THE SUBSTANCE OF FAITH

THE

SUBSTANCE OF FAITH

ALLIED WITH SCIENCE

A CATECHISM FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS

BY

Sir OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S.

PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

SIXTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First Published February 1907

Second Edition February 1907

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Editions March 1907

Sixth Edition April 1907

Gloriam quæsivit scientiarum, invenit Dei.

PREFACE

Everyone who has to do with children at the present day, directly or indirectly, must in some form or another have felt the difficulty of instructing them in the details of religious faith, without leaving them open to the assaults of doubt hereafter,

when they encounter the results of scientific inquiry.

Sometimes the old truths and the new truths seem to conflict; and though everyone must be aware that such internecine warfare between truths can be an appearance only, the reconciliation is not easily perceived: nor is the task simplified by the hostile attitude adopted towards each other by some of the upholders of orthodox Christianity.

It is sometimes said to be impossible for a teacher to educate a class subject to compulsory attendance, in a spirit of weal-th, peace, and godliness, without infringing the legitimate demands of somebody; but the difficulty is caused chiefly by sectarian animosity, which may take a variety of forms.

These religious and educational disputes would be of small consequence, and might even be stimulating to thought and fervour, were it not that one danger is imminent:—a danger lest the nation, in despair of a happier settlement, should consent to a system of compulsory secularism; and forbid, in the public part of the curriculum of elementary schools, not only any form of worship, but any mention of a Supreme Being, and any quotation from the literature left us by the Saints, Apostles, Prophets, of all ages.

If so excentric a negation is brought about by the warfare of denominations, they will surely all regard it as a lamentable result.

Meanwhile, in the hope and belief that the great bulk of the teachers of this country are eager and anxious to do their duty, and lead the children committed to their care along the ways of righteousness,—being deterred therefrom in some cases only by the difficulty of following out their ideals amid the turmoil of voices, and in other cases by their uncertainty of how far the “old paths” can still be pursued in the light of modern knowledge,—I have attempted the task of formulating the fundamentals, or substance,[^[1]] of religious faith in terms of Divine Immanence,[^[2]] in such a way as to assimilate sufficiently all the results of existing knowledge, and still to be in harmony with the teachings of the poets and inspired writers of all ages. The statement is intended to deny nothing which can reasonably be held by any specific Denomination, and it seeks to affirm nothing but what is consistent with universal Christian experience.

Our knowledge of the Christian religion is admittedly derived from information verbally communicated, and from documents; and, in the interpretation of these sources, mistakes have been made. At one time, not long ago, it was the duty of serious students of all kinds to point out some of these mistakes, wherever they ran counter to sense and knowledge. That cleaning and sweetening work has been done vigorously, and done well: at the present time comparatively little sweeping remains to be done, save in holes and corners: most of the lost simplicity has now been found. A positive or constructive statement of religious doctrine, not indeed deduced from present knowledge, but in harmony with all that bears upon the subject, is now more useful. Such a statement might be called New Light on Old Paths; for the “old paths” remain, and are more brightly illuminated than ever: even the old Genesis story of man’s early experience shines out as a brilliant inspiration. Truth always grows in light and beauty the more it is uncovered.

There are still people who endeavour to deny or disbelieve the discoveries of science. They are setting themselves athwart the stream, and trying to stop its advance;—they only succeed in stopping their own. They are good people, but unwise, and, moreover, untrustful. If they will let go their anchorage, and sail on in a spirit of fearless faith, they will find an abundant reward, by attaining a deeper insight into the Divine Nature, and a wider and brighter outlook over the destiny of man.

[1]. “By Substance I understand that which exists in and by itself.” (Spinoza.)

[2]. “We may say much, yet not attain; and the sum of our words is, He is all.” (Ecclesiasticus xliii. 27.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

REFERENCES TO QUOTATIONS

INTRODUCTION

There is a growing conception of religion which regards it not as a thing for special hours or special days, but as a reality permeating the whole of life. The old attempt to partition off a region where Divine action is appropriate, from another region in which such action would be out of place—the old superstition that God does one thing and not another, that He speaks more directly through the thunder of catastrophe or the mystery of miracle than through the quiet voice of ordinary existence—all this is beginning to show signs of expiring in the light of a coming day.

