Part 3

The words juicy, unctuous, fluid, have obvious appropriateness when applied to the mind and its products. Running water gives us the delightful epithets limpid and lucid. Youth is plastic, ductile, impressible--neither the mind nor the body has yet hardened. The analogy is vital. A habit gets deeper and deeper hold of us; we fall into a rut--these figures convey the exact truth.

When used as a symbol how expressive is the dawn, the twilight, the sunset! The likeness is not accidental but fundamental.

The calm that comes after the storm in human life as in nature--how true the analogy. To give vent to things, how significant. To give vent to angry feelings in words, how like giving vent to smothered fire; or to any suppressed and confined force: the words come faster and hotter, the passion of anger mounts and there is a “blow out” indeed. Deny yourself the first word, and the conflagration is avoided. A passion can be smothered as literally as a fire.

The use of metaphor, comparison, analogy is twofold--to enliven and to convince; to illustrate and enforce an accepted truth, and to press home and clinch one in dispute. An apt figure will put a new face upon an old and much worn truism, and a vital analogy may reach and move the reason. Thus when Renan, referring to the decay of the old religious beliefs, says that people are no poorer for being robbed of false bank notes and bogus shares, his comparison has a logical validity,--as has also Herbert Spencer’s figure when he says, “The illusion that great men and great events came oftener in early times than now is partly due to historical perspective. As in a range of equidistant columns the farthest off look the closest, so the conspicuous objects of the past seem more thickly clustered the more remote they are.” We seem to see the identity of law in both these cases. We are treated to a pictorial argument.

We are using analogy in a legitimate and forceful way when we speak of our fund or capital of bodily health and strength, and of squandering or impairing it, or of investing it poorly.

The accidental analogies or likenesses are limitless and are the great stock in trade of most writers and speakers. They tickle the fancy and enliven the page or the discourse. But essential analogies, or those that spring from unity of law, are more rare. These have the force of logic; they shed a steady light.

St. Paul’s famous comparison of the body dead and buried with the seed in the soil, which, he says, dies before it can grow, is used with logical intent. But will it bear examination? Is the germinating seed dead in any sense that the body is dead? It is no more dead than the egg buried beneath the mother hen is dead. When the egg really dies we know the result, as we know the result when the corn rots in the ground. It is not dissolution that the seed experiences, but evolution. The illustration of the eloquent apostle may captivate the fancy, but as argument designed to convince the understanding it has no force.

There might be force in the argument for immortality drawn from the metamorphosis of the grub into the butterfly, if the chrysalis really were a shroud and held a dead body. But it is not, any more than an egg is; it is quick, and capable of movement. The analogy between it and the dead body will not hold. A much more sound analogy, based upon the chrysalis, is that which takes it as the type of a mind or soul undeveloped,--slumbering, gestating,--and the winged creature as the developed, emancipated mind.

Analogy means an agreement of relations or an equality of ratios.

When we speak of the body as a tenement and the soul as the tenant, we mean or aver that the relation of the soul to the body is the same as that of the man to the house he occupies. In either case the occupant can move out or in, and is entirely distinct from the structure that shelters him. But if we know anything about the relations of the mind and the body, we know that they are not like this; we know that they are not truthfully expressed in this comparison.

Bishop Butler’s “analogy from nature,” upon which he built his famous work, will not any better bear close examination. What analogy is there between death and sleep or a swoon? what agreement of ratios? The resemblance is entirely superficial. Or how can we predict another sphere of existence for man because another sphere awaits the unborn infant? But another sphere does not await the unborn infant; only new and different relations to the same physical sphere. An embryo implies a future; but what is there embryonic about the mature man?

This breakdown of Butler’s argument in regard to a future life was pointed out by Matthew Arnold; the very point in dispute, namely, a future life, is assumed. If there is a future life, if there is another world, it doubtless bears some analogy to this. In like manner, if there are fairies and nymphs and demigods, it is not improbable to suppose that they bear some resemblance to human beings, but shall we assume their actual existence upon such a probability?

That the unborn child starting as a bit of protoplasmic jelly should become a man, a Napoleon, or a Shakespeare, may be quite as startling a fact as the assumption of a future existence; yet the former is a matter of experience, which lends no color to the truth of the latter. It is not a matter of reason that babes become men, but a matter of observation and experience. Indeed, in Butler’s famous argument, the analogy of nature is everywhere forced and falsified. In every case he puts the words into her mouth that he would have her speak. His faith supplies him with the belief in a future life, and in a moral governor of the universe, and then he seeks to confirm or to demonstrate the truth of this faith by an appeal to the analogy of nature.

