Kitabı oku: «The Universe a Vast Electric Organism», sayfa 10

It seems Mr. Spencer's agnosticism is a sort of spiritual refuge for the destitutes who renounce their heritage like Esau or waste it like the prodigal son, and feed on husks. For those who by their abstractions separate the elements of experience from each other, are forced to go beyond experience for the unity they have lost, and flounder in the miry bogs of agnosticism.

The true way is to give up such abstractions as objective and subjective mind, for the mind is a unity, and learn to "think things together" and recognize the organic relation of the inner and the outer life and "explain the parts by the whole, and not the whole by artificially severed parts." This organic unity of mind in man is illustrated by the organic unity of the universe, which, under the electric theory of creation, is a vast electric organism bound together by invisible electric bands, where every atom has an individuality manifested and explained in the harmonious unity of an ever-changing but indestructible universe.

As man is capable of knowing all things, he cannot be identified with any of them, or if as an individual he is so identified, he has within him in his spiritual nature that which carries him beyond the limits of his individuality. In his inner moral life man is revealed to himself as a free-will agent, a great and self-determining being, conscious of being subordinated only to the law of duty, which is the law of his own reason.

That law, in spite of every outer pressure, he knows he ought to obey, and therefore knows that he can obey it. Thus man is both natural and spiritual; he is limited to a finite personality, yet possesses a universal capacity for knowledge and an absolute power of self-determination. Human reason with one voice seems to depress man to the level of an animal, and with the other voice proceeds to elevate him to the theatre of all life and being, as a "spectator of all time and existence," gifted with absolute freedom of will and conscious individuality. There is an identity which is below or above all distinction; and the universe is one through all its multiplicity and permanent through all its changes. The unity beneath all differences, the priority of the universal to all particulars, is necessary to the true conception of the organic unity of the world. All opposition of thought and things are relative oppositions which find a solution in the life and movement of the whole. In all the great controversies that have divided the world the combatants have really been co-operators. They developed truth and unity.

We do not see anything truly until we comprehend it as a whole, and see it in all its relations to the universe. Everything so far as it has an independent, individual existence at all is an organism. While conceiving the universe as organic, Hegel maintained that it "is not a natural but a spiritual organism." For the limited scope of a natural organism and its process cannot be regarded as commensurate with a universe which comprehends all existence, whether classed as organic or inorganic. Only the conscious and self-conscious unity of mind can overreach and overcome such extreme antagonisms and reduce them all to elements in the realization of its own life.

The natural universe, I contend, is an organism which includes nature, but manifests its ultimate or highest spiritual force only in the life of man. The universe as an electric organism obeys the higher supreme spiritual forces. It is said that "Hegel was only working out in the sphere of speculative thought what Christianity had already expressed for the ordinary consciousness." Nearly all great thinkers, I contend, reason forward or backward to the fundamental truths of the Bible, only expressed in a little different way, and which is the old familiar process in human history of "pouring old wine into new bottles." Hegel sought to show how an idealistic view of the universe and human life could be maintained consistently with the fullest recognition of scientific methods and results. This was an attempt at the reconciliation of science, philosophy and religion proceeding from the growing prevalence of that harmonizing spirit which seeks to do justice to the results of scientific investigation and at the same time give them a new and enlightened interpretation. In this he was right. The main conflict in philosophy as in religion has ceased to lie between materialism and idealism or spiritualism, but rather between Herbert Spencer's "Vague Consciousness of the Absolute," which he bids us worship, and that faith which enables us to pierce the veil of the phenomena and grasp the ultimate reality of things. Philosophy, therefore, is always toiling after the intuitions of faith as "cities of refuge." All philosophy can safely maintain that "what is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational." And all accord with man's highest inspirations of spiritual faith and hope. And the electric theory of creation is the most rational explanation of an organic universe evolved and controlled by natural law which is the will of Deity, whereby spirit intelligence controls by electric energy all the forces and manifestations of visible creation.

