Can you tell what matter really is? Before you cry Materialism, you had better find what matter is. Can you tell of anything without a material basis? Is it possible to imagine the annihilation of a single atom? Is it possible for you to conceive of the creation of a single atom? Can you have a thought that is not suggested to you by what you call matter? Did any man or woman or child ever have a solitary thought, dream or conception, that was not suggested to them by something they had seen in nature?--Ingersoll.

The Origin of Belief in the Soul.

* * * I had waited at some distance, and as the day grew stronger, saw that this new grave was not the only one upon that lonely height.

On my right was a mound on which lay the betel-box, the pipe, the haversack, and "dah" (or chopper-knife) that in life had been his who lay beneath. I turned to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, when I heard the sound of footsteps. The childless man and woman were passing. I knew the man, and I spoke to him. He had often been my guide in former visits to his village. He stopped. His wife passed on. I asked, tenderly I hope, as to his child. What was the cause of death?

"Fever." Then he squatted down, drew out his pipe, filled and lit it.

"Whose grave is that?" I asked, pointing to the mound with the betel-box and "dah."

"One of the men of my village," he replied; "he died some months ago."

"Why do you leave his betel-box, haversack, and 'dah' on the grave? What use can it be to him?"

"It is our custom."

"But why?"

"His 'lah' (spirit) will require them."

"But you see his 'lah' has not taken them. They are still there, and they are rotting away."

"Oh, no!" Very promptly. "What you see are only the forms of the things. Their 'lahs' have gone away and are with the man's 'lah.'"

"Where?"

"In another world below this."

"And so people's 'lahs' after death go to another world and work as in this?"

"Yes; and if they had no haversack, and no betel-box, and no 'dah' how would they get on? How could they cut down forest and cultivate rice for food if they had no 'dah'?"

He added after a pause:

"So our people say, but I don't know. I am ignorant. I am only a poor jungle fowl."

"But," I persisted, "how do your people know that it is true--that the betel-box, the haversack, the knife, and other things have 'lahs,' or even that the man has a 'lah'?"

The Karen was silent for a while. Then he said--

"My child is dead--his body is buried there. It can not move and go about; yet I know that in my sleep he will come to me. He will speak, and I shall speak to him. It is not his body but his 'lah' that will come. So also I lost an ax long ago. It fell in the forest somewhere. I could not find it, but in my sleep I have seen its 'lah' and have held it in my hand." He paused, and went on: "It must have a 'lah,' for iron and handle have rotted away long ago, yet I held them last night in my hand."

"Then the 'lah' lives independently of the body?"

"Yes. Our people say so."

I was silent. Here among these savages I saw how the germs of belief in a future life are laid, from what delusion they spring.

Then looking back to the far-off times, when the ancestors of our own now civilized race were savages with minds as undeveloped as that of the savage before me, I saw how from the mystery of dream-appearances rose the belief in the dual nature of things. I saw how this belief, extending first to all things animate and inanimate, came in the slow evolution of man's intellect, by the elimination of the grosser and cruder portion of his thought to hold at length only of living things.

No profound thought--no deep insight into human nature is needed to trace along general lines its further development.

Man in his selfish egoism making himself the center of all nature, has deemed that he alone is thus favored and raised above the rest of the universe.

Moreover it is a belief that with all its uncertainties has an intrinsic attractive beauty in the hope it gives to man, that love and happiness will last beyond the grave.

Above all--fatalest of all, it is a belief that offers to the craft of the priest, power over his fellow man.

Thus, flattering to man's self-love, useful as an engine of power, affording an easy explanation of mysteries in life and death, this belief in a soul really rising in "the mists and shadows of sleep," has come down to us as god-revealed from on high.--C. T. Bingham, in "Progress," London, England.

"When a Man Dies what Becomes of his Soul?"

A friend of mine meeting me in the streets of Chicago one day, without much ceremony propounded the above question; "Say, Brother Bell," he began, "I would like to have you tell me what becomes of a man's soul when he dies?" In reply I said, "Do you see that man walking on the other side of the street?" "Yes," he said, "that is old Johnson." I then called his attention to the peculiar movement of the old gentleman. "See what a peculiar gait he has." He assented that our friend's gait was peculiar. As we were contemplating him, he stopped to look in a store window. When he halted I turned to my questioner and asked, "Where has Mr. Johnson's gait gone since he stopped walking?" He very candidly acknowledged that a man's gait was not a thing, not an entity, but a mode of motion, and that when the body ceased to move, there was no gait. I asked him if thinking (the soul) was not a motion or activity of the brain, and that when it ceased to act, if there was any soul or thinking left. I have a very distinct remembrance that he talked a long time and said nothing.

Some Soul Questions.

1. Where does the soul come from?

2. Is the soul an entity or nonentity?

3. Of what is the soul composed?

4. When does the soul enter the body, before or after birth?

5. In what part of the body is the soul located?

6. If the soul is located in all parts of the body what becomes of that part of the soul contained in an amputated part of a living body?

