THE Law of Continuity having been referred
to already as a prominent factor in this inquiry, it may not be out of
place to sustain the plea for Natural Law in the Spiritual Sphere by a
brief statement and application of this great principle. The Law of Continuity
furnishes an a priori argument for the position we are attempting
to establish of the most convincing kind--of such a kind, indeed, as to
seem to our mind final. Briefly indicated, the ground taken up is this,
that if Nature be a harmony, Man in all his relations--physical, mental,
moral, and spiritual--falls to be included within its circle. It is altogether
unlikely that man spiritual should be violently separated in all the conditions
of growth, development, and life, from man physical. It is indeed difficult
to conceive that one set of principles should guide the natural life, and
these at a certain period-- the very point where they are needed--suddenly
give place to another set of principles altogether new and unrelated. Nature
has never taught us to expect such a catastrophe. She has nowhere prepared
us for it. And Man cannot in the nature of things, in the nature of thought,
in the nature of language, be separated into two such incoherent halves.
The spiritual man, it is true, is to be studied
in a different department of science from the natural man. But the harmony
established by science is not a harmony within specific departments.
It is the universe that is the harmony, the universe of which these are
but parts. And the harmonies of the parts depend for all their weight and
interest on the harmony of the whole. While, therefore, there are many
harmonies, there is but one harmony. The breaking up of the phenomena of
the universe into carefully guarded groups, and the allocation of certain
prominent Laws to each, it must never be forgotten, and however much Nature
lends herself to it, are artificial. We find an evolution in Botany, another
in Geology, and another in Astronomy, and the effect is to lead one insensibly
to look upon these as three distinct evolutions. But these sciences, of
course, are mere departments created by ourselves to facilitate knowledge--reductions
of Nature to the scale of our own intelligence. And we must beware of breaking
up Nature except for this purpose. Science has so dissected everything,
that it becomes a mental difficulty to put the puzzle together again; and
we must keep ourselves in practice by constantly thinking of Nature as
a whole, if science is not to be spoiled by its own refinements. Evolution
being found in so many different sciences, the likelihood is that it is
a universal principle. And there is no presumption whatever against this
Law and many others being excluded from the domain of the spiritual life.
On the other hand, there are very convincing reasons why the Natural Laws
should be continuous through the Spiritual Sphere--not changed in any
way to meet the new circumstances, but continuous as they stand.
But to the exposition. One of the most striking
generalisations of recent science is that even Laws have their Law. Phenomena
first, in the progress of knowledge, were grouped together, and Nature
shortly presented the spectacle of a cosmos, the lines of beauty being
the great Natural Laws. So long, however, as these Laws were merely great
lines running through Nature, so long as they remained isolated from one
another, the system of Nature was still incomplete. The principle which
sought Law among phenomena had to go further and seek a Law among the Laws.
Laws themselves accordingly came to be treated as they treated phenomena,
and found themselves finally grouped in a still narrower circle. That inmost
circle is governed by one great Law, the Law of Continuity. It is the Law
for Laws.
It is perhaps significant that few exact
definitions of Continuity are to be found. Even in Sir W. R. Grove's famous
paper, the fountain-head of the modern form of this far from modern truth,
there is no attempt at definition. In point of fact, its sweep is so magnificent,
it appeals so much more to the imagination than to the reason, that men
have preferred to exhibit rather than to define it. Its true greatness
consists in the final impression it leaves on the mind with regard to the
uniformity of Nature. For it was reserved for the Law of Continuity to
put the finishing touch to the harmony of the universe.
Probably the most satisfactory way to secure
for oneself a just appreciation of the Principle of Continuity is to try
to conceive the universe without it. The opposite of a continuous universe
would be a discontinuous universe, an incoherent and irrelevant universe--as
irrelevant in all its ways of doing things as an irrelevant person. In
effect, to withdraw Continuity from the universe would be the same as to
withdraw reason from an individual. The universe would run deranged; the
world would be a mad world.
