CHAPTER VII.

THE PERMANENCE OF THE COMPLETED LIFE OF MAN.

Back of the movement which began in creation and culminated in man, we posited the mind of a self-conscious, self-determining, self-active, personal God. Necessity was upon us to assume a first principle of some kind, and it seemed proper to have one large enough to account for the facts we were about to consider. The first principle Thales set up was water. In water he saw the origin of all and the end of all. But all that came out of water must, in the end, find its death in water. With nothing but a vast ocean to start with, we shall find, at the conclusion, nothing more articulate and rational than an infinite expanse of water to end with.

Herbert Spencer, “the heir of all the ages in the foremost files of time,” took as the starting point of his philosophy the unknowable. In the selection of a first principle, however, we think Thales, though the first philosopher who ever lived, had the advantage of him.

Water is a definite and positive somewhat; the unknowable is an indefinite and inarticulate vacuity. With water for a first principle, the prospect is certain destruction in a general deluge. With the unknowable for a first principle, the prospect is sure imbecility in universal ignorance. It is better to be drowned in water than to have the light of intelligence put out in everlasting night. Mr. Spencer’s unknowable was a convenient receptacle into which to dump difficulties and troublesome problems; but, as a working hypothesis, it was not sufficient even to build the universe Mr. Spencer saw. In the process of constructing his system, Mr. Spencer gave to his unknowable nearly all the attributes which theologians give to a personal God. As we have already seen, when Mr. Spencer got through with drawing from his unknowable all that he had to have to give his system the order and show of reason, it was found that the unknowable part of the unknowable had about been scattered in the light of knowledge. For this same unknowable was found to have Being, Power, Activity, Causal Energy, and Omnipresence for attributes. Nothing more can come out of a first principle than what is contained in it. Out of water, nothing but water comes, and out of the unknowable, nothing but the unknowable comes. One can posit an acorn, under certain conditions of soil and sky, and get an oak; but the germ of the oak must be in the acorn, and the nutriment of the oak must be in the conditions before any oak can come out. It is the old truism, that “out of nothing, nothing comes.” No one ever attempts to account for anything without a first principle. The test of the reality and value of a first principle will be determined solely by its capacity to account for the facts which come out of it. It is because the unknowable fails to account for the facts of nature, and for self-consciousness, self-determination, and self-activity in man, who stands as the complete consummation and realization of nature, that it is not accepted as an adequate first principle.

Matthew Arnold, in order to escape the objections which he had to taking a self-conscious, self-determining, personal God for a first principle, substituted “The Stream of Tendency, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” But this sentence, when analyzed, reveals the fact that Matthew Arnold’s Stream has about the same essential elements the theologian supposes to reside in God. A stream has a source, a direction, and an end. Here, then, we have cause, means, and ultimate object. It is also said that the stream makes for something; here is self-determination. It is said to make for righteousness; here is the attribute of Justice, and justice can only be predicated of a person.

Given nature, with its elements, laws, and unity, and man as the being in whom the whole of nature is summed up, with self-consciousness, self-determination, and self-activity; the only first principle sufficient to account for the facts is a self-conscious, self-determining, self-active personal God. It is only such a first principle that is large enough to account for the number, and order, and drift, and collocations of the facts; and to such a first principle the number, and order, and drift, and collocations of the facts may be traced.

If we see red and violet and blue colors appearing in the carpet on one side of the loom, we are warranted in assuming that red and violet and blue threads are entering the carpet on the other side of the loom. Nature is a marvelous loom. At first there are simple elements, then there are compounds, then there are plants, then there are animals. At last all the elements, as so many strands, with their manifold hues and variegated colors, appear in the life of man. Man is the harbor where all the freight, started on its stormy course at creation, comes to shore. Its matter takes majestic form in his body, its power lends itself as wind to his sail, as heat to his engine, as light to his street: its truth is arranged by the intellect into literature and science: its law is formulated into statutes, enactments, and constitutions: its beauty is built into oratorios and spread in radiant visions: its love is accepted and turned into tenderness, and sacrifice, and hope. Infinite personality at the beginning, self-conscious, self-determining, and self-active. Finite personality at the conclusion, self-conscious, self-determining, and self-active.

