Chapter XX: Part III: BIOLOGY.--Organosophy, Phytogeny, Phyto-physiology, (12)

Of the alleged connexion between inorganic forms and the wholly irregular and the castellated styles of building, we have, I think, some proof in the fact that when an edifice is irregular, the _more_ irregular it is the more it pleases us. I see no way of accounting for this fact, save by supposing that the greater the irregularity the more strongly are we reminded of the inorganic forms typified, and the more vividly are aroused the agreeable ideas of rugged and romantic scenery associated with those forms.

Further evidence of these several relationships of styles of architecture to classes of natural objects, is supplied by the kinds of decoration they respectively represent. The public buildings of Greece, while characterized in their outlines by the bilateral symmetry seen in the higher animals, have their pediments and entablatures covered with sculptured men and beasts. Egyptian temples and Assyrian palaces, while similarly symmetrical in their general plan, are similarly ornamented on their walls and at their doors. In Gothic, again, with its grove-like ranges of clustered columns, we find rich foliated ornaments abundantly employed. And accompanying the totally irregular, inorganic outlines of old castles, we see neither vegetable nor animal decorations. The bare, rock-like walls are surmounted by battlements, consisting of almost plain blocks, which remind us of the projections on the edge of a rugged cliff.

But perhaps the most significant fact is the harmony that may be observed between each type of architecture and the scenes in which it is indigenous. For what is the explanation of this harmony, unless it be that the predominant character of surrounding things has, in some way, determined the mode of building adopted?

That the harmony exists is clear. Equally in the cases of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome, town life preceded the construction of the symmetrical buildings that have come down to us. And town life is one in which, as already observed, the majority of familiar objects are symmetrical. We instinctively feel the naturalness of this association. Out amid the fields, a formal house, with a central door flanked by an equal number of windows to right and left, strikes us as unrural--looks as though transplanted from a street; and we cannot look at one of those stuccoed villas, with mock windows carefully arranged to balance the real ones, without being reminded of the suburban residence of a retired tradesman.

In styles indigenous in the country, we not only find the general irregularity characteristic of surrounding things, but we may trace some kinship between each kind of irregularity and the local circumstances. We see the broken rocky masses amid which castles are commonly placed, mirrored in their stern, inorganic forms. In abbeys, and such-like buildings, which are commonly found in comparatively sheltered districts, we find no such violent dislocations of masses and outlines; and the nakedness appropriate to the fortress is replaced by decorations reflecting the neighbouring woods. Between a Swiss cottage and a Swiss view there is an evident relationship. The angular roof, so bold and so disproportionately large when compared to other roofs, reminds one of the adjacent mountain peaks; and the broad overhanging eaves have a sweep and inclination like those of the lower branches of a pine tree. Consider, too, the apparent kinship between the flat roofs that prevail in Eastern cities, interspersed with occasional minarets, and the plains that commonly surround them, dotted here and there by palm trees. You cannot contemplate a picture of one of these places, without being struck by the predominance of horizontal lines, and their harmony with the wide stretch of the landscape.

That the congruity here pointed out should hold in every case must not be expected. The Pyramids, for example, do not seem to come under this generalization. Their repeated horizontal lines do indeed conform to the flatness of the neighbouring desert; but their general contour seems to have no adjacent analogue. Considering, however, that migrating races, carrying their architectural systems with them, would naturally produce buildings having no relationship to their new localities; and that it is not always possible to distinguish styles which are indigenous, from those which are naturalized; numerous anomalies must be looked for.