There used to be a children's book which
bore the fascinating title of "The Chance World." It described
a world in which everything happened by chance. The sun might rise or it
might not; or it might appear at any hour, or the moon might come up instead.
When children were born they might have one head or a dozen heads, and
those heads might not be on their shoulders--there might be no shoulders--but
arranged about the limbs. If one jumped up in the air it was impossible
to predict whether he would ever come down again. That he came down yesterday
was no guarantee that he would do it next time. For every day antecedent
and consequent varied, and gravitation and everything else changed from
hour to hour. To-day a child's body might be so light that it was impossible
for it to descend from its chair to the floor; but tomorrow, in attempting
the experiment again, the impetus might drive it through a three-storey
house and dash it to pieces somewhere near the centre of the earth. In
this chance world cause and effect were abolished. Law was annihilated.
And the result to the inhabitants of such a world could only be that reason
would be impossible. It would be a lunatic world with a population of lunatics.
Now this is no more than a real picture of
what the world would be without Law, or the universe without Continuity.
And hence we come in sight of the necessity of some principle or Law according
to which Laws shall be, and be "continuous" throughout the system.
Man as a rational and moral being demands a pledge that if he depends on
Nature for any given result on the ground that Nature has previously led
him to expect such a result, his intellect shall not be insulted, nor his
confidence in her abused. If he is to trust Nature, in short, it must be
guaranteed to him that in doing so he will "never be put to confusion."
The authors of the Unseen Universe conclude their examination of
this principle by saying that "assuming the existence of a supreme
Governor of the universe, the Principle of Continuity may be said to be
the definite expression in words of our trust that He will not put us to
permanent intellectual confusion, and we can easily conceive similar expressions
of trust with reference to the other faculties of man." Or, as it
has been well put elsewhere, Continuity is the expression of "the
Divine Veracity in Nature." The most striking examples of the continuousness
of Law are perhaps those furnished by Astronomy, especially in connection
with the more recent applications of spectrum analysis. But even in the
case of the simpler Laws the demonstration is complete. There is no reason
apart from Continuity to expect that gravitation for instance should prevail
outside our world. But wherever matter has been detected throughout the
entire universe, whether in the form of star or planet, comet or meteorite,
it is found to obey that Law. "If there were no other indication of
unity than this, it would be almost enough. For the unity which is implied
in the mechanism of the heavens is indeed a unity which is all-embracing
and complete. The structure of our own bodies, with all that depends upon
it, is a structure governed by, and therefore adapted to, the same force
of gravitation which has determined the form and the movements of myriads
of worlds. Every part of the human organism is fitted to conditions which
would all be destroyed in a moment if the forces of gravitation were to
change or fail."
But it is unnecessary to multiply illustrations.
Having defined the principle we may proceed at once to apply it. And the
argument may be summed up in a sentence. As the Natural Laws are continuous
through the universe of matter and of space, so will they be continuous
through the universe of spirit.
If this be denied, what then? Those who deny
it must furnish the disproof. The argument is founded on a principle which
is now acknowledged to be universal; and the onus of disproof must
lie with those who may be bold enough to take up the position that a region
exists where at last the Principle of Continuity fails. To do this one
would first have to overturn Nature, then science, and last, the human
mind.
It may seem an obvious objection that many
of the Natural Laws have no connection whatever with the Spiritual World,
and as a matter of fact are not continued through it. Gravitation for instance--what
direct application has that in the Spiritual World? The reply is threefold.
First, there is no proof that it does not hold there. If the spirit be
in any sense material it certainly must hold. In the second place, gravitation
may hold for the Spiritual Sphere although it cannot be directly proved.
The spirit may be armed with powers which enable it to rise superior
to gravity. During the action of these powers gravity need be no more suspended
than in the case of a plant which rises in the air during the process of
growth. It does this in virtue of a higher Law and in apparent defiance
of the lower. Thirdly, if the spiritual be not material it still cannot
be said that gravitation ceases at that point to be continuous. It is not
gravitation that ceases--it is matter.
