Part 4

So far as the finest and keenest researches in chemistry and physics carry us, especially such researches as those of Crooks and Lockyer, it is powerfully indicated that the creative method in the inorganic world was a sublime progressive plan, a building up by law, of the dome of heaven and the floor of earth, and all that goes with both. But behind the matter and the motion, above the energies and the force, there surely was, as we have been constrained to see, what we can only think of as the conception, the purpose, and the will by which the evolving order, marked in high, and higher sublimity, the upward and onward movement of the ripening and uncounted ages.

But when the highest point of the inorganic, the not-living, was reached, and a new factor had to appear in the world to crown some of its matter with _life_ and all its wonders, what was it that ensued? If ‘law’ did not cease to act; if there were no break in the continuity of evolution, and yet a factor of power, not now operating within the range of our knowledge, was absolutely necessary to change the not-living matter of the earth into matter that lived, how was it brought about?

Our inability to reply, does not invalidate the facts on the one hand, nor justify attempts at explanations that find no sanction in experience and knowledge on the other.

Suggestion by analogy, feeble as it is, is the nearest approach that we can make to the solution of what must, perhaps, remain for ever a splendid mystery.

If creation be, then, the expression of the mind and will of a Creator, uttered in method and issuing in phenomena, he must see the end from the beginning: his resource is infinite. The human mathematician, of the highest order, can devise, with all the adaptations and prearrangements that are needed, an instrument or machine, which shall continue for a number of motions, without necessary limit, according to a primal law, but which by such prevised and preordered arrangements would, suddenly, at the required point of time, undergo change, and operate henceforth after a law entirely new.

An instrument has actually been made which was competent to effect the solution of quadratic equations whose roots are real. One has also been made capable of effecting the determination of the real roots of any equation. It is perfectly conceivable that an instrument could be made which should go on finding the real roots only, for a measured time, and then by a prearranged and provided method should suddenly, by the very laws and principles of its construction, so change, that for another period, or for evermore, it should also determine the imaginary roots.

Is it not conceivable that infinite resource, infinite wisdom, infinite prevision and power could in a manner which this illustration only suggests have caused the non-vital universe to become in some parts vital? Could not infinite power, infinite wisdom, the originator of all that we call material phenomena, have prevised and preordered, in the impenetrable mystery of ‘the beginning,’ that the creative laws of evolution for an inorganic world, should, as they brought about the completion of their perfect purpose, have carried with them from that ‘beginning’ preordered potentialities, that should, by the primal volition of the Creator, emerge, as an inevitable and orderly sequence, into the operation of higher activities and new laws?

If that may not be, it is not a divine being that is in our thought. But if that may be, then the self-acting laws of nature are self-acting, as the products of eternal mind and will. Each self-acting phenomenon is, to us, an embodied thought of God; emerging in matter now, as a consequence of the sublimity and perfection of the methods divinely willed ‘in the beginning.’

Let this illustration weigh for what it will; this at least is clear, that the mechanical philosophy, whether or not it refuses to be called ‘material,’ has proved its formula incompetent. Atomic matter without property, affected by motion, with persistent relations between the matter and the motion, can no more account for the universe even up to the point of the origin of the lowest life, than the vibrations of a musical chord can account for the joy begotten of music.

But how stands the problem of its origin, when, in that which lives, we include the presence of mind? None more firmly contends for the absolute disparity, the entire and unqualified difference between mind and matter, than Mr. Spencer. To him there can be nothing within the whole realm of thought severed by a wider interval than consciousness and thought on the one hand, and matter on the other. ‘Just,’ he says, ‘in the same way that the object is the unknown permanent _nexus_ which is never itself a phenomenon, but is that which holds phenomena together, so is the subject the unknown permanent _nexus_ which is never itself a state of consciousness, but which holds all states of consciousness together.’[22] Mind and matter, then, are here admitted to be infinitely unlike, but absolutely equal realities. This is boldly reaffirmed; he says: ‘No effort of imagination enables us to think of a shock, however minute, except as undergone by an entity. We are compelled, therefore, to postulate a substance of mind that is affected, before we can think of its affections.’[23]

[Footnote 22: _Principles of Psychology_, vol. ii. p. 484.]

[Footnote 23: _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 627.]

This is as clear as a geometric definition. Mind and matter are admitted to be the two opposite termini of thought; they are divided by an interval beyond which thought cannot go. They are symbolized as _x_ and _y_, two equally unknown, but absolutely unlike, quantities. Beyond the common fact of existence, there is not a quality of the one that is not infinitely unlike all the qualities of the other.