Out of this whirling, seething, bubbling universe of warring and clashing forces man has emerged. How impossible it all seems to reason! Experience alone tells us that it is true. Upon the past history of the earth and of the race of man we may predict astonishing changes and transformations for the future of both, because the continuity of cause and effect is not broken; but the perpetuity of the “me” and the “you” is not implied. All that is implied is the perpetuity of the sum of physical forces. But as to the future of the individual, standing upon the past or upon the present, what are we safe in affirming? Only this--that as we had a beginning we shall have an ending; that as yesterday we were not, so to-morrow we shall not be. A man is like the electric spark that glows and crackles for an instant between two dark, silent, inscrutable eternities. The fluid is not lost, but that tiny bolt has come and gone. Darkness and silence before; darkness and silence after. I do not say this is the summing up of the whole question of immortality. I only mean to say that this is where the argument from analogy lands us.

We can argue from the known to the unknown in a restricted way. We do this in life and in science continually. We do not know that the fixed stars have worlds revolving about them; yet the presumption, based upon our own solar system, is that they have. But could we infer other suns, from the existence of our own, were no others visible? Could we predict the future of the earth did we not know its past, or read aright its past did we not know its present state? From an arc we can complete a circle. We can read the big in the little. The motion of a top throws light upon the motion of the earth. An ingenious mind finds types everywhere, but real analogies are not so common.

The likeness of one thing with another may be valid and real, but the likeness of a thought with a thing is often merely fanciful. We very frequently unconsciously counterfeit external objects and laws in the region of mind and morals. Out of a physical fact or condition we fabricate a mental or spiritual condition or experience to correspond. Thus a current journal takes the fact that the sun obscures but does not put out the light of the moon and the stars, and from it draws the inference that the light of science may dim but cannot blot out the objects of faith. It counterfeits this fact and seeks to give it equal force and value in the spiritual realm. The objects of faith may be as real and as unquenchable as the stars, but this is the very point in dispute, and the analogy used assumes the thing to be proved. If the objects of faith are real, then the light of science will not put them out any more than the sun puts out the stars; but the fact that the stars are there, notwithstanding the sunlight, proves nothing with regard to the reality of the objects of faith. The only real analogy that exists in the case is between the darkness and the daylight of the world within and the darkness and the daylight of the world without. Science, or knowledge, is light; ignorance is darkness; there are no other symbols that so fully and exactly express these things. The mind sees, science lets in the light, and the darkness flees.

If there is anything in our inward life and experience that corresponds or is analogous to the night with its stars, it is to be found in that withdrawal from the noise and bustle of the world into the atmosphere of secluded contemplation. If there are any stars in your firmament, you will find them then. But, after all, how far the stars of religion and philosophy are subjective, or of our own creation, is always a question.

I recently met with the same fallacy in a leading article in one of the magazines. “The fact revealed by the spectroscope,” says the writer, “that the physical elements of the earth exist also in the stars, supports the faith that a moral nature like our own inhabits the universe.” A tremendous leap--a leap from the physical to the moral. We know that these earth elements are found in the stars by actual observation and experience. We see them as truly as we see the stars themselves; but a moral nature like our own--this is assumed and is not supported at all by analogy. The only legitimate inference from the analogy is, that as our sun has planets and that these planets, or one of them at least, is the abode of life, so these other suns in composition like our own, and governed by laws like our own, have planets revolving around them which are or may be the abode of beings like ourselves. If this “moral nature like our own” pervades our system, then the inference is just that it also pervades the other systems. But to argue from physical elements to moral causes is to throw upon analogy more than it will bear.

Analogy is a kind of rule of three: we must have three terms to find the fourth. We argue from the past to the present and from the present to the future. Things that begin must end. If man’s life has been continuous in the past, then we may infer that it will be continuous in the future.

Our earth has a moon; it is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that some of the other planets have moons. It is reasonable to suppose that there are other planets and suns and systems, myriads of them. It may be reasonable to think with Sir Robert Ball that the extinct or dark and burnt-out bodies in the sky exceed in numbers the luminous ones, as the non-luminous bodies exceed the luminous ones upon the earth. No man has seen live steam; when it can be seen it is dead; yet we know that it exists.

We may complete a circle from a small segment of it. If we have two sides of a triangle, we may add the third. To find the value of an unknown quantity, we must have a complete equation and as many equations as we have unknown quantities. We can argue from this life to the future life only after proof that there is a future life.