If you call the process evolution, then no more has been evolved than was involved. If you prefer direct creation, then nothing is seen in the creature that was not built into him by the Creator. Either way, if a self-conscious, self-determining, and self-active man appears on one side of nature, a self-conscious, self-determining, and self-active personal God is, we may know, on the other.

I.

The importance of a correct first principle, and of a right idea of the nature of that first principle, cannot be urged too strongly. In the right solution of the question we are considering, everything depends on it. If we start with water, as Thales did, we will be forced to conclude that individual lives, like bubbles, will eventually fall back and mingle with the waves of the sea.

If we start with the unknowable, as Spencer did, we shall be led to see that human spirits will lose themselves at death, as candles lose their light when the wicks are consumed.

It is not left us, however, arbitrarily to assume such a first principle as comports with the particular theory of life it is our purpose to establish. The first principle that corresponds to reality is already implicit in the facts, the origin, and purpose, and end of which we wish to know. The law of gravity is implicit in falling bodies, and in the revolving stars. The sunbeam is implicit in the growing tree. All that happens when one posits a first principle that is not implicit in the facts he is considering, is that his first principle will fail to account for the facts. Matthew Arnold had a perfect right to assume as a first principle, “The Stream of Tendency, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.” This looked poetic and impersonal, and in his esteem served him as a working hypothesis.

It never seemed to occur to him that his principle implied the same elements and attributes the theologians regarded as uniting in God; the elements and attributes he was so anxious to get rid of. Herbert Spencer, with a theory to work out, and a particular system to buttress and bolster, devised and adopted a first principle that seemed to promise most to his peculiar views. This he had a right to do. But he had no right to take as a first principle the unknowable, with which to destroy the Christian’s God; and just as soon as he had accomplished this to his entire satisfaction, to turn deliberately and take nearly every attribute of the Christian’s God to bestow upon his unknowable. It is hardly to be supposed that Mr. Spencer, with malice aforethought planned the death of God in order to steal his attributes. The more charitable view is to suppose that at the outset his intention was to erect an absolutely new philosophic edifice, upon a new and original foundation. To do this, it was necessary to clear the ground of everything in sight. So in a high moment of philosophic self-confidence, he determined on the obliteration of all previous and time-honored first principles, that he might posit one of his own making and to his own liking.

This was the destructive stage of his mental movement, and it did not occur to him that many of the elements he was clearing away in such wholesale fashion would be necessary to carry up his new philosophic temple. When he got through with the period of preparation, he had nothing to start with but a plain, simple, empty, unknowable. But it soon became evident that the unknowable must have some content, in order to support a decent and orderly structure. At this point he took the attributes of the Christian’s God, Being, Power, Activity, Causal Energy, Omnipresence, and filled up his empty unknowable with them. Then he proceeded with his work.

II.

In starting with a self-conscious, self-determining and personal God, then, as a first principle that accommodates and insures the immortality of the individual spirit, we are only beginning with what is implicit in the facts of nature and human life. Let it be clearly apprehended that the ground of the self-conscious, self-determining, personal God is thought. That the fundamental and first thing in this universe is mind. That the being of God is secondary to the mind, or thought of God. God has being, because he has thought, and not thought, because he has being. The trouble with the pantheistic system of Spinoza was that he looked upon God, first as infinite substance or being, while thought was only one of the modes of this being, and extension was the other. The root of all doubt and skepticism is to be traced to a confused notion of the nature of God. Many speak of God as the Supreme Being, and advertise by their language that in their esteem God is diffused nebulosity, or universally extended externality. There never was a skeptic in the world who had come to the rational and tenable position, that God is primarily, and fundamentally, and essentially thought. We may properly speak of his being, his wisdom, his justice, his truth, his love; but these are different determinations of his thought. God’s being is the externality of his thought. His wisdom is his thought devising means to ends. His justice is his thought balancing and regulating. His truth is his thought in realization. His love is his thought in sacrifice. “In the beginning was the Word.” A word is an expressed thought. “The Word was with God.” The realized thought or word was with God, the Eternal Thinker, or Thought. “God said, Let there be light, and there was light.” Light was thus the expression of thought. Nearly all materialism and pantheism look upon things as an emanation from something. Vapor emanates from the surface of a river, and is only the river in diffusion. But the universe does not emanate from God; it is the direct creation and expression of his thought. Potentially the universe was always in the thought of God.

