{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_30709/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_30709","id":"gutenberg_30709","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30709","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Category: Science - Biology","Category: Science - Physics","Religion -- Philosophy","Religion and science"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  This is one of a series of evidential books drawn up at the\n  instance of the _Christian Evidence Society_.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGOD AND THE WORLD\n\nA SURVEY OF THOUGHT\n\n\nBY\n\nARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.,\n\n\nWarden of the College of Allhallows Barking\n\n\n\nWith a Prefatory Note by SIR OLIVER LODGE\n\n\n\n\nLONDON:\n\nSOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE\n\nNORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C., 43 QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.\n\nBRIGHTON: 129 NORTH STREET\n\nNEW YORK: E. S. GORHAM\n\n1913\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                            PAGE\n\n       PREFATORY NOTE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     5\n       INTRODUCTION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     7\n    I. THE OLDER ORTHODOXY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    13\n   II. THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY . . . . . . . . . . . . .    21\n  III. THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES  . . . . . . . . . . . . .    27\n   IV. THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    37\n    V. THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS (_continued_) . . . . . . . .    46\n   VI. THE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS (_continued_) . . . . . . . .    53\n  VII. LATER SCIENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    68\n VIII. LATER SCIENCE (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . .    76\n   IX. LATER SCIENCE (_continued_) . . . . . . . . . . . .    87\n       CONCLUSION  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    98\n\n\n\n\n{5}\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\nI have read what Dr. Arthur Robinson has written, and find it a most\ninteresting, singularly fair, and I may add, within its limits, able\nand comprehensive survey of the thoughts of the past and passing age.\nI commend it to the coming generation as a useful means of acquiring\nsome notion of the main puzzles and controversies of the strenuous time\nthrough which their fathers have lived.  Fossil remains of these\noccasionally fierce discussions they will find embedded in literature;\nand although we are emerging from that conflict, it can only be to find\nfresh opportunities for discovery, fresh fields of interest, in the\nnewer age.  Towards a wise reception of these discoveries, as they are\ngradually arrived at in the future, this little book will give some\nhelp.\n\nOLIVER LODGE.\n\n\n\n\n{7}\n\nGOD AND THE WORLD\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nA man, so it has been said, is distinguished from the creatures beneath\nhim by his power to ask a question.  To which we may add that one man\nis distinguished from another by the kind of question that he asks.  A\nman is to be measured by the size of his question.  Small men ask small\nquestions: of here and now; of to-day and to-morrow and the next day;\nof how they may quickest fill their pockets, or gain another step upon\nthe social ladder.  Great men are concerned with great questions: of\nlife, of man, of history, of God.\n\nSo again, the size of an age can be determined by the size of its\nquestions.  It has been claimed that the age through which we have\npassed was a great age, and tried by this test we need not hesitate to\nadmit the claim.  It was full of questions, and they were great\nquestions.  As never before, the eyes of men strained upwards and\nbackwards into the dim {8} recesses of the past to discover something,\nif it might be, of the beginnings of things: of matter and life; of the\nearth and its contents; of the solar system and the universe.  We know\nwith what interest inquiries of this sort were regarded, and how ready\nthe people were to read the books that dealt with them; to attend\nlectures and discussions about them, and to give their money for the\npurposes of such research.  It was a great age that could devote itself\nso eagerly to questions of this importance and magnitude.\n\nBut as men cannot live upon appetite, so neither can they be for ever\nsatisfied with questions.  Hence it follows that a period of\nquestioning is ordinarily followed by another, in which the accumulated\ninformation is sorted and digested and turned to practical account; a\ntime in which constructive work is attempted, and some understanding is\narrived at as to the relation that exists between the old knowledge and\nthe new.  It looks as if we were nearing such a time, when, for a while\nat all events, there will be a pause for reconsideration and\nreconstruction, and the human spirit will gather strength and\nconfidence before again setting out upon its quest of the Infinite.\nAlready we are asked to give attention to statements that are intended\nto review the whole situation and to summarise, provisionally at {9}\nall events, the results that have been attained.  Each of these\nattempts will, in its turn, be superseded by something that is wider in\nits outlook and wiser in its verdicts.  This little book is an effort\nof this nature, and it is offered in the hope that it may serve some\nsuch useful and temporary purpose.\n\nMuch more competent writers than its author might well apologise for\nconsenting to enter upon the task which he has been invited to\nundertake.  All that he can say, by way of excuse for his boldness in\ncomplying, is that for many years he has endeavoured to follow the\ntrend of modern thinking, and that the growing interest with which he\nhas done this encourages him to hope that he may be able to make what\nhe has to tell about it both intelligible and interesting to others.\nHe does not imagine that he can escape mistakes, and he will most\ngladly submit himself to the correction of others who know better and\nsee more clearly than he does.  He only begs that those who disagree\nwith his judgments will try to give him credit for a sincere desire to\nbe true to facts, and to welcome the light, from whatever quarter it\nmay have come.\n\nWhen we speak of the age that is passing, we shall have in mind what\nmay roughly be reckoned as the last hundred years.  That space\nincludes, for those of us who are not in our first youth, the time of\nour {10} parents, and even, it may be, of our grandparents.  The period\nhas a certain distinctiveness of character in spite of superficial\ndiversities.  It was marked, as we have said, by the intelligence and\nvigour of its questionings.  It was a time of intellectual movement and\nturmoil.  It witnessed a succession of wonderful discoveries leading on\nto ever bolder investigations.  Rapid generalisations were advanced, to\nbe often as quickly abandoned.  Only by degrees was it possible to see\nthe new facts in their proper proportion and significance.  Nor was it\nat all easy for men to keep their discussions free from heat and\nbitterness, when the most deeply-rooted convictions appeared to be\nassailed, and the most sacred associations to be regarded as of little\naccount.  Looking back, as we can, it is possible to see that in spite\nof the eddies and backwaters a steady progress was made.  And it is of\nthat progress that it will now be our endeavour to speak.\n\nWe know how it has happened to us over and over again in our own\nindividual experiences to have been made conscious of a gradual\nmodification of our opinions as new evidence has reached us, and we\nhave had time to relate it to our previous understanding and knowledge.\nWe have had our first thoughts, and our second thoughts, and then there\nhave come third thoughts, which were the ripest {11} and soundest of\nall.  Just such a process of which we can mark the stages in ourselves\nis to be seen on a larger scale--in bigger print, as it were--in the\nthought movements of an age.  In the case of the period which we are to\nreview, the three stages have been more than commonly clear, as we\nshall aim to shew in the survey we are to make.\n\nWe shall begin with the First thoughts, which were those of what may be\ntermed the older orthodoxy.  These were very generally accepted;\nindeed, they were regarded as for the most part beyond the reach of\nserious contradiction.  Then we shall pass to the Second thoughts,\nwhich were forced upon an astonished and bewildered generation by the\nonslaughts upon traditional views that were made from the side of\nphysical science.  For fifty years or more the debate went on, with\nchallenge and counter-challenge, and much noise and dust of\ncontroversy.  They were great days, and in them great men fought with\ngreat courage in great issues.  We shall seek to do justice to both\nsides, to those who dared to proclaim and suffer for the new, and to\nthose who shewed an equal courage in their resolute determination to be\nloyal to what they held to be the truth of the old.\n\nThen, finally, it will be our difficult task to discriminate between\nthe surging thoughts of that {12} second period and those of the Third\nstage, through which we are advancing, and to shew what can already be\nmade out of a common ground of agreement and co-operation, now much\nmore likely to be reached than could at one time have been foreseen by\nthe most optimistic imagination.\n\n\n\n\n{13}\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE OLDER ORTHODOXY\n\nNever had there been greater unanimity of opinion in England in regard\nto the religious interpretation of the world than that which prevailed\nat the beginning of the nineteenth century.  The excesses on the\nContinent which had accompanied the advocacy of free thought had\ndisposed men's mind to fall back upon authority, and most of all in\nmatters that affected the basis on which the continuance of social\norder and moral conduct depended.  The general position was clearly\napprehended, and was accepted as if beyond dispute.  Men spoke and\nthought of the Order of Nature.  The world was a Cosmos, a regulated\nsystem.  Order implied an Orderer.  It was regarded by them as obvious\nthat there must have been a First Cause, a great Architect and Maker of\nthe Universe.  They agreed with Aquinas that \"things which have no\nperception can only tend toward an end if directed by a conscious and\nintelligent being.  Therefore there is an {14} Intelligence by which\nall natural things are ordered to an end.\"[1]  They were fully prepared\nto endorse the indignant protest of Bacon: \"I had rather believe all\nthe folly of the 'Legend,' and the 'Talmud,' and the 'Alcoran,' than\nthat this universal frame is without a mind.\"[2]  In fact no other\nhypothesis seemed to them thinkable.\n\nIf at any time they felt a need for a more elaborate justification of\ntheir conviction, they had it ready to their hand in the familiar\nargument from design.  Paley, when he set this out in his famous\n_Natural Theology_ (1802), was only expressing with conspicuous ability\nthe view that was then accepted in all circles from the highest to the\nlowest.  He was preaching to those who were already in the fullest\naccord with his doctrine.  They followed with eager approbation his\nreasoning about the watch that he supposed himself to have found on the\nheath.  According to his assumption he had never seen a watch made, nor\nknown of anyone capable of making such a thing.  He concludes,\nnevertheless, that it must have been made by someone.  \"There must have\nexisted, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or\nartificers who formed it for {15} the purpose which we find it actually\nto answer; who comprehended its structure, and designed its use.\"\n\"Neither would it invalidate our conclusion that the watch sometimes\nwent wrong, or that it seldom went exactly right.  The purpose of the\nmachinery, the design and the designer, might be evident in whatever\nway we accounted for the irregularity of the movement, or whether we\ncould account for it at all.\"  \"Nor would it bring any uncertainty into\nthe argument if there were a few parts of the watch concerning which we\ncould not discover, or had not yet discovered, in what manner they\nconducted to the general effect; or even some parts concerning which we\ncould not ascertain whether they conducted to that effect in any manner\nwhatever.\"  Least of all could it be sufficient to explain that the\nwatch was \"nothing more than the result of the laws of metallic\nnature.\"  \"It is a perversion of language to assign any law as the\nefficient operative cause of any thing.  A law presupposes an agent,\nfor it is only the mode according to which our agent proceeds: it\nimplies a power, for it is the order according to which that power\nacts.  Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct\nfrom itself, the law does nothing, is nothing.\"\n\nFrom the watch we are led on to the eye, which exhibits a skill of\ndesign not less, but far greater, {16} than that of the man who gave us\nthe telescope.  Then follows a detailed examination of the use of the\nvarious bodily organs, the contrivances to be met with in vegetables\nand animals, the marvellous adaptations of anatomical structure, the\nprovisions for the flight of birds, and for the movements of fishes;\nwith instances of arrangements to suit particular conditions--the long\nneck of the swan, the minute eye of the mole, the beak of the parrot,\nthe sting of the bee--all furnishing an ever accumulating body of\nirrefutable evidence to attest the existence and operation of an\nintelligent Author of Nature.\n\nThat these arrangements had been expressly intended to meet the\ncircumstances of each particular case was assumed as necessarily\ninvolved in the acceptance of any design at all.  It is interesting to\nobserve that Paley did not think it improbable that the Deity may have\ncommitted to another being--\"nay, there may be many such agents and\nmany ranks of them\"--the task of \"drawing forth\" special creations out\nof the materials He had made and in subordination to His rules.  This,\nhe thought, might in some degree account for the fact that contrivances\nare not always perfected at once, and that many instruments and methods\nare employed.\n\n{17}\n\nOf the goodness of the Creator no manner of doubt was entertained.  For\nproof of it attention was called to the fact that \"in a vast plurality\nof instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the\ncontrivance is beneficial,\" and to the further fact that \"the Deity has\nsuperadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for\nany other purposes or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary,\nmight have been effected by the function of pain.\"  Venomous animals\nthere were, no doubt, but the fang and the sting \"may be no less\nmerciful to the victim, than salutary to the devourer\"; and it was to\nbe noted \"that whilst only a few species possess the venomous property,\nthat property guards the whole tribe.\"  Then again, before we condemn\nthe ordering whereby animals devour one another we must consider what\nwould happen if they did not.  \"Is it to see the world filled with\ndrooping, superannuated, half-starved, helpless and unhelped animals,\nthat you would alter the present system of pursuit and prey?\"  \"A hare,\nnotwithstanding the number of its dangers and its enemies, is as\nplayful an animal as any other.\"  \"It is a happy world after all.  The\nair, the earth, the water teem with delighted existence.  In a spring\nnoon, or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes myriads of\nhappy beings crowd upon my {18} view.  'The insect youth are on the\nwing.'  Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air.