The general idea above illustrated will perhaps be somewhat misinterpreted. Possibly some will take the proposition to be that men _intentionally_ gave to their buildings the leading characteristics of neighbouring objects. But this is not what is meant. I do not suppose that they did so in times past, any more than they do so now. The hypothesis is, that in their choice of forms men are unconsciously influenced by the forms encircling them. That flat-roofed, symmetrical architecture should have originated in the East, among pastoral tribes surrounded by their herds and by wide plains, seems to imply that the builders were swayed by the horizontality and symmetry to which they were habituated. And the harmony which we have found to exist in other cases between indigenous styles and their localities, implies the general action of like influences. Indeed, on considering the matter psychologically, I do not see how it could well be otherwise. For as all conceptions must be made up of images, and parts of images, received through the senses--as it is impossible for a man to conceive any design save one of which the elements have come into his mind from without; and as his imagination will most readily run in the direction of his habitual perceptions; it follows, almost necessarily, that the characteristic which predominates in these habitual perceptions must impress itself on his design.

XIII. THE USE OF ANTHROPOMORPHISM.

That long fit of indignation which seizes all generous natures when in youth they begin contemplating human affairs, having fairly spent itself, there slowly grows up a perception that the institutions, beliefs, and forms so vehemently condemned are not wholly bad. This reaction runs to various lengths. In some, merely to a comparative contentment with the arrangements under which they live. In others to a recognition of the fitness that exists between each people and its government, tyrannical as that may be. In some, again, to the conviction, that hateful though it is to us, and injurious as it would be now, slavery was once beneficial--was one of the necessary phases of human progress. Again, in others, to the suspicion that great benefit has indirectly arisen from the perpetual warfare of past times; insuring as this did the spread of the strongest races, and so providing good raw material for civilization. And in a few this reaction ends in the generalization that all modes of human thought and action subserve, in the times and places in which they occur, some useful function: that though bad in the abstract, they are relatively good--are the best which the then existing conditions admit of.

A startling conclusion to which this faith in the essential beneficence of things commits us, is that the religious creeds through which mankind successively pass, are, during the eras in which they are severally held, the best that could be held; and that this is true, not only of the latest and most refined creeds, but of all, even to the earliest and most gross. Those who regard men's faiths as given to them from without--as having origins either directly divine or diabolical, and who, considering their own as the sole example of the one, class all the rest under the other, will think this a very shocking opinion. I can imagine, too, that many of those who have abandoned current theologies, and now regard religions as so many natural products of human nature--men who, having lost that antagonism towards their old creed which they felt while shaking themselves free from it, can now see that it was highly beneficial to past generations, and is beneficial still to a large part of mankind;--I can imagine even these hardly prepared to admit that all religions, down to the lowest Fetichism, have, in their places, fulfilled useful functions. If such, however, will consistently develop their ideas, they will find this inference involved.

For if it be true that humanity in its corporate as well as in its individual aspect, is a growth and not a manufacture, it is obvious that during each phase men's theologies, as well as their political and social arrangements, must be determined into such forms as the conditions require. In the one case as in the other, by a tentative process, things from time to time re-settle themselves in a way that best consists with national equilibrium. As out of plots and the struggles of chieftains, it continually results that the strongest gets to the top, and by virtue of his proved superiority ensures a period of quiet, and gives society time to grow; as out of incidental expedients there periodically arise new divisions of labour, which get permanently established only by serving men's wants better than the previous arrangements did; so, the creed which each period evolves is one more in conformity with the needs of the time than the creed which preceded it. Not to rest in general statements, however, let us consider why this must be so. Let us see whether, in the genesis of men's ideas of deity, there is not involved a necessity to conceive of deity under the aspect most influential with them.

It is now generally admitted that a more or less idealized humanity is the form which every conception of a personal God must take. Anthropomorphism is an inevitable result of the laws of thought. We cannot take a step towards constructing an idea of God without the ascription of human attributes. We cannot even speak of a divine will without assimilating the divine nature to our own; for we know nothing of volition save as a property of our own minds.

While this anthropomorphic tendency, or rather necessity, is manifested by themselves with sufficient grossness--a grossness that is offensive to those more advanced--Christians are indignant at the still grosser manifestations of it seen among uncivilized men. Certainly, such conceptions as those of some Polynesians, who believe that their gods feed on the souls of the dead, or as those of the Greeks, who ascribed to the personages of their Pantheon every vice, from domestic cannibalism downward, are repulsive enough. But if, ceasing to regard these notions from the outside, we more philosophically regard them from the inside--if we consider how they looked to believers, and observe the relationships they bore to the natures and needs of such; we shall begin to think of them with some tolerance. The question to be answered is, whether these beliefs were beneficent in their effects on those who held them; not whether they would be beneficent for us, or for perfect men; and to this question the answer must be that while absolutely bad, they were relatively good.