What this disparity is we all know: enough, that matter is inert, absolutely without perceiving power, and unable in itself to move or to produce motion. But mind is conscious, knows that it exists; and, however mysteriously, originates motion. Matter has mass; mind is absolutely without it. Matter cannot be thought of save as an occupant of space. Mind has no extension.

Is it conceivable, then, that we should be required by this philosophy, which thus admits the utter disparity of mind and matter, to make mind a function of matter? that we should be asked to mentally follow a process by which _y_ shall be changed into _x_? This verily is so!

I must repeat the formula of this philosophy of evolution. ‘Evolution is an integration of matter, and concomitant dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.’

Matter and motion, these are the all; no suggestion of aught besides. Then, if on that formula the philosophy is built, the rhythmic vicissitudes through which matter has passed during limitless millenniums of time, are supposed to be able to change matter’s unconsciousness into self-perception and thought; to cause extended and gravitating mass to pass into an unextended realization of its own being, unyoked to gravity; to emerge from space relations involving motion produced by outside forces, to an absolute independence of space relations which makes motion impossible. If we make our _knowledge_ of phenomena and the processes and methods of Nature the basis of our judgment, is it not manifest, that such a change is incapable of being thought?

The unknown _y_, that is, matter, must, by sheer physical vicissitudes, actually abnegate its own qualities, and emerge, no longer _itself_, _y_, but another entity, infinitely unlike itself, that is, _x_!

If mind and matter are divergent from each other by infinite unlikeness of quality, the mind refuses assent, that any process, based on the foundation of accurate human knowledge, would sanction the emergence of mind by physical processes from matter. Mind is the antithesis, and cannot be a function, of matter.

The mind is intimately linked with cerebral action. We do not know mind apart from brain; but there is no discovered correlation between the _work_ of the brain, and consciousness. Dr. Tyndall, whose keen and instructed intellect has addressed itself to this deep problem from the position of a physicist, says, amongst many similar utterances: ‘But when we endeavour to pass ... from the phenomena of physics to those of thought, we meet a problem which transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers which we now possess. We may think over the subject again and again, but it eludes all intellectual presentation. We stand at length face to face with the incomprehensible. The territory of physics is wide, but it has its limits, from which we look with vacant gaze into the region beyond, ... and thus it will ever loom, compelling the philosophies of successive ages to confess that—

“We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our life Is rounded by a sleep.”’[24]

[Footnote 24: _Fragments of Science_, vol. ii. pp. 393, 394.]

The same thinker asks, ‘What is the causal connexion ... between molecular motions and states of consciousness?’ And he answers that neither he nor any other can know; and adds: ‘It is no explanation to say that the objective and subjective are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. Why should the phenomenon have two sides? This is the very core of the difficulty. There are plenty of molecular motions which do not exhibit this two-sidedness. Does water think or feel when it runs into frost ferns upon a window pane? If not, why should the molecular motion of the brain be yoked to this mysterious companion—consciousness?’[25]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 410.]

Says Professor Tait, one of our most distinguished physicists: ‘There are ... things associated with living beings which, of course, no one in his senses can regard as physical. Even such things as consciousness and volition we have absolutely no reason, however vague, for classifying even in the smallest degree under the head of physics.’[26]

[Footnote 26: _Recent Advances in Physical Science_, p. 70.]

‘I,’ writes Professor Huxley, ‘know nothing whatever, and never hope to know anything, of the steps by which the passage from molecular movement to states of consciousness is effected.’[27] And again, ‘All our knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness. “Matter” and “force” are, so far as we can know, mere names for certain forms of consciousness.‘[28]

[Footnote 27: _Contemporary Review_, Nov. 1871: ‘Mr. Darwin and his Critics.’]

[Footnote 28: _Lay Sermons_, p. 373.]

Such disparity is there, then, between matter and mind, that it would be apparently as congruous to conceive of a thought as solidifying itself into a material object, as to conceive of any affection of material molecules as being the sole cause of thought. Hence, it follows that the Spencerian philosophy, which affirms the absolute distinctness of mind from matter, on the one hand; but, having no other structural elements _than_ matter in motion, on the other hand, seeks to educe mind from these, is surely incongruous, and fails.