\nTheir sportive motions, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity,\ntheir continual change of place without use or purpose, testify their\njoy, and the exultation which they feel in their lately discovered\nfaculties....  The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are\nequally intent upon their proper employments, and under every variety\nof constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the\noffices which the Author of their nature has assigned to them.\"  Where\nit might have been imagined that there were to be seen miscarriages of\nthe Creator's intentions, these were to be attributed to the presence\nand influence of mysterious forces of evil.  Such attempts to hinder or\nfrustrate the workings of good might be part of a purpose of good\nbecause they only afforded fresh opportunities for a display of the\nDivine wisdom, whose ordinary interventions were accepted as\nProvidences, whilst Miracles supplied the rarer exhibitions of its\npower.\n\nFor the rest, it was our duty to remember that such difficulties as\nmight still be felt must be largely the result of our ignorance.  With\npatience we should learn to know more.  A day was coming when much that\nis now hidden would be made clear, and when the greatness and wisdom\nand justice {19} of the Almighty Ruler would be wonderfully and\nfearfully revealed.\n\nIt is not intended to suggest that there were no dissentients ready to\nbring forward objections to these almost unanimously accepted\ndoctrines.  We know that there were such, if only because it was deemed\nworth while to argue against them.  Kepler and Newton had stirred men's\nminds by their account of the prodigious scale upon which the mechanism\nof the Universe was constructed, and Laplace had already enunciated the\ntheory according to which the cosmic bodies were originally formed in\nobedience to the law of gravitation by the condensation of rotating\nnebulous spheres.  And there were those who used these discoveries of\nastronomy to cast doubts upon the likelihood that the Divine attention\nwould be concentrated upon the concerns of so tiny a speck as this\nplanet of ours.  There were others who maintained that the unbroken\npersistency of the order of Nature was evidence enough to shew that it\nhad no beginning and could have no end.\n\nAgainst both these objectors the irony and the oratory of a Chalmers\nwas directed with what was held to be overwhelming effect.  If the\ntelescope had shewn us wonderful things, there was another instrument,\nhe said, which had been given to us {20} about the same time.  If by\nthe telescope we had been led to see \"a system in every star,\" it was\nno less true that the microscope had disclosed \"a world in every atom,\"\nthus proving to us that \"no minuteness, however shrunk from the notice\nof the human eye, is beneath the notice of His regard.\"\n\nSo again, in an oration upon \"The constancy of Nature,\" the thesis is\nmost eloquently defended that \"the strict order of the goodly universe\nwhich we inhabit\" is nothing else than \"a noble attestation to the\nwisdom and beneficence of its great Architect.\"[3]\n\nLittle did men dream at that time of the wealth of other discoveries\nthat was soon to increase enormously the complexity of their problems;\nor of the inferences that would be drawn from them with an ingenuity\nand an assurance that would task to the utmost the ability and the\npatience of the defenders of the old beliefs.\n\nIt is of the new facts disclosed and of the further thoughts suggested\nby them that we must next proceed to tell.\n\n\n\n[1] _Summa_, I., ii. 3.\n\n[2] Essay on \"Atheism and Superstition.\"\n\n[3] _Astronomical Discourses_ (1817), pp. 80, 211.\n\n\n\n\n{21}\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY\n\nWe find it hard to realise that not so very long ago the steam-engine\nand the electric telegraph were unknown; and we are right when we say\nthat life must have worn a very different aspect in those days.  It is\nscarcely less difficult for us to realise the change that has been\nwrought in men's thoughts since the time when the biological cell was\nunrecognised, and the theory of evolution had not yet been formulated.\nThe rapidity with which advances of knowledge were made in the physical\nsphere was astonishing, and it was only to be expected that they should\nhave seemed not a little bewildering.  We must try to note the main\nsteps of the movement, giving the names of some of the representative\nworkers and thinkers.\n\nIt is generally agreed that the foundations of modern chemistry were\nlaid by Dalton (1808).  He it was who revived the old atomic theory,\nand determined the weights of the atoms and the {22} proportions in\nwhich they are combined into molecules--the smallest particles which\ncould exist in a free condition.  By so doing he prepared the way for\nthe subsequent researches of Faraday and Clerk-Maxwell into the\nproperties of electricity and magnetism, and for the investigations by\nHelmholtz and others into the connexion between electric attraction and\nchemical affinities.\n\nThe forerunner of the wonderful advances of modern biology was the\nFrench naturalist Lamarck (1809), who, in opposition to the accepted\ndoctrine of separate creations, suggested that all the species of\nliving creatures, not excepting the human, have arisen from older\nspecies in the course of long periods of time.  The common parent forms\nhe held to have been simple and lowly organisms, and he accounted for\nthe gradual differentiation of types by the hypothesis that they were\nthe results of the inheritance of characteristics which had been\nacquired by continued use--as, for example, in the case of the giraffe\nwho was supposed to have owed the length of its neck to the efforts of\nits ancestors to browse upon trees that were just beyond their reach.\nHe maintained that the changes produced in the parents by temperature,\nnutrition, repeated use or disuse, were inherited so that they\nreappeared in their offspring.  But the evidence adduced was {23}\njudged to be insufficient, and the balance of scientific opinion was\ndecidedly against his views.\n\nLyell (1830) gave a new direction to the science of geology by\naccumulating evidence to prove the certainty of a natural and\ncontinuous development in the formation of the crust of the earth, thus\nopposing the catastrophic idea which had previously prevailed.  One\noutcome of his researches was to make it plain that the history of this\ndevelopment must have extended over enormous tracts of time.\n\nMore revolutionary still in its effects was the epoch-making discovery\nof the protoplasmic cell as the common element of life in the plant and\nanimal world, made by the Germans Schleiden and Schwann (1838).  It was\nthis that first bridged over what were held to be the fundamental\ndistinctions of animate nature, and made possible the conception of a\nvital physical continuity which has since been accepted as an axiom of\nbiological science.\n\nBy Joule's great discovery (1840) that the same amount of work, whether\nmechanical or electrical, and however expended, always produced exactly\nthe same amount of heat--that, in effect, heat and work were equivalent\nand interchangeable--the way was opened to the conclusion that the\ntotal energy of the material universe is constant in amount through all\nits changes.\n\n{24}\n\nA theory to account for the black lines crossing the coloured band of\nlight, or spectrum, which is obtained by passing sunlight through a\nglass prism, originally suggested by Sir George Stokes, and\nsubsequently reintroduced and verified by the German chemists, Bunsen\nand Kirchhoff, led to the important discovery that the sun and the\nstars are constituted of the very same elements as those of the earth\nbeneath our feet.  Spectrum analysis, moreover, soon detected new\nelements, _e.g._, helium, so-called because first observed as existing\nin the sun.\n\nBut great and stimulating as these discoveries were, their effect upon\nthe thought of the age was not to be compared with that which was to be\nexercised by a theory which, starting in the domain of biological\nscience, soon passed on to far more extended applications.  The theory\ntook its rise from a suggestion made in two papers, by Charles Darwin\nand Alfred Russel Wallace, which were read before the Linnean Society\non July 1st, 1858.\n\nThe Darwinian theory--for so it was soon named--undertook to explain\nthe formation of species by the principle of natural selection through\nthe survival of the fittest in the struggle for life.[1] {25} Darwin\nstarted from the admitted achievements of artificial selection; from\nthe results attained by nurserymen and cattle breeders, who, by\nselecting the kinds they wished to perpetuate, had been able to vary\nand improve their stocks.  He conceived that a like process had been\ncarried on by Nature through vast spaces of time, and that it was this\npicking, choosing, continuing and abandoning of traits and qualities\nwhich had resulted in the preservation of the types which it had been\nbest to retain--the reason in all cases being the fitness to correspond\neffectively to the conditions prescribed by environment.\n\nIt is important to remember that Darwin never claimed that his doctrine\nof evolution could account for the occurrence of variations.  That it\ncould do so he expressly denied.  \"Some,\" he said, in his great work,\n_The Origin of Species_ (1859) \"have, even imagined that natural\nselection induces variability, whereas it implies only the preservation\nof such variations as arise....  Unless such occur, natural selection\ncan do nothing.\"  What he saw, and proved by an amazing wealth of\nillustrative facts, was that any variation in structure or character\nwhich gave to an organism ever so slight an advantage might determine\nwhether or not it would survive amid the fierce competition around it,\nand whether {26} it would obtain a mate and produce offspring.  He\nshewed that all innate variations (which are to be distinguished from\nthe acquired characteristics upon the inheritance of which Lamarck had\ndepended) tend to be transmitted, so that in this manner a favourable\nvariation might be perpetuated, and in time a new species be developed.\n\nSimple as this account of the matter sounds when once it has been\nclearly stated, the discovery--for such it was--opened an entirely new\nchapter in the history of science, inasmuch as it completely\nrevolutionised the conceptions which had previously been entertained\nwith regard to the relationships and the progress of all living things.\n\nIt was Darwinism, accordingly, that provided the principal subject of\nthe controversy which was waged between the upholders and the\nassailants of the older opinions during the latter half of the\nnineteenth century.\n\n\n\n[1] The actual phrase \"Survival of the fittest\" was Herbert Spencer's.\nDarwin had spoken of \"The preservation of favoured races.\"\n\n\n\n\n{27}\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES\n\nWe shall not exaggerate if we say that the chief interest aroused by\nthese discoveries was a theological interest.  Of course the men of\nscience were keenly concerned to understand the new facts and the new\ninterpretations, and among them there were divided camps and serious\ncontentions.  Sir Richard Owen, for instance, was a vigorous opponent\nof Darwin's views.  But we cannot think it surprising that the men of\nreligion should feel that their positions were not only being attacked,\nbut undermined; and that issues were being raised which were more vital\nfor them than for any other students of the problems of existence.\n\nWhen we thus speak of men of science and men of religion we do not mean\nto imply that there were two distinct classes which could be sharply\ndivided.  By no means.  It was not so much that there were two camps as\nthat there were two positions, with much passing to and fro between\nthem, and the {28} keenest interest and anxiety felt on both sides as\nto what the future might have to bring of widening divergence or\nultimate reconciliation.\n\nThere could be no doubt at all that most formidable questions had to be\nfaced and answered.  These were the chief of them:--\n\nIs it any longer necessary, or even possible, to insist upon a First\nCause for all that exists?  Can the argument from Design be said to\nretain its validity as a proof of the working of a controlling Mind?\nIf we admit the evidence for the existence of a Creator, can we know\nanything about Him?  Can we, in particular, still assert with any\nconfidence that He is good?\n\nLet us take the questions in order and give the replies that were made\nto them from the different sides.  And, first of all, from the side of\nnegation.\n\nThe number of those who directly denied that there must have been a\nFirst Cause were very few.  But there were many who did their utmost to\ndiscredit the idea as due to what they held to be an illegitimate\ndeduction from our limited human experiences.  Others were disposed to\nquarrel with the word \"Cause\" altogether, and to dispute the propriety\nof its employment.\n\nThey wished to banish it altogether from the scientific vocabulary, and\nto substitute for the terms {29} cause and effect, antecedent and\nconsequent, reducing causation to conjunction.  But it was generally\nadmitted that, where we have to deal with an invariable antecedent\nfollowed by an invariable consequent, nothing was to be gained by a\nchange in the common phraseology.  John Stuart Mill refused to abandon\nthe word.  Speaking of one who had done so, he said, \"I consider him to\nbe entirely wrong.\"  \"The beginning of a phenomenon is what implies a\nCause.\"[1]  There were, he allowed, \"permanent causes,\" but, he added,\n\"we can give no account of the origin of the permanent causes\"--which\nwas virtually to abandon the subject as being beyond the domain of\nscience.\n\nIn regard to the second question, it very soon became evident that the\nold views of Design would be subjected to the most incisive criticism.\nTo many it appeared as if the new doctrine of evolution had supplied an\nexplanation which left no room for the recognition of the particular\ncontrivances upon which Paley had constructed his argument.  No one\nasserted this more strongly than Haeckel, the German biologist.  To\nquote his words, \"The development of the universe is a monistic\nmechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose {30}\nwhatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special result\nof biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the heavenly\nbodies, nor in that of the crust of our earth, do we find any trace of\ncontrolling purpose.\"  \"Nowhere in the evolution of animals and plants\ndo we find any trace of design, but merely the inevitable outcome of\nthe struggle for existence, the blind controller.\"  \"All is the result\nof chance.\"  We ought to add that he somewhat qualified this last\nstatement by explaining that \"chance\" itself must be considered as\ncoming under \"the universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law.\"[2]\n\nIt is not to be supposed that anyone was to be found who denied the\ngeneral intelligibility of Nature.  To have done this would have been\nto reduce science to an absurdity.  Science is bound to proceed upon\nthe assumption that there are \"reasons\" for things.  Moreover, there is\nmind in man, who is part of the order of Nature.  It follows that what\nis in the part cannot be denied to the whole.  All this could be freely\nadmitted.  But then the question arose, Is mind the originating source\nof the movements of matter, or is it not rather itself the product of\nthem?\n\n{31}\n\nThere were those who did not shrink from affirming that matter produces\nthought, even as the liver secretes bile.  Others preferred to take\nwhat seemed to be an intermediate course.  They were not prepared to\ngive priority to either mind or matter.  Thus Haeckel maintained that\nmatter and thought are only two different aspects, or two fundamental\nattributes of an underlying something which he defined as \"substance.\"\nIt was to the action of this universal substance that he imagined the\n\"monistic mechanical process\" to be due.  