ESSAYS.
I.
THE UNSEEN WORLD.
PART FIRST.
"WHAT are you, where did you come from, and
whither are you bound?"—the question which
from Homer's days has been put to the wayfarer in
strange lands—is likewise the all-absorbing question
which man is ever asking of the universe of which he
is himself so tiny yet so wondrous a part. From the
earliest times the ultimate purpose of all scientific
research has been to elicit fragmentary or partial responses
to this question, and philosophy has ever busied itself
in piecing together these several bits of information
according to the best methods at its disposal, in order to
make up something like a satisfactory answer. In old
times the best methods which philosophy had at its
disposal for this purpose were such as now seem very
crude, and accordingly ancient philosophers bungled
considerably in their task, though now and then they came
surprisingly near what would to-day be called the truth.
It was natural that their methods should be crude, for
scientific inquiry had as yet supplied but scanty materials
for them to work with, and it was only after a
very long course of speculation and criticism that men
could find out what ways of going to work are likely to
prove successful and what are not. The earliest thinkers,
indeed, were further hindered from accomplishing
much by the imperfections of the language by the aid
of which their thinking was done; for science and philosophy
have had to make a serviceable terminology by
dint of long and arduous trial and practice, and linguistic
processes fit for expressing general or abstract notions
accurately grew up only through numberless failures
and at the expense of much inaccurate thinking and
loose talking. As in most of nature's processes, there
was a great waste of energy before a good result could
be secured. Accordingly primitive men were very wide
of the mark in their views of nature. To them the
world was a sort of enchanted ground, peopled with
sprites and goblins; the quaint notions with which we
now amuse our children in fairy tales represent a style
of thinking which once was current among grown men
and women, and which is still current wherever men
remain in a savage condition. The theories of the world
wrought out by early priest-philosophers were in great
part made up of such grotesque notions; and having
become variously implicated with ethical opinions as
to the nature and consequences of right and wrong behaviour,
they acquired a kind of sanctity, so that any
thinker who in the light of a wider experience ventured
to alter or amend the primitive theory was likely to
be vituperated as an irreligious man or atheist. This
sort of inference has not yet been wholly abandoned,
even in civilized communities. Even to-day books are
written about "the conflict between religion and science,"
and other books are written with intent to reconcile
the two presumed antagonists. But when we look
beneath the surface of things, we see that in reality there
has never been any conflict between religion and science,
nor is any reconciliation called for where harmony has
always existed. The real historical conflict, which has
been thus curiously misnamed, has been the conflict between
the more-crude opinions belonging to the science
of an earlier age and the less-crude opinions belonging
to the science of a later age. In the course of this contest
the more-crude opinions have usually been defended
in the name of religion, and the less-crude opinions have
invariably won the victory; but religion itself, which
is not concerned with opinion, but with the aspiration
which leads us to strive after a purer and holier life, has
seldom or never been attacked. On the contrary, the
scientific men who have conducted the battle on behalf
of the less-crude opinions have generally been influenced
by this religious aspiration quite as strongly as the apologists
of the more-crude opinions, and so far from religious
feeling having been weakened by their perennial
series of victories, it has apparently been growing deeper
and stronger all the time. The religious sense is as yet
too feebly developed in most of us; but certainly in no
preceding age have men taken up the work of life with
more earnestness or with more real faith in the unseen
than at the present day, when so much of what was once
deemed all-important knowledge has been consigned to
the limbo of mythology.
The more-crude theories of early times are to be chiefly
distinguished from the less-crude theories of to-day as
being largely the products of random guesswork. Hypothesis,
or guesswork, indeed, lies at the foundation of
all scientific knowledge. The riddle of the universe, like
less important riddles, is unravelled only by approximative
trials, and the most brilliant discoverers have usually
been the bravest guessers. Kepler's laws were the result
of indefatigable guessing, and so, in a somewhat different
sense, was the wave-theory of light. But the guesswork
of scientific inquirers is very different now from
what it was in older times. In the first place, we have
slowly learned that a guess must be verified before it
can be accepted as a sound theory; and, secondly, so
many truths have been established beyond contravention,
that the latitude for hypothesis is much less than
it once was. Nine tenths of the guesses which might
have occurred to a mediæval philosopher would now be
ruled out as inadmissible, because they would not harmonize
with the knowledge which has been acquired since
the Middle Ages. There is one direction especially in
which this continuous limitation of guesswork by ever-accumulating experience has manifested itself. From
first to last, all our speculative successes and failures
have agreed in teaching us that the most general principles
of action which prevail to-day, and in our own corner
of the universe, have always prevailed throughout as
much of the universe as is accessible to our research.
They have taught us that for the deciphering of the
past and the predicting of the future, no hypotheses are
admissible which are not based upon the actual behaviour
of things in the present. Once there was unlimited
facility for guessing as to how the solar system might
have come into existence; now the origin of the sun and
planets is adequately explained when we have unfolded
all that is implied in the processes which are still going
on in the solar system. Formerly appeals were made to
all manner of violent agencies to account for the changes
which the earth's surface has undergone since our planet
began its independent career; now it is seen that the
same slow working of rain and tide, of wind and wave
and frost, of secular contraction and of earthquake pulse,
which is visible to-day, will account for the whole.
It is not long since it was supposed that a species of
animals or plants could be swept away only by some
unusual catastrophe, while for the origination of new
species something called an act of "special creation" was
necessary; and as to the nature of such extraordinary
events there was endless room for guesswork; but the
discovery of natural selection was the discovery of a
process, going on perpetually under our very eyes, which
must inevitably of itself extinguish some species and
bring new ones into being. In these and countless other
ways we have learned that all the rich variety of nature
is pervaded by unity of action, such as we might expect
to find if nature is the manifestation of an infinite God
who is without variableness or shadow of turning, but
quite incompatible with the fitful behaviour of the
anthropomorphic deities of the old mythologies. By thus
abstaining from all appeal to agencies that are extra-cosmic,
or not involved in the orderly system of events that
we see occurring around us, we have at last succeeded in
eliminating from philosophic speculation the character
of random guesswork which at first of necessity belonged
to it. Modern scientific hypothesis is so far from being
a haphazard mental proceeding that it is perhaps hardly
fair to classify it with guesses. It is lifted out of the
plane of guesswork, in so far as it has acquired the character
of inevitable inference from that which now is to
that which has been or will be. Instead of the innumerable
particular assumptions which were once admitted
into cosmic philosophy, we are now reduced to the one
universal assumption which has been variously described
as the "principle of continuity," the "uniformity of nature,"
the "persistence of force," or the "law of causation,"
and which has been variously explained as a necessary
datum for scientific thinking or as a net result of
all induction. I am not unwilling, however, to adopt the
language of a book which has furnished the occasion for
the present discussion, and to say that this grand assumption
is a supreme act of faith, the definite expression
of a trust that the infinite Sustainer of the universe
"will not put us to permanent intellectual confusion."
For in this mode of statement the harmony between the
scientific and the religious points of view is well brought
out. It is as affording the only outlet from permanent
intellectual confusion that inquirers have been driven
to appeal to the principle of continuity; and it is by
unswerving reliance upon this principle that we have
obtained such insight into the past, present, and future
of the world as we now possess.
The work just mentioned[1]
is especially interesting
as an attempt to bring the probable destiny of the
human soul into connection with the modern theories
which explain the past and future career of the physical
universe in accordance with the principle of continuity.
Its authorship is as yet unknown, but it is believed to be
the joint production of two of the most eminent physicists
in Great Britain, and certainly the accurate knowledge
and the ingenuity and subtlety of thought displayed
in it are such as to lend great probability to this
conjecture. Some account of the argument it contains
may well precede the suggestions presently to be set
forth concerning the Unseen World; and we shall find
it most convenient to begin, like our authors, with a
brief statement of what the principle of continuity
teaches as to the proximate beginning and end of the
visible universe. I shall in the main set down only
results, having elsewhere
[2]
given a simple exposition of
the arguments upon which these results are founded.
The first great cosmological speculation which has
been raised quite above the plane of guesswork by
making no other assumption than that of the uniformity
of nature, is the well-known Nebular Hypothesis.
Every astronomer knows that the earth, like all other
cosmical bodies which are flattened at the poles, was
formerly a mass of fluid, and consequently filled a
much larger space than at present. It is further agreed,
on all hands, that the sun is a contracting body, since
there is no other possible way of accounting for the
enormous quantity of heat which he generates. The
so-called primeval nebula follows as a necessary inference
from these facts. There was once a time when the
earth was distended on all sides away out to the moon
and beyond it, so that the matter now contained in the
moon was then a part of our equatorial zone. And at
a still remoter date in the past, the mass of the sun was
diffused in every direction beyond the orbit of Neptune,
and no planet had an individual existence, for all were
indistinguishable parts of the solar mass. When the
great mass of the sun, increased by the relatively small
mass of all the planets put together, was spread out in
this way, it was a rare vapour or gas. At the period
where the question is taken up in Laplace's treatment
of the nebular theory, the shape of this mass is regarded
as spheroidal; but at an earlier period its shape may
well have been as irregular as that of any of the nebuæ
which we now see in distant parts of the heavens, for,
whatever its primitive shape, the equalization of its
rotation would in time make it spheroidal. That the
quantity of rotation was the same then as now is
unquestionable; for no system of particles, great or small,
can acquire or lose rotation by any action going on
within itself, any more than a man could pick himself
up by his waistband and lift himself over a stone wale
So that the primitive rotating spheroidal solar nebula is
not a matter of assumption, but is just what must once
have existed, provided there has been no breach of
continuity in nature's operations. Now proceeding to
reason back from the past to the present, it has been
shown that the abandonment of successive equatorial
belts by the contracting solar mass must have ensued
in accordance with known mechanical laws; and in
similar wise, under ordinary circumstances. each belt
must have parted into fragments, and the fragments
chasing each other around the same orbit, must have at
last coalesced into a spheroidal planet. Not only this,
but it has also been shown that as the result of such a
process the relative sizes of the planets would be likely
to take the order which they now follow; that the ring
immediately succeeding that of Jupiter would be likely
to abort and produce a great number of tiny planets
instead of one good-sized one; that the outer planets
would be likely to have many moons, and that Saturn,
besides having the greatest number of moons, would be
likely to retain some of his inner rings unbroken; that
the earth would be likely to have a long day and Jupiter
a short one; that the extreme outer planets would
be not unlikely to rotate in a retrograde direction; and
so on, through a long list of interesting and striking
details. Not only, therefore, are we driven to the inference
that our solar system was once a vaporous nebula,
but we find that the mere contraction of such a nebula,
under the influence of the enormous mutual gravitation
of its particles, carries with it the explanation of both
the more general and the more particular features of the
present system. So that we may fairly regard this stupendous
process as veritable matter of history, while we
proceed to study it under some further aspects and to
consider what consequences are likely to follow.