The demand is, that the primal atoms of the cosmic cloud, without a single logically added agent besides, have, by combining and recombining, by changing size and shape and intensifying the complexity of their motions, at last emerged into ‘I am,’ ‘I can,’ ‘I ought;’ that in effect they have written Faust and Hamlet, produced philosophies, discovered gravitation, calculated eclipses, realized the eternal nobility of right and the eternal baseness of wrong: in brief, have brought about the moral and intellectual manhood that is ours. What we _know_ by scientific evidence is this: that the persistence of force makes the relations of matter and force permanent. Says Faraday: ‘A particle of oxygen is ever a particle of oxygen, nothing can in the least wear it. If it enters into combination and reappears as oxygen—if it pass through a thousand combinations, animal, vegetable, mineral—if it lie hid for a thousand years and then be evolved—it is oxygen with its first qualities, neither more nor less. It has all its original force, and only that.’[29]

[Footnote 29: _Philosophical Mag._, iv. 13, p. 235.]

Then, in all the area of the universe as we know it, that is, within the range of our experience and experiment, infinite vicissitude leaves what we know as an elementary body, with its first qualities intact, neither more nor less. But we must transcend experience, disregard the evidence before us, and _believe_ that if we give the primal atoms with their inalienable motion _time enough_, they will emerge at last, not only as life, but as intellect!

Can it avail to repudiate materialism, and yet to philosophically conjure mind out of matter? We must indeed recast our definition of matter to do this; but how? Says Professor Max Müller: ‘Mill declares in one place (_Logic_ v. 3, 3) that it is a mere fallacy to say that matter cannot think. Here again he ought to define first of all what he means by matter, and according to his definition it may or may not be a fallacy to say that matter cannot think. If we say that matter cannot think, we do not say so because we cannot conceive thought to be annexed to any arrangement of material particles ... the reason why we are justified in saying “matter cannot think” is our having in our language and thought separated matter from thought, our having called and conceived what is without thought matter, and what is without matter thought. Having done this, we are as certain that our matter cannot think as that A=A and not =B.‘[30]

[Footnote 30: _The Science of Thought_, p. 616.]

The verdict of consciousness is the immovable base of all mental action. Our consciousness affirms our personality and insists on our identity. The Ego is conscious of itself as the hidden thread of unity on which are strung all the past and present states of consciousness and thought. Separate ‘states of consciousness’ as affections of matter we have seen are impossible. But even if they could exist, _to_ whom is their existence? A pang of unutterable remorse, a thrill of keenest pleasure, do not feel themselves. I feel them; what is that I, to whom the feeling is? It is always there, and in the language of Spencer already quoted ‘is the unknown permanent _nexus_ which is never itself a state of consciousness, but which holds all states of consciousness together.’ Then it is as real and more absolute than the ‘states of consciousness’ themselves.

The personal pronouns are as plentiful in the language of modern materialists as in the language of sentiment or theology. What do they represent?

Looking back and looking forward, thinking of ‘what might have been’ and anticipating what will be; and being absolutely conscious that it is ‘I’ in unchanged and unchanging identity that am looking back upon myself, and looking forward to myself, is unthinkable, unless _something_ to which all successive states of consciousness have been, are, and shall be, is admitted. If I deny the separate existence of the Ego, I to all intents and purposes deny that I am, and yet it is I that am there, perjuring myself by the denial.

Not only is there consciousness and thought, memory and prevision, power and volition; but the person, the identity that is conscious and thinks, that remembers and anticipates, that is able and that wills, is an inextinguishable factor of being. And for this there is no provision in the formula of the Spencerian Philosophy.

True, as we have seen, it is fain to admit, outside its formula, the existence of a permanent somewhat lying beneath and outlasting all the flow of mental states; that it has always existed, that it must exist for evermore; that it is a ‘power’ sometimes identified with ‘force;’ but it is contended that this is infinitely and for ever unknowable. With this we cannot be concerned; in practice it is an abstraction equal to nothing. But it is no element of our analysis; it is no factor of the formula which contained the only data required by this philosophy to construct the universe. We cannot assume that this power was the cause of matter, or the cause of motion; for we are shown that we can know nothing concerning it. But this also is of no moment; for matter, motion, and the combinations they bring about, over countless millenniums of time, clearly understood, and fully interpreted, are supposed to contain in themselves, the explanation of all that is. But surely the promise of this philosophy is unfulfilled, its pledge is broken; it left its formula at the very outset of its career, and has employed structural principles, which to _it_ are absolutely alien.

Then to affirm that mind does not exist is impossible; to affirm that matter gave origin to mind is a contradiction. There is but one alternative: it is, that in the beginning, mind, acting through and in matter, by immutable and perfect modes, through unmeasured time, caused matter to assume its forms and display its phenomena; and, being mind, imparted mind to the universe wherever it is found: crowning all, in the moral and intellectual nature of man.

