Chapter II: What May Be Seen Upon the Earth (3)

And yet, even in such a case, you must not boast too loudly of your power; for you will find it necessary to turn and return the term you have arrived at, in every direction; nor will it furnish you with the relation or the cause of the formidable progression whose _alpha_ and _omega_, whose beginning and end, escape us so absolutely.

Whence, in all its interminable metamorphoses, whence comes life? Whither goes it? Were our world to perish, its ruins would not cease, in their apparently disordered movements, to obey the law of universal gravitation: they would so group themselves as to form other worlds, resembling the system of which they were anteriorly the framework. But this force in no wise tells you why, when, and how life will make its appearance on these spheroids of revolution, which, in their state of ponderation, are attracted in the direct ratio of their masses and in the inverse ratio of the square of their distances.

* * * * *

This is not all. Man justly plumes himself on having arrived, by a process of experiment, at the following irrefragable axiom: that "the matter which serves for the movements of life renews itself, while the mould or form remains." You may even affirm, without appearing too adventurous, that the innumerable whirling globules which enter into the composition of the human blood are so many microscopical individuals, each with its own proper life,--infinitesimal forms which are born, and move to and fro, and disappear, and are renewed, without the individual--whose aggregate they perform--having any consciousness of all this activity.

Thus it is that the collective integral being which we call humanity, lives and is developed through the removal of the individuals composing it,--ephemeral creatures, each of whom thinks himself a god!

Must we stop there? That would be to declare humanity the last term of a progression whose commencement and end, according to our own acknowledgment, completely escape us: it would be at once a contradiction and a flagrant violation of the great law of infinite continuity which reigns everywhere.

* * * * *

To suppose that beyond humanity there is only nothingness, would be to enunciate an hypothesis as puerile as that which pretended the earth was not only the centre of our system, but the sole inhabited or inhabitable point in the immensity of space, and that the stars of the firmament were created for the service and pleasure of mortals. Suppose that this absurd belief were true; of what use, I ask you, would be all our agitations, all our flutterings, all our conceptions, all our conquests, all our glories, all our memories, when the end of the world would sweep away and annihilate our race? It was well worth the trouble, truly, of being born, of living, and of suffering, to terminate, after all, in so inglorious a fashion!... Adhere to your hypothesis, materialist, if you have the courage; surely, no man of sense can accept it!

* * * * *

Let us now resume the thread of our meditations.

The end of our system has come at last: the sun, the planets, and their satellites form but one chaotic igneous mass,--a brilliant fugitive luminary, new-born to the inhabitants of worlds which have escaped intact.

The dust of our extinguished world will not be scattered hap-hazard; the molecules of matter, indissolubly linked together by universal gravitation, will so arrange themselves as to constitute a new, and perhaps a more perfect world. But in the constitution of this new world, balanced like the old, our human bones, our ashes united with those of our ancestors, may have, as far as they are matter, their due share. As for the Thought which makes the true power of humanity, which gives to man all his value,--Thought, perfectible and transmissible,--it will contribute nothing, because it is absolutely imponderable and impassible. Will it then be lost for ever?

If the world is to last for ever, you may justly regard as immortal the indefinite transmission of Thought, and the perpetuity of the memory of certain great men. But will all this avail, if the world must perish?

The world will never end, you say; it is eternal.

But how do you know this? If it has had a beginning, as geology and astronomy prove,[90] it will also have an end. This end, however, will not be an annihilation; it will simply be, as we have already pointed out, a transformation of matter. As for the problems, whether nature itself was created, and whether it is eternal, let us leave them to the discussion of heated theoricians, who are too blind to perceive that some questions it is wisest neither to affirm nor deny, but _to know how to ignore_.

* * * * *

The error, then, which we have been considering, destroys itself through its consequences. Let us admit, in effect, that our world--such as it is, just as it is--will last for ever. In that case what becomes of the power and travail of humanity? All they have accomplished are some slight changes of the terrestrial crust, barely sufficient, here and there, to modify the influences of climate. A limited number of men labour, it is true, for the progress and full development of transmissible thought. But even supposing that, in the course of centuries, humanity succeeds in comprehending, it can only _grow_ through the development of the faculties of all its members, and the due balance of all the social forces by means of liberty. Supposing that reason, united to science and conscience, should finally combine in one family the various tribes and peoples scattered over the earth's broad surface; do you indulge yourself in the hope of crossing the limits of the human organization, and establishing the royalty of man "through the interpretation and imitation of Nature?"