Those to whom such a change is welcome regard it as of the utmost importance that this incipient recognition of a Deity immanent in History and in all the processes of Nature shall be guided and elevated and made secure. Ancient formularies must be reconsidered and remodelled if they are to continue to express eternal verities in language corresponding to the enlarged acquaintance with natural knowledge now possessed by humanity.

Nevertheless the attempt to draw up anything of the nature of a creed or catechism, unhallowed by centuries of emotion and aspiration, is singularly difficult; and to obtain general acceptance for such a production may be impossible.

Every Denomination is likely to prefer its own creed or formula, especially if it has the aroma of antiquity upon it—an aroma of high value for religious purposes and more easily destroyed than replaced. No carefully drawn statement can be expected to go far enough to satisfy religious enthusiasts: it is not possible to satisfy both scientific and distinctively denominational requirements. All this might be admitted, and yet it may be possible to lay a sound foundation such as can stand scientific scrutiny and reasonable rationalistic attack—a foundation which may serve as a basis for more specific edification among those who are capable of sustaining a loftier structure.

Even though not yet fully attainable, it is permissible to hope for more union than exists at present among professing Christians, and among the branches of the Christian Church. With some excellent people the differences and distinguishing marks loom out as of special importance; but from these I can hardly claim attention. I must speak to those who try to seize points of agreement, and who long for the time when all Christian workers may be united in effort and friendliness and co-operation, though not in all details of doctrine. On the practical side, a concurrence of effort for the amelioration and spiritualisation of human life, in the light of a common gospel and a common hope, is not impossible; and on the theoretical side, in spite of legitimate differences of belief on difficult and infinite problems, there must be a mass of fundamental material on which a great majority are really agreed.

But a foundation is not to be mistaken for superstructure: a full-fledged and developed religion needs a great deal more than foundation—there must be a building too. The warmth and vitality imparted by strong religious conviction is a matter of common observation, and is a force of great magnitude; but it is a personal and living thing, it cannot be embodied in a formula or taught in a class. Here lies the proper field of work of the Churches. What can be taught in a school is the fundamental substratum underlying all such developments and personal aspirations; and it can be dealt with on a basis of historical and scientific fact, interpreted and enlarged by the perceptions and experiences of mankind.

A creed or catechism should not be regarded as something superhuman, infallible, and immutable; it should be considered to be what it really is—a careful statement of what, in the best light of the time, can be regarded as true and important about matters partially beyond the range of scientific knowledge: it must always reach farther into the unknown than science has yet explored.

An element of mystery and difficulty is not inappropriate in a creed, although it may be primarily intended for comprehension by children. Bare bald simplicity of statement, concerning things keenly felt but imperfectly known, cannot be perfectly accurate; and yet every effort should be made to combine accuracy and simplicity to the utmost. Every word should be carefully weighed and accurately used: mere conventional terminology should be eschewed. A sentence stored in the memory may evolve different significations at different periods of life, and at no one period need it be completely intelligible or commonplace. The ideal creed should be profound rather than explicit, and yet should convey some sort of meaning even to the simplest and most ignorant. Its terms, therefore, should not be technical, though for full comprehension they would have to be understood in a technical or even a recondite sense.

To make a statement of this kind useful, it is necessary to accompany each clause with some indication of the supplementary teaching necessary to make it assimilable: and such hints should be adapted not only to professed teachers, but to parents and all who have to do directly or indirectly with the education of children. It is my hope that the following clauses and explanations may be of some use also to the many who experience some difficulty in recognising the old landmarks amid the rising flood of criticism, and who at one time or another have felt shaken in their religious faith. Some of them are sure to have attained emancipation and conviction for themselves, but in so far as their own insight has led them in the general direction indicated by what follows, these will not be the last to welcome an explicit statement, even though in several places they may wish to modify and amend it. They will recognise that there is an advantage, for some purposes, in throwing old and over-familiar formulæ into new modes of expression; and that a variety in mode of formulation does not necessarily indicate a lack of appreciation of the loftiest truths yet vouchsafed to humanity.

With these preliminary remarks I now submit a catechism, whereof the clauses are intended to be consistent with the teachings of Science in its widest sense, as well as with those of Literature and Philosophy, and to lead up to the substance or substratum of a religious creed.

I
THE ASCENT OF MAN

Q. What are you?

A. I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual processes from lower forms of animal life, and with struggle and suffering became man.