Our attention should first be directed to the enormous
waste of energy which has accompanied this contraction
of the solar nebula. The first result of such a contraction
is the generation of a great quantity of heat, and
when the heat thus generated has been lost by radiation
into surrounding space it becomes possible for
the contraction to continue. Thus, as concentration
goes on, heat is incessantly generated and incessantly
dissipated. How long this process is to endure depends
chiefly on the size of the contracting mass, as
small bodies radiate heat much faster than large ones.
The moon seems to be already thoroughly refrigerated,
while Jupiter and Saturn are very much hotter than
the earth, as is shown by the tremendous atmospheric
phenomena which occur on their surfaces. The sun,
again, generates heat so rapidly, owing to his great
energy of contraction, and loses it so slowly, owing to
his great size, that his surface is always kept in a state
of incandescence. His surface-temperature is estimated
at some three million degrees of Fahrenheit, and a
diminution of his diameter far too small to be detected
by the finest existing instruments would suffice to maintain
the present supply of heat for more than fifty centuries.
These facts point to a very long future during
which the sun will continue to warm the earth and its
companion planets, but at the same time they carry on
their face the story of inevitable ultimate doom. If
things continue to go on as they have all along gone on,
the sun must by and by grow black and cold, and all
life whatever throughout the solar system must come to
an end. Long before this consummation, however, life
will probably have become extinct through the refrigeration
of each of the planets into a state like the present
state of the moon, in which the atmosphere and oceans
have disappeared from the surface. No doubt the sun
will continue to give out heat a long time after heat has
ceased to be needed for the support of living organisms.
For the final refrigeration of the sun will long be postponed
by the fate of the planets themselves. The separation
of the planets from their parent solar mass seems
to be after all but a temporary separation. So nicely
balanced are they now in their orbits that they may
well seem capable of rolling on in their present courses
forever. But this is not the case. Two sets of circumstances
are all the while striving, the one to drive the
planets farther away from the sun, the other to draw
them all into it. On the one hand, every body in our
system which contains fluid matter has tides raised
upon its surface by the attraction of neighbouring bodies.
All the planets raise tides upon the surface of the sun
and the periodicity of sun-spots (or solar cyclones) depends
upon this fact. These tidal waves act as a drag
or brake upon the rotation of the sun, somewhat diminishing
its rapidity. But, in conformity with a principle
of mechanics well known to astronomers, though not
familiar to the general reader, all the motion of rotation
thus lost by the sun is added to the planets in the shape
of annual motion of revolution, and thus their orbits all
tend to enlarge,—they all tend to recede somewhat
from the sun. But this state of things, though long-enduring
enough, is after all only temporary, and will
at any rate come to an end when the sun and planets
have become solid. Meanwhile another set of circumstances
is all the time tending to bring the planets
nearer to the sun, and in the long run must gain the
mastery. The space through which the planets move is
filled with a kind of matter which serves as a medium
for the transmission of heat and light, and this kind of
matter, though different in some respects from ordinary
ponderable matter, is yet like it in exerting friction.
This friction is almost infinitely little, yet it has a
wellnigh infinite length of time to work in, and during all
this wellnigh infinite length of time it is slowly eating
up the momentum of the planets and diminishing their
ability to maintain their distances from the sun. Hence
in course of time the planets will all fall into the sun,
one after another, so that the solar system will end, as
it began, by consisting of a single mass of matter.
But this is by no means the end of the story. When
two bodies rush together, each parts with some of its energy
of motion, and this lost energy of motion reappears
as heat. In the concussion of two cosmical bodies, like
the sun and the earth, an enormous quantity of motion
is thus converted into heat. Now heat, when not
allowed to radiate, or when generated faster than it can
be radiated, is transformed into motion of expansion.
Hence the shock of sun and planet would at once result
in the vaporization of both bodies; and there can be no
doubt that by the time the sun has absorbed the outermost
of his attendant planets, he will have resumed
something like his original nebulous condition. He will
have been dilated into a huge mass of vapour, and will
have become fit for a new process of contraction and for
a new production of life-bearing planets.
We are now, however, confronted by an interesting
but difficult question. Throughout all this grand past
and future career of the solar system which we have
just briefly traced, we have been witnessing a most
prodigal dissipation of energy in the shape of radiant
heat. At the outset we had an enormous quantity of
what is called "energy of position," that is, the outer
parts of our primitive nebula had a very long distance
through which to travel towards one another in the
slow process of concentration; and this distance was
the measure of the quantity of work possible to our
system. As the particles of our nebula drew nearer
and nearer together, the energy of position continually
lost reappeared continually as heat, of which the greater
part was radiated off, but of which a certain amount was
retained. All the gigantic amount of work achieved in
the geologic development of our earth and its companion
planets, and in the development of life wherever life
may exist in our system, has been the product of this
retained heat. At the present day the same wasteful
process is going on. Each moment the sun's particles
are losing energy of position as they draw closer and
closer together, and the heat into which this lost energy
is metamorphosed is poured out most prodigally in
every direction. Let us consider for a moment how
little of it gets used in our system. The earth's orbit
is a nearly circular figure more than five hundred million
miles in circumference, while only eight thousand
miles of this path are at any one time occupied by the
earth's mass. Through these eight thousand miles the
sun's radiated energy is doing work, but through the
remainder of the five hundred million it is idle and
wasted. But the case is far more striking when we
reflect that it is not in the plane of the earth's orbit
only that the sun's radiance is being poured out. It
is not an affair of a circle, but of a sphere. In order to
utilize all the solar rays, we should need to have an
immense number of earths arranged so as to touch each
other, forming a hollow sphere around the sun, with
the present radius of the earth's orbit. We may well
believe Professor Tyndall, therefore, when he tells us
that all the solar radiance we receive is less than a two-billionth part of what is sent flying through the desert
regions of space. Some of the immense residue of
course hits other planets stationed in the way of it, and
is utilized upon their surfaces; but the planets, all put
together, stop so little of the total quantity that our
startling illustration is not materially altered by taking
them into the account. Now this two-billionth part of
the solar radiance poured out from moment to moment
suffices to blow every wind, to raise every cloud, to
drive every engine, to build up the tissue of every
plant, to sustain the activity of every animal, including
man, upon the surface of our vast and stately globe.
Considering the wondrous richness and variety of the
terrestrial life wrought out by the few sunbeams which
we catch in our career through space, we may well
pause overwhelmed and stupefied at the thought of the
incalculable possibilities of existence which are thrown
away with the potent actinism that darts unceasingly
into the unfathomed abysms of immensity. Where it
goes to or what becomes of it, no one of us can surmise.
Now when, in the remote future, our sun is reduced
to vapour by the impact of the several planets upon his
surface, the resulting nebulous mass must be a very
insignificant affair compared with the nebulous mass
with which we started. In order to make a second
nebula equal in size and potential energy to the first
one, all the energy of position at first existing should
have been retained in some form or other. But nearly
all of it has been lost, and only an insignificant fraction
remains with which to endow a new system. In order
to reproduce, in future ages, anything like that cosmical
development which is now going on in the solar
system, aid must be sought from without. We must
endeavour to frame some valid hypothesis as to the
relation of our solar system to other systems.
Thus far our view has been confined to the career of
a single star,—our sun,—with the tiny, easily-cooling
balls which it has cast off in the course of its development.
Thus far, too, our inferences have been very
secure, for we have been dealing with a circumscribed
group of phenomena, the beginning and end of which
have been brought pretty well within the compass of
our imagination. It is quite another thing to deal with
the actual or probable career of the stars in general,
inasmuch as we do not even know how many stars there
are, which form parts of a common system, or what. are
their precise dynamic relations to one another. Nevertheless
we have knowledge of a few facts which may
support some cautious inferences. All the stars which
we can see are undoubtedly bound together by relations
of gravitation. No doubt our sun attracts all the other
stars within our ken, and is reciprocally attracted by
them. The stars, too, lie mostly in or around one great
plane, as is the case with the members of the solar system.
Moreover, the stars are shown by the spectroscope
to consist of chemical elements identical with those
which are found in the solar system. Such facts as
these make it probable that the career of other stars,
when adequately inquired into, would be found to
be like that of our own sun. Observation daily enhances
this probability, for our study of the sidereal
universe is continually showing us stars in all stages
of development. We find irregular nebuæ, for example;
we find spiral and spheroidal nebulæ; we find
stars which have got beyond the nebulous stage, but
are still at a whiter heat than our sun; and we also
find many stars which yield the same sort of spectrum
as our sun. The inference seems forced upon us that
the same process of concentration which has gone on in
the case of our solar nebula has been going on in the
case of other nebulæ. The history of the sun is but
a type of the history of stars in general. And when
we consider that all other visible stars and nebulæ are
cooling and contracting bodies, like our sun, to what
other conclusion could we very well come? When we
look at Sirius, for instance, we do not see him surrounded
by planets, for at such a distance no planet
could be visible, even Sirius himself, though fourteen
times larger than our sun, appearing only as a "twinkling
little star." But a comparative survey of the heavens
assures us that Sirius can hardly have arrived at
his present stage of concentration without detaching,
planet-forming rings, for there is no reason for supposing
that mechanical laws out there are at all different
from what they are in our own system. And the same
kind of inference must apply to all the matured stars
which we see in the heavens.