He went so far as to state\nhis conviction that not even the atom is without \"a rudimentary form of\nsensation and will.\"[3]\n\nIn like manner Tyndall had claimed a two-sidedness for matter, and\ntraced all higher developments back to the side which held in it the\nelement of spirit and thought; while admitting that \"the production of\nconsciousness by molecular action is quite as inconceivable on\nmechanical principles as the production of molecular action by\nconsciousness.\"[4]\n\nThe bearing of all this upon the question of Design was plain, for, if\nthought and intention are the outcome and result of the mechanical\noperations of Nature, it might well seem to follow that mind {32} had\nbeen removed from its high place as the dominant and directing power.\n\nBut these difficulties with which the theologian was thus confronted in\nrespect of a First Cause and the recognition of Design, were even less\nformidable than those which were arrayed under the other heads that we\nhave enumerated.  It was Huxley who invented the term Agnosticism to\ndescribe the position of such of his contemporaries as were not\ninclined to deny that there was a great Power at work behind the\nphenomena of the Universe, but were not prepared to admit that this\nPower could be any degree comprehensible by us.  The most systematic\nexponent of this view was Herbert Spencer.  He allowed that we are\nobliged to refer the phenomenal world and its law and order to a First\nCause.  \"And the First Cause,\" he said, \"must be in every sense\nperfect, complete, total--including within itself all power, and\ntranscending all law.\"  But he insisted that, \"it cannot in any manner\nor degree be known, in the strict sense of knowing.\"[5]  Elsewhere he\nsuggested that it may belong to \"a mode of being as much transcending\nintelligence and will as these transcend mechanical motion.\"  \"Our only\nconception of what we know as Mind in ourselves is the {33} conception\nof a series of states of consciousness.\"  \"How,\" he asked, \"is the\n'originating Mind' to be thought of as having states produced by things\nobjective to it, as discriminating among these states, and classing\nthem as like and unlike; and as preferring one objective result to\nanother.\"[6]  It was by a similar line of reasoning that Romanes\nreached the like conclusions.[7]  \"In my opinion,\" he said, \"no\nexplanation of natural order can either be conceived or named other\nthan that of intelligence as the supreme directing cause.\"  But \"this\ncause must be widely different from anything that we know of Mind in\nourselves.\"  \"If such a Mind exists, it is not conceivable as existing,\nand we are precluded from assigning to it any attributes.\"\n\nIt was obvious that, if no satisfactory reply were forthcoming to such\na contention, the very word Theology must be discarded, since there\nwould be no longer any need for it, or justification of its use.\n\nBut there was yet a further criticism that was supposed by not a few to\ncomplete the discomfiture of those who still clung to the traditional\nbeliefs.  We can find it forcibly expressed in one of the earlier\nwritings of Romanes, who in this case was endorsing the verdict of\nMill.  \"Supposing the Deity to be {34} omnipotent, there can be no\ninference more transparent than that such wholesale suffering, for\nwhatever ends designed, exhibits an incalculably greater deficiency of\nbeneficence in the divine character than that which we know in any, the\nvery worst, of human characters.  For let us pause for one moment to\nthink of what suffering in Nature means.  Some hundreds of millions of\nyears ago, some millions of millions of animals must be supposed to\nhave become sentient.  Since that time till the present there must have\nbeen millions and millions of generations of millions and millions of\nindividuals.  And throughout all this period of incalculable duration,\nthis inconceivable host of sentient organisms have been in a state of\nunceasing battle, dread, ravin, pain.  Looking to the outcome, we find\nthat more than one-half of the species which have survived the\nceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient\nforms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find teeth and\ntalons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for\ntorment--everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing\nblood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence\nthat dimly close in deaths of cruel torture!\"[8]\n\n{35}\n\nHuxley, arguing to the same effect, concluded that \"since thousands of\ntimes a minute, were our ears sharp enough, we should hear sighs and\ngroans of pain like those heard by Dante at the gate of hell, the world\ncannot be governed by what we call benevolence.\"[9]\n\nHaeckel went so far as to propose to describe by the term\n\"dysteleology\" that part of the science of Biology which collected the\nfacts that gave direct contradiction to the idea of beneficial\n\"purposive arrangement.\"\n\nSuch were the difficulties which loomed largest before the minds of\nvast numbers of thinking men and women, and did much to shake the\ngeneral confidence in religion, in the years that followed the\ndiscoveries which culminated in the Darwinian theory of evolution.  It\nmust not be supposed that these thoughts were lightly entertained, nor\nmay we imagine that they gave no distress to those who sincerely\nbelieved that they were bound to accept what seemed to be their\ninevitable consequences.  To quote again from the _Candid Examination_\nof Romanes, we may take it that he was speaking for many others when he\nsaid, \"Forasmuch as I am far from being able to agree with those who\naffirm {36} that the twilight doctrine of the new faith is a desirable\nsubstitute for the waning splendour of 'the old,' I am not ashamed to\nconfess that, with this virtual negation of God, the universe to me has\nlost its soul of loveliness; and although, from henceforth the precept\n'to work while it is day' will doubtless but gain an intensified force\nfrom the terribly intensified meaning of the words 'that the night\ncometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at\ntimes I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of\nthat creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as\nnow I find it--at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid\nthe sharpest pang of which my nature is susceptible.\"\n\n\n\n[1] _Logic_, Chap. V.\n\n[2] _The Riddle of the Universe_, Chaps. XIV, XV.\n\n[3] Chap. XII.\n\n[4] _Fragments of Science_, p. 222.\n\n[5] _First Principles_, i., pp. 33-39.\n\n[6] _Essays_, Vol. III., pp. 246, f.\n\n[7] In an essay written before 1889.\n\n[8] _A Candid Examination of Theism_ (1876), pp. 171, f.\n\n[9] _Nineteenth Century_, February, 1888.\n\n\n\n\n{37}\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS\n\nIt must not be imagined that all the arguments were on one side.  Far\nfrom it.  The defenders of the old faith were many, and not the least\nable of them were drawn from the ranks of the men of science.  The list\nof scientific leaders who avowedly ranged themselves on the Christian\nside, if it were made out, would be a long one.  It would include\ndistinguished names such as those of Faraday, Joule, the Duke of\nArgyll, Lord Kelvin, Stokes, Tait, Adams, Clerk Maxwell, Salmon,\nCayley, and Pasteur.  And others would have to be added who, after\ncontending for a while as materialists or agnostics, ultimately changed\ntheir attitude and joined the supporters of Theism.  Haeckel frankly\nadmitted that there were such defaulters from his cause in Germany,\ngiving the names of \"two of the most famous of living scientists, R.\nVirchow and E. Du Bois Raymond,\" amongst others.  On the other hand he\nrecommended his readers to study \"the profound work of Romanes,\" {38}\nwithout, it would seem, being aware of the transformation that took\nplace in that thinker's opinions towards the end of his life.\n\nWe have now to indicate the nature of the replies that were made to the\ndifficulties of which we spoke in our last chapter.  Let us follow the\norder in which they were presented.\n\nAbout the necessity for a First Cause not much had to be said.  Even if\nthe whole course of organic development could be proved to have been\ncontinuous without a break from the first movements of matter, through\nall the changes of physical life, up to the highest exhibition of human\npowers--and no one ventured to say that this had been proved--there\nwould still be the necessity for an initial impulse to set the process\nin action.  Spencer, as we have seen, declared that there must have\nbeen a First Cause, and Tyndall agreed that \"the hypothesis\" of\nEvolution \"does nothing more than transport the conception of life's\norigin to an indefinitely distant past.\"[1]\n\nDarwin himself never hesitated on this point.  \"The theory of\nevolution,\" he insisted, \"is quite compatible with the belief in\nGod.\"[2]  The words which he expressly added to the conclusion of the\n{39} _Origin of Species_ are well known.  After describing once again\nthe production of the innumerable forms of being as the result of\nnatural selection, he said: \"There is a grandeur in this view of life,\nwith its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator\ninto a few forms or into one.\"\n\nIt is well also to keep on record the striking dictum of Lord Kelvin,\naddressed to the students of University College.[3]  \"Science,\" he told\nthem, \"positively affirmed creative power.\"\n\nIt will be remembered that we quoted Mill as speaking of \"permanent\ncauses.\"  We may be grateful to him for the suggestion.  We could not\nreadily think of a better term than the great \"Permanent Cause\" by\nwhich to describe, in modern language, the \"I AM\" of the Biblical\nTheology.[4]\n\nBut, if on this point there was no serious conflict of opinion, it was\notherwise in regard to the next.  Here it did look as if the new\ndiscoveries might have {40} changed the whole situation.  Huxley\nacknowledged that what struck him most forcibly on his first perusal of\nthe Origin of Species, was that \"teleology, as commonly understood, had\nreceived its death-blow at Mr. Darwin's hands.\"[5]  But Huxley was a\nborn fighter, and he could turn his weapons with facility and effect\nagainst his friends when he thought they had overstated their case.  It\nis interesting to find him, in 1867, criticising Haeckel for his\nrepudiation of the principle of Design.\n\n\"The Doctrine of Evolution,\" he says, \"is the most formidable opponent\nof the commoner and coarser forms of teleology.\"\n\n\"The teleology which supposes that the eye such as we see it in man, or\none of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure it\nexhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal which possesses it to\nsee, has undoubtedly received its death-blow.  Nevertheless, it is\nnecessary to remember that there is a wider teleology which is not\ntouched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the\nfundamental proposition of evolution.\"  Then, referring to the appeal\nwhich had been made to the existence of rudimentary organs as\ndiscrediting teleology, he says in his {41} characteristic way: \"Either\nthese rudiments are of no use to the animals, in which case they ought\nto have disappeared; or they are of some use to the animal, in which\ncase they are of no use as an argument against teleology.\"[6]\n\nDarwin himself felt the grave difficulty in which the ordinary\narguments had become involved; but he was most unwilling to abandon his\nbelief in Design.\n\n\"The old argument from design in nature as given by Paley,\" he wrote,\n\"which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law of\nnatural selection has been discovered.  We can no longer argue that,\nfor instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been\nmade by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by a man.\"  On\nthe other hand, he could not shut his eyes to the fact that there are\n\"endless beautiful adaptations which we everywhere meet with,\"[7] and\nto the further fact that \"the mind refuses to look at this universe,\nbeing what it is, without having been designed.\"[8]\n\nA few years later, when Dr. Asa Gray had sent him from America a review\nin which he had written of \"Mr. Darwin's great service to natural\nscience {42} in bringing back teleology,\" on the ground that in\nDarwinism usefulness and purpose come to the front again as working\nprinciples of the first order, Darwin replied, \"What you say about\nteleology pleases me especially.\"[9]  Later still, in 1878, Romanes\nsent him a copy of his _Candid Examination_.  Darwin in his letter of\nacknowledgment wrote more than half seriously, in the person as it were\nof an imaginary correspondent, to this effect:\n\n\"I should like to hear what you would say if a theologian addressed you\nas follows:\n\n\"'I grant you the attraction of gravity, persistence of force (or\nconservation of energy), and one kind of matter, though the latter is\nan immense addition, but I maintain that God must have given such\nattributes to this force, independently of its persistence, that under\ncertain conditions it develops or changes into light, heat,\nelectricity, galvanism, perhaps into life.\n\n\"'You cannot prove that force (which physicists define as that which\ncauses motion) would invariably thus change its character under the\nabove conditions.  Again, I maintain that matter, though it may be in\nthe future eternal, was created by God with the most marvellous\naffinities, leading to {43} complex definite compounds, and with\npolarities leading to beautiful crystals, etc., etc.  You cannot prove\nthat matter would necessarily possess these attributes.  Therefore you\nhave no right to say that you have \"demonstrated\" that all natural laws\nnecessarily follow from gravity, the persistence of force, and\nexistence of matter.  If you say that nebulous matter existed\naboriginally and from eternity, with all its present complex powers in\na potential state, you seem to me to beg the whole question.'\n\n\"Please observe it is not I, but a theologian, who has thus addressed\nyou, but I could not answer him.\"[10]\n\nThe alternatives to Design, _i.e._, to the recognition of directive\nactivity, would be Necessity or Chance.  From both of these the deepest\ninstincts of humanity--which in such matters are as fully to be relied\non as its logical faculty--strongly recoil.  No one has spoken out more\nstrongly about the first than Huxley did.\n\n\"What is the dire necessity and 'iron' law under which you groan?\" he\nasks.  \"Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears.  I suppose if there\nbe an 'iron' law, it is that of gravitation; and if {44} there be a\nphysical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the\nground....  But when, as commonly happens, we change _will_ into\n_must_, we introduce an idea of necessity which most assuredly does not\nlie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover.\nFor my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematise the intruder....  The\nnotion of necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the\nperfectly legitimate conception of law; the materialistic position that\nthere is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity, is as\nutterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological\ndogmas.\"[11]\n\nBut a dogma of Necessity would be more tolerable than a doctrine of\nChance.  In Lord Kelvin's address, to which reference has been made, he\ndeclared his conviction that \"directive power\" was \"an article of\nbelief which science compelled him to accept.\"\n\nThere was nothing, he said, between such a belief and the acceptance of\nthe theory of a fortuitous concourse of atoms.  And, in a letter to the\n_Times_ justifying this assertion, he told how forty years before he\nhad asked Liebig, when walking with him in the country, whether he\nbelieved that the grass {45} and flowers they saw around them \"grew by\nmere chemical forces.