Do you cherish the idea of penetrating, through the perfect union of all your intellectual forces, the mysteries of creation?

No; you would never dare to form such a hope, to nourish such an idea, at least unless you felt that the earth (which you must first demonstrate) comprehends in itself the whole universe, that the humanity swarming on its surface is eternal, that every other creature is absolutely subordinate to it: in a word, that Man is all!

But we know how limited is human power. We are not masters even of the mechanism of the body; the movements of organic life are independent of our will; we can neither command the stomach, the lungs, nor the heart: that marvellous process of absorption and elimination, that perpetual movement hither or thither which constitutes the essence of the assimilative function, goes on in us--as in all living beings, animal or vegetable--completely outside our sphere of activity. Then, without quitting our planet, how numerous are the movements which still escape the human will!

* * * * *

It is quite different when we lift up our eyes to examine the face of heaven. We have no grasp whatever of the incommensurable spiraloids of innumerable worlds to which our own belongs; we have no means of communicating with the inhabitants of other planets; we cannot establish any interchange of thought with the _men_ (if there be any) of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,--who form, perhaps, like the _men_ of the earth, the most elevated circle of material life, varying under an infinity of forms upon each of their floating domiciles.... I see you smiling, reader, because you do not believe that these _other earths_--satellites of the sun, like our own--are inhabited by beings analagous to our human race. You are at liberty not to believe it. But then, to be in agreement with yourselves, you ought to declare in favour of the Science of the Past, though demonstrated to be false, against the Science of the Present. Will you do so? Certainly not. But then, of two things, one: either you will be obliged to make the earth an unique exception, a kind of monstrosity in the midst of the other mechanism of the universe, which will be to throw yourself back upon the erroneous science of the ancients; or you must perforce admit that the earth is not specially privileged, and that the other planets, its companions, have also their human inhabitants.

* * * * *

Is this all? Alas, all this is nothing! The other worlds whose suns appear to us under the form of scintillating points or stars, will, undoubtedly, in like manner, possess their systems of planets and satellites. Why should they divaricate from the general plan of the universe? Now, multiply the number of the stars--who has counted them?--with the probable number of their planets, and you will gain, if this be permitted you, the number of _humanities_ who people yonder star-sown space. And it is not only with _these_ we must be able to correspond, but with the humanities of all the nebulæ of all the firmaments--for remember our starry heaven itself is but a nebula--that we must establish an interchange of ideas, if you would have your power, and civilisation, and intellectual royalty, something more than a mere optical illusion of your pride.

* * * * *

You do not cease to proclaim as an axiom that "there are no abrupt intervals in Nature;" that Nature never ventures upon sudden leaps or bounds ("in natura non datur saltus"), and yet you would make an exception for the world of thought--a world which no more lies outside the laws of nature than does the physical world. The former ought even to secure our preference; it is there only that we are free, that we can become true creators, by creating for ourselves our own happiness; that we can grow great before our own eyes, by following, not the tyrannous will of the _brute_, but the tender voice of the _angel_; by listening to conscience--that pure and infallible counsellor--conscience, the foundation of all justice, the latent force of generations passing away and coming, the universal gravitation of our species as of all the ultra-terrestrial humanities.

* * * * *

But how can the humanities, with which we suppose the universe to be peopled,--how can they communicate with one another?

The law of attraction comprehends not only the celestial bodies, but also their intervals, the intersidereal spaces. Do these spaces present a void to the thinking beings who probably people the stars?

Everything, force and matter, testifies to an entire unity of plan or thought, and the mind which is powerful enough to rise above all the attractions and influences of the body, the mind which, by its continuous labour, alone renders life and man of any importance, the mind once detached from the animal nature which it drags behind it like a prisoner to the chariot of his conqueror, shall it be inferior to inert matter? shall it be less than a ship without its compass? Continuous here, shall that continuity be elsewhere broken up? Surely this is impossible.