This point, however, will require development
for another reason. In the case of the plant just referred to, there is
a principle of growth or vitality at work superseding the attraction of
gravity. Why is there no trace of that Law in the Inorganic world? Is not
this another instance of the discontinuousness of Law? If the Law of vitality
has so little connection with the Inorganic kingdom--less even than gravitation
with the Spiritual, what becomes of Continuity? Is it not evident that
each kingdom of Nature has its own set of Laws which continue possibly
untouched for the specific kingdom but never extend beyond it?
It is quite true that when we pass from the
Inorganic to the Organic, we come upon a new set of Laws. But the reason
why the lower set do not seem to act in the higher sphere is not that they
are annihilated, but that they are overruled. And the reason why the higher
Laws are not found operating in the lower is not because they are not continuous
downwards, but because there is nothing for them there to act upon. It
is not Law that fails, but opportunity. The biological Laws are continuous
for life. Wherever there is life, that is to say, they will be found acting,
just as gravitation acts wherever there is matter.
We have purposely, in the last paragraph,
indulged in a fallacy. We have said that the biological Laws would certainly
be continuous in the lower or mineral sphere were there anything there
for them to act upon. Now Laws do not act upon anything. It has been stated
already, although apparently it cannot be too abundantly emphasized, that
Laws are only codes of operation, not themselves operators. The accurate
statement, therefore, would be that the biological Laws would be continuous
in the lower sphere were there anything there for them, not to act upon,
but to keep in order. If there is no acting going on, if there is
nothing being kept in order, the responsibility does not lie
with Continuity. The Law will always be at its post, not only when its
services are required, but wherever they are possible.
Attention is drawn to this, for it is a correction
one will find oneself compelled often to make in his thinking. It is so
difficult to keep out of mind the idea of substance in connection with
the Natural Laws, the idea that they are the movers, the essences, the
energies, that one is constantly on the verge of falling into false conclusions.
Thus a hasty glance at the present argument on the part of any one ill-furnished
enough to confound Law with substance or with cause would probably lead
to its immediate rejection.
For, to continue the same line of illustration,
it might next be urged that such a Law as Biogenesis, which, as
we hope to show afterwards, is the fundamental Law of life for both the
natural and spiritual worlds, can have no application whatsoever in the
latter sphere. The life with which it deals in the Natural World
does not enter at all into the Spiritual World, and therefore, it might
be argued, the Law of Biogenesis cannot be capable of extension into it.
The Law of Continuity seems to be snapped at the point where the natural
passes into the spiritual. The vital principle of the body is a different
thing from the vital principle of the spiritual life. Biogenesis deals
with Bios, with the natural life, with cells and germs, and as there are
no exactly similar cells and germs in the Spiritual World, the Law cannot
therefore apply. All which is as true as if one were to say that the fifth
proposition of the First Book of Euclid applies when the figures are drawn
with chalk upon a blackboard, but fails with regard to structures of wood
or stone.
The proposition is continuous for the whole
world, and, doubtless, likewise for the sun and moon and stars. The same
universality may be predicated likewise for the Law of life. Wherever there
is life we may expect to find it arranged, ordered, governed according
to the same Law. At the beginning of the natural life we find the Law that
natural life can only come from pre-existing natural life; and at the beginning
of the spiritual life we find that the spiritual life can only come from
pre-existing spiritual life. But there are not two Laws; there is one--Biogenesis.
At one end the Law is dealing with matter, at the other with spirit. The
qualitative terms natural and spiritual make no difference. Biogenesis
is the Law for all life and for all kinds of life, and the particular substance
with which it is associated is as indifferent to Biogenesis as it is to
Gravitation. Gravitation will act whether the substance be suns and stars,
or grains of sand, or raindrops. Biogenesis, in like manner, will act wherever
there is life.