\"  \"No,\" he answered, \"no more than I could\nbelieve that a book of botany describing them could grow by mere\nchemical forces.\"\n\nDiscussions may continue as to whether what Huxley called \"the wider\nteleology,\" or some other form of the doctrine of Design is to be\npreferred; but thoughtful men are likely to agree with the judgment\ngiven by Sir George Stokes--that recognised master of masters--when he\nsaid: \"We meet with such overwhelming evidence of design, of purpose,\nespecially in the study of living things, that we are compelled to\nthink of mind as being involved in the constitution of the\nuniverse.\"[12]\n\n\n\n[1] _Fragments of Science_, p. 166.\n\n[2] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 307.\n\n[3] May 2nd, 1903.\n\n[4] The debate as to the accuracy of the Mosaic account of Creation\ndoes not come directly within the scope of our survey; but,\nnevertheless, it may be worth while to recall the following statement\nin view of the very confident assertions that have often been made, by\nno less an authority than Romanes.  \"The order in which the flora and\nfauna are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared upon the earth\ncorresponds with that which the theory of evolution requires and the\nevidence of geology proves.\"--(_Nature_, August 11th, 1881.)\n\n[5] _Lay Sermons_.\n\n[6] _Critiques and Addresses_, pp. 305, 308.\n\n[7] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 309.\n\n[8] I., p. 314.\n\n[9] _Life and Letters_, III., p. 189.\n\n[10] _Life and Letters_ of Romanes, pp. 88.\n\n[11] Essay on \"The Physical Basis of Life\" (1868).\n\n[12] _Gifford Lectures_ (1891), p. 196.\n\n\n\n\n{46}\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS (_continued_)\n\nBut though Materialism had to go, there was a time when it seemed to\nmany by no means unlikely that Agnosticism might have to be accepted as\nits substitute.  And if that had been so the case would have been\nscarcely less desperate.  We might have been left with a philosophy of\na kind, but we should have been deprived of any object which could\nevoke within our hearts the trust and affection that are needed to\nsustain a religion.  However, as it proved, there was no great cause\nfor fear.  Agnosticism was subjected in its turn to the ordeal of\ncriticism, and the result proved that it had not in it the substance\nand force that could give it any permanent hold upon the best\nintelligence of the age.\n\nIf Agnosticism could have been content to confine itself to positive\nassertions, there might have been less cause to find fault with it.\nBut its name stood for negation, and its temper was in accord with its\nname.  The exponents of Agnosticism were not {47} satisfied with\naffirming that the Power behind phenomena is beyond all thought\nmysterious.  They insisted that it is unknowable, and that not merely\nin the sense that it is incomprehensible, not to be fully grasped, but\nunknowable in the sense that nothing at all can be known about it.  And\nthen, having laid down this as their fundamental principle, they\nproceeded at once, with a strange inconsistency, to assert that we can\nknow what it is _not_.  This above all else, they said, it is not: it\nis not personal.  True, Herbert Spencer maintained that it is as far\nraised above personality as personality is raised above\nunconsciousness; but the stress was laid not upon the affirmation of\nsuper-personality, but upon the denial and rejection of anything like\npersonality as we understand it.\n\nThe position was really untenable.  Possibly, if we could detect no\nmore in Nature than power, we might be content, intellectually, to stop\nat the affirmation of inscrutable force.  But if there is also design,\nthen we are bound to go a step further.  Bishop Harvey Goodwin\nexpressed this exactly when he said: \"Purpose means person.\"  No doubt\npersonality in the Creator must be something far higher and fuller than\npersonality in the creature.  The German philosopher Lotze was speaking\nthe truth when he declared that \"to all finite minds {48} there is\nallotted but a pale copy\" of personality; \"the finiteness of the\nfinite,\" being \"not a producing condition of personality,\" as has often\nbeen maintained, \"but a limit and hindrance of its development.\"\n\"Perfect personality,\" he said, \"is in God alone.\"[1]\n\nTo most of us it may sound paradoxical to urge that the full Christian\ndoctrine of the Three Persons in the Godhead is really less difficult\nintellectually than the doctrine that the Divine Being consists of an\nisolated unit.\n\nThis was the contention of the Greek Fathers of the Church, whose acute\nand subtle minds anticipated not a few of the objections which we have\nhad to encounter in our days.  We cannot elaborate the statement\nhere,[2] but it is to the point to observe that the doctrine of the\nTrinity in Unity removes from the Christian believer that which to\nSpencer was one of the greatest obstacles in the way of the acceptance\nof the idea of a Divine Personality; for it relieves him from the\nnecessity of imagining a subject without an object, since in the\nChristian view the highest life in the universe is a social life, {49}\nin which thought is for ever communicated with unbroken harmony of\nfeeling and will.\n\nBut the inadequacy of Agnosticism was to be seen not only on the\nintellectual side.  Its practical effects were necessarily determined\nby its negations.  Since we could know nothing of the ultimate power,\nit was plainly our wisdom to turn our attention elsewhere.  It followed\nthat, if morality was to be upheld, it must be based upon other than\nthe familiar sanctions.  For awhile it was enthusiastically promised\nthat this could and should be done.  But the event proved otherwise.\nTowards the end of his life, Herbert Spencer was constrained to admit\nthis.  \"Now that ... I have succeeded in completing the second volume\nof _The Principles of Ethics_ ... my satisfaction is somewhat dashed by\nthe thought that these new parts fall short of expectation.  The\ndoctrine of Evolution has not furnished guidance to the extent that I\nhad hoped.\"[3]\n\nAnd this moral failure of the system pointed yet deeper to its\nessential weakness.  It deliberately ignored the profoundest needs and\ncapacities of our nature.  The need is the need for God, and for One\nwho, though greatly above us, is yet within our reach, and ready to\ngive us His friendship.  \"Thou {50} hast made us for Thyself, and our\nheart is restless until it rests in Thee.\"  That cry of St. Augustine\nhas found its echo in unnumbered souls, and our humanity will never be\nsatisfied while it is offered no more than an impalpable abstraction\nfor the contentment of its craving.\n\nAllusion has been made to the fact that Romanes in his latter days was\nled to abandon the negative attitude which he had taken in his earlier\nlife.  The story of the change is to be found as told by himself in the\nvolume of _Life and Letters_ edited by his widow, and in the _Notes_\nwhich he left behind him.  These he had written in preparation for a\nbook which was to have been entitled: _A Candid Examination of\nReligion_.[4]  It is evident that no consideration weighed more with\nhim than this witness of the deeper needs of the soul.  We have seen\nwith what sorrow he had accepted as a young man the conclusions to\nwhich he had found himself driven when Theism seemed no longer a\npossible belief.  After his change he admitted that he had failed to\nrecognise an important element in his treatment of the problem.  \"When\nI wrote the preceding treatise I {51} did not sufficiently appreciate\nthe immense importance of _human_ nature in any enquiry touching\nTheism.  But since then I have seriously studied anthropology\n(including the science of comparative religions), psychology, and\nmetaphysics, with the result of clearly seeing that human nature is the\nmost important part of nature as a whole whereby to investigate the\ntheory of Theism.\"[5]\n\nThe outcome of his study was to convince him of two things.  The first\nwas that, \"if the religious instincts of the human race point to no\nreality as their object, they are out of analogy with all other\ninstinctive endowments.  Elsewhere in the animal kingdom we never meet\nwith such a thing as an instinct pointing aimlessly.\"[6]  And this\nfirst conviction was only the preparation for a second.  Speaking again\nof his _Candid Examination of Theism_, he says: \"In that treatise I\nhave since come to see that I was wrong touching what I constituted the\nbasal argument for my negative conclusion ...  Reason is not the only\nattribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually\nemploys for the ascertainment of truth.  Moral and spiritual faculties\nare of no less importance in their respective spheres, even of everyday\nlife; faith, trust, taste, etc., are {52} as needful in ascertaining\ntruth as to character, beauty, etc., as is reason.\"[7]\n\nHe put the same thing with even more of the note of personal experience\nwhen he wrote to Dean Paget of Christ Church within three months of his\ndeath: \"Strangely enough for my time of life, I have begun to discover\nthe truth of what you once wrote about logical processes not being the\nonly means of research in regions transcendental.\"[8]  In all this he\nwas following, as he knew, in the steps of Pascal, who had devoted the\nwhole of the first part of his treatise to the argument from the\ncondition of man's nature without God, and then had appealed to that\nnature for its positive testimony to the reality of the spiritual.\n\"The heart has its reasons that the reason does not know.\"\n\nAgnosticism appeared dressed in the garb of an exceeding reverence,\nbut, on closer acquaintance, it became evident that its acceptance\nwould mean the cheapening of life by banishing from it the Divine\npersonality, and robbing the human of the qualities that give it its\ngreatest worth.  Happily the disaster has been averted, and there are\nnot many now who would seriously undertake its defence.\n\n\n\n[1] _Microcosmus_ (E.T.), II., p. 688.\n\n[2] Those who may desire to see the matter clearly and ably handled\nwould do well to read the Essay on \"The Being of God,\" in _Lux Mundi_,\nby Aubrey Moore.\n\n[3] Preface, Vol. II. (1893).\n\n[4] These notes were sent by Mr. Romanes' desire after his death, in\n1894, to Bishop Gore, and have been published by him in a sixpenny\nvolume under the title of _Thoughts on Religion_.\n\n[5] P. 154.\n\n[6] P. 82.\n\n[7] Pp. 111, f.\n\n[8] Life and Letters, p. 375.\n\n\n\n\n{53}\n\nCHAPTER VI.\n\nTHE COUNTER-ARGUMENTS (_continued_)\n\nWe have still to see how the last of the difficulties of which we have\nspoken was treated.  It was a difficulty which could not be regarded\nwith indifference.  For what would it avail to shew that men had a\nright to cherish the belief in Power, and Purpose, and Personality,\nunless they could also be assured that the Orderer of the world is\ngood?  Nay, might they not feel, if there were no such assurance, that\nit would be better to be altogether without His presence and influence?\nOn a matter so vital to happiness and well-being the mere possibility\nof a doubt was torment enough.  What was there to be said to bring\nrelief to the mind and heart when charges were made against the\nbenevolence and beneficence of Nature's ways?  What satisfactory\naccount could be given of the waste and cruelty which were seen to\nabound on every hand?  The more clear the certainty that there is\ndesign in the Universe, the more urgent became {54} the question as to\nthe character of that design, and of the motives that prompt it.\n\nSo long as the difficulty remained unrelieved, the thoughts of many of\nthe most sensitive minds in regard to Theism were held in suspense.\nThe shadow of misgiving was felt to be creeping over the mind of the\nage, like the gloom of an approaching eclipse, even before the arrival\nof the Darwinian hypothesis.  In words too well known to need\nrepeating, Tennyson had given utterance to the half-realised anxiety of\nhis contemporaries in the stanzas of his _In Memoriam_, published in\n1850.\n\nWhat the finer spirits were already beginning to feel was soon to be\nproclaimed, in terms which could not fail to be understood by the\nmultitude, as an inevitable truth brought to light by scientific\nenquiry.  We have seen how it was stated with the passion of eloquence\nby Huxley and Romanes.  And Darwin, with all his detachment and\nphilosophic calm, was at times deeply affected by the seriousness of\nthe problem which he had done so much to bring into prominence.  It is\nplain that he did his very utmost to retain the hopeful view, and to\nput the most consoling interpretation he could upon the disquieting\nfacts.\n\nHe had no difficulty in shewing that the wholesale destruction of\nliving organisms was imperatively {55} necessary.  \"There is no\nexception to the rule,\" he said, \"that every organic being naturally\nincreases at so high a rate that, if not destroyed, the earth would\nsoon be covered by the progeny of a single pair.\"[1]\n\nThe truth of this has been demonstrated again and again.  A pair of\nrabbits, for example, would in the most favourable circumstances\nincrease in four or five years to a million.  The roe of a cod may\ncontain eight or nine millions of eggs.  More appalling still, the\nfemale of the common flesh fly will at one time deposit 20,000 eggs.\nAt this rate of increase it has been calculated that, in less than a\nyear, a single pair would produce enough flies, if these were not\ndevoured by their natural foes, to cover the whole surface of the globe\nto the depth of a mile and a quarter!  But all this does not, of\ncourse, make it clear why in a beneficently ordered world such a\nnecessity of slaughter should ever have been allowed to arise.\n\nDarwin, as we have said, tried hard to take the most favourable view of\nthe whole process.  He thus concluded his chapter on the struggle for\nexistence; \"When we reflect on the struggle, we may console ourselves\nwith the full belief that {56} the war of nature is not incessant, that\nno fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous,\nthe healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.\"  And these are the\nwords with which he concluded the _Origin of Species_: \"Thus from the\nwar of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object we are\ncapable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals,\ndirectly follows.\"\n\nBut a year or two later he shewed that his mind was by no means at rest\non the matter, by writing in this strain to his friend Asa Gray:\n\n\"I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish\nto do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us.  There\nseems to me too much misery in the world.  I cannot persuade myself\nthat a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the\nIchneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the\nliving bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice....\nI am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws,\nwith the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what\nwe may call chance.  Not that this notion _at all_ satisfies me....\nLet each man hope and believe what he can.  Certainly I agree with you\nthat my views are not at all necessarily atheistical.\"[2]\n\n{57}\n\nHappily there were others who were able to see their way somewhat\nfurther than this.  Romanes, in a paper which he read before the\nAristotelian Society in 1889, shewed that he was reconsidering his\nposition.  He questioned whether the assertion, made by a speaker in a\nprevious discussion, that \"the fair order of Nature is only acquired by\na wholesale waste and sacrifice,\" could be accepted as strictly true,\nfor \"how can it be said that, in point of fact, there _has_ been a\nwaste, or _has_ been a sacrifice?  Clearly such things can only be said\nwhen our point of view is restricted to the means (_i.e._, the\nwholesale destruction of the less fit); not when we extend our view to\nwhat, even within the limits of human observation, is unquestionably\nthe _end_ (_i.e._, the causal result in an ever improving world of\ntypes).