For is it not obvious that the savage man will be most effectually controlled by his fears of a savage deity? Must it not happen, that if his nature requires great restraint, the supposed consequences of transgression, to be a check upon him, must be proportionately terrible; and for these to be proportionately terrible, must not his god be conceived as proportionately cruel and revengeful? Is it not well that the treacherous, thievish, lying Hindoo should believe in a hell where the wicked are boiled in cauldrons, rolled down mountains bristling with knives, and sawn asunder between flaming iron posts? And that there may be provided such a hell, is it not needful that he should believe in a divinity delighting in human immolations and the self-torture of fakirs? Does it not seem clear that during the earlier ages in Christendom, when men's feelings were so hard that a holy father could describe one of the delights of heaven to be the contemplation of the torments of the damned--does it not seem clear that while the general nature was so unsympathetic, there needed, to keep men in order, all the prospective tortures described by Dante, and a deity implacable enough to inflict them?

And if, as we thus see, it is well for the savage man to believe in a savage god, then we may also see the great usefulness of this anthropomorphic tendency; or, as before said, necessity. We have in it another illustration of that essential beneficence of things visible everywhere throughout nature. From this inability under which we labour to conceive of a deity save as some idealization of ourselves, it inevitably results that in each age, among each people, and to a great extent in each individual, there must arise just that conception of deity best adapted to the needs of the case. If, being violent and bloodthirsty, the nature be one calling for stringent control, it evolves the idea of a ruler still more violent and bloodthirsty, and fitted to afford this control. When, by ages of social discipline, the nature has been partially humanized, and the degree of restraint required has become less, the diabolical characteristics before ascribed to the deity cease to be so predominant in the conception of him. And gradually, as all need for restraint disappears, this conception approximates towards that of a purely beneficent necessity. Thus, man's constitution is in this, as in other respects, self-adjusting, self-balancing. The mind itself evolves a compensating check to its own movements; varying always in proportion to the requirement. Its centrifugal and its centripetal forces are necessarily in correspondence, because the one generates the other. And so we find that the forms of both religious and secular rule follow the same law. As an ill-controlled national character produces a despotic terrestrial government, so also does it produce a despotic celestial government--the one acting through the senses, the other through the imagination; and in the converse case the same relationship holds good.

Organic as this relationship is in its origin, no artificial interference can permanently affect it. Whatever perturbations an external agency may seem to produce, they are soon neutralized in fact, if not in appearance. I was recently struck with this in reading a missionary account of the "gracious visitations of the Holy Spirit at Vewa," one of the Feejee islands. Describing a "penitent meeting," the account says:--

"Certainly the feelings of the Vewa people were not ordinary. They
literally roared for hours together for the disquietude of their
souls. This frequently terminated in fainting from exhaustion, which
was the only respite some of them had till they found peace. They no
sooner recovered their consciousness than they prayed themselves
first into an agony, then again into a state of entire
insensibility."

Now these Feejee islanders are the most savage of all the uncivilized races. They are given to cannibalism, infanticide, and human sacrifices; they are so bloodthirsty and so treacherous, that members of the same family dare not trust each other; and, in harmony with these characteristics, they have for their aboriginal god, a serpent. Is it not clear then, that these violent emotions which the missionaries describe, these terrors and agonies of despair which they rejoiced over, were nothing but the worship of the old god under a new name? Is it not clear that these Feejees had simply understood those parts of the Christian creed which agree in spirit with their own--the vengeance, the perpetual torments, the diabolism of it; that these, harmonizing with their natural conceptions of divine rule, were realized by them with extreme vividness; and that the extremity of the fear which made them "literally roar for hours together," arose from the fact that while they could fully take in and believe the punitive element, the merciful one was beyond their comprehension? This is the obvious inference. And it carries with it the further one, that in essence their new belief was merely their old one under a new form--the same substantial conception with a different history and different names.