* * * * *

But how are we to recognise this continuity of essence in a spirit which, like man's, appears unavoidably fixed, like a parasite, to the surface of a planet?

Here lies the whole difficulty of the question; a question all the more perplexing because, in the search after scientific truth, the mind walks surely and steadily, except when resting upon the senses,--which are the backbone, so to speak, of the experimental method.

Answers, indeed, are not wanting, for each religion has its own. Every creed attempts to solve the problem. But then, faith is required to accept the answer or solution, and alas! faith is not implanted in every soul. It is useless, therefore, to wish that it might be the gift of those who, to the authority of tradition and long-established dogmas, prefer the liberty of discussion and the axioms of science. Are our bigots actually aware of what they do when they seek to compel into their circle of belief those minds which tend to escape from it at a tangent? We assert that in so doing they are guilty of an act of iniquity, of a veritable blasphemy.

* * * * *

Some explanation is necessary here. You believe, we hope, in the majesty, power, wisdom, and mercy of God, in the revelations He has vouchsafed to man, in the immortality of the soul. These are great problems, however; the greatest problems a mortal can venture to discuss. Already I see the bigot frowning; he professes to be shocked by the word "problem," he would fain substitute for it that of "certainty" or "truth." Well, through faith we accept them as truths; but, metaphysically speaking, they may be regarded as problems which the All-wise has submitted to man's earnest consideration. In fact, the God in whom you and we believe, in whom you and we put all our trust, has surrounded them with something of uncertainty, has invested them with so much of doubtfulness as may test our faith.

Yes, in doing so, He has had a purpose to fulfil. Let us think of a geometrician--and an ancient writer said that God, by creating the world, created geometry--for the sake of exercising the minds of his pupils, his children, giving them a problem to be solved.

If at the same time, he placed before them the solution, he would assuredly fail in his object. No means would remain of distinguishing the capable from the incapable, the studious from the indifferent, the idler from the worker, if they all found the question answered beforehand!

True, if the problem is too difficult, if the solution lies beyond the faculties of those whom he wishes to test and put to the proof, the master will not fail to furnish them with all the elements necessary for their guidance, whether they consider it from without, or whether they consider it with the help of their own inner consciousness.

But science and conscience stand in need of an equally difficult task; the first, that it may learn to observe clearly, the latter that it may learn to act purely. And it is here, above all, that the two-fold nature of man becomes a perplexity and a stumbling-block. On the one hand, man creates theories, in order to disembarrass himself of the science which calls for the exercise of powerful and laborious observation; on the other, he creates dogmas, which he hopes may lull to sleep that ever active, ever restless conscience, which demands fertile and beneficial actions, and rejects barren or deceitful phrases.

It is true that to many minds the discussion of the questions at which we have hinted seems a sorry work, because the time given for their discussion is necessarily so limited. What is life? they say. What can be effected in so short an interval? What can man hope to accomplish in the few short years that intervene between manhood, when the mind is mature, and old age, when the intellect grows enfeebled? These are the men who echo the old poet's mournful cry:--[91]

"A good that never satisfies the mind,
A beauty fading like the April flowers,
A sweet with floods of gall that runs combined,
A pleasure passing ere in thought made ours,
An honour that more fickle is than wind,
A glory at opinion's frown that lowers,
A treasury which bankrupt Time devours,
A knowledge than grave ignorance more blind,
A vain delight our equals to command,
A style of greatness in effect a dream,
A swelling thought of holding sea and land,
A servile lot, decked with a pompous name;
Are the strange ends we toil for here below,
Till wisest death make us our urns know."

But the poet, while taking this despondent view of life, forgets--not only that it is an opportunity, but--that it is the first stage of an eternal existence, and that the progress begun now shall be continued hereafter, when the mind, freed from its material clogs, shall enter upon the full fruition of its wondrous powers. And however brief it may be, is it not better it should be devoted to noble work than to ignoble idleness? Is it not better to use it as a time of preparation than to waste it in empty pleasures? To the despairing wail of the poet just quoted we would oppose, as far worthier of a gallant spirit, Ben Jonson's admirable conclusions:--

"It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make men better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in short measure life may perfect be."