When we duly take all these things into the account,
the case of our solar system will appear as only one of a
thousand cases of evolution and dissolution with which
the heavens furnish us. Other stars, like our sun, have
undoubtedly started as vaporous masses, and have thrown
off planets in contracting. The inference may seem a
bold one, but it after all involves no other assumption
than that of the continuity of natural phenomena. It is
not likely, therefore, that the solar system will forever
be left to itself. Stars which strongly gravitate toward
each other, while moving through a perennially resisting
medium, must in time be drawn together. The collision
of our extinct sun with one of the Pleiades, after this
manner, would very likely suffice to generate even a
grander nebula than the one with which we started.
Possibly the entire galactic system may, in an inconceivably
remote future, remodel itself in this way; and
possibly the nebula from which our own group of planets
has been formed may have owed its origin to the
disintegration of systems which had accomplished their
career in the depths of the bygone eternity.
When the problem is extended to these huge dimensions,
the prospect of an ultimate cessation of cosmical
work is indefinitely postponed, but at the same time it
becomes impossible for us to deal very securely with the
questions we have raised. The magnitudes and periods
we have introduced are so nearly infinite as to baffle
speculation itself: One point, however, we seem dimly
to discern. Supposing the stellar universe not to be
absolutely infinite in extent, we may hold that the day of
doom, so often postponed, must come at last. The
concentration of matter and dissipation of energy, so often
checked, must in the end prevail, so that, as the final
outcome of things, the entire universe will be reduced to
a single enormous ball, dead and frozen, solid and black,
its potential energy of motion having been all transformed
into heat and radiated away. Such a conclusion
has been suggested by Sir William Thomson, and it is
quite forcibly stated by the authors of "The Unseen
Universe." They remind us that "if there be any one
form of energy less readily or less completely transformable
than the others, and if transformations constantly
go on, more and more of the whole energy of the universe
will inevitably sink into this lower grade as time
advances." Now radiant heat, as we have seen, is such
a lower grade of energy. "At each transformation of
heat-energy into work, a large portion is degraded, while
only a small portion is transformed into work. So that
while it is very easy to change all of our mechanical or
useful energy into heat, it is only possible to transform
a portion of this heat-energy back again into work.
After each change, too, the heat becomes more and more
dissipated or degraded, and less and less available for
any future transformation. In other words," our authors
continue, "the tendency of heat is towards equalization;
heat is
par excellence the communist of our universe, and
it will no doubt ultimately bring the system to an end.
.... It is absolutely certain that life, so far as it is
physical, depends essentially upon transformations of
energy; it is also absolutely certain that age after age
the possibility of such transformations is becoming less
and less; and, so far as we yet know, the final state of
the present universe must be an aggregation (into one
mass) of all the matter it contains,
i. e. the potential
energy gone, and a practically useless state of kinetic
energy,
i. e. uniform temperature throughout that mass."
Thus our authors conclude that the visible universe
began in time and will in time come to an end; and
they add that under the physical conditions of such a
universe "immortality is impossible."
Concerning the latter inference we shall by and by
have something to say. Meanwhile this whole speculation
as to the final cessation of cosmical work seems to
me—as it does to my friend, Professor Clifford
[3]—by
no means trustworthy. The conditions of the problem
so far transcend our grasp that any such speculation
must remain an unverifiable guess. I do not go with
Professor Clifford in doubting whether the laws of mechanics
are absolutely the same throughout eternity; I
cannot quite reconcile such a doubt with faith in the
principle of continuity. But it does seem to me needful,
before we conclude that radiated energy is absolutely
and forever wasted, that we should find out what becomes
of it. What we call radiant heat is simply transverse
wave-motion, propagated with enormous velocity
through an ocean of subtle ethereal matter which bathes
the atoms of all visible or palpable bodies and fills the
whole of space, extending beyond the remotest star
which the telescope can reach. Whether there are any
bounds at all to this ethereal ocean, or whether it is as
infinite as space itself, we cannot surmise. If it be
limited, the possible dispersion of radiant energy is limited
by its extent. Heat and light cannot travel through
emptiness. If the ether is bounded by surrounding
emptiness, then a ray of heat, on arriving at this limiting
emptiness, would be reflected back as surely as a ball
is sent back when thrown against a solid wall. If this
be the case, it will not affect our conclusions concerning
such a tiny region of space as is occupied by the solar
system, but it will seriously modify Sir William Thomson's
suggestion as to the fate of the universe as a whole.
The radiance thrown away by the sun is indeed lost so
far as the future of our system is concerned, but not a
single unit of it is lost from the universe. Sooner or
later, reflected back in all directions, it must do work in
one quarter or another, so that ultimate stagnation be
comes impossible. It is true that no such return of
radiant energy has been detected in our corner of the
world; but we have not yet so far disentangled all the
force-relations of the universe that we are entitled to
regard such a return as impossible. This is one way
of escape from the consummation of things depicted by
our authors. Another way of escape is equally available,
if we suppose that while the ether is without bounds the
stellar universe also extends to infinity. For in this case
the reproduction of nebulous masses fit for generating
new systems of worlds must go on through space that is
endless, and consequently the process can never come to
an end and can never have had a beginning. We have,
therefore, three alternatives: either the visible universe
is finite, while the ether is infinite; or both are finite;
or both are infinite. Only on the first supposition, I
think, do we get a universe which began in time and
must end in time. Between such stupendous alternatives
we have no grounds for choosing. But it would
seem that the third, whether strictly true or not, best
represents the state of the case relatively to our feeble
capacity of comprehension. Whether absolutely infinite
or not, the dimensions of the universe must be taken as
practically infinite, so far as human thought is concerned.
They immeasurably transcend the capabilities
of any gauge we can bring to bear on them. Accordingly
all that we are really entitled to hold, as the outcome
of sound speculation, is the conception of innumerable
systems of worlds concentrating out of nebulous
masses, and then rushing together and dissolving into
similar masses, as bubbles unite and break up—now
here, now there—in their play on the surface of a pool,
and to this tremendous series of events we can assign
neither a beginning nor an end.
We must now make some more explicit mention of
the ether which carries through space the rays of heat
and light. In closest connection with the visible stellar
universe, the vicissitudes of which we have briefly traced,
the all-pervading ether constitutes a sort of unseen world
remarkable enough from any point of view, but to which
the theory of our authors ascribes capacities hitherto
unsuspected by science. The very existence of an ocean
of ether enveloping the molecules of material bodies has
been doubted or denied by many eminent physicists,
though of course none have called in question the necessity
for some interstellar medium for the transmission of
thermal and luminous vibrations. This scepticism has
been, I think, partially justified by the many difficulties
encompassing the conception, into which, however, we
need not here enter. That light and heat cannot be conveyed
by any of the ordinary sensible forms of matter is
unquestionable. None of the forms of sensible matter
can be imagined sufficiently elastic to propagate wave-motion at the rate of one hundred and eighty-eight
thousand miles per second. Yet a ray of light is a
series of waves, and implies some substance in which
the waves occur. The substance required is one which
seems to possess strangely contradictory properties. It
is commonly regarded as an "ether" or infinitely rare
substance; but, as Professor Jevons observes, we might
as well regard it as an infinitely solid "adamant." "Sir
John Herschel has calculated the amount of force
which may be supposed, according to the undulatory
theory of light, to be exerted at each point in space, and
finds it to be 1,148,000,000,000 times the elastic force
of ordinary air at the earth's surface, so that the pressure
of the ether upon a square inch of surface must be about
17,000,000,000,000, or seventeen billions of pounds."
[4]
Yet at the same time the resistance offered by the ether
to the planetary motions is too minute to be appreciable.
"All our ordinary notions," says Professor Jevons,
"must be laid aside in contemplating such an hypothesis;
yet [it is] no more than the observed phenomena
of light and heat force us to accept. We cannot
deny even the strange suggestion of Dr. Young, that
there may be independent worlds, some possibly existing
in different parts of space, but others perhaps pervading
each other, unseen and unknown, in the same
space. For if we are bound to admit the conception of
this adamantine firmament, it is equally easy to admit a
plurality of such."
The ether, therefore, is unlike any of the forms of matter
which we can weigh and measure. In some respects
it resembles a fluid, in some respects a solid. It is both
hard and elastic to an almost inconceivable degree. It
fills all material bodies like a sea in which the atoms of
the material bodies are as islands, and it occupies the
whole of what we call empty space. It is so sensitive
that a disturbance in any part of it causes a "tremour
which is felt on the surface of countless worlds." Our
old experiences of matter give us no account of any
substance like this; yet the undulatory theory of light
obliges us to admit such a substance, and that theory is
as well established as the theory of gravitation. Obviously
we have here an enlargement of our experience of
matter. The analysis of the phenomena of light and
radiant heat has brought us into mental relations with
matter in a different state from any in which we previously
knew it. For the supposition that the ether may
be something essentially different from matter is contradicted
by all the terms we have used in describing it.
Strange and contradictory as its properties may seem,
are they any more strange than the properties of a gas
would seem if we were for the first time to discover
a gas after heretofore knowing nothing but solids and
liquids? I think not; and the conclusion implied by
our authors seems to me eminently probable, that in the
so-called ether we have simply a state of matter more
primitive than what we know as the gaseous state. Indeed,
the conceptions of matter now current, and inherited
from barbarous ages, are likely enough to be crude
in the extreme. It is not strange that the study of such
subtle agencies as heat and light should oblige us to
modify them; and it will not be strange if the study
of electricity should entail still further revision of our
ideas.