However great, therefore, may be the seeming change adventitiously produced in a people's religion, the anthropomorphic tendency prevents it from being other than a superficial change--insures such modifications of the new religion as to give it all the potency of the old one--obscures whatever higher elements there may be in it until the people have reached the capability of being acted upon by them: and so, re-establishes the equilibrium between the impulses and the control they need. If any one requires detailed illustrations of this, he will find them in abundance in the history of the modifications of Christianity throughout Europe.

Ceasing then to regard heathen theologies from the personal point of view, and considering them solely with reference to the function they fulfil where they are indigenous, we must recognise them in common with all theologies, as good for their time and places; and this mental necessity which disables us from conceiving a deity save as some idealization of ourselves, we must recognise as the agency by which harmony is produced and maintained between every phase of human character and its religious creed.

INDEX.

A

Abstract and concrete, relations of, 174.

Actions, voluntary and involuntary, 319.

Analogies of the rudest societies to the lowest forms of life, 398,
402.

Analogies of function between living beings and societies, 410.

Annulosa, structure of compared to that of nations, 408, 422.

Anthropomorphism, necessity of, 422.

Architectural ideas, origin of, 439.

Architecture, relationship to natural objects, 435; illustrations of,
435-437; town, why symmetrical, 435; country, why irregular, 437.

Arts, interconnexion of, 187.

Astronomic influences upon climate produce breaks in geological
succession, 356.

Automatic actions of men and governments, 426.

Australia, fauna of, 350.

B

Bain "On the Emotions and Will," estimate of, 302.

Beauty, its evolution from utility, 429, 433.

Beliefs, how to judge of them, 442.

Bow, derivation of the, 78.

Breaks in the geological record, Hugh Miller upon, 355; produced by
astronomic causes, 356; by re-distributions of land and sea, 359.

Buildings related to landscape, 438; cause of incongruities in, 438;
relation unintentional, 439.

C

Cambrian rocks, inference from their thickness, 366.

Calculus, origin of, 158.

Castles, built with no reference to art, 430.

Cause, single, produces more than one effect, 32; illustrated in
geological phenomena, 35; in chemical, 40; in organic evolution,
42; in social progress, 50; in use of locomotive engine, 53.

Central America, effects of subsidence of, 38.

Centrifugal force and condensation, 287.

Cerebrum, analogy of to houses of parliament, 423, 426.

Circulation in animal bodies and bodies politic, 410, 411; rates of
movement in, 417; of money and blood-discs, 414.

Classifications of science, progress of, 183; what they indicate,
125; Oken's, 125; Hegel's, 128; Comte's, 131; serial arrangement
vicious, 144.

Classification, the mental process in, 147; advances with
rationality, 157; how it has aided science, 182; of the cognitions,
321; of the feelings, 323; in Psychology, for the present must be
provisional, 300, 301.

Climate, changes in, produced by astronomic rhythm, 356; by
re-distributions of land and sea, 359.

Comets, formation of, 256; orbits of, 258; distribution of, 259, 261.

Common knowledge, nature of, 117; relation of, to science, 118, 122.

Comte's hierarchy of the sciences, 131.

Consciousness, mystery of, 197.

Condensation of nebula, 250.

Contrast, its relation to beauty, 432.

Creeds suited to the age that holds them, 441, 443.

Curtsy, origin of, 79.

D

Densities of the planets, 278-280.

Development hypothesis, neither proved nor disproved by Paleontology,
367, 376; defense of, 379.

Direct creation inconceivable, 378; no examples of, 377; origin of
the notion, 383.

E

Earth, internal constitution of, 290.

Earth's crust, 5; contraction of, 35.

Ectoderm social and embryonic, 419.