\"[3]\n\nHe had intended to write more fully on the subject, but did not live to\ndo so.  We only know that on the Sunday before his death he did express\nto Bishop Gore his entire agreement with a statement that had been made\na short time before by Professor Knight, in his _Aspects of Theism_, to\nthe effect that \"A larger good is evolved through the winnowing process\nby which physical nature casts its weaker products {58} aside, etc.\"[4]\nWe cannot suppose that, if he had lived, he would have been content to\nhave left the argument thus.  That the end justifies the means, is\nscarcely a doctrine which can be accepted as the last word of an\nethical defence of the constitution of the world.\n\nNo doubt there were further pleas to be put in, and we shall do well to\ngive them their full value.  There is the contention that the pleasures\nof life as a whole outweigh the sum of its evils.  This was maintained,\nand we need not hesitate to say successfully maintained, by Lord\nAvebury, and not by him alone.  Indeed Darwin had emphatically said,\n\"According to my judgment happiness decidedly prevails.\"[5]  Then there\nhas always been urged the undoubted fact that pain, if an evil, is yet\nthe minister of good.  Browning's optimism may have carried him too far\nwhen he laid it down that \"when pain ends gain ends,\" but it is not to\nbe questioned that men have profited by sufferings, and that they have\nhad to thank their pains, if only because these have served to protect\nthem from yet greater misfortunes.  There is a true wisdom in the moral\nof the old fable of the blacksmith, who prayed to heaven that the fire\nmight not burn his fingers, to discover that as {59} a result it had\ncharred his hand to the bone.  Medical science has had much to say with\nregard to the salutary office of pain.  It has gone so far as to assert\nthat, \"the symptoms of disease are marked by purpose, and the purpose\nis beneficent.\"  Nay more, \"the processes of disease aim not at the\ndestruction of life, but at the saving of it.\"[6]  None the less, with\nwhat might seem a splendid inconsistency, the medical profession\ndevotes itself untiringly to the alleviation of the symptoms and to the\neradication of disease.\n\nAgain, we may be thankful to be assured that, whatever be the case with\nman, the lower organisms feel pain less than he does, and much less\nthan he is often wont to imagine that they feel it.  This has been\nargued again and again by the veteran naturalist Wallace, whose right\nto speak on the subject no one is likely to dispute.  In his recently\npublished book, _The World of Life_, he has devoted a whole chapter to\nanswering the question, \"Is Nature cruel?\" and it is due to him, as\nwell as to the importance of the problem, that we should carefully note\nwhat he has said.  The following quotations may be taken as\nsufficiently indicating his position.\n\n\"The widespread idea of the cruelty of Nature is {60} almost wholly\nimaginary.\"[7]  \"Our whole tendency to transfer _our_ sensations of\npain to the other animals is grossly misleading.\"[8]\n\n\"No other animal _needs_ the pain-sensations that we need; it is\ntherefore absolutely certain--on principles of evolution--that no other\npossesses such sensations in more than a fractional degree of ours.\"[9]\n\n\"In the category of painless or almost painless animals, I think we may\nplace almost all aquatic animals up to fishes, all the vast hordes of\ninsects, probably all mollusca and worms; thus reducing the sphere of\npain to a minimum throughout all the earlier geological ages, and very\nlargely even now.\"[10]\n\n\"The purpose and use of all parasitic diseases is to seize upon the\nless adapted and less healthy individuals--those which are slowly dying\nand no longer of value in the preservation of the species, and\ntherefore to a certain extent injurious to the race by requiring food\nand occupying space needed by the more fit.\"[11]\n\nSpeaking of \"the vicious-looking teeth and claws of the cat tribe, the\nhooked beak and prehensile talons of birds of prey, the poison fangs of\nserpents, the stings of wasps and many others,\" Dr. Wallace {61}\nwrites; \"The idea that all these weapons exist for the _purpose_ of\nshedding blood or giving pain is wholly illusory.  As a matter of fact,\ntheir effect is wholly beneficent even to the sufferers, inasmuch as\nthey tend to the diminution of pain.  Their actual purpose is always to\nprevent the escape of captured food--of a wounded animal, which would\nthen, indeed, suffer _useless_ pain, since it would certainly very soon\nbe captured again and be devoured.\"  \"All conclusions derived from the\nhouse-fed cat and mouse are fallacious.\"[12]  Finally he concludes by\ninveighing against \"the ludicrously exaggerated view adopted by men of\nsuch eminence and usually of such calm judgment as Huxley--a view\nalmost as far removed from fact or science as the purely imaginary and\nhumanitarian dogma of the poet:\n\n  'The poor beetle, that we tread upon,\n  In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great\n  As when a giant dies.'\n\n\nWhatever the giant may feel, if the theory of Evolution is true, the\n'poor beetle' certainly {62} feels an almost irreducible minimum of\npain, probably none at all.\"[13]\n\nWe may add to all these considerations the further fact that we are\nconstantly finding out that things have their use which had been too\nhastily assumed to be mere blots upon Nature.  The desert and the\nvolcano, for instance, have often been regarded in that light.  But we\nhave lately been assured that both are needed for the supply of\natmospheric dust, which is a necessary condition of the rain-fall; so\nthat they are really essential to life upon the planet.  Beyond\nquestion, then, there is very much to be said in mitigation of the\nterrible difficulty occasioned by what appear to be the havoc and the\nprodigality of Nature.\n\nAnd yet--when all has been said--a residuum does remain of inexplicable\nmisery and distress, and there are times when we are all of us\nconstrained to cry out with Darwin that it is \"too much,\" and to ask\nwhether there is not some further clue to the mystery.  And then it may\nwell be that there comes to our mind an answer that has been given from\nthe very first moment at which human beings have thought at all.  It is\nan answer which has seemed inevitable alike to the simplest and the\nwisest.\n\n{63}\n\nCarlyle once told of two Scottish peasants who found themselves for the\nfirst time at Ailsa Crag.  They stared in astonishment at the great\nsea-precipices.  At last one said to the other: \"Eh, Jock, Nature's\ndeevilish!\"[14]  That was the view taken by the primitive races of the\nworld, as their worships and incantations bore witness.  It is a view\nwhich cannot be lightly dismissed as having nothing at all in its\nsupport.  We may minimise the evil that is at work around and within us\nas we will, but, when we have done our utmost, we shall be unlike the\nvast majority of our race if we are not compelled to admit that there\nis that in the world which it is quite impossible to ascribe to the\nimmediate action of an entirely good and beneficent God.\n\nIs it then to be thought incredible that the order of the world should\nhave been interfered with, at an early stage in its development, in\nsuch a way that the disarrangement was left to work out its fatal\nmischief by means of the very constancy of the great system of laws\nwhich make for a regular development?  How this might conceivably have\noccurred has been set out by an anonymous writer in a remarkable book\nwhich ought to be better known than it is.  {64} It was published some\nyears ago,[15] and bears the suggestive title of _Evil and Evolution_.\nThe author maintains that the original motive in all living things was\nself-preservation for self-realisation; and that this elementary law\nwas in itself necessary and good, the essential condition of progress.\nBut just as we to-day know well how hard it is to draw the line which\ndistinguishes a right self-seeking from the wrong, so it has been from\nthe outset.  The distinction is a fine one, and the balance is easily\nupset.  We have but to suppose that this perversion of the right and\nlawful happened at an early stage, to see that nothing more would have\nbeen required to account for the subsequent heritage of woe.[16]  After\nspeaking of the innocent \"kind of comparative strife that we see in the\nfields and forests around us,\" in which \"there may be nothing that we\ncannot reconcile with the perfect beneficence of the Great {65}\nDesigner and Creator,\" this writer goes on to say: \"But the moment that\nevolution has attained that point at which the struggle begins to\ninvolve pain and unhappiness, it becomes quite another matter.  The\nmoment that rudimentary but happy and congenial life begins to be\novershadowed by fear, or debased by conscious cruelty, the moment that\nprocess of evolution begins to evolve not only cruel selfishness in its\nmost odious forms, but deceit and artifice and treacherous cunning in\nthe warfare which one animal wages with another, then I think you may\nbe certain of one of two things--either the Creator is not\nall-benevolent, or that that scheme is somehow working out as He never\nintended it should: there must have been some disturbing and hostile\ninfluence.\"[17]\n\nThis is well put, but the interest of the book chiefly consists in its\nattempts to show in detailed instances how things that are evil may\nhave been made so.  The author boldly argues that, if the normal course\nhad been followed, \"birds and beasts of prey and venomous reptiles\nwould never have been evolved.\"  \"Evolutionists,\" he says, \"are agreed\nthat it is just the fierce struggle of created things that has produced\nthese birds and beasts of prey, and that there can be {66} little doubt\nthat it is the malignity of the struggle that has produced the venom of\nso many reptiles.\"[18]  Instances are given in which such venom may now\nbe developed as the result of rage or terror in an otherwise harmless\nanimal.\n\n\"A few years ago it was reported that the late M. Pasteur 'cultivated'\nthe poison of human saliva to such a point that he was able to produce\nwith it many of the effects of the most virulent snake poisons.\"[19]\nHad they not been inflamed by the terror of the struggle for existence,\n\"tigers and hyaenas, vultures and sharks, ferrets and polecats, wasps\nand spiders, puff-adders and skunks\" might have turned their undoubted\nabilities in other more desirable directions.[20]  Again, \"it is the\nperpetual effort, generation after generation, through long ages, to\nrepair the mischief inflicted by enemies,\" that accounts for \"the\nfecundity of the codfish and other creatures.  The more prolific it\nbecomes, the more enemies it can feed; and the more they multiply, the\nmore prolific it grows.\"  A vicious circle indeed!  Even \"earthquakes,\nstorms, droughts, deluges,\" are explained as due to a certain want of\nbalance and failure in adjustment.[21]\n\nCertainly, if we had to choose between the idea {67} of a careless or\nindifferent God, and the belief in a God who has given us ample proofs\nof a generally beneficent purpose, but who has, for reasons of the\nmeaning of which we as yet can have only the vaguest conceptions,\nallowed Himself to be hindered and thwarted on the way to His goal,\nwith results of suffering to Himself even greater than those endured by\nHis creatures; if these were the alternatives before us, there can\nscarcely be one of us who would hesitate to say towards which of them\nhis reason and conscience would confidently point him.\n\n\n\n[1] _Origin of Species_, Chap. III.\n\n[2] _Life and Letters_.\n\n[3] _Thoughts on Religion_, pp. 92, f.\n\n[4] p. 94.\n\n[5] _Life and Letters_, I., p. 309.\n\n[6] Address by Sir Frederick Treves at the Edinburgh Philosophical\nInstitution, October, 1905.\n\n[7] p. 380.\n\n[8] p. 377.\n\n[9] p. 381.\n\n[10] p. 375.\n\n[11] p. 383.\n\n[12] p. 377.  Among the illustrations that have been adduced of the\ninsensibility of the lower organisms, none perhaps is more\nextraordinary than this: \"A crab will continue to eat, and apparently\nrelish, a smaller crab while being itself slowly devoured by a larger\none!\"--(Transactions of Victoria Institute, Vol. XXV., p. 257).\n\n[13] p. 384.\n\n[14] William Allingham's _Diary_, p. 226.\n\n[15] In 1896, by Messrs. Macmillan.\n\n[16] In one instance, at least, Darwin had pictured in his imagination\nthe steps by which a \"strange and odious instinct\" may have been\ndeveloped from comparatively innocent beginnings.  He was referring to\nthe ejection by the young cuckoo of its companions from the nest.  \"I\ncan see no special difficulty in its having gradually acquired, during\nsuccessive generations, the blind desire, the strength and structure\nnecessary for the work of ejection.\"  \"The first step towards the\nacquisition of the proper instinct might have been mere unintentional\nrestlessness on the part of the young bird.\"--_Origin of Species_, p.\n200.\n\n[17] Pp. 135, f.\n\n[18] P. 142.\n\n[19] P. 143.\n\n[20] P. 144.\n\n[21] P. 232.\n\n\n\n\n{68}\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nLATER SCIENCE\n\nThe position, as we have described it, was that which may be said to\nhave existed up to about twenty years ago.  Since then much new light\nhas come.  Indeed, Lord Kelvin, speaking at Clerkenwell on February\n26th, 1904, is reported in _The Times_ to have said, referring to the\nextraordinary progress of scientific research, that it \"had, perhaps,\nbeen even more remarkable and striking at the beginning of the\ntwentieth century than during the whole of the nineteenth.\"\n\nLet us take first that which he had more particularly in mind, the\nadvance in the knowledge of the constitution of Matter.\n\nIn an address delivered before the British Association at Bradford in\n1873, Clerk Maxwell had stated the conclusions to which science had, up\nto that time, been led in its investigations of matter.  Throughout the\nnatural universe it had been shewn, by Spectrum Analysis, that matter\nis built up of {69} molecules.  These molecules, according to the most\ncompetent judgment, were incapable of sub-division without change of\nsubstance, and were absolutely fixed for each substance.  \"A molecule\nof hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius, or in Arcturus, executes\nits vibrations in precisely the same time.\"  The relations of the parts\nand movements of the planetary systems may and do change, but \"the\nmolecules--the foundation-stones of the natural universe--remain\nunbroken and unworn.\"\n\nAs a result of this, it was maintained that \"the exact equality of each\nmolecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel\nhas well said, the essential character of being a manufactured article,\nand precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent.\"  \"Not\nthat science is debarred from studying the internal mechanism of a\nmolecule which she cannot take to pieces ... but, in tracing back the\nhistory of matter, science is arrested when she assures herself, on the\none hand, that the molecule has been made, and on the other that it has\nnot been made by any of the processes we call natural.\"\n\nSo the case had stood for some while until science, through its\nindefatigable inquirers, shewed that it was in very deed \"not debarred\nfrom studying the internal mechanism of a molecule,\" nor, perhaps, from\ntaking it to pieces.  In 1895 came the {70} discovery of the X-rays by\nRoentgen in Germany, to be followed in a year by Becquerel's discovery\nof spontaneous radio-activity, and in a couple of years by the\nremarkable further discovery, made by Madame Curie, of what was termed\n\"radium,\" a substance that went on producing heat _de novo_, keeping\nitself permanently at a higher temperature than its surroundings, and\nspontaneously producing electricity.\n\nThis in itself was a new fact of extraordinary interest.  For long,\ndiscussion had been waged between two departments of scientific\ninquirers.  