Herbert Spencer has done a great work for science. He has been a great champion and expounder of evolution, and the laws of the material universe. And while he has been a great agnostic on religious subjects it is because he is a spiritual non-conductor.

Man is like a wireless telegraphic receiver; he draws only that which corresponds to his nature and character.

Different men have different casts of mind and different natural aptitudes. Some are natural receivers of truths, and others are natural non-conductors of certain truths.

There are two eminent illustrations of this fact, it is said, in the immortal Sir Isaac Newton and John Milton, whose names are equally historic and illustrious for their learning and culture. For it is said that Newton could not appreciate "Paradise Lost," and Milton could see nothing in "The Principia." This was not to the discredit of either of these books, nor was it a reflection upon the technical learning of either man. Neither was attuned to the message which the other brought to humanity and it proves that in order to apprehend truth in any quarter a man must be sympathetically disposed toward it.

Milton had no mind for mathematics, nor Newton for poetry. So the wisest philosophers like Herbert Spencer may go to religion and find nothing there but the abstruce and unknowable. Spencer's mind dwells on the phenomena of matter and material senses only. It is said nearly every great thinker has some central thought fixed firmly in his mind. The central thought of Plato is the theory of ideas—the assertion of the apparitional character of the seemingly real world. The central thought of Pascal is that of human intelligence confronting the universe and strangled by its inexorable tragedies. The central thought of Schopenhauer is the absurdity of life, and the central thought of Herbert Spencer is the evolution of the material universe.

PART SECOND

 
Sleep, death and oblivion are things that mock;
Sleep in dreams; death and oblivion in the grave;
And yet we are not mocked. We only walk
Amid realities that bind us like a slave.
Sleep soothes and cheers; death grimly reaps and slays.
It makes earth but a tomb—its house of revelry;
It stalks amid life's dark and brightest ways
And takes its victims. All are 'neath its slavery.
With chilling frosts it nips life's brightest flowers,
And with pale faces and a gasp they go,
And vaguely trust to bloom 'neath other bowers,
Where death's grim hand will never blast them so.
 
 
All hearts beat to music and measure,
Like songs of the spheres as they roll,
And from dreamland's far mystical treasure
Come songbirds that sing to the soul;
Where the glint of the gold in fair tresses
Hide a face that we never have seen,
And the infinite hope that caresses
Kisses joys that we never may glean.
 
 
For the wealth of the world is ideal;
There is bliss in the beauty of rhyme,
And the thoughts of the soul are the real,
Outlasting the cycles of time.
And the soul is the diamond eternal
Where spirit and power are one,
Brushing dross from its splendor supernal
As dust from the eye of the sun.
 
 
All life is a poem of glory;
Neither reason nor senses can grasp,
Till we read every verse in the story,
And the hand of the author we clasp.
Then sing on sweet souls as of olden,
With visions of soul-land that shine,
Till the harp of the earthly is golden
From the hand of the Author Divine.
 

CHAPTER XI
SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY SUSTAIN THE RELIGIOUS CONCEPT

I contend that science, philosophy and electric evolution sustain the religious concept.

The infinite and eternal power that animates the universe must be psychical in its nature, and any attempt to reduce it to mechanical force must end in absurdity. The only kind of monism which will stand the test of an ultimate analysis, says John Fiske is monotheism. The highest development of psychical life is the end for which the world exists. To the materialist the ultimate power is material power, and psychical life is nothing but fleeting colocations of natural elements in the shape of nervous systems. The psychical nature of God and the immortality of the soul harmonize infinitely better with cosmic philosophy. Prof. John Fiske says: "Evolution brings before us with vividness the conception of an ever-present God, not an absentee God who once manufactured a cosmic machine capable of running itself. It makes God our constant support and nature His revelation, and when all its religious implications are set forth it will be seen to be the most potent ally Christianity ever had in elevating mankind. The progress of evolution now is to bring out the higher spiritual attributes and to set the whole doctrine of evolution in harmony with religion. Then, the assumption that underlies all religion must be true—that what we see of the present life is not the whole thing; that there is a spiritual as well as a material side of life; in short, a life eternal.