Professor Drummond was able to show the continuity of natural law in the spiritual world by assuming that a spiritual world which was the counterpart of the physical world actually existed. That Calvinism in its main tenets tallies, or seems to tally, with science is no more proof of the literal truth of those tenets than the ascribing of human form and features to the man in the moon is proof of the existence of such a man. Our minds, our spirits, are no doubt in a way under the same law as are our bodies, because they are the outcome of our bodies and our bodies are the outcome of material nature; but to base upon that fact the existence of a corresponding world and life after death is to leap beyond the bounds of all possible analogy.

Many of the dogmas of theology have a grain of natural truth in them. This does not prove their truth, as applicable to some hypothetical other world, but as applied to this world. The kingdom of heaven, as the founder of Christianity taught, is not yonder and of to-morrow, but is now and here.

Tolstoi, I think, is guilty of false analogy when, in attempting to get rid of the idea of pleasure as the aim and purpose of art, he makes the comparison with food, and says that pleasure is no more the end in eating than it is in painting, or poetry, or music. The analogy is false because the necessities of our bodies are not to be compared with the luxuries, so to speak, of our minds. We cannot live without food, but we can and do live without art. And yet, do we not eat because the food tastes good? Is not the satisfaction of appetite the prime motive in eating? If dining gave us no pleasure, we should probably soon learn to swallow our food in a highly concentrated form, in capsules, and thus make short work of it. Nature, of course, conceals her own purpose in the pleasure we take in our food, just as she does in the pleasure of the sexes; but of this purpose we take little thought, except in the latter case how to defeat it. We do not have conscious pleasure in breathing; hence our breathing is involuntary. We do have conscious pleasure in food; hence our elaborate and ingenious cookery--often to the detriment of our bodies. Take away the pleasures of life, the innocent natural pleasure, take away the pleasures of art, and few of us would care for either.

Man is a microcosm, an epitome of the universe, and its laws and processes are repeated dimly or plainly in him. Then there are, of course, real analogies and homologies between different parts of nature, as between fluids and gases, and fluids and solids, between the organic and the inorganic, between the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms.

When we strike the great vital currents or laws,--the law of growth, of decay, of health and disease, of reproduction, of evolution,--we strike the region of true analogy. These laws must be continuous throughout nature. All phases of development must be analogous. The mind grows with the body and is under the same law. Exercise is the same to both. Each has its appetites. Each has its tonics and stimulants. All beginnings are the same; that is, from a germ. Language must have begun in the most rudimentary sounds. Art, we know, began in the most rude and simple marks and signs; science in the crudest, simplest facts; religion in childish superstition; and so on through the whole scope of human development. Development is always from the simple to the complex.

There is, no doubt, a deep-seated analogy between the growth of the individual and the growth of the state or nation; between revolutions in history, and storms and convulsions in nature.

We speak of the root of the matter; everything really has its root, its obscure beginning, its hidden underground processes.

There are types and suggestions everywhere--fresh fuel checks the fire; the soft stone cuts the steel the fastest; the first big drops of the shower raise the dust.

The analogy between the development of animal life upon the earth and the growth of organized communities seems complete. In the lower forms of life, there is no specialization, or division of functions. The amœba can move, feel, digest, reproduce in every part of its structure; it is not differentiated or specialized; so in the rudest tribes, there is little division of labor. As animal life develops, each part of the body has a function of its own; and as communities develop, extreme specialization takes place. Organic life goes from the simple to the complex, as does progress in human affairs. This is the law of all growth.

When Schopenhauer says “riches are like sea water; the more you drink the thirstier you become,” the mind is instantly pleased by the force and aptness of the comparison, and for the moment we look upon riches as something to be avoided. But is the analogy entirely true? Sea water is to be avoided altogether, even a single mouthful of it; but even Schopenhauer defends riches and the pursuit of riches. “People are often reproached for wishing for money above all things, and for loving it more than anything else; but it is natural and even inevitable for people to love that which, like an unwearied Proteus, is always ready to turn itself into whatever object their wandering wishes or manifold desires may for the moment fix upon.” Here the comparison will bear a closer scrutiny. Wealth is indeed a Proteus that will take any form your fancy may choose. “Other things are only relatively good,” the great pessimist further says; “money alone is absolutely good, because it is not only a concrete satisfaction of one need in particular; it is an abstract satisfaction of all.” What, then, becomes of its analogy to sea water, which so mocks and inflames our thirst? Even the resemblance in the one particular that Schopenhauer had in mind is not true. To the great majority of people wealth brings a degree of satisfaction; they give over its pursuit and seek the enjoyment of it. When a man enters into the race for wealth, he is unflagging in seeking it as long as his cup of life is full; but when the limits of his powers are reached, he begins to lose interest, and the appetite for gold, as for other things, declines.