7. Is the soul an organization independent of the body?

8. Does the soul develop as the body develops?

9. Is the soul of an infant of the same size and weight as the soul of an adult?

10. Is the soul of a negro of the same color as the soul of a caucasian?

11. Is the soul of an idiot as well developed as the soul of an intelligent person?

12. When does the soul leave the body, at death or at the resurrection day?

13. If the soul leaves the body at death, where does it sojourn while waiting for the resurrection morn?

14. If a living person was placed in an air-tight jar, and the jar sealed hermetically, at death how would the soul make its exit?

15. After leaving the body what direction does the soul pursue to reach its final destination?

16. What length of time does it require for the soul to reach its final destination?

17. Where and at what distance from the earth is the soul land located?

18. Has the soul the physical organs indispensible to mental action and consciousness?

19. If not, of what use would the soul be?

20. Is the soul sensible or insensible to pain?

21. Of what shape is the soul?

22. Of what color is the soul?

23. Does the soul retain its sex?

24. When and where are the souls made, or did they always exist?

25. We have five infallible witnesses to prove the existence of matter, namely, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. By these five witnesses we prove the existence and the component parts of matter. Can you by the aid of these five senses prove the existence of souls?--W. C. Clow.

DESIGN ARGUMENT.

Nothing could have come by chance, it is said, and therefore it is inferred that this universe must have been created by a God.

Let us view this famous argument for a moment. God is something or nothing. To say he is nothing is to say there is no God. If he is something, he is not merely a property or quality, but an existence per se--an entity, a substance, whether material or immaterial is unimportant. If he is a substance, a material, or spiritual being, there must be order, harmony, and adaptation, or fitness, in his divine nature, to enable him to perceive, reflect, design, and execute his plans. If Deity does not reason, does not cogitate, but perceives truth without the labor of investigation and contrivance, he must still possess an adaptation or fitness thus to perceive, as well as to execute his design.

To say God is without order, harmony, and adaptation, or fitness, is to say he is a mere chaos--worse than that imaginary chaos that theologians tell us would result if divine agency were withdrawn from the universe. If a being without order, harmony, and adaptation, or a divine chaos, can create an orderly universe then there is no consistency in saying that unintelligent matter could not have produced the objects that we behold. If order, harmony, and adaptation do exist in the divine mind (or in the substance which produces thought, power, and purpose in the divine mind) they must be eternal, for that which constitutes the essential nature of a God must be the eternal basis of his being. If the order, harmony, and adaptation in God are co-existent with him, are eternal, they must be independent of design, for that which never began to exist could not have been produced, and does not therefore admit of design. If order, harmony, and adaptation are independent of design in the divine mind, it is certain that order, harmony, and adaptation exist, and are not evidence of a pre-existent, designing intelligence.

If order, harmony, and adaptation exist, which were not produced by design, which are therefore not evidence of design, it is unreasonable and illogical to infer designing intelligence from the fact alone that order, harmony, and adaptation exist in nature. Therefore an intelligent Deity cannot be inferred from the order, harmony, and adaptation in nature. If the order, harmony, and adaptation in Deity, to produce his thoughts, and to execute his plans, are eternal, why may not the formation of matter into worlds, and the evolutions of the various forms of vegetable and animal life on this globe be the result of the ceaseless action of self-existent matter in accordance with an inherent eternal principle of adaptation? Is it more reasonable to suppose the universe was created, or constructed by a being in whom exists the most wonderful order and harmony, and the most admirable adaptation to construct a universe (which order, harmony, and adaptation could have had no designing cause), than to suppose that the universe itself in its entirety is eternal, and the self-producing cause of all the manifestations we behold?

Is a God uncaused, and who made everything from nothing, more easy of belief than a universe uncaused and existing according to its own inherent nature? Is it wonderful that matter should be self-existent; that it should possess the power to form suns, planets, and construct that beautiful ladder of life that reaches from the lowest forms of the vegetable kingdom up to man? How much more wonderful that a great being should exist, without any cause, who had no beginning, and who is infinitely more admirable than the universe itself.

Again, the plan of a work is as much evidence of intelligence and design as the work which embodies the plan. The plan of a steam engine in the mind of Fitch--the plan of the locomotive in the mind of Stephenson--was as much evidence of design as the piece of machinery after its mechanical construction. If God be an omniscient being--a being who knows everything; to whose knowledge no addition can be made--his plans must be eternal--without beginning, and therefore uncaused. If God's plans are not eternal; if from time to time new plans originate in his mind, there must be an addition to his knowledge, and if his knowledge admits of addition, it must be finite. But if his plans had no beginning; if, like himself, they are eternal, they must, like him, be independent of design. Now, the plan of a thing, we have already seen, is as much evidence of design as the object which embodies the plan. Since the plans of Deity are no proof of design that produced them (for they are supposed to be eternal), the plan of this universe, of course, was no evidence of a designing intelligence that produced it. But since the plan of the universe is as much evidence of design as the universe itself, and since the former is no evidence of design, it follows that design cannot be inferred from the existence of the universe.