The conclusion finally is, that from the
nature of Law in general, and from the scope of the Principle of Continuity
in particular, the Laws of the natural life must be those of the spiritual
life. This does not exclude, observe, the possibility of there being new
Laws in addition within the Spiritual Sphere; nor does it even include
the supposition that the old Laws will be the conspicuous Laws of the Spiritual
World, both which points will be dealt with presently. It simply asserts
that whatever else may be found, these must be found there; that they must
be there though they may not be seen there, and that they must project
beyond there if there be anything beyond there. If the Law of Continuity
is true, the only way to escape the conclusion that the Laws of the natural
life are the Laws, or at least are Laws, of the spiritual life,
is to say that there is no spiritual life. It is really easier to give
up the phenomena than to give up the Law.
Two questions now remain for further consideration--one
bearing on the possibility of new Law in the spiritual; the other, on the
assumed invisibility or inconspicuousness of the old Laws on account of
their subordination to the new.
Let us begin by conceding that there may
be new Laws. The argument might then be advanced that since, in Nature
generally, we come upon new Laws as we pass from lower to higher kingdoms,
the old still remaining in force, the newer Laws which one would expect
to meet in the Spiritual World would so transcend and overwhelm the older
as to make the analogy or identity, even if traced, of no practical use.
The new Laws would represent operations and energies so different, and
so much more elevated, that they would afford the true keys to the Spiritual
World. As Gravitation is practically lost sight of when we pass into the
domain of life, so Biogenesis would be lost sight of as we enter the Spiritual
Sphere.
We must first separate in this statement
the old confusion of Law and energy. Gravitation is not lost sight of in
the organic world. Gravity may be, to a certain extent, but not Gravitation;
and gravity only where a higher power counteracts its action. At the same
time it is not to be denied that the conspicuous thing in Organic Nature
is not the great Inorganic Law.
But the objection turns upon the statement
that reasoning from analogy we should expect, in turn, to lose sight of
Biogenesis as we enter the Spiritual Sphere. One answer to which is that,
as a matter of fact, we do not lose sight of it. So far from being invisible,
it lies across the very threshold of the Spiritual World, and, as we shall
see, pervades it everywhere. What we lose sight of, to a certain extent,
is the natural Bios. In the Spiritual World that is not the conspicuous
thing, and it is obscure there just as gravity becomes obscure in the Organic,
because something higher, more potent, more characteristic of the higher
plane, comes in. That there are higher energies, so to speak, in the Spiritual
World is, of course, to be affirmed alike on the ground of analogy and
of experience; but it does not follow that these necessitate other Laws.
A Law has nothing to do with potency. We may lose sight of a substance,
or of an energy, but it is an abuse of language to talk of losing sight
of Laws.
Are there, then, no other Laws in the Spiritual
World except those which are the projections or extensions of Natural Laws?
From the number of Natural Laws which are found in the higher sphere, from
the large territory actually embraced by them, and from their special prominence
throughout the whole region, it may at least be answered that the margin
left for them is small. But if the objection is pressed that it is contrary
to the analogy, and unreasonable in itself, that there should not be new
Laws for this higher sphere, the reply is obvious. Let these Laws be produced.
If the spiritual nature, in inception, growth, and development, does not
follow natural principles, let the true principles be stated and explained.