III.

We have dwelt at length on the self-consciousness and self-determination of God, as these unite in him as an absolute personality, for the reason that the immortality of the human spirit finds its condition and its security here. If God is a person, and self-conscious, self-determining, and self-active, man is immortal, for in him the elements which constitute the essential nature of God appear. Man is a person and a spirit, made in the likeness and image of God. He is, therefore, as imperishable and indestructible as God is. He has thought and is therefore self-conscious; he has a will, and is therefore self-determining; he has power, and is therefore self-active; he maintains his identity through change, and is therefore a person. But the finite person finds his life through the infinite Person. He finds his knowledge by partaking of truth, the realized thought of God; he finds his freedom by the observance of law, the expressed will of God; he finds his peace by partaking of the life that was in Christ, the manifested love of God. As the fundamental and prior thing in the being of God is thought, so the fundamental and prior thing in the being of man is thought. His progress in the practical matters of life will be in proportion to his thought. His political status will be in proportion to his thought; his religious attainment will be in proportion to his thought. Schleiermacher said “Feeling is the source of religion—a feeling of dependence.” But one cannot have a feeling of dependence without having the thought of dependence. One cannot feel that he depends unless he thinks of himself as dependent. Matthew Arnold said that religion was morality touched by emotion. But there cannot be morality without the thought of some rule by which conduct ought to be guided. Even the African savage, who worships a snake, thinks there is something in the snake entitled to his adoration. Thought is the clearest self-explication of the human spirit. In thought it comes to itself and knows itself. Take thought out of the spirit of man, and you take out its essential nature. Its immortality, even were it possible, would then not be worth contending for. One had as well be blotted out, as to lose the only element of his spirit by which he is able to recognize himself as such. Looking upon thought as the center and kernel of the human spirit, we see that to deny the immortality of the human spirit is to assume that thought is destructible; and this is a flat contradiction, for destruction has no meaning, except in relation to thought. It is of the very nature of thought to be eternal. No thought ever dies, or can die. All the determinations of God’s thought are eternal. The mind of God has within it all determinations of thought; those past, those present, and those to come. Some of these determinations of the divine thought have taken the form of objects in the inorganic world, some have taken the form of objects in the vegetable kingdom, and some have taken the form of objects in the animal kingdom. The determinations of thought, of which inorganic things, trees, and animals were the expressions, are all eternal.

It is of the nature of the things in which the determinations of thought took form to change and pass away. But the ideal patterns, of which they were only the temporary forms, are held in the mind of God forever. The house which expresses the architect’s ideal may be blown away, or burned up, but the ideal in the thought of the architect cannot be blown away or burned up. Now in man the determination of God’s thought is not expressed in a thing, but in a thought. Man, as God’s child, inherits, or comes through creation into the possession of thought, of mind, so that he is able to set up thinking—in his own behalf, and by the self-determining, self-conscious, and self-active power of his own mind. God as thought is his own object and his own subject, and man as thought is his own object and his own subject. God has set him up to housekeeping in the republic of thought.

In the changes which take place in material objects, there is preservation of the species, but the loss of the individual. The object is an element and not a self. When it changes, it is by something external to itself, and in changing, realizes its nature. It is indifferent to change, as there is no central self that retains its essential identity in the midst of all change. The tree belongs to a higher order of existence than a rock. It is the expression of unconscious life. The animal belongs to a still higher plane than the tree. Besides appropriating food from its environment, as does the tree, it takes in the images of things, and lives a low order of sentient life. But in order that animals may take in the images of things through the senses, the things must be present before them. When the thing is gone, the image fades. The objects which stand around man in his environment pass into his consciousness through the senses. But when the environment changes and the objects are taken away, the impressions made by the objects remain. In this way man re-creates the universe for his own thought. The gurgling of brooks, the murmur of the sea, the sighing of the winds, the cooing of doves, he hears just as the animal does. But away from brooks, and seas, and winds, and doves, Beethoven throws into one of his symphonies all the notes that were ever on sea or land. He has within him the same kind of mind that expressed itself in all the notes of music, and he not only hears these notes, but he re-combines and reorganizes them in his great compositions.