The absurdity of the a posteriori argument of a God consists in the assumption that what we call order and adaptation in nature are evidence of design, when it is evident that whether there be a God or not, order and adaptation must have existed from eternity, and are not therefore necessarily proof of a designing cause. The reasoning of the theologian is like that of the Hindoo in accounting for the position of the earth. "Whatever exists must have some support," said he. The earth exists, and is therefore supported. He imagined it resting on the back of an elephant. The elephant needing some support, he supposed rested on the back of a huge tortoise. He forgot that according to his own premise that whatever exists must have some support, that the tortoise should rest on something. The inconclusiveness of his reasoning is apparent to a child. Whatever exists is supported. The earth exists. Therefore, the earth is supported; it rests on an elephant; the elephant rests on a tortoise; the tortoise exists, but nothing is said about its support.

The theologian says order, harmony, and adaptation are evidence of a designing intelligence that produced them. The earth and its productions show order, harmony, and adaptation. Therefore, the earth and its productions have been produced by an intelligent designer. Just as the Hindoo stopped reasoning when he imagined the earth on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, so the theologian stops reasoning when he says, God made the world. But as surely as from the premise that whatever exists must have some support, follows the conclusion that the tortoise rests on something, as rests on it the elephant, does it follow from the proposition that order, harmony, and adaptation are proof of an intelligent designer, that the order, harmony, and adaptation in the Deity to produce the effects ascribed to him are evidence of an intelligent designer who made him, as the various parts of nature, adapted to one another, are evidence of an intelligent designer that produced them. This reasoning leads to the conclusion that there has been an infinite succession of creative and created Gods, which is inconsistent with the idea of a First Cause, the creator of the universe. Then why attempt to explain the mysteries of the universe by imagining a God who produced everything but himself, and why argue from the order and fitness in the world the existence of a designer. It reminds me of the ostrich, that having buried its head in the sand, so as to render invisible its pursuers, fancies there is no further need of exertion to escape from the dangers and difficulties which surround it.

"Design represented as a search after final cause, until we come to a first cause, and then stop," says F. N. Newman, "is an argument I confess which in itself brings me no satisfaction." "The attempt," says Buckle, "which Paley and others have made to solve this mystery by rising from the laws to the cause are evidently futile, because to the eye of reason the solution is as incomprehensible as the problem, and the arguments of the natural theologian, in so far as they are arguments, must depend on reason."

Design implies the use of means for the attainment of ends. Man designs, plans, contrives and uses secondary agencies to accomplish his purposes, because unable to attain his ends directly. But how absurd to speak of contrivance and design in a being of infinite power and knowledge. Man, to build steamships has to fell trees and hew them into various shapes, get iron from the earth and smelt it in furnaces, and work it into bolts, braces, nails, etc., hundreds of workmen, carpenters, joiners, blacksmiths, cabinet-makers, painters, caulkers, riggers, etc., labor for months before the vessel can be launched. If man possessed the power to speak into existence a steamship, would he contrive, plan and use means to construct it? On the contrary, would it not come instantly into existence as a complete, perfect whole?

But the existence of a steamer, since it is only a means to an end, would be inconsistent with unlimited power in man. If he were able to effect his purposes why should he construct a vessel with which to visit far off lands? Infinite power would enable him to cross the ocean by the mere exercise of his will. It is evident at a glance that the use of means is incompatible with infinite knowledge and infinite power. This argument ... in proving too much proves nothing, and demonstrates its own worthlessness, and therefore we cast it aside. Design implies finiteness; man designs and has to calculate and use means to accomplish his end. If he were all powerful would he use that power to construct ships to cross the ocean, or armies to win battles, when he could accomplish his end without, and by those means demonstrate that he is infinite in power? An infinite being would not have to employ means to complete his works; he would not have to doubt and cogitate before he accomplished his design; that would be the method of man. It is absurd to suppose that a God did all those things. We supposed God infinite in everything, in his power, in his love and kindness. He has power to do everything. And yet the world is so constructed that at every step we take we crush to death creatures as minutely and curiously formed as ourselves. They kill one another in numerous struggles, and life has been such a series of bloody battles, resulting in destruction of life, that the Waterloos and Solferinos of history are nothing in comparison. Where is the design in the volcano that belches forth its fiery billows and buries in ruins a Pompeii and a Herculaneum? Where is the design in the tornado that sends a fleet with its precious freight of humanity beneath the remorseless waves? Where is the design in the suffering and torture that thousands feel this very moment in the chambers of sickness, and in the hospitals full of diseases? Where is the evidence of a great being who has the power to make men happy, and yet allows the world to go on in all its misery--such misery as it makes one's heart ache to see, and which we, imperfect creatures as we are, would gladly stop if we could?