Education, bearing of evolution of science upon, 193.

Emotions in animals, genesis of, 315.

Emotional language, 232; importance of, 235, 238.

Engine, locomotive, results of invention of, 53.

Equality, origin of notion of, 152,158; of things and relations, 153.

Evolution of the emotions, 311.

Evolution of governmental and nervous structures, 420.

F

Fashion, origin of, 90; corruption of, 91.

Feeling and action, relation of, 199, 208.

Feeling, mystery of, 197; effects of surplus in producing laughter,
201; why it disturbs the intellect, 207.

Feeling a stimulus to muscular action, 211, 220; shown in loudness of
voice, 215; in quality or timbre, 215; in pitch, 216; in intervals,
217; in variability of pitch, 219; relation of, to vocal sounds in
ourselves, 220; in others, 220; causes prostration, 222;
classification of the feelings, 323.

Feejee islanders, penitent meeting among, 444.

Final cause, 262, 272, 275, 293.

Fossils as tests of age and position, 339, 347.

Function of music, 231-235.

G

Generalizations, premature, use of, 323; as seen in history of
Astronomy, 326; in Geology, 327.

Genesis of new emotions in civilization, 313; in animals, 315.

Geological evidence, value of, 8.

Geologic "systems," are they universal? 335-339.

Geometry, origin of, 158, 167.

God, origin of the conception of, 65.

Gothic architecture, source of, 435, 436.

Government, rise of, 12, 69, 92; three-fold nature of, 13, 65, 83;
separation of civil from religious, 69; early need of severe, 85;
progressive amelioration of, 88; course of all, 114; results from
national character, 387.

Great men, relation of to social changes, 388.

Greek and Roman architecture, derivation of, 435.

H

Heathen theologies, estimate of, 44.

Heat of heavenly bodies, source of, 292.

Hegel's classification of philosophy, 128.

History as commonly studied, small, value of, 385.

Hobb's parallelism of society and the human body, 389.

Homogeneous, change of to heterogeneous, 3; seen in genesis of solar
system, 3; in phenomena of earth's crust, 5; in the advance of life
in general, 7; in the progress of man, 10; in growth of
civilization, 12; in government, 13; in language, 17; in painting
and sculpture, 20; in poetry, music, and dancing, 24; cause of this
universal change, 32.

Hutton's geological system, 327; contrast of the modern with, 330.

Hydra compared with primitive tribes, 401, 407, 412, 420.

Hydrozoa, analogies of, 401, 403, 412.

I

Industrial organization, 385.

Industrial arrangements, development of compared with that of the
alimentary organs, 410.

Insensible modifications effect great changes, 379; illustrated by
geometrical curves, 318; by physiological development, 382.

Internal structure of sun and planets, 281-286.

K

King's councils compared to ganglia, 421, 423.

Knowledge, experience the source of all, 126; relations of various
kinds of, 167.

L

Language, differentiation of, 17; origin of written, 18; origin of
verbal, 149; origin of emotional, 220.

La Place's theory of planetary evolution, 263-265.

Laughter, common explanations of, 194; movements in, 200; groups of
muscles successively affected in, 201; caused by incongruities,
203; facilitates digestion, 207.

Law, origin of, 70.

Likeness and unlikeness, recognition of, the basis of classification,
147; the basis of language, 149; of reasoning, 150; of art, 151;
leads to science, 152.

Logic, how evolved, 158.

Lyell, Sir Charles, criticism upon, 338, 342.

M

Man, progress of, 10.

Manners, genesis of, 77; decline of the influence of, 89; conformity
in manners leads to extravagance, 99; conformity in, decreases
social intercourse, 100; defeats the true end of social life, 102,
107.

Mathematics, how evolved, 158.

Mechanics, rise of science of, 168.

Mineral qualities of rocks untrustworthy tests of age or position,
332.

Miller Hugh, estimate of, 352.

Motion of nebulous matter, 251-253.

Morality, origin of, 70.