We are now brought to one of the profoundest speculations
of modern times, the vortex-atom theory of
Helmholtz and Thomson, in which the evolution of
ordinary matter from ether is plainly indicated. The
reader first needs to know what vortex-motion is; and
this has been so beautifully explained by Professor
Clifford, that I quote his description entire: "Imagine
a ring of india-rubber, made by joining together the
ends of a cylindrical piece (like a lead-pencil before
it is cut), to be put upon a round stick which it will
just fit with a little stretching. Let the stick be now
pulled through the ring while the latter is kept in its
place by being pulled the other way on the outside.
The india-rubber has then what is called vortex-motion.
Before the ends were joined together, while it was
straight, it might have been made to turn around without
changing position, by rolling it between the hands.
Just the same motion of rotation it has on the stick,
only that the ends are now joined together. All the inside
surface of the ring is going one way, namely, the
way the stick is pulled; and all the outside is going
the other way. Such a vortex-ring is made by the
smoker who purses his lips into a round hole and sends
out a puff of smoke. The outside of the ring is kept
back by the friction of his lips while the inside is going
forwards; thus a rotation is set up all round the smoke-ring as it travels out into the air." In these cases, and
in others as we commonly find it, vortex-motion owes
its origin to friction and is after a while brought to an
end by friction. But in 1858 the equations of motion
of an incompressible frictionless fluid were first successfully
solved by Helmholtz, and among other things he
proved that, though vortex-motion could not be originated
in such a fluid, yet supposing it once to exist, it
would exist to all eternity and could not be diminished
by any mechanical action whatever. A vortex-ring, for
example, in such a fluid, would forever preserve its own
rotation, and would thus forever retain its peculiar
individuality, being, as it were, marked off from its
neighbour vortex-rings. Upon this mechanical truth Sir
William Thomson based his wonderfully suggestive theory
of the constitution of matter. That which is permanent
or indestructible in matter is the ultimate homogeneous
atom; and this is probably all that is permanent, since
chemists now almost unanimously hold that so-called
elementary molecules are not really simple, but owe
their sensible differences to the various groupings of an
ultimate atom which is alike for all. Relatively to our
powers of comprehension the atom endures eternally;
that is, it retains forever unalterable its definite mass
and its definite rate of vibration. Now this is just
what a vortex-ring would do in an incompressible frictionless
fluid. Thus the startling question is suggested,
Why may not the ultimate atoms of matter be vortex-
rings forever existing in such a frictionless fluid filling
the whole of space? Such a hypothesis is not less
brilliant than Huyghens's conjectural identification of
light with undulatory motion; and it is moreover a
legitimate hypothesis, since it can be brought to the test
of verification. Sir William Thomson has shown that
it explains a great many of the physical properties of
matter: it remains to be seen whether it can explain
them all.
Of course the ether which conveys thermal and luminous
undulations is not the frictionless fluid postulated
by Sir William Thomson. The most conspicuous property
of the ether is its enormous elasticity, a property
which we should not find in a frictionless fluid. "To
account for such elasticity," says Professor Clifford
(whose exposition of the subject is still more lucid than
that of our authors), "it has to be supposed that even
where there are no material molecules the universal
fluid is full of vortex-motion, but that the vortices are
smaller and more closely packed than those of [ordinary]
matter, forming altogether a more finely grained
structure. So that the difference between matter and
ether is reduced to a mere difference in the size and
arrangement of the component vortex-rings. Now,
whatever may turn out to be the ultimate nature of the
ether and of molecules, we know that to some extent at
least they obey the same dynamic laws, and that they
act upon one another in accordance with these laws.
Until, therefore, it is absolutely disproved, it must
remain the simplest and most probable assumption
that they are finally made of the same stuff, that the
material molecule is some kind of knot or coagulation
of ether."[5]
Another interesting consequence of Sir William
Thomson's pregnant hypothesis is that the absolute
hardness which has been attributed to material atoms
from the time of Lucretius downward may be dispensed
with. Somewhat in the same way that a loosely suspended
chain becomes rigid with rapid rotation, the
hardness and elasticity of the vortex-atom are explained
as due to the swift rotary motion of a soft and yielding
fluid. So that the vortex-atom is really indivisible, not
by reason of its hardness or solidity, but by reason of
the indestructibleness of its motion.
Supposing, now, that we adopt provisionally the vortex
theory,—the great power of which is well shown
by the consideration just mentioned,—we must not
forget that it is absolutely essential to the indestructibleness
of the material atom that the universal fluid
in which it has an existence as a vortex-ring should be
entirely destitute of friction. Once admit even the
most infinitesimal amount of friction, while retaining
the conception of vortex-motion in a universal fluid,
and the whole case is so far altered that the material
atom can no longer be regarded as absolutely indestructible,
but only as indefinitely enduring. It may have
been generated, in bygone eternity, by a natural process
of evolution, and in future eternity may come to
an end. Relatively to our powers of comprehension
the practical difference is perhaps not great. Scientifically
speaking, Helmholtz and Thomson are as well
entitled to reason upon the assumption of a perfectly
frictionless fluid as geometers in general are entitled
to assume perfect lines without breadth and perfect
surfaces without thickness. Perfect lines and surfaces
do not exist within the region of our experience; yet
the conclusions of geometry are none the less true
ideally, though in any particular concrete instance
they are only approximately realized. Just so with the
conception of a frictionless fluid. So far as experience
goes, such a thing has no more real existence than a
line without breadth; and hence an atomic theory based
upon such an assumption may be as true ideally as any
of the theorems of Euclid, but it can give only an
approximatively true account of the actual universe.
These considerations do not at all affect the scientific
value of the theory; but they will modify the tenour of
such transcendental inferences as may be drawn from it
regarding, the probable origin and destiny of the universe.
The conclusions reached in the first part of this paper,
while we were dealing only with gross visible matter,
may have seemed bold enough; but they are far surpassed
by the inference which our authors draw from
the vortex theory as they interpret it. Our authors exhibit
various reasons, more or less sound, for attributing
to the primordial fluid some slight amount of friction;
and in support of this view they adduce Le Sage's
explanation of gravitation as a differential result of
pressure, and Struve's theory of the partial absorption
of light-rays by the ether,—questions with which our
present purpose does not require us to meddle. Apart
from such questions it is every way probable that the
primary assumption of Helmholtz and Thomson is only
an approximation to the truth. But if we accredit the
primordial fluid with even an infinitesimal amount of
friction, then we are required to conceive of the visible
universe as developed from the invisible and as destined
to return into the invisible. The vortex-atom, produced
by infinitesimal friction operating through wellnigh infinite
time, is to be ultimately abolished by the agency
which produced it. In the words of our authors, "If
the visible universe be developed from an invisible
which is not a perfect fluid, then the argument deduced
by Sir William Thomson in favour of the eternity of
ordinary matter disappears, since this eternity depends
upon the perfect fluidity of the invisible. In fine, if
we suppose the material universe to be composed of a
series of vortex-rings developed from an invisible universe
which is not a perfect fluid, it will be ephemeral,
just as the smoke-ring which we develop from air, or
that which we develop from water, is ephemeral, the only
difference being in duration, these lasting only for a few
seconds, and the others it may be for billions of years."
Thus, as our authors suppose that "the available energy
of the visible universe will ultimately be appropriated
by the invisible," they go on to imagine, "at least as a
possibility, that the separate existence of the visible
universe will share the same fate, so that we shall have
no huge, useless, inert mass existing in after ages to remind
the passer-by of a form of energy and a species of
matter that is long since out of date and functionally
effete. Why should not the universe bury its dead out
of sight?"
In one respect perhaps no more stupendous subject
of contemplation than this has ever been offered to the
mind of man. In comparison with the length of time
thus required to efface the tiny individual atom, the
entire cosmical career of our solar system, or even that
of the whole starry galaxy, shrinks into utter nothingness.
Whether we shall adopt the conclusion suggested
must depend on the extent of our speculative audacity.
We have seen wherein its probability consists, but in
reasoning upon such a scale we may fitly be cautious
and modest in accepting inferences, and our authors,
we may be sure, would be the first to recommend such
modesty and caution. Even at the dimensions to which
our theorizing has here grown, we may for instance discern
the possible alternative of a simultaneous or rhythmically
successive generation and destruction of vortex-atoms which would go far to modify the conclusion just
suggested. But here we must pause for a moment, reserving
for a second paper the weightier thoughts as to
futurity which our authors have sought to enwrap in
these sublime physical speculations.
PART SECOND.
UP to this point, however remote from ordinary
every-day thoughts may be the region of speculation
which we have been called upon to traverse, we
have still kept within the limits of legitimate scientific
hypothesis. Though we have ventured for a goodly
distance into the unknown, we have not yet been
required to abandon our base of operations in the
known. Of the views presented in the preceding paper,
some are wellnigh certainly established, some are probable,
some have a sort of plausibility, others—to which
we have refrained from giving assent—may possibly
be true; but none are irretrievably beyond the jurisdiction
of scientific tests. No suggestion has so far been
broached which a very little further increase of our
scientific knowledge may not show to be either eminently
probable or eminently improbable. We have
kept pretty clear of mere subjective guesses, such as
men may wrangle about forever without coming to any
conclusion. The theory of the nebular origin of our
planetary system has come to command the assent
of all persons qualified to appreciate the evidence on
which it is based; and the more immediate conclusions
which we have drawn from that theory are only such
as are commonly drawn by astronomers and physicists.
The doctrine of an intermolecular and interstellar ether
is wrapped up in the well-established undulatory theory
of light. Such is by no means the case with Sir William
Thomson's vortex-atom theory, which to-day is in
somewhat the same condition as the undulatory theory
of Huyghens two centuries ago. This, however, is none
the less a hypothesis truly scientific in conception, and
in the speculations to which it leads us we are still sure
of dealing with views that admit at least of definite
expression and treatment. In other words, though our
study of the visible universe has led us to the recognition
of a kind of unseen world underlying the world of
things that are seen, yet concerning the economy of this
unseen world we have not been led to entertain any
hypothesis that has not its possible justification in our
experiences of visible phenomena.