The geologists and biologists had demanded hundreds, and\nperhaps thousands, of millions of years to allow for the developments\nwith which they were concerned.  The physicists, led by Lord Kelvin,\nrefused to admit the demand, claiming that it could be proved\nmathematically that it was impossible that the sun could have been\ngiving out heat at its present rate for more than a hundred million\nyears, at the very outside.  The appearance of radium robbed this\nargument of its cogency.  It is true that an examination of the sun's\nspectrum has not, as yet, revealed any radium lines, but it is well\nknown that helium, a transformation product of radium, is present in it.\n\nAnd this modification of our views as to the {71} probable age of our\nsolar system was far from being the only result of this latest\ndiscovery.  Investigations which followed into radio-activity led the\nCambridge professors, Larmor and Thomson, to conclude that electricity\nexisted in small particles, which were called \"electrons.\"[1]  These\nseem to be the ingredients of which atoms are made.  A molecule is\ncomposed of two or more atoms.  That of hydrogen, for example, has two;\nthat of water three; and so on up to a thousand or more.\n\nMolecules are very small.  If a drop of water were magnified to the\nsize of the globe, the molecules would be seen to be less than the size\nof a cricket ball!\n\nAtoms are much smaller.  \"The atoms in a drop of water outnumber the\ndrops in an Atlantic Ocean.\"  Electrons are much smaller still--about\n\"a thousand-million-million times smaller than atoms.\"[2]\n\nWithin the atom thousands or tens of thousands of these electrons are\nmoving in orderly arrangement, at terrific speed, round and about one\nanother.  The amount of energy required to build up a molecule of any\ndegree of complexity is very great, and it is {72} by the breaking down\nof complex molecules into simple ones that all our mechanical work is\ndone.  And this is not all, for not only can the molecule be thus\nbroken in pieces, but the atom itself is capable of disintegration.\n\"Although we do not know how to break atoms up, they are liable every\nnow and then themselves to explode, and so resolve themselves into\nsimpler forms.\"  \"Atoms of matter are not the indestructible and\nimmutable things they were once thought.\"[3]  The idea of the amount of\nenergy thus revealed as available for all kinds of active work is so\nvast as to baffle calculation and even imagination.  It has been said\nthat there is energy enough in fifteen grains of radium, if it could\nall be set free at once, to blow the whole British Navy a mile high\ninto the air.  The thought that we are thus encompassed on every side\nby pent up potentialities of force, which if uncontrolled might at any\nmoment work our destruction, may well deepen in us the sense of the\nneed, not only for an originating, but for a continually directing mind\nto superintend the conduct of the universe.\n\nWe have referred to more than one change of view to which the new\ndiscoveries have led.  We shall doubtless find that there are other\nscientific theories {73} which will have ere long to be modified.\nAlready it is recognised that the arguments of Lord Kelvin (he was then\nSir William Thomson) and of Clerk Maxwell, which were based upon\ncalculations as to the \"dissipation of energy,\" can scarcely remain\nunaffected by what we now know, and suspect, of the crumbling and\nre-forming of atoms.\n\nAnd there are hints abroad of even more revolutionary suggestions.  If\nthere has been one principle more imperatively and unanimously insisted\nupon than another, it has been the uniformity of Nature's laws.  What\nthen are we to make of a remark like the following, made by Professor\nJ. J. Thomson, perhaps only half-seriously, to the British Association\nat Cambridge, in 1904?  \"There was one law,\" he said, \"which he felt\nconvinced nobody who had worked on this question\"--the radio-activity\nof matter--\"would ever suggest, and that was the constancy of Nature.\"\n\nNot less startling is it to be told that a question may yet be raised\nwhich will challenge \"the conception of a luminiferous aether, which\nfor half a century has dominated physical science.  It is possible,\" so\nwe are informed, \"that the field of electro-magnetic energy surrounding\nan electric charge in motion moves with it, and that the vibrations of\nlight travel through this moving {74} field, instead of through an\nocean of stagnant aether.\"[4]\n\nOne further quotation of singular interest may be added.  It is taken\nfrom an address to students by the President of the Institution of\nMining and Metallurgy.[5]\n\n\"Twenty years ago,\" he said, \"the idea held that inorganic chemistry\nwas almost a dead science--dead in the sense of being apparently\ncompleted in many of its aspects, and that its records could be safely\nconfided to the encyclopaedia....  A modified conception of life is now\nbecoming co-extensive with the whole range of our experience.  Even a\nsimple inorganic crystal does not spring ready formed from its solvent,\nbut first passes through phases of granulation and striation comparable\nwith those which characterise the beginnings of vital growth.  Metals\nexhibit in some respects phenomena similar to those possessed by\norganised beings.  Thus, they show fatigue under long continued stress,\nand they recover their strength with rest.  They are also susceptible\nto certain of the poisons which destroy organic life.  Matter, broadly,\nis no longer merely dead masonry from which the edifice to shelter life\n{75} is constructed, but also appears to be the reservoir of that\nenergy which is developed, altered and drawn into vitality itself....\nThe indestructibility of matter bids fair to become relegated to the\nmuseum of outworn theories; and with it will probably go our present\nconceptions as to the conservation of energy.\"\n\nIt is clear, then, that the tasks awaiting the students of physical\nscience are likely to be as arduous, and we may hope as full of reward,\nas they have been at any time in the past.  Meanwhile, it does look as\nif there were truth in Mr. Balfour's remark that \"Matter is not merely\nexplained, but is explained away.\"[6]\n\n\n\n[1] The weighing and measuring of the electron were first announced by\nProfessor Thomson to the British Association meeting at Dover, in 1899.\n\n[2] Sir Oliver Lodge.\n\n[3] Sir Oliver Lodge.  _Life and Matter_, p. 28.\n\n[4] Whetham.  _The Foundations of Science_, p. 50.\n\n[5] H. L. Sulman, at the Sir John Cass Institute, November 29th, 1911.\n\n[6] Presidential Address to British Association, 1904.\n\n\n\n\n{76}\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nLATER SCIENCE (_continued_)\n\nWe have spoken of what science has recently been doing in the\ninvestigation of the constitution of matter; we have now to talk of its\nresearches into the nature of Life.\n\nThe discovery that all plant and animal life is developed from living\ncells was made, as we have already stated, more than seventy years ago.\nSince then our knowledge of the formation and history of these cells\nhas been continually growing.  The size of cells varies, but as a rule\nthey are very minute.  They consist of what is termed protoplasm.  At\none time it was supposed that protoplasm was structureless.  Now it is\nknown that the protoplasmic cell contains a nucleus and a surrounding\nbody.  Moreover, the nucleus, or small spot in the centre, has within\nit a spiral structure of a very complicated kind.  Every cell is\nderived from a pre-existing cell by a process of division, the two\nresulting cells being apparently identical with the parent cell.  {77}\nThe cells possess the power of assimilating other cells or fragments of\ncells.  As they grow they move and go in search of food and light and\nair and moisture.  They exhibit feeling, and shrink as if in pain.\nSpots specially sensitive to vibrations become eyes and ears; and thus\nthe various organs and faculties are evolved under the stimulating\ninfluence of environment.  The progress, so far as it is physical, can\nbe traced from the lowest blue-green algae right up to man.  And all\nthroughout, in so far as their chemical composition is concerned, the\nconstituent elements of the living structure are the same.  It is said\nto be practically impossible to distinguish between the cells of a\ntoadstool and those of a human being.\n\nBut when all this has been explained, we have still left one great\nquestion unanswered.  How is the protoplasm made?  Is there any\nconnexion of development to be traced whereby life can be shewn to have\narisen from inorganic matter?  Protoplasm, under analysis, is found to\nconsist of some of the commonest elements on the earth's surface, such\nas carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus.  Apart from its\nvery complicated structure, its contents are not hard to provide.  And\nwe know that there was a time when it must of necessity have been\nformed out of that which was not living, {78} for there was a time when\nour globe was in a state of incandescent heat in which no life that we\nknow could possibly have existed.  More than this we cannot say.  Sir\nWilliam Thomson, as President of the British Association in 1871,\nsuggested that a germ of life might have been wafted to our world on a\nmeteorite; but to say that is obviously only to banish the problem to a\ngreater distance.[1]\n\nHuxley had, in 1868, invented the name \"Bathybius\" to describe the\ndeep-sea slime which he held to be the progenitor of life on the\nplanet.  But later on he frankly confessed that his suggestion was\nfruitless, acknowledging that the present state of our knowledge\nfurnishes us with no link between the living and the not-living.\n\nAnd so the problem remains.  Sir Edward Schaefer, indeed, has laid it\ndown that \"we are compelled to believe that living matter must have\nowed its origin to causes similar in character to those which have been\ninstrumental in producing all other forms of matter in the universe; in\nother words, to {79} a process of gradual evolution,\"[2] but he can\nthrow no further light on the process and its stages.\n\nSir Oliver Lodge is but speaking the admitted truth when he says that\n\"Science, in chagrin, has to confess that hitherto in this direction it\nhas failed.  It has not yet witnessed the origin of the smallest trace\nof life from dead matter.\"[3]\n\nNo doubt there are many who are hopeful that it may yet be possible to\ndiscover a way by which a cell, discharging all the essential functions\nof life, can be constructed out of inorganic material; or, at least,\nthat it may be possible to frame an intelligible hypothesis as to how\nthis might have been done under conditions which long ago may have been\nmore favourable than our own.  But, on the other hand, there are not a\nfew who have quite deliberately abandoned any expectation of the kind.\nThis was made plain by some of the expressions of adverse opinion which\nwere elicited by Sir Edward Schaefer's address.  Of these the following\nmay be given as specimens: \"The more they saw of the lower forms of\nlife, the more remote seemed to become the possibility of conceiving\nhow life arose.\"[4]\n\n{80}\n\n\"He could not imagine anything happening in the laboratory, according\nto our present knowledge, which would bring us any nearer to life.\"[5]\n\n\"Living protoplasm has never been chemically produced.  The assertion\nthat life is due to chemical and mechanical processes alone is quite\nunjustified.  Neither the probability of such an origin, nor even its\npossibility, has been supported by anything which can be termed\nscientific fact or logical reasoning.\"[6]\n\n\"The phenomena of life are of a character wholly different from those\nwhich are presented by matter viewed under any other aspect,\nmechanical, electrical, chemical, or what not.  It is beside the\nquestion to point to the fact that in Nature 'new elements are making\ntheir appearance and old elements disappearing,' for though we may\nspeculate as to the manner of formation of uranium and thorium, and\nthough the production of radio-active matters in Nature at the present\ntime and always seems to be a well-established fact, such phenomena\nhave not even an analogy with those of a living being, however\nhumble.\"[7]\n\nIt cannot be surprising that those who believe {81} the door to be\nshut, so to speak, in the direction of any theory of development\nthrough mechanical and chemical agencies alone, should look elsewhere\nfor the solution of a problem which science is bound to do its very\nutmost to solve.  This is what, as a matter of fact, is happening; and\nit is of the very deepest interest to observe the nature of the\nsuggested explanation.  It is no other than a revived form of the\nancient doctrine of a \"vital force,\" which we had imagined to have been\nfinally discarded.  There is this difference, however, and it is\nall-important.  The force is not, as formerly supposed, some unique\nkind of energy; is not, indeed, energy at all.  But we shall do best to\nstate the new doctrine in the words of its leading exponents.\n\nProfessor Anton Kerner, one of the most distinguished German writers on\nBotany, in his _Natural History of Plants_, speaking of the chemical\nexplanation, says: \"It does not explain the purposeful sequence of\ndifferent operations in the same protoplasm without any change in the\nexternal stimuli; the thorough use made of external advantages; the\nresistance to injurious influences; the avoidance or encompassing of\ninsuperable obstacles; the punctuality with which all the functions are\nperformed; the periodicity which occurs with the greatest regularity\nunder constant conditions of environment; {82} nor, above all, the fact\nthat the power of discharging all the operations requisite for growth,\nnutrition, renovation and multiplication is liable to be lost.\"\n\nAnd then he gives his opinion thus: \"I do not hesitate again to\ndesignate as vital force this natural agency, not to be identified with\nany other, whose immediate instrument is the protoplasm, and whose\npeculiar effects we call life.\"\n\nSir Oliver Lodge is, perhaps, the most uncompromising advocate of the\nnewer vitalism in England.  The following striking quotations will set\nforth his views:\n\nLife, he maintains, is no more a function of matter \"than the wind is a\nfunction of the leaves which dance under its influence.\"[8]\n\n\"If it were true that vital energy turned into, or was anyhow\nconvertible into, inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body\nhad more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that 'these\ninorganic energies' always, or ever, 'reappear on the dissolution of\nlife,' then, undoubtedly, _cadit quaestio_, life would immediately be\nproved to be a form of energy, and would enter into the scheme of\nphysics.  But, inasmuch as all this is untrue--the direct contrary of\nthe truth--I maintain that life is not a form of {83} energy, that it\nis not included in our present physical categories, that its\nexplanation is still to seek.\"\n\n\"It appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which\ninteracts with this material frame of things, and, while there, exerts\nguidance and control on the energy which already exists.\"[9]\n\n\"Life does not add to the stock of any human form of energy, nor does\ndeath affect the sum of energy in any known way.\"[10]\n\n\"Life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its\ntransmutations.\"[11]\n\n\"My contention then is--and in this contention I am practically\nspeaking for my brother physicists--that whereas life or mind can\nneither generate energy nor directly exert force, yet it can cause\nmatter to exercise force on matter, and so can exercise guidance and\ncontrol; it can so prepare any scene of activity, by arranging the\nposition of existing material, and timing the liberation of existing\nenergy, as to produce results concordant with an idea or scheme or\nintention; it can, in short, 'aim' and 'fire.'\"[12]\n\n\"It is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws of mechanics\nalone.