CLAUSE I

This answer does not pretend to exhaust the nature of man; another aspect is dealt with in Clause XII. It is usual to impart the latter mode of statement first; but premature dwelling on the more mystical aspect of human nature, with ignorance or neglect of the biological facts actually ascertained concerning it, only gives rise to troubled thought in the future when the material facts become known—often in crude or garbled form—and leads to scepticism.

The clause as it stands is a large and comprehensive statement, that will need much time for its elucidation and adequate comprehension. Its separate terms may be considered thus:—

Earth.—Children can gradually be assisted to realise the earth as an enormous globe of matter, with vast continents and oceans on its surface and with a clinging atmosphere, the whole moving very rapidly (nineteen miles each second) through space, and constituting one of a number of other planets all revolving round the sun. They may also be led to realise that from the distance of a million miles it would appear as an object in the sky rather like the moon; that from a greater distance it would look like any of the other planets; while from a vastly greater distance neither it nor any other planet is large or luminous enough to be visible—nothing but the sun would then be seen, looking like a star. It is occasionally helpful to realise that the earth, with all its imperfections, is one of the heavenly bodies.

Being.—The mystery of existence may be lightly touched upon. The fact that anything whatever—even a stone—exists, raises unanswerable questions of whence and why. It is instructive to think of some rocks as agglomerations of sand, and of sand as water-worn fragments of previous rock; so that, even here, there arises a sense of infinitude.

Alive.—The nature of life and, consequently, of death is unknown, but life is associated with rapid chemical changes in complex molecules, and is characterised by the powers or faculties of assimilation, growth, and reproduction. It is a property we share with all animals and also with plants. Children should not be told this in bald fashion, but by judicious questioning should be led to perceive the essence of it for themselves. Soon after they realise what is meant by life, some of them will perceive that it has an enormous range of application, and will think of flowers as possessing it also: being subject like all living things to disease and death.

What plants do not possess is the specifically animal power of purposed locomotion, of hunting for food and comfort, with its associated protective penalty of pain.

Conscious.—Here we come to something specially distinctive of higher animal life. Probably it makes its incipient appearance low down in the scale, in vague feelings of pain or discomfort, and of pleasure; though it is not likely that worms are as conscious as they appear to us to be. In its higher grades consciousness means awareness of the world and of ourselves, a discrimination between the self and the external world—“self-consciousness” in its proper signification: an immense subject that can only be hinted at to children. They can, however, be taught to have some appreciation of the senses, or channels, whereby our experience of external nature is gained; and to perceive that the way in which we apprehend the universe is closely conditioned by the particular sense-organs which in the struggle for existence have been evolved by all the higher kinds of animal life,—organs which we men are now beginning to put to the unfamiliar and novel use of scientific investigation and cosmic interpretation. What wonder if we make mistakes, and are narrow and limited in our outlook!

Digression on the Senses

Our fundamental interpretative sense is that of touch—the muscular sense generally. Through it we become aware of space, of time, and of matter. The experience of space arises from free motion, especially locomotion; speed is a direct sensation; and time is the other factor of speed. Time is measured by any uniformly moving body—that is by space and speed together. Muscular action impeded, the sense of force or resistance, is another primary sensation; and by inference from this arises our notion of “matter,” which is sometimes spoken of as a permanent possibility of sensation. Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, are all inferences from varieties of touch. Another sense allied to touch is that of temperature, whereby we obtain primitive ideas concerning heat. Then there are the chemical senses of taste and smell; and lastly, the two senses which enable us to draw inferences respecting things at a distance. These two attract special attention; for the information which they convey, though less fundamental than that given by the muscular sense, is of the highest interest and enjoyment.

The ear is an instrument for the appreciation of aerial vibrations, or ripples in the air. They may give us a sense of harmony; and in any case they enable us to infer something concerning the vibrating source which generated them, so that we can utilise them, by a prearranged code, for purposes of intelligent communication with each other—a process of the utmost importance, to which we have grown so accustomed that its wonder is masked.

The eye is an instrument for appreciating ripples in the ether. These are generated by violently revolving electric charges associated with each atom of matter, and are delayed, stopped, and reflected in various ways, by other matter which they encounter in their swift passage through the ethereal medium.

From long practice and inherited instinct we are able, from the small fraction of these ripples which enter our eyes, to make inferences regarding the obstructive objects from which they have been shimmered and scattered. It is like inferring the ships and boats and obstacles in a harbour from the pattern of the reflected ripples which cross each other on the surface of the water.