This is the true philosophy; to make our life as perfect as our faculties will permit, and to look upon it as the introduction to a grander life, where the problems here discussed shall find a satisfactory solution.

"Oh for the time when in our seraph wings
We veil our brows before the Eternal Throne--
The day when, drinking knowledge at its springs,
We know as we are known."

Let us beware, however, when we devote our life to the pursuit of wisdom, that we do not make a false start. Do not let us diverge into the narrow way of bigotry and dogma. It is the property of exclusive and intolerant error to dominate and to reign alone. For this reason we systematically refuse and reject all control; and it is thus men have been fatally led to lay a rash hand upon intellectual liberty,--liberty, which the All-wise Himself has refrained from touching! Such is the early taint of our race, the moral situation of humanity.

But retribution has followed close upon this violation of all that is most sacred in our human world. The schools of philosophy, and the infallible creeds, founded upon authority to the exclusion of all mental and spiritual freedom, have never ceased to be at war with one another, and instead of labouring for that union which is strength,--that union so necessary to the happiness and advancement of humanity,--they have everywhere sown irreconcilable antipathies and bloody discords. Such is the religion of those who, under a pretence of worshipping God, worship only themselves! History affords us abundant illustrations of this melancholy truth.

Finally, let us return to our metamorphosis. The butterfly, which the Greeks designated by the same word as the soul, ψυχή, springs, like every living creature, from an egg. But see what a transformation this egg undergoes! It becomes a caterpillar--a transitory form of animal life, remarkable for its voracity; this caterpillar is in its turn transformed; it grows into a chrysalis,--a temporary tomb, and whence issues the winged insect, alone adapted to the discharge of all the functions of a perfect animal. Gluttonous and greedy of enjoyment, the caterpillar lived for itself. So the caterpillar has no sex; while the butterfly hovers from flower to flower, has to seek therein its own nourishment, there to find the companion with whom its being is to be united.

* * * * *

This metamorphosis impresses the observer; principally because its periods are so distinct, and are so plainly marked by stages, which have all the appearance of veritable species. But he would greatly err if he thought it confined to a certain class of insects. All insects,--nay, more, all animals, including man himself,--undergo certain transformations in the course of their lives. Metamorphosis plays an important part in the unity of the general scheme of Creative Thought. If it is not always recognised, the reason is, that its phases are not boldly marked, that the periods blend into one another, that the various stages are effaced in the continuousness of the transformation.

* * * * *

But let not this continuity prevent the observer from detecting or discerning _in that which is, that which is to come_. In the caterpillar he must learn to see the chrysalis; in the chrysalis he must be ready to recognise the future butterfly. And in all these changes the thoughtful mind may acknowledge a significant emblem of that immortality of the soul, that final transformation of humanity, which the Word of God has promised to us:--

"Child of the sun! pursue thy rapturous flight,
Mingling with her thou lov'st in fields of light;
And, where the fields of Paradise unfold,
Quaff fragrant nectars from their cups of gold.
There shall thy wings, rich as an evening sky,
Expand and shut with silent ecstasy!
Yet wert thou once a worm, a thing that crept
On the bare earth, then wrought a tomb and slept.
And such is man; soon from his cell of clay
To burst a seraph in the blaze of day."[92]

To assure ourselves by observation that, in living matter, there are organs irrevocably destined to decay or disappear, while others incline and grow towards perfection, is certainly one of the noblest studies imaginable. If philosophers, instead of employing their time in profitless speculations, devoted themselves to the examination of the great Book of Nature, God's second revelation, they would long ago have discovered what they are still seeking.

And we should now know how to distinguish, in man as in the insect, the rudimentary condition of his future life; and the belief in the immortality of the soul would not only be the creed of the Christian, but a scientific truth.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: Reference is here invited to Humboldt's _thermal_ and _isothermal_ lines. See Dr A. K. Johnston's "Physical Atlas," and Humboldt's "Kosmos."]

[Footnote 79: Sir J. Herschel, "Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy."]