Thus the ultimate demand of thought, of reason, and of consciousness, is that when we are unravelling the modes of phenomena, pushing our inquiries into the conditions of all existences, generalizing vast areas of knowledge, expressing in formula of geometry and numbers the splendid rhythm and order of all things in heaven and earth, we are simply finding, and expressing, the thoughts of an Infinite Intelligence; discovering the modes by which His immutable perfections were caused to take form in matter and mind.

It is science alone that can discover and express the _mode_ of action; it is theology alone that must strive reverently to lead the mind up from the mode, not to the _conception_, but to the inevitable existence and thought of the Creator.

In doing this, to suppose that there are no intellectual difficulties is to manifest narrow mental grasp; but there are no absolute contradictions; no incongruities intolerable to the mind. True, as we have seen above, we encounter the inevitable fact of the uncreate existence of the Infinite. But we have seen that this, though infinitely impenetrable by us for ever, is still not repugnant to our reasoning and moral faculties. Indeed the eternal existence of _matter_ as not requiring proof is one of the assumptions of some materialists. But surely the self and necessary existence of an intelligent omnipotence is without measure more congruous. It has been argued that the eternity of matter is thinkable, because matter is immutable—retains its properties through every vicissitude conceivable in time and space. But surely gravity is an indispensable quality of matter; yet take a bar of iron, weighing a thousand pounds at the sea level, four miles high, and it loses two pounds of its weight; carry it to the distance of the moon from the earth, and it weighs but five ounces; and at a distance which could be computed its gravity would be absolutely lost. It is conceivable that all the ‘modes of motion’ by which matter is known to us, might, if we knew enough concerning them, be found to have conditions in which they would cease to operate. We must know that matter is unchangeable before the argument is valid. But even then it is incompetent.

What the mind asks, is power and intelligence, to account for the majesty of the universe, and the existence of mind; and if their cause, to be such, must be admitted to be uncaused, the majority of reflective minds can accept this, and in doing so, can fairly rest, and fully hope.

But, this granted, the question shapes itself afresh, ‘In the beginning what?’ Had matter a coeval existence, an eternal being like God? or did He create it? bring, what to our senses is something, directly out of nothing? None dare answer. Both suggestions refuse to be dealt with by reason. But the incongruity of both might vanish like starlight in the dawn, if we knew _what_ that is, which constitutes matter. It would, perhaps, make the Divine mind more immanent than we could dare to imagine. But it is easier without measure, judged of by our only source of knowledge, our own mental experience, to conceive of matter as a product of mind, than mind as a product of matter.

What, then, is it that the reverent mean by a ‘creative act’? What is involved in the affirmation, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’? _Must_ the answer be speculative? or does the evidence of Nature indicate a method? If the answer must be wholly speculative, it is without a shred of value. But if the _mode_ of creation be a question of evidence, who are the witnesses? They are those who are students and masters of the _facts_ of Nature. Willing or not willing, in the end, we _must_ accept the facts of Science. What, from the very nature and constitution of our mind, we are bound to accept as truth, it would be a travesty of all morality to ignore, much more to reject.

What was gained to morals, or religion, by rejecting Galileo’s demonstration of a revolving earth and a central sun? When Kepler demonstrated the laws of planetary motion, in the spirit of his age he was obliged to suppose that the direct motion of the planets was brought about by some spirit influence which he denominated ‘immateriate species,’ capable of overcoming the inertia of material bodies. But the splendid insight of Newton enabled him to perceive, that the laws of planetary motion, were a consequence of the cosmical law of gravitation. This took the moving planets out of spirit hands, and reduced the music of their motions to a method—a mechanical ‘law.’ To thousands that was deemed a truce to ‘atheism;’ but it is an unalterable truth; and men yet believe in God.

Within the range of living memory it has been held as vital to the existence of theology that creation, from the stars that fringe the margin of the universe, to the earth, and the crown of manhood, arose in six literal days. But science, with no weapon but inexorable fact, has made this for ever untenable. But the foundations of religion are unshaken.

Science has removed whole regions and æons of phenomena, from what was considered the supernatural, to the natural; but to believe that this is so much lost to theology is a feeble and faithless fallacy.

That conception of the Great Creator which takes its rise in the majestic law of universal gravitation must be sublimer than that which thought of Him as telling off spirits to move, and bear up the planets, in their paths.

Can that be a higher view of an illimitable Creative Mind, which conceived of Him as a Power who caused the earth to be formed, and the heavens to be filled, in six literal days, rather than to think of Him to whom there can be no yesterday and no to-morrow, but an unchanging now, as determining laws and forces, which, in the slow progression of uncounted ages, should express His creative will and accomplish His Divine idea?