The precision and clearness with which we can thus gain knowledge concerning things beyond our reach, and the extraordinary amount of information that can be thus conveyed, are nothing short of miraculous: though, again, we are liable to treat sight as an everyday and commonplace faculty. We are not, however, directly conscious of the ripples, though they are the whole exciting cause of the sensation; our real consciousness and perception are of the objects which have invested the ripples with their peculiarities, have imprinted upon them certain characteristics, and made them what they are. The eye is able to analyse all this, as the ear analyses the tones of an orchestra.

Ancestors.—In the first instance human ancestors may be considered, and a family tree drawn for any one child; from which he will learn how large a number of persons combine to form his ancestry. The tree can also represent the converging effect of inter-marriages, so that ultimate descent from a common ancestor is not an impossibility, if the facts of biology and ethnology point in that direction—as it appears they do. The probable though remote relationship existing between all the branches of the human family may be suggested by an inverted tree descending from some remotest ancestor: for whom Noah is as good a name as any other.

Rose.—The doctrine of the ascent of man may be found in some cases to conflict with early religious teaching. If so, offence and iconoclasm should be carefully avoided; and if the teacher feels that he can conscientiously draw a distinction, between the persistent vital or spiritual essence of man, and the temporary material vehicle which displays his individual existence amid terrestrial surroundings, he may with advantage do so. The second or higher aspect of the origin of man is dealt with in Clause XII. The history and origin of the spiritual part of man is unknown, and can only be rightly spoken of in terms of mysticism and poetry: the history of the bodily and much of the mental part is studied in the biological facts of evolution.

The doctrine of the ascent of man, properly regarded, is a doctrine of much hope and comfort. Truly it is an unusual item in a child’s creed; but it is, I think, a helpful item: it explains much that would otherwise be dark, and it instils hope for the future. For in the light of an evolution doctrine we can readily admit—(1) that low and savage tendencies are naturally to be expected at certain stages, for an evanescent moment; and (2) that having progressed thus far, we may anticipate further—perhaps unlimited—advance for mankind.

The fact that each individual organism hastily runs through, or reduplicates, a main part of the series of stages in the life-history of its race, is a fact of special interest and significance; notably in connection with the trials and temptations of human beings during their effort to cleanse away the traces of animal nature. The severity of the contest is already lessening, and both the individual and the race may look forward to a time when the struggles and failures are nearly over, when the unruliness of passion is curbed, when at length we

“. . . hear no yelp of the beast, and the man is quiet at last

As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height

that is higher.”

Gradual Processes.—The slowness and precariousness of evolution may be indicated; and the possibility of descent or degeneration, as well as of ascent and development, must be insisted on. A genealogical tree can be drawn laterally, to illustrate the origin of any set of animals—both those risen and those fallen in the scale—from some, possibly hypothetical, common ancestor. The dog on the one hand, and the wolf or jackal on the other, may serve as easy examples of ascent and descent respectively, and of relationship between higher and lower species, or even genera, without direct or obvious connection. The horse and the bear may serve as examples of distant relationship; birds and reptiles as another; and we may point out that at each stage of inheritance some of the progeny may ascend a little in the scale, and some descend a little.

Presently the sponge of time may wipe out the common ancestry at the root of the lateral tree, and nothing be left but some of its ascending and some of its descending branches,—all suited to their environment and so continuing to live and flourish, each in its own way; but so apparently different, that relationship between them is a matter of inference, and is sometimes difficult to believe in. The example of the caterpillar and butterfly, however, of the tadpole and the frog, etc., can be used to remove incredulity at extraordinary and instructive transmutations—transmutations which in the individual represent rapidly some analogous movements of racial development in the history of the distant past. The degradation of certain free-swimming animals, such as ascidians, which in old age become rooted or sessile like plants, can be pointed to as typical, and, indeed, a true representation of what has gone on in a race also, during long periods of time. The rapid passage of the embryo through its ancestral chain of development should be known, at any rate to the teacher; and in general the greater the teacher’s acquaintance with natural history, the more living and interesting will be the series of lessons that can occasionally be given on this part of the clause.

The popular misconception concerning the biological origin of man, that he is descended from monkeys like those of the present day, is a trivial garbling of the truth. The elevated and the degraded branches of a family can both trace their descent from a parent stock; and though the distant common ancestor may now be lost in obscurity, there is certainly in this sense a blood relationship between the quadrumana and the bimana: a relationship which is recognised and is practically useful in the investigations of experimental pathology.