"In the whole history of evolution," he continues, "when we see an internal adjustment reach out towards something, it is in order to adapt itself to something that exists. And if the religious cravings of man constitute an exception they are the only exception in the whole process of evolution." This is an argument of stupendous and resistless weight. This puts evolution in harmony with religious thought, and the great religious drift of humanity in all ages, and removes the antagonism that used to appear to exist between religion and science.

The French materialists of the eighteenth century virtually declared: "We content ourselves with what we can prove by the methods of physical science and we will reject all else." But think how chaotic nature was to their minds compared to our present conception, and how different the universe they saw to what we see to-day. And it is not to be wondered at that there was antagonism between science and religion. Anaxagoras maintained that the human race would never have become human if it were not for the hand, and John Fiske says, "man never would have attained his present psychic powers but for religion."

This is truth well stated, and the fact that man is the only creature that has a hand, an articulate voice and an aesthetic nature that is never satisfied, is strong proof that man is infinitely more than a mere animal, or a transient animate machine. The higher intellectual powers were dwarfed in the middle ages, when human life was made hideous by famine, pestilence, perennial warfare and bloody superstitions, fear of witchcraft and eternal torments, and men endured it because they had no experience of anything better. But the change wrought in six centuries is amazing, and shows that human genius and man's possibilities are beyond our comprehension. The genius of Aristotle proved that the earth is a globe, that of Copernicus showed that it was one of a system of planets, and that of Newton undertook to explain the laws and dynamics of this marvelous sun and world system.

Belief in God, and the immortality of the soul, and the compensations of a future life tend to maintain social order and moral rectitude, by enabling men to endure the trials and injustice of this world in the hope of ample compensation in the hereafter. Man steps forth on this revolving globe not of his own volition, but is sent here by some mysterious power on some inscrutable mission to fulfill some divine purpose. He comes as a spiritual wayfarer under sentence of death. Not death to the spirit, but to the transient habiliments of earth-dust he gathers round his invisible spiritual form. When he arrives and gathers his reasoning powers to scan the narrow horizon of his life, he is beset by perplexing problems of poverty, disease, sorrow, sin and death. The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" often overwhelm him, and he discovers at last that the law of life is the law of growth and development; and all these struggles and trials are intended to evolve character and purify and ennoble the soul. That this is the seed time and nursery of existence preparatory to the harvest of eternal life when he shall drop this overcoat of atoms and be transplanted to the self-luminous bosom and unfading joys of the perfected and celestial sun-worlds. Here he sees incompleteness, fragmentary careers, tragedies, injustice, griefs and farewells, and he hungers for knowledge. His quenchless spirit seeks to penetrate the mysteries of the universe, and comprehend time and eternity, and in agony of soul he asks the age-old question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" Then, if he turn not to the pages of sacred writ for an answer, he will find written on the living pages and animated forms of all nature the promise of another life. He will find it in the returning verdure of spring, in the unfading light of the eternal stars, in the ever-changing beauty of the bending skies, in the mysterious impulse of the untaught birds of the air who start on their vast migrations from the frozen seas of the north to the summer-lands of the sunny south; in the tropic fish, who seek their spawning nests in the clear, cool rivers of the north. The bear and lion, the tiger and elephant, the bees and the insects of a summer day, all have the longings of their natures satisfied. Why should man be an exception? If the Creator of all keeps faith with all other creatures, why not with man?

"As something must have been eternal," says Prof. Wright, "it is easier to suppose it was an intelligent, designing mind which was uncreated from the beginning, and which has brought the universe into being with all its uniformity of laws and complexity of adaptation than to suppose that the eternal substance was matter out of which has come the orderly universe as we know it, with its high grades of intelligence in animals and man.

