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.