Lower Forms of Animal Life.—The existence of single cells and other low microscopic forms (like amœbæ), and the analysis or dissection of a more complex structure (say rhubarb) into the cells of which it is in a sense composed, together with some indication of the vital processes occurring in similar but isolated cells (such as yeast or protococcus) which lead us to consider them as possessing life—of a form so fundamental that there is in some cases no clear discrimination between animal and vegetable—may be spoken of and exhibited in the microscope.

From a not very different-looking minute germinal vesicle, or nucleus of a cell, the chick is developed.

The lower forms of animal life, spoken of in the clause as ancestral, may be understood to go back to forms even as low as these,—indeed, to the lowest and minutest forms which in dim and distant ages can have possessed any of the incipient characteristics of life at all: down, perhaps, to some unknown process whereby the earthy particles began to coalesce under a vivifying influence. And as the race springs from lowly forms of cell life, so does the individual,—the body of each individual was once no more than a microscopic cell-nucleus or germinal vesicle. Therein was the germ of life: and the complex aggregate of cells we now possess has all been put together by the directive power latent in, or initially manifested by, that germ. So it is also with a seed—an apple pip, an acorn, or a grain of mustard seed.

But there are many forms of animal life not in the direct line of our ancestry—side branches, as it were, of the great terrestrial family. At present the earth is dominated by man, but at one time it was mastered by gigantic reptiles, larger than any land creature of to-day, the remains of which are occasionally found fossilised into stone and embedded in the rocks; fit to be collected and preserved in museums.

For millions of years the earth was inhabited by creatures no higher than these; the progress upwards has been slow and patient: time is infinitely long, and the great history of the world is still working itself out.

Still do lower forms exist side by side with higher; and many of them are suited to their surroundings, and in their place are beautiful and sane and perfect of their kind. But a few of the lower forms are lower because they have failed to reach the standard of their race, they are very far from any kind of perfection, they are at war with their environment; and for these, the only alternatives are extinction or improvement. In such a species as man the variety or range of achievement and of elevation is enormous. Among men and their works we find, on the one hand, cathedrals and oratorios and poems, and faith and charity and hope; on the other, slums and ugliness and prisons, and spite and cruelty and greed. And we must not forget that want of harmony with environment may in some cases be the fault, not of the individual, but of the environment: a fault which it is specially likely to possess when man-made. For every now and then is born an individual far above the average of the race, amid surroundings which he finds deadly and depressing. He may be despised and rejected by his fellows, and nevertheless may be the precursor or herald of a nobler future.

The problem, the main human problem, is how to deal with the earth now—now that we have at length attained to conscious control—so as to cease perpetuating the lower forms, and to encourage the production of the higher; by giving to all children born on the planet a fair chance of becoming, each in its own way, a noble specimen of developed humanity.

Struggle and Suffering.—Children should realise the bleak and unprotected state through which their remote ancestors must have begun a human existence, the great dangers which they had to overcome, the contests with beasts and with the severities of climate, the hardships and perils and straits through which they passed; and should be grateful to those unknown pioneers of the human race, to whose struggles and suffering and discoveries and energies our present favoured mode of existence on the planet is due.

The more people realise the effort that has preceded them and made them possible, the more are they likely to endeavour to be worthy of it: the more pitiful also will they feel when they see individuals failing in the struggle upward and falling back towards a brute condition; and the more hopeful they will ultimately become for the brilliant future of a race which from such lowly and unpromising beginnings has produced the material vehicle necessary for those great men who flourished in the recent epoch which we speak of as antiquity; and has been so guided, since then, as to develop the magnificence of a Newton and a Shakespeare even on this island in the northern seas.

II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CONSCIENCE

Q. 2. What, then, may be meant by the Fall of man?

A. At a certain stage of development man became conscious of a difference between right and wrong, so that thereafter, when his actions fell below a normal standard of conduct, he felt ashamed and sinful. He thus lost his animal innocency, and entered on a long period of human effort and failure; nevertheless, the consciousness of degradation marked a rise in the scale of existence.

CLAUSE II

This clause has been inserted because of the historic, though often mistaken, notions accreted round a legend of Fall and of a Paradise lost; and it is of interest to detect the germ of truth which these ancient ideas contain. It may be regarded as really an appendage of, or introductory to, the next clause.