We have not denied that there may be new Laws. One would almost be surprised
if there were not. The mass of material handed over from the natural to
the spiritual, continuous, apparently, from the natural to the spiritual,
is so great that till that is worked out it will be impossible to say what
space is still left unembraced by Laws that are known, At present it is
impossible even approximately to estimate the size of that supposed terra
incognita. From one point of view it ought to be vast, from
another extremely small. But however large the region governed by the suspected
new Laws may be that cannot diminish by a hair's-breadth the size of the
territory where the old Laws still prevail. That territory itself, relatively
to us though perhaps not absolutely, must be of great extent. The size
of the key which is to open it, that is, the size of all the Natural Laws
which can be found to apply, is a guarantee that the region of the knowable
in the Spiritual World is at least as wide as these regions of the Natural
World which by the help of these Laws have been explored. No doubt also
there yet remain some Natural Laws to be discovered, and these in time
may have a further light to shed on the spiritual field. Then we may know
all that is? By no means. We may only know all that may be known. And that
may be very little. The Sovereign Will which sways the sceptre of that
invisible empire must be granted a right of freedom--that freedom which
by putting it into our wills He surely teaches us to honour in His. In
much of His dealing with us also, in what may be called the paternal relation,
there may seem no special Law--no Law except the highest of all, that Law
of which all other Laws are parts, that Law which neither Nature can wholly
reflect nor the mind begin to fathom--the Law of Love. He adds nothing
to that, however, who loses sight of all other Laws in that, nor does he
take from it who finds specific Laws everywhere radiating from it.
With regard to the supposed new Laws of the
Spiritual World--those Laws, that is, which are found for the first time
in the Spiritual World, and have no analogies lower down--there is this
to be said, that there is one strong reason against exaggerating either
their number or importance--their importance at least for our immediate
needs. The connection between language and the Law of Continuity has been
referred to incidentally already. It is clear that we can only express
the Spiritual Laws in language borrowed from the visible universe. Being
dependent for our vocabulary on images, if an altogether new and foreign
set of Laws existed in the Spiritual World, they could never take shape
as definite ideas from mere want of words. The hypothetical new Laws which
may remain to be discovered in the domain of Natural or Mental Science
may afford some index of these hypothetical higher Laws, but this would
of course mean that the latter were no longer foreign but in analogy, or,
likelier still, identical. If, on the other hand, the Natural Laws of the
future have nothing to say of these higher Laws, what can be said of them?
Where is the language to come from in which to frame them? If their disclosure
could be of any practical use to us, we may be sure the clue to them, the
revelation of them, in some way would have been put into Nature. If, on
the contrary, they are not to be of immediate use to man, it is better
they should not embarrass him. After all, then, our knowledge of higher
Law must be limited by our knowledge of the lower. The Natural Laws as
at present known, whatever additions may yet be made to them, give a fair
rendering of the facts of Nature. And their analogies or their projections
in the Spiritual sphere may also be said to offer a fair account of that
sphere, or of one or two conspicuous departments of it. The time has come
for that account to be given. The greatest among the theological Laws are
the Laws of Nature in disguise. It will be the splendid task of the theology
of the future to take off the mask and disclose to a waning scepticism
the naturalness of the supernatural.
It is almost singular that the identification
of the Laws of the Spiritual World with the Laws of Nature should so long
have escaped recognition. For apart from the probability on a priori
grounds, it is involved in the whole structure of Parable. When any two
Phenomena in the two spheres are seen to be analogous, the parallelism
must depend upon the fact that the Laws governing them are not analogous
but identical. And yet this basis for Parable seems to have been overlooked.
Thus Principal Shairp: "This seeing of Spiritual truths mirrored in
the face of Nature rests not on any fancied, but in a real analogy between
the natural and the spiritual worlds. They are in some sense which science
has not ascertained, but which the vital and religious imagination can
perceive, counterparts one of the other." But is not this the explanation,
that parallel Phenomena depend upon identical Laws? It is a question indeed
whether one can speak of Laws at all as being analogous. Phenomena are
parallel, Laws which make them so are themselves one.
In discussing the relations of the Natural
and Spiritual kingdom, it has been all but implied hitherto that the Spiritual
Laws were framed originally on the plan of the Natural; and the impression
one might receive in studying the two worlds for the first time from the
side of analogy would naturally be that the lower world was formed first,
as a kind of scaffolding on which the higher and Spiritual should be afterwards
raised. Now the exact opposite has been the case. The first in the field
was the Spiritual World.
It is not necessary to reproduce here in
detail the argument which has been stated recently with so much force in
the "Unseen Universe." The conclusion of that wort remains still
unassailed, that the visible universe has been developed from the unseen.