[Footnote 80: Professor Balfour's "Manual of Botany," pp. 566-568.]

[Footnote 81: Pliny, "Hist. Nat.," xxii. 46.]

[Footnote 82: Martial, "Epigram.," i. 21.]

[Footnote 83: "Annales des Sciences Naturelles," i. 18.]

[Footnote 84: Count de Castelnau, "Histoire Naturelle des Coléoptères," i. 7.]

[Footnote 85: As recorded, in a condensed form, in _The Academy_ (Feb. 12, 1870), pp. 131, 132.]

[Footnote 86: This section is translated from M. Hoefer, without addition or alteration.]

[Footnote 87: From these slow movements, which have been designated the "secular inequalities," we might with some probability infer the end of the world, which even Newton regarded as certain,--at least, unless "the Great Architect at times retouched His work." The inequalities or secular variations affect the elements of the orbits, such as the inclination of the plane of the orbit,--the semi-major axis of the ellipse, or the mean distance of the planet from the sun,--the eccentricity of the ellipse, or the relation between the distance which separates the forces from the centre and the semi-major axis assumed to be unity,--and the movements of the perihelions and the nodes. These elements change with extreme slowness. Thus, the inclination of Jupiter diminishes by 8" in a century; and that of Saturn increases by 9"; but the very ecliptic varies,--it diminishes 33" in a century.

The variations of the eccentricities are scarcely computable by centuries; their effect is, that the ellipses insensibly approach or recede from a circular form.

It is demonstrated by mathematical analysis that these variations are periodical, and confined within narrow limits, in such wise that "the planetary system can oscillate only round a certain mean, from which it never departs except by a very small quantity." But may not this very mean, which we have taken to be constant, oscillate round a more distant and still more constant mean?

Observation had long ago detected a continual acceleration in the movement of Jupiter, and a not less certain diminution in the movement of Saturn. Now, to say of a star that its velocity augments, is to declare that it draws nearer its centre of movement. To say that its velocity decreases, is to affirm that it is retiring from that centre.

It would seem, therefore, that Jupiter,[88] the greatest of our planets, is destined to be swallowed up, or absorbed, in the incandescent mass of the Sun, while Saturn,[89] with its belt and eight satellites, will gradually wander further and further into the mysterious infinity of space. It is true enough that these catastrophes are very distant,--distant to a period of time which the human imagination cannot even grasp,--and the "common herd" will certainly feel no anxious apprehension about an event which will not take place until myriads of years have elapsed.

Yet, in the last century, the question excited the curiosity of certain scientific societies, and they directed the attention of the geometers to these formidable perturbations. Euler and Lagrange spent their keen intellects upon them to no profit. Laplace discovered that between the mean velocities of Jupiter and Saturn the ratios are simple, and capable of calculation; five times the velocity of Saturn perceptibly equals ten times the velocity of Jupiter. These terms, which, in the regularly-decreasing and indefinite series, might have been neglected, have acquired a value which was worthy of being taken into consideration. From thence result, in the movements of the two planets, those perturbations whose complete development necessitates a period of upwards of nine hundred years.... This will be, then, another periodic inequality.

But, independently of the centres, which we suppose to be in themselves variable, may there not exist, in the space traversed by our planet, some cause of perturbation? Is our system so isolated in the universe that it neither receives nor loses aught of that which constitutes its force and matter? Is there no solidarity between its different worlds? And if this solidarity exists, is not their transformation a necessity?]

[Footnote 88: The equatorial diameter of Jupiter in English miles is 56,065; its density is ·24 of the Earth's; its distance from the sun, 494,270,000 miles; inclination of its orbit to the ecliptic, 1° 18' 51".]

[Footnote 89: The equatorial diameter of Saturn in English miles is 79,147; its density, ·12, the Earth = 1; its distance from the sun, 906,200,000 miles; and the inclination of its orbit to the ecliptic, 2° 29' 36".]

[Footnote 90: Our author, it must be understood, is considering these questions apart from the Scriptural standpoint.]

[Footnote 91: William Drummond.]

[Footnote 92: Samuel Rogers.]

APPENDIX.