"The world, as the creation of a supreme intelligence, is partially comprehensible to finite minds. But to suppose that the thought and purpose and will of man are products of material forces is not only a mystery, but an absurdity which cannot long be entertained by any sane mind. The theory of evolution without a God can lay no claim to scientific support. A theory of evolution, designed, controlled and permeated by divine ideas, may be both scientific and in accord with the highest dictates of religious truth."

As to the life hereafter, which the religious concept has always proclaimed, it is a fact demonstrated by history that in all ages, among all people, under all religious forms, the idea of immortality remains fixed and imperishable in the human mind. Every human being in coming into this world brings with him under a form more or less vague this inward belief, desire and hope of immortality. This is God's handwriting on the human soul. And the history of man, the reasoning conscience of man, is God's Bible of life written in man's spiritual nature. And whatever is rational, true and good is of God, and whatever is contrary to the enlightened conscience of man is contrary to the divine purpose of God.

Revelation proclaims God is a spirit and man is a spirit, and after death man in his spiritual being shall live on forever. The latest modern scientific thought fully and powerfully sustains the Bible. It says in substance, in dealing with man we must deal with him as a spiritual being; we must go into a realm that brings us within the sphere of the electrical and magnetic relations of the elements, but on a different plane. First, matter in the invisible world has the same essential basis of formative power so potent in the more tangible relations. Second, the invisible atoms there obey the same essential principles that in a lower grade of activity give visible results. Third, there must be a direct connection between the two conditions of being—the visible and the spiritual—as to be axiomatic. Fourth, there must be a secondary form of the invisible elements ere they assume the visible relation, which is a chemical or electric necessity. In all life this law is absolute. Fifth, in applying this principle to the process of the evolution of man's form we have an explanation of how it must be a natural product of evolutionary life, and that man must follow the same law as the evolution of all spirit that pertains to planetary life. Spirit holds visible things in form by its connection with the magnetic life of the planet. It is the controlling power in shaping the form and organism to correspond to changed conditions. The material form can only exist by keeping itself in harmony with the laws of the elements in the planet, and as long as the planet endures the electric form in man and the electric or instinct form in animals within the radius of its magnetic aurora must exist as a secondary satellite, or miniature concrete expression of the forces in the planet. This principle may give the electric form immortality, and, by reason of the eternal nature of the elements composing it, place it beyond the possibility of dissolution as long as the planetary relation of the elements exists. But with man it goes even further, for the spirit form, having the basic principles of eternal existence in its spiritual composition and having once entered upon organic life, has in itself immortality and the power of self-sustenance from the elements in space and cannot become disintegrated, for it has all the necessary material to keep it in eternal existence as an organism, though the planet should revert to its original status and vanish as a distinct form. This explanation of the nature of spirit gives us a logical ground for the rational consideration of the phenomenon that has been the basis of all the superstitions embalmed in the sacred and curious literature of past ages. That man and probably all types of life have a spiritual or electric counterpart is not a scientific speculation or hypothesis merely, but a logical sequence of the forms that enter into physical organization.

Here in the secondary form, says the author of "Planetary Evolution," is an explanation of the nature of spirit that follows the same principles that construct the physical body and form the same material environments. And the questions of a spiritual life, apart from this principle of a secondary form, cannot be solved by any known formula of a scientific character. On the other hand, the existence of a form holding the powers of thought and action upon the plane of radiant matter gives a satisfactory explanation of the transference of the mental powers that belong to planetary life. The law of correlation and conservation of force prevent their annihilation, and they must exist somewhere. They are a spiritual entity, but should not be regarded as having a supernatural origin.