Apart from the general proof from the Law of Continuity, the more special
grounds of such a conclusion are, first, the fact insisted upon by Herschel
and Clerk-Maxwell that the atoms of which the visible universe is built
up bear distinct marks of being manufactured articles; and, secondly, the
origin in time of the visible universe is implied from known facts with
regard to the dissipation of energy. With the gradual aggregation of mass
the energy of the universe has been slowly disappearing, and this loss
of energy must go on until none remains. There is, therefore, a point in
time when the energy of the universe must come to an end; and that which
has its end in time cannot be infinite, it must also have had a beginning
in time. Hence the unseen existed before the seen.
There is nothing so especially exalted therefore
in the Natural Laws in themselves as to make one anxious to find them blood
relations of the Spiritual It is not only because these Laws are on the
ground, more accessible therefore to us who are but groundlings; not only,
as the "Unseen Universe" points out in another connection, "because
they are at the bottom of the list--are in fact the simplest and lowest--that
they are capable of being most readily grasped by the finite intelligences
of the universe." But their true significance lies in the fact that
they are on the list at all, and especially in that the list is the same
list. Their dignity is not as Natural Laws, but as Spiritual Laws, Laws
which, as already said, at one end are dealing with Matter, and at the
other with Spirit "The physical properties of matter form the alphabet
which is put into our hands by God, the study of which, if properly conducted,
will enable us more perfectly to read that great book which we call the
`Universe."' But, over and above this, the Natural Laws will enable
us to read that great duplicate which we call the "Unseen Universe,"
and to think and live in fuller harmony with it. After all, the true greatness
of Law lies in its vision of the Unseen. Law in the visible is the Invisible
in the visible. And to speak of Laws as Natural is to define them in their
application to a part of the universe, the sense-part, whereas a wider
survey would lead us to regard all Law as essentially Spiritual. To magnify
the Laws of Nature, as Laws of this small world of ours, is to take a provincial
view of the universe. Law is great not because the phenomenal world is
great, but because these vanishing lines are the avenues into the eternal
Order.
"Is it less reverent to regard the universe
as an illimitable avenue which leads up to God, than to look upon it as
a limited area bounded by an impenetrable wall, which, if we could only
pierce it would admit us at once into the presence of the Eternal?"
Indeed the authors of the " Unseen Universe" demur even to the
expression material universe, since, as they tell us "Matter
is (though it may seem paradoxical to say so) the less important half of
the material of the physical universe." And even Mr. Huxley, though
in a different sense, assures us, with Descartes, "that we know more
of mind than we do of body; that the immaterial world is a firmer reality
than the material."
How the priority of the Spiritual improves
the strength and meaning of the whole argument will be seen at once. The
lines of the Spiritual existed first, and it was natural to expect that
when the "Intelligence resident in the `Unseen"' proceeded to
frame the material universe He should go upon the lines already laid down.
He would, in short, simply project the higher Laws downward, so that the
Natural World would become an incarnation, a visible representation, a
working model of the spiritual. The whole function of the material world
lies here. The world is not a thing that is; it is not. It
is a thing that teaches, yet not even a thing--a show that shows, a teaching
shadow, However useless the demonstration otherwise, philosophy does well
in proving that matter is a non-entity. We work with it as the mathematician
with an x. The reality is alone the Spiritual. "It is very
well for physicists to speak of `matter,' but for men generally to call
this `a material world' is an absurdity. Should we call it an x-world
it would mean as much, viz., that we do not know what it is." When
shall we learn the true mysticism of one who was yet far from being a mystic--"We
look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which
are not seen are eternal?" The visible is the ladder up to the invisible;
the temporal is but the scaffolding of the eternal. And when the last immaterial
souls have climbed through this material to God, the scaffolding shall
be taken down, and the earth dissolved with fervent heat--not because it
was base, but because its work is done.