IV.

The spirit of man is simple. It is an ultimate and indivisible unity. Death divides, breaks up, and disintegrates. The nature of the human spirit is such, however, that it cannot be divided, broken up, or disintegrated. We see it maintain its identity through the storms and mutations of eighty years. All things change about it. The very body that constitutes its temporary abiding place is torn down and rebuilt many times in the course of a long life. It advances in knowledge and experience; grows larger and richer in hope and love, but all its accumulations of thought and increasing wealth of life are stored in the same self-conscious, self-determining, personal spirit. In the evening of life the old man sits in the midst of his grandchildren and recounts the scenes of his boyhood days. All the waves of time contained within the sweep of three score years and ten have left their labels of drift and storm on the shores of his life. But they have not worn, or wasted, or altered his spirit.

A rock wears away, or is crumbled to dust, when it is a rock no longer. A tree is cut down and split into cord wood and burned in the engine, and it is a tree no longer. In the furnace it is turned back into its original elements. In the fire it is altered or othered. The other of a tree is oxygen, hydrogen, etc. The bird in the thicket is shot by the heartless sportsman. It falls to the ground and its little heart ceases to beat. Soon its body is changed back into earth and air. The other of a bird is not a bird, but the particles which were organized under the process of natural law to form its body. The images which fell on its vision in the grove, faded away when the objects which caused them were removed. The sounds which came to its ears from here and there in the forest passed from its sense when the air that caused them ceased to vibrate. In the bird there was no inner self, abiding, self-conscious, determining, and active, that was capable of grasping and holding and recreating the visions and the notes which came to it. It may have had a sort of sentient consciousness, but it was not much above the consciousness of the sea, which holds the images of the stars in its dark blue waves, as long as they stand above it.

By comparing man with the classes of individuals below him, we may see the respects in which he rises infinitely above them. And we may see, too, by this comparison, that immortality is not something to which man is to come beyond death, but something that he has already in the very constitution of the personal spirit. The same may be said of man’s body, that is said of the bodies of trees and birds, its other is the original elements which compose it. The life in a tree cannot other itself, because it is not conscious. The life in a bird cannot other itself because its consciousness is not self-consciousness. But in man’s body there resides a spirit that can other itself. Man, as a personal spirit, can project himself out of himself, and reason with himself and commune with himself. The self he projects out of himself is another self, but not a different self. The other of man’s spirit, then, is not something else, but it is the same spirit. Man is subject and object, active and passive, determiner and determined. Man, as subject, may externalize himself, and thus make of himself his own object, and by this self-separation enrich himself and advance within himself. Beethoven, as a thinking subject, objectified his thought in the symphonies, and thus regaled and thrilled his own spirit. By putting his own thought into the form of sound waves, it came back to him in the rain, and storm, and thunder, and sigh, and murmur of music. As a thinking subject Raphael objectified his own thought in the transfiguration, and thus had it come back to him in a vision as immortal as the spirit that created it. Michael Angelo objectified his own thought in the Last Judgment, and by this self-separation of his spirit, advertised its indestructibility. Homer, as a thinking subject, objectified his thought into the Iliad. This great epic poem has already lived, even on this side of the grave, where the order is change and decay, nearly three thousand years. Are we to conclude that a personal spirit that could deposit itself in numbers never to die, was itself subject to dissolution? This would be to have an effect greater than the cause. The sunbeam may deposit itself in a tree, and thus secure to itself life in embodied form for hundreds of years. But in order that this may be, the sun must send his beams to warm and nourish the tree all the days of its life. The Iliad has lived, however, nearly three thousand years, without the daily ministrations of Homer’s spirit. For a bubble on the sea of life to lift itself into imperishable form and then fall back to mingle with the waves and the waters, is to contradict the principle of the correlation of forces, which declares that action and reaction must always be equal. The expression a spirit makes of itself cannot be more enduring than the spirit itself.

“The ship may sink and I may drink A hasty death in the bitter sea; But all that I leave in the ocean grave May be slipped and spared, and no loss to me.