Muscular movements, cause of, 195; arrested by feeling, 199; in
laughter purposeless, 201; of animals when excited, 211; variations
of, produce changes of voice, 214.

Music, increasing heterogeneity of, 26; relation of mental to
muscular excitement, the source of, 214; theory of, 221-224; its
history confirms the theory, 224-228; negative proof of theory of,
228-231.

Murchison Sir R. I., criticism upon his "Siluria," 332, 340, 363,
366.

N

Nebula, are they parts of our siderial system? 243, 249; condensation
of, 250; motion in, 251; significance of forms of, 254; structure
of spiral, 254.

Nebular hypothesis, 3, 34; its high derivation, 239; it explains
cometary phenomena, 262.

Negative facts in geology, small value of, 362-365.

Nervous system, effects of excitement in, 195; directions of
discharge of excitement in, 197; course of discharge unguided by
purpose, 201.

Number, origin of conception of, 154.

O

Oken's classification of knowledge, 125.

P

Painting and sculpture, origin of, 20.

Paleontology neither proves nor disproves development, 367, 376.

Picturesque, meaning of, 433.

Planetoids, origin of 289.

Plato's model republic, central idea of, 388.

Previsions and ordinary knowledge, 117; previsions known as science,
118; common and scientific, 123; when quantitative arose, 158;
increase in precision, 171.

Primary divisions of a germ and of a society, 404-407.

Progress, current meaning of, 1; present inquiry concerning, 2; law
of progress exemplified in the genesis of solar system, 3; in the
phenomena of the earth's crust, 5; in the advance of life in
general, 7; in the history of man, 10; in the growth of
civilization, 12; in government, 13; in language, 17; in painting
and sculpture, 20; in poetry, music, and dancing, 24; statement of
the principle which determines progress of every kind, 32; the
principle of progress illustrated in geological phenomena, 35; in
chemical, 40; in organic evolution, 42; in social advancement, 50;
in use of locomotive engine, 54; this principle does not explain
things in themselves, 58; progress of science, 141; of astronomical
discovery, 165, 171.

Progress of animals and societies in forming channels of
communication, 416.

Psychology, relation of English thought to, 301; classification in,
for the present, must be provisional, 300, 301.

R

Reasoning, nature of, 150; basis of, 154; advances with
classification, 157.

Reformers, eccentricities of, 61; why necessary, 93; not selfish, 95,
97; difficulties of social, 110.

Reform, how is it to be effected? 111.

Religion aided by inquiry, 58.

Religious ideas, account of primitive, 66.

S

Saturn, rings of, 276.

Satellites, distribution of, 272-276.

Savage men need a savage deity, 443.

Science, limits of, 58; definition of, 119; when complete, 120; test
of the depth of, 122; slow growth of, 123; duplex progress of, 141;
ultimate analysis of exact, 160.

Sciences, early simultaneous advance of, 165; not independent of each
other, 186; aid each other by analogies, 181; mutual influence of
modern, 178.

Sculpture and painting, origin of, 20.

Solar System, movements of planets on their axes in, 267-271.

Strata now forming, lithological differences in, 347; differences in
the order of superposition of, 348; differences in the organic
remains of, 349.

Societies and individual organisms, points of agreement between,
391-393; differences of, examined, 393-397.

Social intercourse, philosophy of, 105.

Social changes, true source of, 386.

Spectrum analysis, 295.

Spiral nebula, 255.

Steam-engine, multiplied effects of, 53.

Sun, constitution of, 294, 296; relation of plane of its equator to
plane of planetary orbits, 266.

T

Telegraph wires, comparison of to nerves, 427.

Titles, derivation of, 72; depreciation of, 74.

Truth, ultimate test of, 130.

U

Useful passes into the beautiful, 430, 433.

V

Voice, cause of loudness of, 215; cause of quality of, 215; of pitch
of, 216; intervals in, 217; variability of the pitch of, 219.

Voluntary and involuntary actions, 319.

W

Werner's system of Geology, 328; contrast of, with the modern system,
330.

THE END.