The sense of guilt and shame is to some extent displayed by a dog; but it appears to be due to domestication, and to be a secondary result of human influence. In any case, it is certainly only the higher animals that thus exhibit the germ of conscience, and the sense of shame and remorse: a sense which is most real and genuine when it is independent of externally inflicted and of expected punishment. Wild animals appear to have no such feeling, they glory in what we may picturesquely speak of as their “misdeeds,” and in running the gauntlet of danger to achieve them; and though often cruel, they are free from sin. Some savages—our own Norse forefathers among others—must on their freebooting expeditions have been in similar case. So were some of the Homeric heroes. It would be only the highest and most thoughtful among them that could rise to the sense of guilt and degradation. Only those who have risen are liable to fall. The summit of manhood is attained when evil is consciously overcome. The period before it was recognised as such has been called the golden age; but the condition of unconsciousness of evil, though joyous, is manifestly inferior to the state ultimately attainable, when paradise is regained through struggle and victory.

Mere innocency, the freedom from sin by reason only of lack of perception, is not the highest state; it has been thought ideal from the point of view of inspiration and poetry, but it is a condition in which advance is necessarily limited. Sooner or later fuller knowledge and consciousness must arrive; and then ensues a long period of discipline and distress, until first a Leader and ultimately the race find their way out, through temptation and difficulty, once more to freedom and joy.

A perception that the possibility of backsliding is a necessary ingredient in the making of man, and the consequent discernment of a soul of goodness in things evil, constitute a large part of the teaching of Browning:

“Then welcome each rebuff

That turns earth’s smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!

Be our joys three parts pain!

Strive to hold cheap the strain;

Learn, nor account the pang: dare, never grudge the throe.”

And again—

“We fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,

Sleep to wake——”

The intervening period between fall and victory, between loss of innocency and gain of righteousness, is the period with which all human history is concerned: and there is often a corresponding period in the life-history of every fully developed individual, during which he gropes his way through darkness and longs for light.

Immense is the area still to be traversed and illumined: only faint gleams penetrate the dusk. A Light has indeed shone through the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not. The race itself is still enveloped in mist, and only here and there a glint of reflexion heralds the brightness of a coming dawn. Yet a time will come when we shall cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light, and stand forth in the glory of completed manhood:

“Nor shall I deem his object served, his end

Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,

While only here and there a star dispels

The darkness, here and there a towering mind

O’erlooks its prostrate fellows. When the host

Is out at once, to the despair of night,

When all mankind alike is perfected,

Equal in full-blown powers—then, not till then,

I say, begins man’s general infancy.”

III
CHARACTER AND WILL

Q. 3. What is the distinctive characteristic of man?

A. The distinctive character of man is that he has a sense of responsibility for his acts, having acquired the power of choosing between good and evil, with freedom to obey one motive rather than another.

Creatures far below the human level are irresponsible; they feel no shame and suffer no remorse; they are said to have no conscience.

CLAUSE III

Character of Manhood

In putting this question, children may be asked to suggest characteristics which distinguish man from animals. If gradually they hit upon clothes and fire and speech they will do well.

Clothes may be defined as artificial covering removable at will; “artificial” meaning made by an artificer, or manufactured, as opposed to natural growth, like fur. But the changes of covering among animals should not be overlooked: moulting for instance, renewal of skin necessitated by growth, protective change of colour at summer and winter, and so on.

The discovery of Fire is a thing to be emphasised, because familiarity with lucifer matches is liable to engender contempt for this great pre-historic discovery. People should realise that at one time the production of flame de novo was extremely difficult: the ordinary method of lighting fires being to keep some one fire always alight, so that brands could be ignited at it and thus it could be spread. The fact that lighting other fires does not diminish or weaken the original stock, is noteworthy, and is an analogy with life which may be typified by oaks and acorns—any number of trees arising from a parent stock, and spreading for innumerable generations. The ancient ceremony of keeping flames alight on sacred altars was doubtless due to the difficulty of re-ignition when every fire in a village had accidentally become extinguished. That the ancients valued fire highly, and felt strongly the difficulty of generating it, is shown by the legend that the first fire must have been stolen from heaven; and the priests taught, as usual in barbarous times, that the gods were jealous and angry at man’s discoveries and the progress of science.

