Chapter 12

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.

And oh, when hope began to die, I saw it all; saw it in the weary eyes; heard it in the step that lagging past my door, climbed to its task, its hopeless task, again. I saw it in the cheek where hunger,--the hunger of the common herd--had set its fangs upon the delicate bloom. To ask for bread meant to receive a stone, a stone like unto the stones cast at her, that one in old Jerusalem. Perhaps she hungered too; who dares judge, since Christ himself refused to condemn.

She tried at shops at last, but no man wanted modest Quaker maids to measure off their goods. The shop-girl's smile was part and parcel of the bargain, and if the smile beguiled a serpent in man's clothing, why the girl must look to that.

One night I sought her room, her tidy little nest--my poor solitary birdling--and found her at her work, her old task of writing. She had gone back to it. There were rings about the eyes where tears were forbidden visitors. I took the poor head in my arms.

"Don't, Claudia," I cried. "The youth is all gone from your face." "That's right," she said. "It left my heart long ago, and face and heart should have a common correspondence."

And then she laughed, as if to cheat my old ears with the sound of merriment.

"I needed stamps," she said. "The question rested, stamps _vs._ supper. Like a true artist I made my choice for art. But see here. That manuscript when it is finished, means _no more hunger_. Something tells me it will succeed, and save me. So I have called it _Refuge_, and on it I have staked my last hope."

She playfully tapped the tidy page, and laughed again. But her words had a solemn earnestness about them to which her pale pinched face lent something still of awe.

Day after day I watched her, as day after day the battle became too much for her. Too much? I spoke too quickly when I said so. She was a mystery to me. I felt but could not understand her life, and its grand, heart-breaking changes. She had planned for something which she could not reach. The doors to it were closed. Her starving woman's soul called for food; the husks were offered in its stead; the bestial, grovelling, brutish swine's husks. She refused them. Her soul would make no compromise with swine. She was so strong, and _had_ been so full of hope I could not understand her. You who have studied the tricks of the human heart, you who have held your own while faith died in your bosom, or you who have felt it stabbed and crushed _refuse_ to die, perhaps you can understand that strange and fitful strength that came and went; that outburst of hope, that silence of despair which made, in turn, my dear one's torture.

One night I found her sitting in the moonlight with her face dropped forward on the windowsill. So pure, so white, so frail of body, and so strong of soul, she might have been some marble priestess waiting there for God's breath to move in passion through the pulseless stone.

"Claudia, dear, are you asleep?" I whispered.

"No, I was thinking if the moon would ever shine upon the night when I shall feel no more the pangs of hunger."

I took her in my arms and wept, although her eyes were strangely tearless. She put out her hand and stroked away my tears.

"Don't, dear," she begged. "It is all right. It is only that there is no place for me. The niche I wish to fill has never been chiseled in the wall of this world's matters. It is God's mistake if one is made, and God must look to it. I tell you, Gertie," and she rose up grandly in her pride and in her wrath, "there are but two niches made for woman in this world. There's but one choice, wife or harlot. The poor, who refuse still to be vile, must step aside, since honest poverty by man's decree is but a myth. There's no room in this world for such."

She was growing bitter, bitter, driving on, I thought, to that fatal rock from which the wrecks of lost women cry back to rail at God who would not save them from destruction, although they prayed aloud and shrieked their agony up heavenward, straight to His ears. I think sometimes I should not like to sit in God's stead when such women come to face His judgment. Women who called, and called, and never had an answer, and so went down, still calling.

It was thus _she_ called.

One day I came upon her where she had thrown herself upon a little garden stool to rest. A book lay on her knee, her eyes upon the page; and as I listened, for she read aloud, slowly, as when one reads to his own heart, I caught the meaning of the poet's words as they had found interpretation by her:--

"'For each man deems his own sand-house secure, While life's wild waves are lulled; yet who can say, If yet his faith's foundations do endure, It is not that no wind hath blown that way?'"

She was silent a moment, then repeated the first line of the stanza again, even more softly than before,

"'For each man deems his own sand-house secure.'"

Then, tossing the book aside, she burst out wildly, all the pent-up patience, all the insulted and outraged womanhood within her, breaking bonds at last. She lifted up her hand as if calling down from God a curse, or offering at His register an oath. It might have been an oath, indeed; who knows? Thinking of her since I think it _was_ an oath, made, in that moment of her frenzy, betwixt her soul and God, and registered with Him.

"Gertie," she said, "to-day a man offered me money. Offered me all I asked, offered to make me his mistress. Do you hear? Do you? or has your soul gone deaf as mine has? His mistress! I meet it everywhere. Yet why? Because I am respectably poor. To-morrow the roof tumbles about my ears. The mortgage closes. You and I alike are homeless. I went to him, my father's friend, to whom, in dying, he entrusted me for guidance. I begged of him that guidance, or, at the least, a little longer time upon the mortgage. He laughed. 'Don't worry,' said he, 'and don't soil your pretty hands with ink stains any further. Leave that for the printer, or the devil. You and I will make an _easier_ trade.' Ease! ease! I tell you 'tis these flowery beds of ease on which poor suffocated women wake in hell. 'Soil' my soul and leave that for the 'devil,' too, his trade meant. He put it in plain words, that gray-haired _guardian_ of a dead friend's honor. Ease! _I_ did not ask for ease, but work. I am strong, and young, and willing; but my 'sand-house' trembles with the lashing of the tide on its foundation. O my God! what fools we women be to kick against the pricks of fate."

"Each man deems his own sand-house secure."