\"[13]\n\n\"On a stagnant and inactive world life would be {84} powerless: it\ncould only make dry bones stir in such a world if it were itself a form\nof energy.  It is only potent where inorganic energy is mechanically\n'available'--to use Lord Kelvin's term--that is to say, is either\npotentially or actually in process of transfer and transformation.  In\nother words, life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide\nits transformation.\"[14]\n\n\"Life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates\nwhich exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time\nto display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to\ndisappear or evaporate whence it came.\"[15]\n\nTo these voices from Germany or England we can add that of M. Bergson\nfrom France.  In many respects, as he says, he is at one with Sir\nOliver Lodge.  If he goes beyond him, it is mainly in these ways.  He\nemphasises the element of Freedom, the power of choice as shewn by\nevery living thing.  It appears, he says, \"from the top to the bottom\nof the animal scale,\" \"although the lower we go, the more vaguely it is\nseen.\"  \"In very truth, I believe no living organism is absolutely\nwithout the faculty of performing actions and moving spontaneously; for\nwe see that even in the vegetable world, where {85} the organism is for\nthe most part fixed to the ground, the faculty of motion is asleep\nrather than absent altogether.  Sometimes it wakes up, just when it is\nlikely to be useful.\"\n\nAnd this is not all.  What is specially characteristic of M. Bergson is\nthe insistence that this power of choice is an evidence of\nConsciousness.  \"Life,\" he declares, \"is nothing but consciousness\nusing matter for its purposes.\"  \"There is behind life an impulse, an\nimmense impulse to climb higher and higher, to run greater and greater\nrisks in order to arrive at greater and greater efficiency.\"\n\"Obviously there is a vital impulse.\"[16]\n\n\"Life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a\ncentre, speeds outwards, and which on almost the whole of its\ncircumference is stopped\"--that is, as he explains, by matter--\"and\nconverted into oscillation; at one point the obstacle has been forced,\nthe impulsion has poured freely.  It is this freedom that the human\nform registers.  Everywhere but in man consciousness has had to come to\na stand; in man alone it has kept on its way.  Man continues the vital\nmovement indefinitely, although he does not draw along with him all\nthat life carries in itself.  On other {86} lines of evolution there\nhave travelled other tendencies which life implied\"--the reference is\nmore especially to powers of instinct as distinguished from those of\nintelligence--\"and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has\ndoubtless kept something, but of which he has kept only a little.\"[17]\n\nPerhaps the most astonishing thing about M. Bergson's philosophy is his\nunreadiness to allow that the consciousness, which he says is\neverywhere at work, has any deliberate purpose in its working.  Mr.\nBalfour has called attention to the unsatisfactoriness of what he\ndescribed as \"too hesitating and uncertain a treatment.\"[18]\n\nBut, in spite of so serious an omission, we may be glad to believe,\nwith our acute statesman-critic, that \"there is permanent value in his\ntheories.\"  If they indicate at all the direction in which scientific\nthinking is to move, we shall soon have travelled a very long distance\nfrom the days in which it was imagined that all vital phenomena might\nbe accounted for on merely materialistic and mechanical lines.\n\n\n\n[1] \"To this 'meteorite' theory the apparently fatal objection was\nraised that it would take some sixty million years for a meteorite to\ntravel from the nearest stellar system to our earth, and it is\ninconceivable that any kind of life could be maintained during such a\nperiod.\"--Schaefer.\n\n[2] Presidential Address to British Association, at Edinburgh (1912).\n\n[3] _Man and the Universe_, p. 24.\n\n[4] Prof. Wager.\n\n[5] Dr. J. S. Haldane.\n\n[6] Dr. A. R. Wallace.  Article in _Everyman_, October 18th, 1912.\n\n[7] Sir William Tilden.  Letter to _The Times_, September 9th,1912.\n\n[8] _Life and Matter_, p. 106.\n\n[9] Pp. 132, f.\n\n[10] P. 158.\n\n[11] P. 160.\n\n[12] Pp. 164, f.\n\n[13] P. 166.\n\n[14] P. 160.\n\n[15] P. 198.\n\n[16] Lecture at Birmingham, May, 1911.\n\n[17] _Creative Evolution_, p. 280.\n\n[18] _Hibbert Journal_, October, 1911.\n\n\n\n\n{87}\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nLATER SCIENCE (_continued_)\n\nThe leaders of the scientific thought of last century would have been\nvastly surprised if they could have foreseen the results of the\ninvestigations which were to be made into the constitution of matter\nand the nature of life; but not even these would have amazed them so\nmuch as would other investigations that were to be carried out in a yet\ndeeper and more mysterious region of experience.  Perhaps it was\nbecause science had been so busy about the more external things, that\nit had seemed to have no time to spare for the thorough consideration\nof that which is more truly vital to man than the matter which obeys or\nopposes him, or even than the physical life which enables him to act,\nin so far as he can, as its master.  It was strange that the last thing\nto be thought of should be his own personality, himself; the innermost\nworkings of his soul.\n\nBut if this profoundest problem has been neglected, it is to be\nneglected no longer.  Psychology has {88} already made good its claim\nto be respectfully regarded as one of the sciences.  It is too early to\nspeak with any great certainty of the results that it has achieved,\nthough these are probably more substantial than is commonly supposed.\n\nAnyhow, it will be best that, as before, we should give some\ncharacteristic statements of the investigators themselves, rather than\nattempt to make unauthorised summaries of our own.\n\nAnd, first of all, Sir Oliver Lodge shall tell us what he understands\nby the Soul.  \"The soul is that controlling and guiding principle which\nis responsible for our personal expression and for the construction of\nthe body, under the restrictions of physical condition and ancestry.\nIn its higher developments it includes also feeling and intelligence\nand will, and is the storehouse of mental experience.  The body is its\ninstrument and organ, enabling it to receive and to convey physical\nimpressions, and to affect and be affected by matter and energy.\"[1]\n\nHow the soul acts by means of the body is thus explained.\n\n\"The brain is the link between the psychical and the physical, which in\nthemselves belong to different orders of being.\"[2]\n\n{89}\n\n\"A portion of brain substance is consumed in every act of\nmentation.\"[3]  \"Destroy certain parts of brain completely, and\nconnexion between the psychic and the material regions is for us\nsevered.  True; but cutting off or damaging communication is not the\nsame as destroying or damaging the communicator; nor is smashing an\norgan equivalent to killing the organist.\"[4]\n\nM. Bergson does not differ from this when he says that, \"the\nsoul--essentially action, will, liberty--is the creative force _par\nexcellence_, the productive agent of novelty in the world.\"  He goes on\nto speak of the way by which souls have been differentiated and raised\nto self-conscious existence.  \"The history of this great effort is the\nvery history of the evolution of life on our planet.  Certain lines of\nevolution seem to have failed.  But on the line of evolution which\nleads to man the liberation has been accomplished and thus\npersonalities have been able to constitute themselves.\"[5]  Like many\nanother, M. Bergson cannot bring himself to believe that death is to be\nthe end of all that has been thus painfully achieved during this\nprocess of attainment.  \"When we see that consciousness is also memory,\n{90} that one of its essential functions is to accumulate and preserve\nthe past, that very probably the brain is an instrument of\nforgetfulness as much as one of remembrance, and that in pure\nconsciousness nothing of the past is lost, the whole life of a\nconscious personality being an indivisible continuity; are we not led\nto suppose that the effect continues beyond, and that in this passage\nof consciousness through matter (the passage which at the tunnel's exit\ngives distinct personalities) consciousness is tempered like steel, and\ntests itself by clearly constituting personalities and preparing them,\nby the very effort which each of them is called upon to make, for a\nhigher form of existence?\"[6]\n\nBut the psychologist has yet more to tell us about the nature of\npersonality.  Although helped to distinctiveness of self-conscious\nexpression by means of its experience of the struggle under present\nmaterial conditions, it is not the whole of it that can be thus\nexpressed.  In fact its present physical embodiment is but partially\nadequate to the task.  In other words, \"cerebral life represents only a\nsmall part of the mental life.\"  \"One of the roles of the brain is to\nlimit the vision of the mind, to render {91} its action more\nefficacious\"[7]--more efficacious, that is to say, for such uses as are\nof value for survival and success under our existing conditions.\n\nIt is to Frederick Myers that we have chiefly owed the conception of\nthe subliminal or subconscious mind.  The full report of his researches\nis given in the two volumes of his work on \"Human Personality and its\nSurvival of Bodily Death\" (1901).  He it was who invented the word\n\"telepathy\" to express the fact that mental action can be exerted at a\ndistance.  And it was he who brought for the first time the phenomena\nof clairvoyance and apparitions under thorough examination by the\nemployment of the most exacting tests.  Along such lines he was led to\nthe conclusion, now largely accepted, that the conscious self is only a\nfraction of the entire personality, the fraction being greater or less\naccording to the magnitude of the individual.\n\nBy means of this subconscious part of our being we are, he held,\nbrought into touch with one another and are capable of attaining a\nknowledge which may greatly transcend that which comes to us through\nour ordinary channels of communication.  In the case of genius we watch\nthe emergence of exceptional {92} potentialities, which may serve as\nthe promise and pledge of what the future has in store for us all.  One\nday like some winged insect we shall pass to a condition beyond that of\nthe life we now know, and then we may hope that what we \"can regard as\nlarval characters of special service in the present stage of\nexistence,\" will prove to have been \"destined to be discarded, or\nmodified almost out of recognition, in proportion as a higher state is\nattained.\"[8]\n\nThis recognition of the existence within human nature of such\ncapacities and powers, however imperfectly developed and understood,\nwould greatly help us to deal with many mysteries of experience that\nhave hitherto seemed completely beyond the purview of a strict\nscientific research.  The American psychologist, William James, has\ndone good service to this highest department of critical inquiry in his\nwell-known work on \"Varieties of Religious Experience.\"  A single\nextract may suffice to illustrate his position, and to shew what may\nyet lie before those who are prepared to press on in the direction in\nwhich he was able to point.\n\n\"The further limits of our being plunge ... into an altogether other\ndimension of existence from the sensible and merely 'understandable'\n{93} world....  So far as our ideal impulses originate in this region\n(and most of them do originate in it, for we find them possessing us in\na way for which we cannot articulately account) we belong to it in a\nmore intimate sense than that in which we belong to the visible\nworld...  When we commune with it, work is actually done upon our\nfinite personality, for we are turned into new men...  I call this\nhigher part of the universe by the name of God.\"[9]\n\n\n\n[1] _Man and the Universe_, p. 78.\n\n[2] P. 91.\n\n[3] _Life and Matter_, p. 107.\n\n[4] _Man and the Universe_, p. 93.\n\n[5] Lecture at University College, October, 1911.\n\n[6] Birmingham Lecture, May, 1911.\n\n[7] Bergson.  Presidential Address to Society for Psychical Research,\nMay, 1913.\n\n[8] _Op. cit._, I., p. 97.\n\n[9] Pp. 515, f.\n\n\n\n\n{94}\n\nNOTE\n\nSince the preceding chapters were written, the meeting of the British\nAssociation has been held at Birmingham (September, 1913).  Its\ninterest was unusually great inasmuch as the President's address and\nthe principal discussions were occupied with the most critical and\ndebatable scientific questions of the present moment.  The following\nextracts will give a general idea of the line taken at the outset by\nthe President, Sir Oliver Lodge.\n\n\"Theological controversy is practically in abeyance just now.\"  \"It is\nthe scientific allies, now, who are waging a more or less invigorating\nconflict among themselves, with philosophers joining in.\"  \"Ancient\npostulates are being pulled up by the roots.\"  \"The modern tendency is\nto emphasise the discontinuous or atomic character of everything.\"\n\"The physical discovery of the twentieth century, so far, is the\nelectrical theory of matter.\"  \"So far from Nature not making jumps, it\nbecomes doubtful if she does anything else.\"  \"The corpuscular theory\nof radiation is by no means so dead as in my youth we thought it was.\"\n\"But I myself am an upholder of _ultimate_ continuity, and a fervent\nbeliever in the aether of space.\"\n\n{95}\n\n\"I have been called a vitalist, and in a sense I am; but I am not a\nvitalist if vitalism means an appeal to an undefined 'vital force' (an\nobjectionable term I have never thought of using) as against the laws\nof chemistry and physics.\"  \"There is plenty of physics and chemistry\nand mechanics about every vital action, but for a complete\nunderstanding of it something beyond physics and chemistry is needed.\"\n\"No mathematics could calculate the orbit of a common house-fly.\"  \"I\nwill risk the assertion that life introduces something incalculable and\npurposeful amid the laws of physics; it thus distinctly supplements\nthose laws, though it leaves them otherwise precisely as they were and\nobeys them all.\"\n\n\"The Loom of Time is complicated by a multitude of free agents who can\nmodify the web, making the product more beautiful or more ugly\naccording as they are in harmony or disharmony with the general scheme.\nI venture to maintain that manifest imperfections are thus accounted\nfor, and that freedom could be given on no other terms, nor at any less\ncost.\"\n\n\"I will not shrink from a personal note summarising the result on my\nown mind of thirty years of experience of psychical research, begun\nwithout predilection--indeed, with the usual hostile prejudice.\"  \"The\nfacts so examined have convinced me that memory and affection are not\nlimited to that association with matter by which alone they can\nmanifest themselves here and now, and that personality persists beyond\nbodily death.\"\n\n{96}\n\nOf the debates on the subsequent days those on \"Radiation\" and \"The\nOrigin of Life\" were, perhaps, the most remarkable.  At the former the\npoint at issue was the amount of truth contained in Planck's \"famous\nhypothesis that energy was transferred by jumps instead of in a\ncontinuous stream.\"  Sir Joseph Larmor evidently expressed the\nprevailing opinion when he said that \"some advance in that direction\nhad become necessary, and old-fashioned physicists like himself had\neither to take part in it or run the risk of becoming obsolete.\"\n\nFor the discussion about \"Life,\" the three sections of Physiology,\nZoology, and Botany were combined.  Professor Moore stood stoutly for\nthe older views, and \"believed that he could demonstrate a step which\nconnected inorganic with organic creation.