“What care I, though falls the sky, And the shriveled earth to a cinder turn? No fires of doom can ever consume What never was made nor meant to burn.

“Let go the breath! There is no death For the living soul, nor loss nor harm. Nor of the clod is the life of God; Let it mount, as it will, from form to form.”

When a train of cars stops suddenly at the depot, the energy that caused it to fly along the track is not lost, it is only transformed. When a tree is cut down, the energy that expressed itself in its trunk and branches is not lost, it will only take other forms. When a horse dies, the energy of which its life was the expression is not lost, it is transformed. When a tree or a horse passes from the living world into the world of inorganic things, the exact amount of energy in the body of the living tree or horse takes other forms. The amount on the side of death is equal to the amount on the side of life. If we consider man only as a physical organism, the same may be said of him. The amount transformed into earth and air, will be the equivalent of the organized fund of bone, and sinew, and muscle, turned over to death. If we thus estimate man, however, as we do a tree or a horse, have we taken into account the entire sum of assets that were in his possession during life? What of his thought, affection, and volition? When Kepler died, what became of the intelligence that discovered the “Three Laws,” which constitute the arches of the sublime bridge that spans the vast chasm between Ptolemaic and modern astronomy? When Laplace died, what became of the spirit that solved the problems of the Mécanique Céleste, by the aid of which the irregularities of the heavenly bodies were reduced to order? When Adams died, what became of the massive spirit that built in the depths of his own study the planet Neptune, with no other raw material to work from than the perturbations of Uranus? When Moses died, what became of the affection that expressed itself in the training and civilization of a race? When Jesus Christ died, what became of the love that sacrificed itself for a sinful world?

When we begin to talk about human life, we find all that has made civilization is not physical. In the death of human beings, the energies of thought, and affection, and volition are not represented in the transformations which take place with reference to their bodies. Yet all the energies man has put forth that give any evidence of his record on the earth are such as come from thought, and affection, and volition. As these energies are not transformed at death, as are the forces of the body, they must continue. For to suppose they ceased at death would be to break the law of the correlation and the conservation of forces. If they are not transformed at death, along with the forces of the body, they must reside in another than the material world, and must not, therefore, be subject to its changes.

V.

The personal spirit, by its very nature, and tendencies, and possibilities, seems to be addressed to another than the tangible, local, and physical realm in which it finds itself while residing in the body. An irrepressible and wide-reaching something in the spirit of each man seems to impel him to triumph over space, and time, and change. In the accumulation of property, he would own the whole world. A very small portion of land would be adequate to his physical needs. But he would add acre to acre, till his private domain compassed the surface of the whole earth. Alexander, weeping because there was not another world he could get to conquer, advertises the immensity and illimitability of the human spirit. By the aid of instruments by which man has augmented and lengthened his power of vision, he has come upon stars rolling in the immensity of space to the circle of the thirteenth magnitude. He has not been content to look upon the stars in the vast depths of space, but he has photographed them, so as to behold their faces in his study. Back beyond the dim dawn of time, commensurate with the appearance of human life on earth, he has gone, to return with the chemical, physical, and stratigraphical history of the globe. By the aid of steam, he has made himself a cosmopolite, and through the application of electricity, he has made himself ubiquitous. Must we not posit a spirit correlated to the universal to account for this disposition to compass all things, to know all things, and to be everywhere? The tendency of the human spirit to compass and possess universality is seen, too, by its capacity to create language, in which it embodies all things and through which it expresses its thought of all things. If there had to be separate words for all individual things any but the most limited knowledge would be impossible, and such knowledge alone there would be if man was shut up to atomic sensations for the data of knowledge. But the mind, by its creative, combining power, and its active spontaneous insight, forms words which represent not only individual things, but classes and species of things. Man devises the word _oak_, and lets it stand for all the oaks in the world. He creates the word _humanity_, and puts into it the whole human race. He coins the word _vegetable_, and uses it to define the whole kingdom of plants. Thus he not only goes over the world and sees it directly, but he produces language manifold and complicated, and elastic enough to accommodate and contain the world, with all that is in it. This makes it possible for him to go round the world and see all its wonders, without leaving the place of his birth.