We are now called upon, following in the wake of
our esteemed authors, to venture on a different sort of
exploration, in which we must cut loose altogether from
our moorings in the world of which we have definite
experience. We are invited to entertain suggestions
concerning the peculiar economy of the invisible portion
of the universe which we have no means of subjecting
to any sort of test of probability, either experimental
or deductive. These suggestions are, therefore,
not to be regarded as properly scientific; but, with this
word of caution, we may proceed to show what they
are.
Compared with the life and death of cosmical systems
which we have heretofore contemplated, the life and
death of individuals of the human race may perhaps
seem a small matter; yet because we are ourselves the
men who live and die, the small event is of vastly
greater interest to us than the grand series of events
of which it is part and parcel. It is natural that
we should be more interested in the ultimate fate of
humanity than in the fate of a world which is of
no account to us save as our present dwelling-place.
Whether the human soul is to come to an end or not
is to us a more important question than whether the
visible universe, with its matter and energy, is to be
absorbed in an invisible ether. It is indeed only because
we are interested in the former question that we are so
curious about the latter. If we could dissociate ourselves
from the material universe, our habitat, we
should probably speculate much less about its past and
future. We care very little what becomes of the black
ball of the earth, after all life has vanished from its
surface; or, if we care at all about it, it is only because
our thoughts about the career of the earth are necessarily
mixed up with our thoughts about life. Hence in
considering the probable ultimate destiny of the physical
universe, our innermost purpose must be to know
what is to become of all this rich and wonderful life of
which the physical universe is the theatre. Has it all
been developed, apparently at almost infinite waste of
effort, only to be abolished again before it has attained
to completeness, or does it contain or shelter some
indestructible element which having drawn sustenance
for a while from the senseless turmoil of physical
phenomena shall still survive their final decay? This
question is closely connected with the time-honoured
question of the meaning, purpose, or tendency of the
world. In the career of the world is life an end, or a
means toward an end, or only an incidental phenomenon
in which we can discover no meaning? Contemporary
theologians seem generally to believe that one
necessary result of modern scientific inquiry must be
the destruction of the belief in immortal life, since
against every thoroughgoing expounder of scientific
knowledge they seek to hurl the charge of "materialism."
Their doubts, however, are not shared by our
authors, thorough men of science as they are, though
their mode of dealing with the question may not be
such as we can well adopt. While upholding the doctrine
of evolution, and all the so-called "materialistic"
views of modern science, they not only regard the hypothesis
of a future life as admissible, but they even
go so far as to propound a physical theory as to the
nature of existence after death. Let us see what this
physical theory is.
As far as the visible universe is concerned, we do not
find in it any evidence of immortality or of permanence
of any sort, unless it be in the sum of potential and
kinetic energies on the persistency of which depends
our principle of continuity. In ordinary language "the
stars in their courses" serve as symbols of permanence,
yet we have found reason to regard them as but temporary
phenomena. So, in the language of our authors,
"if we take the individual man, we find that he lives
his short tale of years, and that then the visible
machinery which connects him with the past, as well as
that which enables him to act in the present, falls into
ruin and is brought to an end. If any germ or potentiality
remains, it is certainly not connected with the
visible order of things." In like manner our race is
pretty sure to come to an end long before the destruction
of the planet from which it now gets its sustenance.
And in our authors opinion even the universe will by
and by become "old and effete, no less truly than the
individual: it is a glorious garment this visible universe,
but not an immortal one; we must look elsewhere
if we are to be clothed with immortality as with
a garment."
It is at this point that our authors call attention to
"the apparently wasteful character of the arrangements
of the visible universe." The fact is one which we have
already sufficiently described, but we shall do well to
quote the words in which our authors recur to it: "All
but a very small portion of the sun's heat goes day by
day into what we call empty space, and it is only this
very small remainder that is made use of by the various
planets for purposes of their own. Can anything be
more perplexing than this seemingly frightful expenditure
of the very life and essence of the system? That
this vast store of high-class energy should be doing
nothing but travelling outwards in space at the rate
of 188,000 miles per second is hardly conceivable, especially
when the result of it is the inevitable destruction
of the visible universe."
Pursuing this teleological argument, it is suggested
that perhaps this apparent waste of energy is "only an
arrangement in virtue of which our universe keeps up a
memory of the past at the expense of the present, inasmuch
as all memory consists in an investiture of present
resources in order to keep a hold upon the past."
Recourse is had to the ingenious argument in which Mr.
Babbage showed that "if we had power to follow and
detect the minutest effects of any disturbance, each particle
of existing matter must be a register of all that
has happened. The track of every canoe, of every
vessel that has yet disturbed the surface of the ocean,
whether impelled by manual force or elemental power,
remains forever registered in the future movement of all
succeeding particles which may occupy its place. The
furrow which is left is, indeed, instantly filled up by
the closing waters; but they draw after them other and
larger portions of the surrounding element, and these
again, once moved, communicate motion to others in
endless succession." In like manner, "the air itself is
one vast library, on whose pages are forever written all
that man has ever said or even whispered. There in
their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the
earliest as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand
forever recorded vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled,
perpetuating in the united movements of each particle
the testimony of man's changeful will."
[6]
In some such
way as this, records of every movement that takes place
in the world are each moment transmitted, with the
speed of light, through the invisible ocean of ether with
which the world is surrounded. Even the molecular
displacements which occur in our brains when we feel
and think are thus propagated in their effects into the
unseen world. The world of ether is thus regarded by
our authors as in some sort the obverse or complement
of the world of sensible matter, so that whatever energy
is dissipated in the one is by the same act accumulated
in the other. It is like the negative plate in photography,
where light answers to shadow and shadow to
light. Or, still better, it is like the case of an equation
in which whatever quantity you take from one side is
added to the other with a contrary sign, while the relation
of equality remains undisturbed. Thus, it will be
noticed, from the ingenious and subtle, but quite defensible
suggestion of Mr. Babbage, a leap is made to an
assumption which cannot be defended scientifically, but
only teleologically. It is one thing to say that every
movement in the visible world transmits a record of
itself to the surrounding ether, in such a way that from
the undulation of the ether a sufficiently powerful
intelligence might infer the character of the generating
movement in the visible world. It is quite another
thing to say that the ether is organized in such a complex
and delicate way as to be like a negative image or
counterpart of the world of sensible matter. The latter
view is no doubt ingenious, but it is gratuitous. It is
sustained not by scientific analogy, but by the desire to
find some assignable use for the energy which is constantly
escaping from visible matter into invisible ether.
The moment we ask how do we know that this energy
is not really wasted, or that it is not put to some use
wholly undiscoverable by human intelligence, this
assumption of an organized ether is at once seen to be
groundless. It belongs not to the region of science, but
to that of pure mythology.
In justice to our authors, however, it should be
remembered that this assumption is put forth not
as something scientifically probable, but as something
which for aught we know to the contrary may possibly
be true. This, to be sure, we need not deny; nor if we
once allow this prodigious leap of inference, shall we
find much difficulty in reaching the famous conclusion
that "thought conceived to affect the matter of another
universe simultaneously with this may explain a future
state." This proposition, quaintly couched in an anagram,
like the discoveries of old astronomers, was published
last year in "Nature," as containing the gist of the
forthcoming book. On the negative-image hypothesis
it is not hard to see how thought is conceived to affect
the seen and the unseen worlds simultaneously. Every
act of consciousness is accompanied by molecular displacements
in the brain, and these are of course responded
to by movements in the ethereal world. Thus
as a series of conscious states build up a continuous
memory in strict accordance with physical laws of
motion,
[7] so a correlative memory is simultaneously
built up in the ethereal world out of the ethereal correlatives
of the molecular displacements which go on in
our brains. And as there is a continual transfer of
energy from the visible world to the ether, the extinction
of vital energy which we call death must coincide
in some way with the awakening of vital energy in the
correlative world; so that the darkening of consciousness
here is coincident with its dawning there. In this
way death is for the individual but a transfer from one
physical state of existence to another; and so, on the
largest scale, the death or final loss of energy by the
whole visible universe has its counterpart in the acquirement
of a maximum of life by the correlative
unseen world.
There seems to be a certain sort of rigorous logical
consistency in this daring speculation; but really the
propositions of which it consists are so far from answering
to anything within the domain of human experience
that we are unable to tell whether any one of them
logically follows from its predecessor or not. It is evident
that we are quite out of the region of scientific
tests, and to whatever view our authors may urge we
can only languidly assent that it is out of our power to
disprove it.
The essential weakness of such a theory as this lies
in the fact that it is thoroughly materialistic in character.
It is currently assumed that the doctrine of a
life after death cannot be defended on materialistic
grounds, but this is altogether too hasty an assumption.
Our authors, indeed, are not philosophical materialists,
like Dr. Priestley,—who nevertheless believed in a
future life,—but one of the primary doctrines of materialism
lies at the bottom of their argument. Materialism
holds for one thing that consciousness is a product
of a peculiar organization of matter, and for another
thing that consciousness cannot survive the disorganization
of the material body with which it is associated.
As held by philosophical materialists, like Büchner and
Moleschott, these two opinions are strictly consistent
with each other; nay, the latter seems to be the inevitable
inference from the former, though Priestley did not
so regard it. Now our authors very properly refuse to
commit themselves to the opinion that mind is the product
of matter, but their argument nevertheless implies
that some sort of material vehicle is necessary for the
continuance of mind in a future state of existence. This
material vehicle they seek to supply in the theory which
connects by invisible bonds of transmitted energy the
perishable material body with its counterpart in the
world of ether. The materialism of the argument is
indeed partly veiled by the terminology in which this
counterpart is called a "spiritual body," but in this
novel use or abuse of scriptural language there seems
to me to be a strange confusion of ideas. Bear in mind
that the "invisible universe" into which energy is
constantly passing is simply the luminiferous ether, which
our authors, to suit the requirements of their hypothesis,
have gratuitously endowed with a complexity and
variety of structure analogous to that of the visible
world of matter. Their language is not always quite so
precise as one could desire, for while they sometimes
speak of the ether itself as the "unseen universe," they
sometimes allude to a primordial medium yet subtler in
constitution and presumably more immaterial. Herein
lies the confusion. Why should the luminiferous ether,
or any primordial medium in which it may have been
generated, be regarded as in any way "spiritual"?