Speech and language is a most vital characteristic of manhood, and is largely responsible for the chasm between him and other animals. The gestures and noises of animals must not be overlooked, however, and they often seem to have mysterious modes of communication of some kind. But they have nothing akin to writing, and this portentous discovery enables not merely communication between contemporary living men, but an accumulation of information and experience throughout the centuries; so that a man is no longer dependent solely on his own individual experience, but is able to draw upon the records and wisdom of the past. Owing to this power of recording and handing on information, a discovery once made becomes the possession of the human race henceforth for ever—unless it relapses into barbarism.

Will

None of these characteristics, however, is emphasised in the clause, because they lead too far afield if pursued. For our present purpose we regard the sense of “conscience,” suggested by the previous answer, as the most important and highest characteristic of all,—the sense of responsibility, the power of self-determination, the building up of character, so that ultimately it becomes impossible to be actuated by unworthy motives. Our actions are now controlled not by external impulses only, but largely by our own characters and wills. The man who is the creature of impulse, or the slave of his passions, cannot be said to be his own master, or to be really free; he drifts hither and thither according to the caprice or the temptation of the moment, he is untrustworthy and without solidity or dignity of character. The free man is he who can control himself, who does not obey every idea as it occurs to him, but weighs and determines for himself, and is not at the mercy of external influences. This is the real meaning of choice and free will. It does not mean that actions are capricious and undetermined; but that they are determined by nothing less than the totality of things. They are not determined by the external world alone, so that they can be calculated and predicted from outside: they are determined by self and external world together. A free man is the master of his motives, and selects that motive which he wills to obey.

If he chooses wrongly, he suffers; he is liable also to make others suffer, and he feels remorse. In a high grade of existence no other punishment is necessary. Artificial punishment has for its object the production of artificial remorse, in creatures too low as yet for the genuine feeling. Artificial punishment can be easily exaggerated and misapplied, and should be employed with extreme caution. It is always ambitious and often dangerous, though sometimes justifiable and necessary, to attempt to take the place of Providence. Even between parents and children, enforcement of another’s will may be overdone, till the power of self-control and the instinct of duty are impaired.

The sense of responsibility inevitably grows with power and knowledge, and is proportional thereto. By means of drugs a grown man may enfeeble his will till he becomes in some sense irresponsible for his actions; but he is not irresponsible for his wilful destruction of a human faculty; and in so far as he is dangerous to others he must be treated accordingly.

The struggle in man’s nature between the better and the worse elements,—sometimes spoken of as a struggle between dual personalities, and otherwise depicted as a conflict between the flesh and the spirit,—is a natural consequence of our double ancestry (spoken of in Clause XII.), our ascent from animal fellow-creatures, and our relationship with a higher order of being. No man in his sober senses really wills to do evil: he does it with some motive which he tries to think justifies it; or else he does it against his real will because mastered by something lower. So Plato teaches in the Gorgias. And St. Paul says the same thing:

“The good which I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

The conflict is often a period of torment and misery. “O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

Whenever the better nature prevails in the struggle, there is a mystic sense of strength and comfort universally testified to by humanity, even though the victory results in temporal loss or persecution; “in all these things we are more than conquerors.” And this fact corresponds with part of the answer to Question 6 below.

We can recognise that our evil impulses are the natural remnant of bestial ancestry, and need not be due to diabolical promptings. An animal, though perhaps innocent from lack of knowledge, is bound and enslaved by its instincts; for instance, the apparently intelligent and social bee is driven by racial instincts into a prescribed course of action; a cat can no more refrain from trying to catch a bird than a man of high nature can allow himself to commit a crime.

The weak man often allows his brute nature to get the upper hand and enslave his higher self, and he hates himself afterwards for the degradation so caused; but the strong and free man takes control, and dominates his animal nature.

“If my body come from brutes, tho’ somewhat finer than their own,

I am heir, and this my kingdom. Shall the royal voice be mute?

No, but if the rebel subject seek to drag me from the throne,

Hold the Sceptre, Human Soul, and rule thy Province of the brute.”

IV
DUTY AND SERVICE

Q. 4. What is the duty of man?

A. To assist his fellows, to develop his own higher self, to strive towards good in every way open to his powers, and generally to seek to know the laws of Nature and to obey the will of God; in whose service alone can be found that harmonious exercise of the faculties which is identical with perfect freedom.