\"  Then he gave an abstruse\nand highly technical account of a process by which in \"solutions of\ncolloidal ferric hydroxide, exposed to strong sunlight,\" compounds\ncould be formed similar to those to be found in the green plant.  With\na proper grouping of molecules it might be imagined how \"colloidal\naggregates appeared,\" and eventually \"organic colloids\" which \"acquired\nthe property of transforming light energy into chemical activity.\"  The\nspeakers who followed seemed to be agreed that, even were such\n\"potentially living matter\" to be produced, we should have reached, not\nthe discovery of the secret of life, but only the construction of \"its\nphysical vehicle.\"  Professor Hartog strongly protested against the\nnotion that there was \"a consensus {97} of opinion among biologists\nthat life was only one form of chemical and physical actions which\ncould be reduced in the laboratory.\"  He wished it to be understood\nthat \"the preponderance of weight among scientific men\" was opposed to\nsuch a position.\n\n\n\n\n{98}\n\nCONCLUSION\n\nIt is dangerous to generalise; and, when as in this survey we are\nattempting to indicate broadly the trend of the thought of an age, we\nhave more than ordinary need to be on our guard lest we should\nsacrifice truth to the desire for a seeming completeness of logical\npresentation.  For fear, then, of misunderstanding, let it be clearly\nremembered that in what has been said we have had no wish to suggest\nthat all minds have moved at the same pace, or even in the same\ndirection; but only that certain strong tendencies were observable,\nwhich gave colour and character to the mental stream at the particular\nstages in its course.  It is with a full sense of the possibility of\nexaggeration, and of the necessity of holding the balance even, that we\nshall now make our final attempt to sum up as concisely as possible\nwhat we have been able to gather in regard to the thought-movement of\nthe period we have had under review.  There can be no danger of\nmisstatement in saying that, all throughout, the chief thoughts of the\ntime were intensely occupied with {99} the greatest of all questions,\nthose about GOD AND THE WORLD.  And, further, it has not been difficult\nto perceive that there have been three distinct stages in the sequence\nof these thoughts.\n\nIn the _first stage_ we can see, as we look back, that the Religious\nfeeling was dominant, while the scientific temper could scarcely have\nbeen said to exist; certainly it did not exist upon any extended scale.\nBut, though the desire to be reverent was widespread, we are bound to\nallow that the ideas about God were somewhat crudely conceived.  As a\nlegacy, no doubt, from the Deistic controversies of the preceding\ncentury, the general thought did not rise above the notion of a Supreme\nMechanist and all-powerful Ruler of all things.  The Divine Being was\nregarded as having originated the universe by a fiat of His will,\nfashioning its several contents one after another as He pleased, and\nappointing that each and all should be subjected to the laws He had\nordained; always reserving to Himself the right to intervene by some\nsignal display of wisdom and power, when such intervention was\nrequired, either to remedy a defect, or yet further to set forth His\nglory.  Men were very ready to admit the idea of the Supernatural, but\nit was in the merely superficial and popular sense of _power working\nwithout means_, rather than what we now {100} feel to be the far truer\nsense of _superhuman knowledge of means, and power to use them_.[1]  It\nfollowed, and this was the weakest point in the Paleyan system of\nNatural Theology, that God's action was looked for not in the normal,\nbut in the exceptional processes of Nature.  The need of the Divine was\nonly felt when no other explanation was forthcoming; with the result,\nof course, that as other explanations were found, the necessity for\nrecognising its operation grew ever less and less.  And, even apart\nfrom such a consequence, the effects of the conception could not be\notherwise than injurious to religious faith; for, as it has been truly\nand reverently observed, \"a theory of occasional intervention implies\nas its correlative a theory of ordinary absence.\"[2]\n\nAs to knowledge of the World, there was scarcely any at all, according\nin our present understanding of such knowledge.  Not everybody, of\ncourse, accounted for the existence of fossils by supposing that they\nwere the casts from which the Almighty had designed His creatures, or\npossibly the Devil's {101} attempts to imitate His works; but the\nprevailing ideas were of the most primitive kind.  Even Paley could\ngive us no better explanation of certain rudimentary anatomical organs,\nthan by suggesting that the creature in whom they were found had been\nso far constructed before it was decided what its sex should be!  We\ncan see that if any real progress in knowledge was to be made, a change\nof a very radical order had to come.  And it did come.\n\nThe _second stage_ was Scientific rather than religious.  The thought\nof God occupied a less prominent place in proportion as men's minds\nwere yielded to the attraction of the new studies.  This was partly\ndue, as we have already explained, to the fact that causes were found\nto account for the phenomena which had previously, for the lack of the\nunderstanding of such causes, been attributed to the immediate exercise\nof supernatural power.  Partly, also, it was due to a growing distrust\nof human ability, which resulted from the belief that this was nothing\nmore than a recent development from a lower animal ancestry.  A mind\nthus originated was supposed to be debarred from forming any\ntrustworthy notion of the nature of a First Cause which had operated,\nif at all, at some point infinitely distant in the long succession of\nages.\n\nThe main work of this stage was to prosecute {102} research into the\nelaborated mechanism, or as men soon came to prefer to think of it, the\ndeveloping growth of the world.  And wonderful, beyond all\nanticipation, was the success which rewarded the pains that were\nlavishly bestowed upon the inquiry.  Small marvel was it that some\nmen's heads were well-nigh turned, and that to many it seemed little\nless than certain that science had dispensed with the supernatural\naltogether; and that it only required time, and no great length of\ntime, to secure universal acceptance for the materialistic explanations\nwhich were destined, as they supposed, to leave no mysteries of life\nunsolved.  But such persons had reckoned with a too hasty and\nsuperficial knowledge of the data involved.  Little by little the\ncounter-criticisms produced their effect.  The idea of a First and\nPermanent Cause was shewn to be as indispensable as ever; not, indeed,\nas an influence to be pushed far back, and to be thought of as acting\neither once or occasionally.  A truer reading of the meaning of what\nhad been discovered led to the grateful acknowledgment that \"Darwinism\nhas conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit by\nshewing us that we must choose between two alternatives: either God is\neverywhere present in Nature, or He is nowhere.\"[3] {103} So, again,\nwith Design.  The earlier notion of the separate manufacture of species\nand of special adaptations to particular ends had to give way to a\nlarger conception of the growth and gradual correlation of the parts\nand functions of a stupendous whole.  But for the attainment of this\nmighty result direction and superintendence are even more imperatively\nneeded.  As it was often urged with good reason, to make a world right\noff would not have been so marvellous an achievement as to make that\nworld make itself.\n\nThe problem of Beneficence had, as we saw, come to be so entangled with\ndifficulties as to render it the most serious of all the problems which\npressed upon the minds and hearts of the men of this second stage of\nthinking.  But here, also, the fears which were at first aroused were\nfound to have been exaggerated; and perhaps it is true to say that\nbefore the end of the century there was a general disposition to\nconclude that with larger knowledge we should get to understand the\nutility of much that to uninstructed eyes appears to be lavish waste\nand needless suffering.  The obvious fact that science could not go\nforward without a loyal belief in the rational intelligibility of\nnature gave justification to a corresponding belief in its ethical\nintelligibility, even though in this case, as in the other, the {104}\ncomplete proofs might not be immediately forthcoming.  And there was,\nfurther, the possibility--to some it was more than a possibility--that\nmuch in the world which looks contrary to goodness is really to be\naccounted for as the result of a misuse of liberty on the part of\npowers and forces whose action has most mysteriously been allowed to\nthwart and to complicate the task of the beneficent Maker of all.\n\nAbout the _third stage_ it is fitting that we should speak with more\nhesitation.  We are living in it, and are as yet only at its beginning.\nBut we may hazard the prognostication that it will be both Religious\nand Scientific; and that, \"as knowledge grows from more to more,\" there\nwill be found the \"more of reverence\" of which our modern poet sings.\nThere is reason to hope that the bitterness of old controversies will\nnot be revived, and that we have before us a time in which Theology and\nScience will co-operate and no longer conflict.  With deepening insight\nit is becoming plainer than ever that the phenomena of life, and even\nof matter, are the expressions of a more than physical force.\nEvolution is a law under which a forward process is moving on, and\nmoving up.  There is an impulse of consciousness working from within,\nand there is a spiritual, as well as a material, environment inviting\n{105} to correspondence with itself.  Freedom and power of choice are\nadmitted to be present in regions where their existence was for long\nmost strenuously denied.  Even matter may have its own power of\ninsistence and resistance--how much more mind and will.  This\nconsideration may give us a yet clearer clue to the mysteries of\nfailure, miscarriage, and waste.  A world that was to produce\nself-conscious, self-determining personalities needed to have freedom\nthrough the whole of its development; and the consequent risk and\npossible cost were inevitable.  Shall we not be led to admire and\nrevere increasingly the wonder of it all, as there grows upon us the\nsense of the quietness and gentleness, the foresight, and the infinite\npatience of the Being of beings, who will never obtrude His presence\nand action upon us, just because He would help us to be our own, not\ndead but living, selves, and would have us rise with Him to the highest\nthings?\n\nWe are far from the end of our learning.  There are many enigmas yet to\nbe made plain.  We could not wish it otherwise.  It has ever been\nthrough the narrow gate of difficulty that we have passed into the\nwider court of truth.  We have good cause to be humble, but we have\nfull right to be hopeful.  We must not be afraid to face the problems\nthat await {106} us, whatever they may be.  We may be confident that we\nare not to be deceived; but that, under a Guidance that has never\nfailed, we shall at length be brought to see the dawning of the\nlonged-for day,\n\n  \"When that in us which thinks with that which feels\n  Shall everlastingly be reconciled,\n  And that which questioneth with that which kneels.\"\n\n\n\n[1] This important distinction was carefully drawn by the Duke of\nArgyll in his _Reign of Law_ (pp. 14, 25), published in 1866.\n\n[2] Aubrey Moore, in one of a series of remarkable articles contributed\nto the _Guardian_ (January 18th, 25th, February 1st, 1888).\n\n[3] Aubrey Moore, _Lux Mundi_.\n\n\n\n\n{107}\n\nINDEX\n\n\nAETHER, 73, 94.\n\nAgnosticism, 32, 46-52.\n\nAquinas, St. Thomas, 13.\n\nArgyle, George Douglas, Duke of, 37, 100.\n\nAtoms, 21, 71, 72.\n\nAugustine, St., 50.\n\nAvebury, Lord, 58.\n\n\nBACON, LORD, 14.\n\nBalfour, A. J., 75, 86.\n\n\"Bathybius,\" 78.\n\nBecquerel, A. C., 70.\n\nBeneficence, Divine, 17, 18, 53-67, 103.\n\nBergson, Henri, 84-86, 89, 90.\n\nBrain, 88, 89, 90.\n\nBunsen, R. W., 24.\n\n\nCARLYLE, THOMAS, 63.\n\nCause, 29.\n\nCells, The growth of, 77.\n\nChalmers, Thomas, 19, 20.\n\nChance, 30, 44, 56.\n\nConsciousness, 85, 89, 90.\n\nCreation, Mosaic account of 39.\n\nCreative power, affirmed by Science, 39.\n\nCruelty in Nature, 34, 35, 54-67.\n\nCurie, Mme., 70.\n\n\nDALTON, JOHN, 21.\n\nDarwin, Charles, 24-26, 41-43, 54, 58, 64.\n\nDeserts, Use of, 62.\n\nDesign, Argument from, 14-16, 29, 40-45, 103.\n\nDirective power, 44, 83, 106.\n\nDu Bois Raymond, E., 37.\n\nDysteleology, 35.\n\n\nEARTHQUAKES, 66.\n\nElectrons, 71.\n\nEnergy:\n  Conservation of, 23, 42, 75.\n  Dissipation of, 73.\n\n_Evil and Evolution_, 64-66.\n\nEvil in Nature, 18, 63-67.\n\nEvolution, Doctrine of, 24, 25, 40, 104.\n\n\nFARADAY, MICHAEL, 22, 37.\n\n\"First Cause,\" 13, 28, 32, 38, 39, 101, 102.\n\nFreedom, 84, 95, 104, 105.\n\nFuture life, 89-92, 95.\n\n\nGEOLOGY, 23, 39, 70.\n\nGoodwin, Bishop Harvey, 47.\n\nGore, Bishop, 50, 57.\n\nGray, Asa, 41, 56.\n\n\nHAECKEL, E., 29, 30, 31, 35, 40.\n\nHaldane, J. S., 80.\n\nHartog, Professor, 96.\n\nHeat, Mechanical equivalent of, 23.\n\nHelium, 70.\n\nHelmholtz, H. von, 22.\n\nHerschel, Sir John, 69.\n\nHuxley, T. H., 32, 35, 40, 43, 61, 78.\n\n\nICHNEUMONIDAE, 56.\n\nInsensibility of animals, 60, 61.\n\n\nJAMES, WILLIAM, 92, 93.\n\nJoule, J. P., 23, 37.\n\n\nKELVIN, LORD, 37, 39, 44, 68, 70, 78.\n\nKepler, J., 19.\n\nKerner, Anton, 81, 82.\n\nKirchhoff, Professor, 24.\n\nKnight, Professor W., 57.\n\n\nLAMARCK, J. B., 22, 26.\n\nLaplace, P. S., 19.\n\nLarmor, Sir J., 71, 96.\n\nLiebig, J. F. von, 44.\n\nLife:\n  failure to produce out of matter, 79, 80, 96, 97.\n  Meteorite theory of, 78,\n  not a form of energy, 82, 83.\n\nLodge, Sir Oliver, 71, 79, 82-85, 88, 89, 94, 95.\n\nLotze, Hermann, 47.\n\nLyell, Sir Charles, 23.\n\n\nMATERIALISM, 44, 46.\n\nMatter, Disintegration of, 72.\n\nMaxwell, James Clerk, 22, 37, 68.\n\nMetals, 74.\n\nMill, J. Stuart, 29, 33, 39.\n\nMolecules, 69, 71, 72.\n\nMonism, 31.\n\nMoore, Aubrey, 48, 100, 102.\n\nMoore, Professor B., 96.\n\nMyers, Frederick W. H., 91.\n\n\nNEBULAR HYPOTHESIS, 19.\n\nNecessity, 43.\n\nNewton, Sir Isaac, 19.\n\n\nORGANS, RUDIMENTARY, 40, 41, 101.\n\n_Origin of Species_, 25, 39, 40, 55, 56.\n\nOwen, Sir Richard, 27.\n\n\nPAGET, BISHOP FRANCIS, 52.\n\nPain, Use of, 58, 59.\n\nPaley, William, 14-19, 100, 101.\n\nPascal, Blaise, 52.\n\nPasteur, Louis, 37, 66.\n\nPersonality:\n  Divine, 48, 52.\n  Human, 87, 90.\n\nProtoplasm, 23, 76, 77.\n\nPsychical Research, 91, 95.\n\nPsychology, 87, 90-92.\n\n\nRADIUM, 70, 72.\n\nReligious instinct, 51.\n\nRomanes, G. J., 33-36, 37.  39, 42, 50-52, 57.\n\nRoentgen rays, 70.\n\n\nSCHAFER, SIR EDWARD, 78.\n\nSchleiden, M. J., 23.\n\nSchwann, T., 23.\n\nSnake poison, 60, 66.\n\nSoul, 87, 88, 89.\n\nSpectrum analysis, 24, 68.\n\nSpencer, Herbert, 32, 33, 47, 49.\n\nSpiritual environment, 93, 104.\n\nStokes, Sir G. G., 24, 37, 45.\n\nSubconsciousness, 91, 92.\n\nSuffering, Divinely shared, 67, 105.\n\nSulman, H. L., 74, 75.\n\nSupernatural, The, 99, 100.\n\nSurvival:\n  after death, 89-92, 95.\n  of the fittest, 24, 25.\n\n\nTELEOLOGY, THE WIDER, 40, 45.\n\nTelepathy, 91.\n\nTennyson, Alfred, Lord, 54.\n\nThomson, Sir J. J., 71, 73.\n\nTilden, Sir William, 80.\n\nTreves, Sir Frederick, 59.\n\nTyndall, John, 31, 38.\n\n\nUNBELIEF, DISTRESS CAUSED BY, 35, 36, 50.\n\n\nVARIATIONS, 25, 26.\n\nVenomous animals, 17, 65, 66.\n\nVirchow, R., 37.\n\nVitalism, 81-85, 95.\n\nVolcanoes, Use of, 62.\n\n\nWAGER, PROFESSOR, 79.\n\nWallace, Alfred Russel, 59-61, 80.\n\nWhetham, W. C. D., 74.\n\n\n\n\n_Wyman & Sons Ltd., Printers, London and Reading._\n\n\n\n\nPublications of the\n\nSociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge.\n\n\nModern Substitutes for Traditional Christianity.  By the Rev. Canon E.\nMCCLURE.  Crown 8vo.  Cloth boards.  2s. net.\n\nModern Rationalism.  As seen at work in its Biographies.  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