When the same philosopher says that to measure a man’s happiness only by what he gets, and not also by what he expects to get, is as futile as to try to express a fraction which shall have a numerator but no denominator, he uses a figure that conveys the truth much more fully. It may be open to the objection of being too technical, but it expresses a real relation for all that. When you increase your expectations, you increase your denominator; and as most men expect or want more than they have, human happiness is nearly always a fraction--rarely is it a whole number. With many it is a very small fraction indeed. Blessed is he who expects little. The man who expects ten and gets but five is more to be envied than he who expects a thousand and gets but fifty. He is nearer the sum of his wishes. Hence the truth of the old saying that it is our wants that make us poor. When a piece of good fortune that he did not expect comes to a man, his happiness or satisfaction is no longer a fraction; it is more than a unit.

Quintilian says that the early blossom of talent is rarely followed by the fruit of great achievement, but the early works of a man or a youth are just as much fruit as his later ones. There is really no analogy between the early works of an author and the blossoms of a tree. The dreams, the visions, the aspirations of youth are more like blossoms. Probably no great man has been without them; but how they wither and fall, and how much more sober the aspect which life puts on before any solid achievements can be pointed to! There is usually something more fresh and pristine about the earlier works of a man--more buoyancy, more unction, more of the “fluid and attaching character;” but the ripest wisdom always goes with age.

There are, no doubt, many strict and striking analogies between the mind and the body, their growth and decay, their health and disease, their assimilative, digestive, and reproductive processes.

The mind is only a finer body. It is hardly a figure of speech to speak of wounded feelings, of a wounded spirit. How acute at first, and how surely healing with time. But the scar remains. Then there are real analogies, real parallels, between the mind and outward nature, in the laws of growth and decay, nutrition and reproduction. “The mind of Otho,” says Tacitus, “was not, like his body, soft and effeminate.” There are minds that are best described by the word masculine, and others by the word feminine. There are dull, sluggish minds, just as there are heavy, sluggish bodies, and the two usually go together. There are dry, lean minds, and there are minds full of unction and juice. We even use the phrase “mental dyspepsia,” but the analogy here implied is probably purely fanciful, though mental dissipation and mental intemperance are no idle words. Some persons acquire the same craze for highly exciting and stimulating mental food that others have for strong drink, or for pepper and other condiments. They lose their taste for simple, natural, healthful things,--for good sound literature,--and crave sensational novels and the Sunday newspapers. Doubtless a large part of the reading of the American people to-day is sheer mental dissipation, and is directed by an abnormal craving for mental excitement. There is degeneration in the physical world, and there is degeneration, strictly so called, in the intellectual world. There are proportion, relation, cause and effect, health and disease, in one as in the other. Logic is but the natural relation of parts as we see them in the organic world. In fact, logic is but health and proportion. The mind cannot fly any more than the body can; it progresses from one fact or consideration to another, step by step, though often, or perhaps generally, we are not conscious of the steps. A large view of truth may be suddenly revealed to the mind, as of a landscape from a hill-top; but the mind did not fly to the vantage ground; it reached it by a slow and maybe obscure process.

The world is simpler than we think. The modes and processes of things widely dissimilar are more likely to be identical than we suspect. There are homologies where we see apparent contradiction. There is but one protoplasm for animal and vegetable. A little more or less heat makes the gaseous, makes the liquid, makes the solid. Lava crystallizes or freezes at a high temperature; water, at a low one; mercury, at a still lower. Charcoal and the diamond are one; the same law of gravitation which makes the cloud float makes the rain fall. The law that spheres a tear spheres a globe. These facts warrant us in looking for real homologies, vital correspondences, in nature. Only such correspondences give logical and scientific value to analogy. If the likeness means identity of law, or is the same principle in another disguise, then it is an instrument of truth. We might expect to find many analogies between air and water, the atmosphere being but a finer ocean; also between ice and water, and between ice and the stratified rocks. If water flows, then will ice flow; if ice bends, then will the rocky strata bend. If cross fertilization is good in the vegetable world, we should expect to find it good in the animal world.

There is thought to be a strict analogy between the succession of plants in different months of the year and the prevalence of different diseases at different seasons. The germ theory of disease gives force to the comparison. The different species of germs no doubt find some periods of the year more favorable to their development than others.