"The spirit is an evolution of planetary life and cannot be destroyed, and it is natural that its mental attachments to the planet should bring it in contact with the mental development generated there. The spirit would have the power of thought and consecutive reasoning as much after its transition from mortal life as before, but it would lack the power of expression through ordinary channels. It would, however, have the power of inductive electric transfer of thought, and, coming in contact with a spirit embodied, this power of induction would excite the elements in the spirit embodied to equilibrium of mentality, which would give rise to a similarity of thought in both." And here lies the foundation of the doctrine of inspiration which is a process of mental action whereby the mind in the body is raised to a perception and expression of ideas beyond its own range of thought as generated by the physical senses. The result is the upbuilding of the brain organ and the uplifting of the mentality to the purely spiritual plane, and man has thus, by the aid of the spiritual powers, made another stride forward in the domain of spiritual evolution. And man is a spiritualized being with brain organs adapted to the expression of ideas that respond to the spiritual state of life.

It is sometimes assumed that a man cannot be a Christian and a man of science; yet there have been many men of science, from Newton to Lord Kelvin, who were devout Christians. It is also assumed in some quarters that an educated man cannot believe in miracles, or answers to prayer, or special providences. But this is not a fair assumption even from a scientific standpoint. Science affirms the universality of energy and law; Christian theology accepts this fundamental postulate of science and says it is the result of universal spirit and will, or Infinite Mind and volition, which is back of universal energy and law. Energy is spirit and will at work; law is the mode of work. Energy and law are derivative, spirit and will is the primary and ultimate force of the universe.

But says the unbelieving scientist, "I accept energy and law as facts, but do not see that spirit and will are facts." Christianity replies: "You mean by 'see,' mental sight; for in the physical sense you can no more see energy and law than you can see spirit and will, or mind and volition.

"The fact is, science is a search for the invisible or supersensible—for that which lies beyond sense and vision. You call it energy and law, which we say is a result and not a cause, and point to spirit and will, which is the primitive, ultimate, first cause of universal energy and law.

"Would you feel it a just description of yourself if you were described as nothing but a system of energy and law. Energy is action according to law. But there is psychical energy as well as physical energy, or 'a double faced' unity—psychical on one side and physical on the other. Thought, feeling, volition are all species of energy subject to laws of their own. And, what is most wonderful, while they are invisible and intangible they control all physical energy in man and all animal organisms, just as universal spirit and will or volition control all energy and law in the physical universe. Then, is universal energy and law psychical or physical? If it is intelligent and works according to design and purpose with beneficent uniformity it must be psychical, and all physical energy and law is but a manifestation of spiritual energy and purpose."

Then says the scientist, "there may be intelligence without physical organism, and man may be in constant contact with the spiritual world. But I am an organized being and cannot imagine how unorganized beings could communicate with me even if they wished to do so. I cannot imagine it as possible that I could know God, who is a spirit."

But Christianity answers, "suppose you are not matter only, but that you are a spirit also, and a spiritual atom of that universal spirit which controls the universe, then could not spirit communicate with spirit? Thus, you say, all science is founded on energy and law, which necessitates spiritual intelligence and will for its foundation, and consciousness for its evidence. Thought, feeling volition are forms of psychical energy. We are conscious that we think, feel, will; and as consciousness is a mental or spiritual perception, man must be a spiritual being. Then we are not far from Theism—for God is a spirit. Besides energy and law we have consciousness and spirit, and no force without will. Law is simply the mode in which will works. Law stands for the regular and steadfast operation of will, as opposed to variable or capricious action. The uniformity of nature is rooted in the faithfulness of God, which sustains the steadfast operation of natural law."

Then says the scientist, "there could be no miracles, or answers to prayer, or special providences, for these imply interference with law, which would mean inconsistency on God's part and confusion on ours."

But Christianity answers, "interference with law is of continual occurrence. You cannot stand up or walk, or so much as raise your hand without interfering with the law of gravitation or attraction. We can modify or direct the action of forces without violating their laws. Violation of God's laws on God's part would mean inconstancy. Direction of his own energy to any point He wills—as in evolution, for example—is no violation of law; neither are what are termed miracles, special providences and answers to prayer violations of law, but evolutions in accordance with law, as law stands for God's mode of working in the control of the universe."

Then says the scientist, "I cannot reconcile the two ideas of 'infinity' and 'personality.' Personality implies limitation; infinity asserts absence of limitation, a being cannot be at once limited and unlimited."