Great physicists, like less trained thinkers, are sometimes
liable to be unconsciously influenced by old associations
of ideas which, ostensibly repudiated, still lurk
under cover of the words we use. I fear that the old
associations which led the ancients to describe the soul
as a breath or a shadow, and which account for the
etymologies of such words as "ghost" and "spirit," have
had something to do with this spiritualization of the
interstellar ether. Some share may also have been
contributed by the Platonic notion of the "grossness" or
"bruteness" of tangible matter,—a notion which has
survived in Christian theology, and which educated
men of the present day have by no means universally
outgrown. Save for some such old associations as these,
why should it be supposed that matter becomes "spiritualized"
as it diminishes in apparent substantiality?
Why should matter be pronounced respectable in the
inverse ratio of its density or ponderability? Why
is a diamond any more chargeable with "grossness"
than a cubic centimetre of hydrogen? Obviously such
fancies are purely of mythologic parentage. Now
the luminiferous ether, upon which our authors make
such extensive demands, may be physically "ethereal"
enough, in spite of the enormous elasticity which leads
Professor Jevons to characterize it as "adamantine";
but most assuredly we have not the slightest reason for
speaking of it as "immaterial" or "spiritual." Though
we are unable to weigh it in the balance, we at least
know it as a transmitter of undulatory movements, the
size and shape of which we can accurately measure.
Its force-relations with ponderable matter are not only
universally and incessantly maintained, but they have
that precisely quantitative character which implies an
essential identity between the innermost natures of the
two substances. We have seen reason for thinking it
probable that ether and ordinary matter are alike composed
of vortex-rings in a quasi-frictionless fluid; but
whatever be the fate of this subtle hypothesis, we may
be sure that no theory will ever be entertained in which
the analysis of ether shall require different symbols
from that of ordinary matter. In our authors' theory,
therefore, the putting on of immortality is in no wise the
passage from a material to a spiritual state. It is the
passage from one kind of materially conditioned state to
another. The theory thus appeals directly to our experiences
of the behaviour of matter; and in deriving so
little support as it does from these experiences, it remains
an essentially weak speculation, whatever we may
think of its ingenuity. For so long as we are asked to
accept conclusions drawn from our experiences of the
material world, we are justified in demanding something
more than mere unconditioned possibility. We require
some positive evidence, be it ever so little in amount;
and no theory which cannot furnish such positive evidence
is likely to carry to our minds much practical
conviction.
This is what I meant by saying that the great weakness
of the hypothesis here criticized lies in its materialistic
character. In contrast with this we shall presently
see that the assertion of a future life which is not
materially conditioned, though unsupported by any item
of experience whatever, may nevertheless be an impregnable
assertion. But first I would conclude the foregoing
criticism by ruling out altogether the sense in
which our authors use the expression "Unseen Universe."
Scientific inference, however remote, is connected
by such insensible gradations with ordinary perception,
that one may well question the propriety of
applying the term "unseen" to that which is presented
to "the mind's eye" as inevitable matter of inference.
It is true that we cannot see the ocean of ether in
which visible matter floats; but there are many other
invisible things which yet we do not regard as part of
the "unseen world." I do not see the air which I am
now breathing within the four walls of my study, yet
its existence is sufficiently a matter of sense-perception
as it fills my lungs and fans my cheek. The atoms
which compose a drop of water are not only invisible,
but cannot in any way be made the objects of sense-perception; yet by proper inferences from their behaviour
we can single them out for measurement, so
that Sir William Thomson can tell us that if the drop
of water were magnified to the size of the earth, the
constituent atoms would be larger than peas, but not so
large as billiard-balls. If we do not see such atoms
with our eyes, we have one adequate reason in their
tiny dimensions, though there are further reasons than
this. It would be hard to say why the luminiferous
ether should be relegated to the "unseen world" any
more than the material atom. Whatever we know as
possessing resistance and extension, whatever we can
subject to mathematical processes of measurement, we
also conceive as existing in such shape that, with appropriate
eyes and under proper visual conditions, we
might
see it, and we are not entitled to draw any line of demarcation
between such an object of inference and others
which may be made objects of sense-perception. To
set apart the ether as constituting an "unseen universe"
is therefore illegitimate and confusing. It introduces a
distinction where there is none, and obscures the fact
that both invisible ether and visible matter form but
one grand universe in which the sum of energy remains
constant, though the order of its distribution endlessly
varies.
Very different would be the logical position of a theory
which should assume the existence of an "Unseen
World" entirely spiritual in constitution, and in which
material conditions like those of the visible world should
have neither place nor meaning. Such a world would
not consist of ethers or gases or ghosts, but of purely
psychical relations akin to such as constitute thoughts
and feelings when our minds are least solicited by
sense-perceptions. In thus marking off the "Unseen
World" from the objective universe of which we have
knowledge, our line of demarcation would at least be
drawn in the right place. The distinction between
psychical and material phenomena is a distinction of
a different order from all other distinctions known to
philosophy, and it immeasurably transcends all others.
The progress of modern discovery has in no respect
weakened the force of Descartes's remark, that between
that of which the differential attribute is Thought and
that of which the differential attribute is Extension,
there can be no similarity, no community of nature
whatever. By no scientific cunning of experiment or
deduction can Thought be weighed or measured or in
any way assimilated to such things as may be made the
actual or possible objects of sense-perception. Modern
discovery, so far from bridging over the chasm between
Mind and Matter, tends rather to exhibit the distinction
between them as absolute. It has, indeed, been
rendered highly probable that every act of consciousness
is accompanied by a molecular motion in the cells
and fibres of the brain; and materialists have found
great comfort in this fact, while theologians and persons
of little faith have been very much frightened by it.
But since no one ever pretended that thought can go
on, under the conditions of the present life, without a
brain, one finds it rather hard to sympathize either with
the self-congratulations of Dr. Büchner's disciples
[8] or
with the terrors of their opponents. But what has been
less commonly remarked is the fact that when the
thought and the molecular movement thus occur
simultaneously, in no scientific sense is the thought the
product of the molecular movement. The sun-derived
energy of motion latent in the food we eat is variously
transformed within the organism, until some of it appears
as the motion of the molecules of a little globule
of nerve-matter in the brain. In a rough way we might
thus say that the chemical energy of the food indirectly
produces the motion of these little nerve-molecules.
But does this motion of nerve-molecules now produce
a thought or state of consciousness? By no means. It
simply produces some other motion of nerve-molecules,
and this in turn produces motion of contraction or
expansion in some muscle, or becomes transformed into
the chemical energy of some secreting gland. At no
point in the whole circuit does a unit of motion disappear
as motion to reappear as a unit of consciousness.
The physical process is complete in itself, and the
thought does not enter into it. All that we can say
is, that the occurrence of the thought is simultaneous
with that part of the physical process which consists
of a molecular movement in the brain.
[9] To be sure,
the thought is always there when summoned, but it
stands outside the dynamic circuit, as something utterly
alien from and incomparable with the events which
summon it. No doubt, as Professor Tyndall observes,
if we knew exhaustively the physical state of the brain,
"the corresponding thought or feeling might be inferred;
or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding state
of the brain might be inferred. But how inferred? It
would be at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,
but of empirical association. You may reply that many
of the inferences of science are of this character; the
inference, for example, that an electric current of a
given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a definite
way; but the cases differ in this, that the passage
from the current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is
thinkable, and that we entertain no doubt as to the final
mechanical solution of the problem. But the passage
from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts
of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite
thought and a definite molecular action in the brain
occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual
organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which
would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from
the one to the other. They appear together, but we do
not know why."
[10]
An unseen world consisting of purely psychical or
spiritual phenomena would accordingly be demarcated
by an absolute gulf from what we call the material universe,
but would not necessarily be discontinuous with
the psychical phenomena which we find manifested in
connection with the world of matter. The transfer of
matter, or physical energy, or anything else that is
quantitatively measurable, into such an unseen world,
may be set down as impossible, by reason of the very
definition of such a world. Any hypothesis which
should assume such a transfer would involve a contradiction
in terms. But the hypothesis of a survival of
present psychical phenomena in such a world, after
being denuded of material conditions, is not in itself
absurd or self-contradictory, though it may be impossible
to support it by any arguments drawn from the domain
of human experience. Such is the shape which it seems
to me that, in the present state of philosophy, the
hypothesis of a future life must assume. We have nothing
to say to gross materialistic notions of ghosts and bogies,
and spirits that upset tables and whisper to ignorant
vulgar women the wonderful information that you once
had an aunt Susan. The unseen world imagined in our
hypothesis is not connected with the present material
universe by any such "invisible bonds" as would allow
Bacon and Addison to come to Boston and write the silliest
twaddle in the most ungrammatical English before
a roomful of people who have never learned how to test
what they are pleased to call the "evidence of their
senses." Our hypothesis is expressly framed so as to
exclude all intercourse whatever between the unseen
world of spirit unconditioned by matter and the present
world of spirit conditioned by matter in which all our
experiences have been gathered. The hypothesis being
framed in such a way, the question is, What has philosophy
to say to it? Can we, by searching our experiences,
find any reason for adopting such an hypothesis?
Or, on the other hand, supposing we can find no such
reason, would the total failure of experimental evidence
justify us in rejecting it?
The question is so important that I will restate it. I
have imagined a world made up of psychical phenomena,
freed from the material conditions under which alone we
know such phenomena. Can we adduce any proof of
the possibility of such a world? Or if we cannot, does
our failure raise the slightest presumption that such a
world is impossible?