He not only builds for himself the universe in language, so that he can contemplate its moons, and measure its suns, and sail its oceans, and climb its mountains in the silent precincts of his study, but he avails himself of sound and light, also, to give expression to universal ideas. He takes a few notes, and so combines and mixes them as to be able to touch all the chords of the universal human heart in one song. Michael Angelo put all the theology of all the books into the Last Judgment.

Throughout the length and breadth of nature, there is economy of faculty and resource until we come to man. The fish has not a gill nor a fin too many, and there is not in the water where he lives any surplus or margin upon which he does not make levies for his life.

The wings and tail and bones of the bird are all necessary to his poise and circle in the sky. The same economy is found in the atmosphere through which the bird flies. It is none too heavy and none too light. But when we come to man, we find that margin and surplus is the rule. He has a surplus of faculty and a surplus of resource, a surplus of endowment and a surplus of environment. He finds it necessary to make levies on hardly any of himself to get along in this world, at least as far as his natural wants are concerned. What would be the use for a carpenter to have all the tools necessary to build St. Peter’s at Rome, if his only work was to put up a tent for a week’s camping excursion in the woods? Why have an engine with a million horse power to run a flutter mill?

With the animal there is changing endowment and changing environment. Limitations are clear and distinct within and without. But with man there is infinite environment. Within he has a self-determining spirit, subject and object, bound together in a simple and indissoluble unity. Surrounding this spirit, infinite in structure and capacity, is infinite truth, infinite law, and infinite love. Even Herbert Spencer said “Perfect correspondence would be perfect life. Were there no changes in the environment but such as the organism had adapted changes to meet, and were it never to fail in the efficiency with which it met them, there would be eternal existence, and eternal knowledge.” In the personal spirit and the elements which surround it, we have the two eternal terms of eternal correspondence. A self-determining spirit is essentially, structurally, and constitutionally imperishable. It others itself only through its own act. And the other of itself is itself. It is its own subject and its own object. When it goes out of itself, it is itself that goes out. It is a complete circle, an absolute and indestructible individuation. It is the final expression of God’s creative power. Through all the revolutions and mutations of time, this was the destined goal. The destruction of a human spirit would register the death of God. It is the direct expression of the spirit of God, and bears his own likeness and image, and has for the guarantee of its permanence the person of the eternal God himself.

VI.

Rev. Edward White of England, Dr. E. Petavel of France, and Dr. Lyman Abbott of America, have denied what Dr. Abbott is pleased to call facultative immortality. Immortality, in their esteem, is an importation from without. It is the claim of Locke, and Hume, and Mill, and Spencer, that knowledge is an importation from the realm of sensation. Their war was upon the knowing faculties. From the domain of philosophy the conflict has passed up to the plane of religion, and we now have the attack made upon the self-determining spirit. In the sensational philosophy, we have seen all things dissolved. It not only makes it impossible to rationally believe in God, but also in mind, and self, and external world. The sensational philosophy got the object of knowledge by a process that destroyed the subject of knowledge, so this irrational theory of Dr. Lyman Abbot would secure the object of life by the destruction of the subject of life. We know that the raw material of knowledge is found in the objective world, but unless the mind has the inherent combining, active power to take this raw material and organize it into an orderly system, then the individual can never know anything. There being in the mind no master of ceremonies, no director and referee, the tramp and vagabond sensations may wander in and wander out at their sweet will. They would come in with their own opinions and go out with their own opinions. There being no head of the house within, the tramps could have it all their own way.

Knowledge, beginning out of the mind, would have its cause and end out of the mind. Beginning with matter, knowledge could be resolved back into matter.

We believe the life in which the human spirit is to realize its nature fully and harmoniously was embodied in Jesus Christ, who was the word made flesh.

But it is because the spirit of man is essentially indestructible, that it has power to take hold of this life and assimilate it. If it refuses this divine embodiment of life, it brings disorder, and confusion, and everlasting sorrow to itself, but not destruction. The self-determining spirit is in its structure and constitution up to the style of life offered it in the Son of Man and the Son of God. In finding the life that was in Christ, it finds its own life, and enters the path of everlasting progress.