"But why should we suppose personality to involve limitation?" says Christian theology. "Even in man the essential idea of personality is not limitation. Personality in philosophy and theology refers not to the body but to consciousness and will. What difficulty is there in believing that the Infinite God is infinitely conscious and volitional and therefore personal."

There is a mighty force in the material metaphors of the Bible, but these all stand for spiritual realities, and its fundamental postulate is "God is a Spirit," and "God is Love." As man is a spiritual atom of deity. God has spiritual contact and influence with his spiritual children and they are "moved by the Spirit," and "born of the Spirit," as they accept and obey that spiritual influence which leads to righteousness and truth. Religion cannot exist without spirituality and the religious concept. God has so constituted the human soul. Without religion the soul could not dream of heaven nor feel the sweet whisperings of faith and hope. Neither could the heart thrill with spiritual joy and truth. Without religion the heaven-bound spirit could not soar to the altitudes of celestial bliss.

Without religion and ideality there would have been no gems of art or literature, no beautiful pictures, no living statuary, no lofty temples or inspiring thoughts. The grandeur of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the poetry of Byron, Burns, Tennyson and Longfellow, the romances of Scott, Dickens and Hawthorne, the noble architecture of Michael Angelo, the statuary of Phideas, Praxatelles and Canova, and the pictures of Raphael, Murello, and Reuben had never been known. Ideality is the father of beauty and the inspiration of all genius, goodness and nobility and the twin brother of religious hope and faith.

Without religion ideality would be a mockery and a dream, hope would be a delusion and a snare, inspiration would wither, like Jonas' gourd, in a night, and the mildew of selfish materialism would convert the verdure of earth into deserts of despair.

John Fiske well says, "Man never would have attained his present psychic powers but for religion," and without religion ideality would never have soared to her lofty heights or brought forth her beautiful thoughts, her lofty conceptions, her sublime dreams of joy, or her noble gems of art, poetry, sculpture, architecture and literature. Remove the twin brothers—religion and ideality—from the earth, and its glory and worth would shrivel like a withered flower. Its hopes and joys, its dreams of peace and love, of paradise and heaven, would vanish into the desolations of a boundless Sahara, heaped with the burning sands of doubt and scorched by the withering blast of despair. The religious concept is the pilot of the soul to the fair field of heaven, the communion with the Father of the spirit, and ideality is its companion and servant who carries its cloak and staff as they journey along the pathways of earth and the highways of eternity. Science and philosophy, ideality, love and hope and all the aspirations of the human soul sustain the religious concept. It is a scientific postulate imbedded in the nature of man and in the basic law of the universe. Ideality and religion are the most powerful forces in uplifting humanity. The sublimer the ideal the more potent and ennobling its influence on the human soul. Though millions grasp not its sublimity and truth, those receptive souls nearest the light will catch its divine illuminations and reflect it to those below. And gradually those below will grasp its beauty and truth and step up higher, and each in succession, step by step, will advance to "a higher plane and a broader view," and this is growth and progress toward perfection.

The ultimate aim and purpose of creation is ideal perfection. This purpose is written in the fundamental law of evolution—progress from the lower to the higher and the survival of the fittest. The higher, the more sublime, the spiritual truth, though it be ages in advance of the world's comprehension, yet its brightness and power will penetrate the darkness, and scintillate from soul to soul, as the sun gleams from atom to atom, until at last all humanity is illumined and exalted. When we go down into the darkness and poisoned vapors of a dungeon we seek for a ray of sunshine as we seek for life and light, and we are cheered by the smallest sunbeam which enters through a crevice, for in its silvery thread of light little atoms float like miniature stars, dispelling the desolation. There at our feet, left to decay and perish, may be the seed or bulb of an insignificant vine or flower, forgotten by the busy world of conflicts without, where little men become great and great men become little, not dreaming of the eternal law of life and hope that thrills in every throbbing atom and electric germ in this life-evolving magnetic universe.