The reply to the first clause of the question is
sufficiently obvious. We have no experience whatever of
psychical phenomena save as manifested in connection
with material phenomena. We know of Mind only as
a group of activities which are never exhibited to us
except through the medium of motions of matter. In
all our experience we have never encountered such
activities save in connection with certain very complicated
groupings of highly mobile material particles into
aggregates which we call living organisms. And we
have never found them manifested to a very conspicuous
extent save in connection with some of those
specially organized aggregates which have vertebrate
skeletons and mammary glands. Nay, more, when we
survey the net results of our experience up to the present
time, we find indisputable evidence that in the past
history of the visible universe psychical phenomena have
only begun to be manifested in connection with certain
complex aggregates of material phenomena. As these
material aggregates have age by age become more complex
in structure, more complex psychical phenomena
have been exhibited. The development of Mind has
from the outset been associated with the development
of Matter. And to-day, though none of us has any
knowledge of the end of psychical phenomena in his
own case, yet from all the marks by which we recognize
such phenomena in our fellow-creatures, whether
brute or human, we are taught that when certain material
processes have been gradually or suddenly brought
to an end, psychical phenomena are no longer manifested.
From first to last, therefore, our appeal to experience
gets but one response. We have not the faintest
shadow of evidence wherewith to make it seem probable
that Mind can exist except in connection with a material
body. Viewed from this standpoint of terrestrial
experience, there is no more reason for supposing that
consciousness survives the dissolution of the brain than
for supposing that the pungent flavour of table-salt survives
its decomposition into metallic sodium and gaseous
chlorine.
Our answer from this side is thus unequivocal enough.
Indeed, so uniform has been the teaching of experience
in this respect that even in their attempts to depict a
life after death, men have always found themselves
obliged to have recourse to materialistic symbols. To
the mind of a savage the future world is a mere reproduction
of the present, with its everlasting huntings and
fightings. The early Christians looked forward to a
renovation of the earth and the bodily resurrection from
Sheol of the righteous. The pictures of hell and purgatory,
and even of paradise, in Dante's great poem, are so
intensely materialistic as to seem grotesque in this more
spiritual age. But even to-day the popular conceptions
of heaven are by no means freed from the notion of matter;
and persons of high culture, who realize the inadequacy
of these popular conceptions, are wont to avoid
the difficulty by refraining from putting their hopes and
beliefs into any definite or describable form. Not
unfrequently one sees a smile raised at the assumption of
knowledge or insight by preachers who describe in eloquent
terms the joys of a future state; yet the smile
does not necessarily imply any scepticism as to the
abstract probability of the soul's survival. The scepticism
is aimed at the character of the description rather
than at the reality of the thing described. It implies a
tacit agreement, among cultivated people, that the unseen
world must be purely spiritual in constitution.
The agreement is not habitually expressed in definite
formulas, for the reason that no mental image of a
purely spiritual world can be formed. Much stress is
commonly laid upon the recognition of friends in a
future life; and however deep a meaning may be given
to the phrase "the love of God," one does not easily
realize that a heavenly existence could be worth the
longing that is felt for it, if it were to afford no further
scope for the pure and tender household affections which
give to the present life its powerful though indefinable
charm. Yet the recognition of friends in a purely spiritual
world is something of which we can frame no conception
whatever. We may look with unspeakable reverence
on the features of wife or child, less because of
their physical beauty than because of the beauty of soul
to which they give expression, but to imagine the
perception of soul by soul apart from the material structure
and activities in which soul is manifested, is something
utterly beyond our power. Nay, even when we try to
represent to ourselves the psychical activity of any single
soul by itself as continuing without the aid of the
physical machinery of sensation, we get into unmanageable
difficulties. A great part of the contents of our
minds consists of sensuous (chiefly visual) images, and
though we may imagine reflection to go on without further
images supplied by vision or hearing, touch or
taste or smell, yet we cannot well see how fresh experiences
could be gained in such a state. The reader, if
he require further illustrations, can easily follow out
this line of thought. Enough has no doubt been said to
convince him that our hypothesis of the survival of conscious
activity apart from material conditions is not only
utterly unsupported by any evidence that can be gathered
from the world of which we have experience, but
is utterly and hopelessly inconceivable.
It is inconceivable because it is entirely without
foundation in experience. Our powers of conception are
closely determined by the limits of our experience.
When a proposition, or combination of ideas, is suggested,
for which there has never been any precedent in
human experience, we find it to be unthinkable,—the
ideas will not combine. The proposition remains one
which we may utter and defend, and perhaps vituperate
our neighbours for not accepting, but it remains none
the less an unthinkable proposition. It takes terms
which severally have meanings and puts them together
into a phrase which has no meaning.[11] Now when we
try to combine the idea of the continuance of conscious
activity with the idea of the entire cessation of material
conditions, and thereby to assert the existence of a
purely spiritual world, we find that we have made an
unthinkable proposition. We may defend our hypothesis
as passionately as we like, but when we strive
coolly to realize it in thought we find ourselves baulked
at every step.
But now we have to ask, How much does this inconceivability
signify? In most cases, when we say that a
statement is inconceivable, we practically declare it to
be untrue; when we say that a statement is without
warrant in experience, we plainly indicate that we consider
it unworthy of our acceptance. This is legitimate
in the majority of cases with which we have to deal in
the course of life, because experience, and the capacities
of thought called out and limited by experience, are
our only guides in the conduct of life. But every one
will admit that our experience is not infinite, and that
our capacity of conception is not coextensive with the
possibilities of existence. It is not only possible, but in
the very highest degree probable, that there are many
things in heaven, if not on earth, which are undreamed
of in our philosophy. Since our ability to conceive
anything is limited by the extent of our experience, and
since human experience is very far from being infinite,
it follows that there may be, and in all probability is,
an immense region of existence in every way as real as
the region which we know, yet concerning which we
cannot form the faintest rudiment of a conception. Any
hypothesis relating to such a region of existence is not
only not disproved by the total failure of evidence in its
favour, but the total failure of evidence does not raise
even the slightest
prima facie
presumption against its
validity.
These considerations apply with great force to the
hypothesis of an unseen world in which psychical phenomena
persist in the absence of material conditions.
It is true, on the one hand, that we can bring up no
scientific evidence in support of such an hypothesis.
But on the other hand it is equally true that in the
very nature of things no such evidence could be expected
to be forthcoming: even were there such evidence
in abundance, it could not be accessible to us.
The existence of a single soul, or congeries of psychical
phenomena, unaccompanied by a material body, would
be evidence sufficient to demonstrate the hypothesis.
But in the nature of things, even were there a million
such souls round about us, we could not become aware
of the existence of one of them, for we have no organ
or faculty for the perception of soul apart from the
material structure and activities in which it has been
manifested throughout the whole course of our experience.
Even our own self-consciousness involves the
consciousness of ourselves as partly material bodies.
These considerations show that our hypothesis is very
different from the ordinary hypotheses with which science
deals.
The entire absence of testimony does not raise
a negative presumption except in cases where testimony is
accessible. In the hypotheses with which scientific men
are occupied, testimony is always accessible; and if we
do not find any, the presumption is raised that there is
none. When Dr. Bastian tells us that he has found
living organisms to be generated in sealed flasks from
which all living germs had been excluded, we demand
the evidence for his assertion. The testimony of facts
is in this case hard to elicit, and only skilful reasoners
can properly estimate its worth. But still it is all
accessible. With more or less labour it can be got at;
and if we find that Dr. Bastian has produced no evidence
save such as may equally well receive a different
interpretation from that which he has given it, we
rightly feel that a strong presumption has been raised
against his hypothesis. It is a case in which we are
entitled to expect to find the favouring facts if there
are any, and so long as we do not find such, we are
justified in doubting their existence. So when our
authors propound the hypothesis of an unseen universe
consisting of phenomena which occur in the interstellar
ether, or even in some primordial fluid with which the
ether has physical relations, we are entitled to demand
their proofs. It is not enough to tell us that we cannot
disprove such a theory. The burden of proof lies
with them. The interstellar ether is something concerning
the physical properties of which we have some
knowledge; and surely, if all the things are going on
which they suppose in a medium so closely related to
ordinary matter, there ought to be some traceable indications
of the fact. At least, until the contrary can be
shown, we must refuse to believe that all the testimony
in a case like this is utterly inaccessible; and accordingly,
so long as none is found, especially so long as
none is even alleged, we feel that a presumption is
raised against their theory.
These illustrations will show, by sheer contrast, how
different it is with the hypothesis of an unseen world
that is purely spiritual. The testimony in such a case
must, under the conditions of the present life, be forever
inaccessible. It lies wholly outside the range of
experience. However abundant it may be, we cannot
expect to meet with it. And accordingly our failure to
produce it does not raise even the slightest presumption
against our theory. When conceived in this way, the
belief in a future life is without scientific support; but
at the same time it is placed beyond the need of scientific
support and beyond the range of scientific criticism.
It is a belief which no imaginable future advance in
physical discovery can in any way impugn. It is a
belief which is in no sense irrational, and which may
be logically entertained without in the least affecting
our scientific habit of mind or influencing our scientific
conclusions.
To take a brief illustration: we have alluded to the
fact that in the history of our present world the development
of mental phenomena has gone on hand in hand
with the development of organic life, while at the same
time we have found it impossible to explain mental
phenomena as in any sense the product of material phenomena.
Now there is another side to all this. The
great lesson which Berkeley taught mankind was that
what we call material phenomena are really the products
of consciousness co-operating with some Unknown Power
(not material) existing beyond consciousness. We do
very well to speak of "matter" in common parlance,
but all that the word really means is a group of qualities
which have no existence apart from our minds.
Modern philosophers have quite generally accepted this
conclusion, and every attempt to overturn Berkeley's
reasoning has hitherto resulted in complete and disastrous
failure. In admitting this, we do not admit the
conclusion of Absolute Idealism, that nothing exists outside
of consciousness. What we admit as existing independently
of our own consciousness is the Power that
causes in us those conscious states which we call the
perception of material qualities. We have no reason
for regarding this Power as in itself material: indeed,
we cannot do so, since by the theory material qualities
have no existence apart from our minds. I have elsewhere
sought to show that less difficulty is involved in
regarding this Power outside of us as quasi-psychical, or
in some measure similar to the mental part of ourselves;
and I have gone on to conclude that this Power may be
identical with what men have, in all times and by the
aid of various imperfect symbols, endeavoured to apprehend
as Deity.[12] We are thus led to a view of things
not very unlike the views entertained by Spinoza and
Berkeley. We are led to the inference that what we
call the material universe is but the manifestation of
infinite Deity to our finite minds. Obviously, on this
view, Matter—the only thing to which materialists
concede real existence—is simply an orderly phantasmagoria;
and God and the Soul—which materialists
regard as mere fictions of the imagination—are the only
conceptions that answer to real existences.
In the foregoing paragraph I have been setting down
opinions with which I am prepared to agree, and which
are not in conflict with anything that our study of the
development of the objective world has taught us. In
so far as that study may be supposed to bear on the
question of a future life, two conclusions are open to us.
First we may say that since the phenomena of mind
appear and run their course along with certain specialized
groups of material phenomena, so, too, they must
disappear when these specialized groups are broken up.
Or, in other words, we may say that every living person
is an organized whole; consciousness is something which
pertains to this organized whole, as music belongs to
the harp that is entire; but when the harp is broken it
is silent, and when the organized whole of personality
falls to pieces consciousness ceases forever. To many
well-disciplined minds this conclusion seems irresistible;
and doubtless it would be a sound one—a good
Baconian conclusion—if we were to admit, with the
materialists, that the possibilities of existence are limited
by our tiny and ephemeral experience.
But now, supposing some Platonic speculator were to
come along and insist upon our leaving room for an
alternative conclusion; suppose he were to urge upon
us that all this process of material development, with
the discovery of which our patient study has been
rewarded, may be but the temporary manifestation of
relations otherwise unknown between ourselves and the
infinite Deity; suppose he were to argue that psychical
qualities may be inherent in a spiritual substance which
under certain conditions becomes incarnated in matter,
to wear it as a perishable garment for a brief season, but
presently to cast it off and enter upon the freedom of a
larger existence;—what reply should we be bound to
make, bearing in mind that the possibilities of existence
are in no wise limited by our experience? Obviously
we should be bound to admit that in sound philosophy
this conclusion is just as likely to be true as the other.
We should, indeed, warn him not to call on us to help
him to establish it by scientific arguments; and we
should remind him that he must not make illicit use
of his extra-experiential hypotheses by bringing them
into the treatment of scientific questions that lie within
the range of experience. In science, for example, we
make no use of the conception of a "spiritual substance"
(or of a "material substance" either), because we can
get along sufficiently well by dealing solely with qualities.
But with this general understanding we should
feel bound to concede the impregnableness of his main
position.
I have supposed this theory only as an illustration,
not as a theory which I am prepared to adopt. My
present purpose is not to treat as an advocate the question
of a future life, but to endeavour to point out what
conditions should be observed in treating the question
philosophically. It seems to me that a great deal is
gained when we have distinctly set before us what are
the peculiar conditions of proof in the case of such
transcendental questions. We have gained a great deal
when we have learned how thoroughly impotent, how
truly irrelevant, is physical investigation in the presence
of such a question. If we get not much positive satisfaction
for our unquiet yearnings, we occupy at any rate
a sounder philosophic position when we recognize the
limits within which our conclusions, whether positive or
negative, are valid.
It seems not improbable that Mr. Mill may have had
in mind something like the foregoing considerations
when he suggested that there is no reason why one
should not entertain the belief in a future life if the
belief be necessary to one's spiritual comfort. Perhaps
no suggestion in Mr. Mill's richly suggestive posthumous
work has been more generally condemned as unphilosophical,
on the ground that in matters of belief
we must be guided, not by our likes and dislikes, but
by the evidence that is accessible. The objection is
certainly a sound one so far as it relates to scientific
questions where evidence is accessible. To hesitate to
adopt a well-supported theory because of some vague
preference for a different view is in scientific matters
the one unpardonable sin,—a sin which has been only
too often committed. Even in matters which lie beyond
the range of experience, where evidence is inaccessible,
desire is not to be regarded as by itself an adequate
basis for belief. But it seems to me that Mr. Mill
showed a deeper knowledge of the limitations of scientific
method than his critics, when he thus hinted at
the possibility of entertaining a belief not amenable to
scientific tests. The hypothesis of a purely spiritual
unseen world, as above described, is entirely removed
from the jurisdiction of physical inquiry, and can only
be judged on general considerations of what has been
called "moral probability"; and considerations of this
sort are likely, in the future as in the past, to possess
different values for different minds. He who, on such
considerations, entertains a belief in a future life may
not demand that his sceptical neighbour shall be convinced
by the same considerations; but his neighbour
is at the same time estopped from stigmatizing his belief
as unphilosophical.
The consideration which must influence most minds
in their attitude toward this question, is the craving,
almost universally felt, for some teleological solution to
the problem of existence. Why we are here now is a
question of even profounder interest than whether we
are to live hereafter. Unfortunately its solution carries
us no less completely beyond the range of experience!
The belief that all things are working together for some
good end is the most essential expression of religious
faith: of all intellectual propositions it is the one most
closely related to that emotional yearning for a higher
and better life which is the sum and substance of religion.
Yet all the treatises on natural theology that
have ever been written have barely succeeded in establishing
a low degree of scientific probability for this
belief. In spite of the eight Bridgewater Treatises, and
the "Ninth" beside, dysteleology still holds full half
the field as against teleology. Most of this difficulty,
however, results from the crude anthropomorphic views
which theologians have held concerning God. Once
admitting that the Divine attributes may be (as they
must be) incommensurably greater than human attributes,
our faith that all things are working together for
good may remain unimpugned.
To many minds such a faith will seem incompatible
with belief in the ultimate destruction of sentiency amid
the general doom of the material universe. A good end
can have no meaning to us save in relation to consciousness
that distinguishes and knows the good from the
evil. There could be no better illustration of how we
are hemmed in than the very inadequacy of the words
with which we try to discuss this subject. Such words
have all gained their meanings from human experience,
and hence of necessity carry anthropomorphic implications.
But we cannot help this. We must think with
the symbols with which experience has furnished us;
and when we so think, there does seem to be little that
is even intellectually satisfying in the awful picture
which science shows us, of giant worlds concentrating
out of nebulous vapour, developing with prodigious
waste of energy into theatres of all that is grand and
sacred in spiritual endeavour, clashing and exploding
again into dead vapour-balls, only to renew the same
toilful process without end,—a senseless bubble-play
of Titan forces, with life, love, and aspiration brought
forth only to be extinguished. The human mind, however
"scientific" its training, must often recoil from the
conclusion that this is all; and there are moments when
one passionately feels that this cannot be all. On
warm June mornings in green country lanes, with sweet
pine-odours wafted in the breeze which sighs through
the branches, and cloud-shadows flitting over far-off
blue mountains, while little birds sing their love-songs,
and golden-haired children weave garlands of wild roses;
or when in the solemn twilight we listen to wondrous
harmonies of Beethoven and Chopin that stir the heart
like voices from an unseen world; at such times one
feels that the profoundest answer which science can
give to our questionings is but a superficial answer after
all. At these moments, when the world seems fullest
of beauty, one feels most strongly that it is but the harbinger
of something else,—that the ceaseless play of
phenomena is no mere sport of Titans, but an orderly
scene, with its reason for existing, its
"One divine far-off event
To which the whole creation moves."
Difficult as it is to disentangle the elements of reasoning
that enter into these complex groups of feeling,
one may still see, I think, that it is speculative interest
in the world, rather than anxious interest in self, that
predominates. The desire for immortality in its lowest
phase is merely the outcome of the repugnance we feel
toward thinking of the final cessation of vigorous vital
activity. Such a feeling is naturally strong with healthy
people. But in the mood which I have above tried to
depict, this feeling, or any other which is merely self-regarding, is lost sight of in the feeling which associates
a future life with some solution of the burdensome
problem of existence. Had we but faith enough to
lighten the burden of this problem, the inferior question
would perhaps be less absorbing. Could we but know
that our present lives are working together toward some
good end, even an end in no wise anthropomorphic, it
would be of less consequence whether we were individually
to endure. To the dog under the knife of the
experimenter, the world is a world of pure evil; yet
could the poor beast but understand the alleviation of
human suffering to which he is contributing, he would be
forced to own that this is not quite true; and if he were
also a heroic or Christian dog, the thought would perhaps
take away from death its sting. The analogy may
be a crude one; but the reasonableness of the universe
is at least as far above our comprehension as the purposes
of man surpass the understanding of the dog.
Believing, however, though as a simple act of trust, that
the end will crown the work, we may rise superior to
the question which has here concerned us, and exclaim,
in the supreme language of faith, "Though He slay me,
yet will I trust in Him!"
July, 1875.
[[1]]
The Unseen Universe; or, Physical Speculations on a Future
State. [Attributed to Professors TAIT and BALFOUR STEWART.] New
York: Macmillan & Co. 1875. 8vo. pp. 212.
[[2]]
Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, based on the Doctrine of
Evolution. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co. 1875. 2 vols. 8vo.
[[3]]
Fortnightly Review, April, 1875.
[[4]]
Jevons's Principles of Science, Vol. II. p. 145. The figures, which
in the English system of numeration read as seventeen billions, would
in the American system read as seventeen trillions.
[[5]]
Fortnightly Review, June, 1875, p. 784.
[[6]]
Babbage, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, p. 115; Jevons, Principles
of Science, Vol. II. p. 455.
[[7]]
See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 142-148.
[[8]]
The Nation once wittily described these people as "people who
believe that they are going to die like the beasts, and who congratulate
themselves that they are going to die like the beasts."
[[9]]
For a fuller exposition of this point, see my Outlines of Cosmic
Philosophy, Vol. II. pp. 436-445.
[[10]]
Fragments of Science, p. 119.
[[11]]
See my Ontlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I. pp. 64-67.
[[12]]
See my Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Part I. Chap. IV.; Part
III. Chaps. III., IV.