CLAUSE IV

The laws of nature signify the ascertained processes and consistencies observable in all surrounding things; they are a special and partial, but accurately ascertainable, aspect of what is called the will of God. They cannot be broken or really disobeyed; but we may set ourselves in fruitless antagonism to them,—as by building a bridge too weak to stand, by various kinds of wrong conduct, eating unduly or wrong kind of food, by careless sanitation and neglect of health. But all such ignorance or neglect of the laws of nature involves disaster. By knowing them, and acting with them, we show wisdom; and by steady persistence in right action we attain the highest development possible to us at present; we also escape that dreary sense of disloyal hopeless struggle against circumstances which is inconsistent with harmony or freedom. So long as the will of any creature is antagonistic to the rest of the universe, it is not fully developed. There must be a harmony among all the parts of a whole; but in the case of free beings it is not a forced but a willing harmony that is aimed at; and all experience takes time

“Our wills are ours, we know not how,

Our wills are ours to make them Thine.”

The higher a man can raise himself in the scale of existence—by education, right conduct, and persistent effort—the more he may be able to help his fellows. To some are given ten talents, to some five, and to another one; but it is the duty of all to use their talents to the uttermost, so that they may fulfil the intention of the higher Power which brought us into existence and intrusted us with responsible control. Events do not happen without adequate cause, and in so far as agents, stewards, or trustees rest on their oars or misuse their opportunities, improvements now possible will not be accomplished. We must regard ourselves as instruments and channels of the Divine action; even in a few things we must be good and faithful servants, and it is our privilege to help now in the conscious evolution and development of a higher life on this planet.

The race of man has far to travel before it can be regarded as an efficient organ of the Divine Purpose. The extremes of ability and character and virtue are widely separated; and the occasional elevation of a leader, here and there, serves but to display the darkness in which the majority of a race so newly evolved are still imprisoned; crawling feebly toward the light, in a state of only rudimentary consciousness; anxious about trivialities, opposing and hindering instead of helping each other, competing rather than co-operating, fighting and struggling and killing in the throes of racial birth. It is often difficult to realise the possible perfectness of human life, in the midst of so much difficulty and discouragement.

And much of the difficulty is unnecessary and artificial. Deficiency in the means of subsistence, or in modest comfort, is not a reasonable condition of human life. The earth is ready to yield plenty for all, and will when properly treated and understood; but never will it spoil its children with bounties from a neglected breast. It must be coaxed and coerced, and then it will respond lavishly. We expend plenty of energy already, only we misapply it. If only our aim could be changed, and our energy be concentrated on clear and conscious pressing forward, with a definite mark in view—towards which all could work together and all together could attain, instead of one at the expense of others—“then would the earth put forth her increase, and God, even our own God, would give us His blessing.”

(The “duty” clauses in the Church Catechism are well worth learning.)

V
GOODNESS AND BEAUTY AND GOD

Q. 5. What is meant by good and evil?

A. Good is that which promotes development, and is in harmony with the will of God. It is akin to health and beauty and happiness.

Evil is that which retards or frustrates development, and injures some part of the universe. It is akin to disease and ugliness and misery.

CLAUSE V

“Development” means unfolding of latent possibilities; as a bud unfolds into a flower, or as a chicken develops from an egg.

The idea controlling this answer is that growth and development are in accordance with the law of the universe, and that destruction and decay are features which are only good in so far as they may be on the way to something better; as leaf-mould assists the growth of flowers, or as discords in their proper place conduce to, or prepare for, harmony. In the same way conditions and practices which once were good become in process of time corrupt; yet out of them must grow the better future.

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

The law of the Universe, and the will of God, are here regarded as in some sort synonymous terms. It is impossible properly to define such a term as “God,” but it is permissible reverently to use the term for a mode of regarding the Soul of the Universe as invested with what in human beings we call personality, consciousness, and other forms of intelligence, emotion, and will. These attributes, undoubtedly possessed by a part, are not to be denied to the whole; however little we may be able as yet to form a clear conception of their larger meaning.

It is quite clear that the Universe was not made by man; it must owe its existence to some higher Power of which man has but an infinitesimal knowledge. Some primary conception of such a Power has been independently formed by every fraction of the human race, and is what under various symbols has been called God.

It is sometimes asserted that God does not possess powers and faculties and attributes which we ourselves possess. But that is preposterous: for though we may be able to form no conception as to the particular form our powers would take, when possessed by a being even moderately higher in the scale of existence than ourselves; and although vastly more must be attributed to the Reality denoted by the term “God” than we can even begin to conceive of; yet such a term, if it is to have any meaning at all, must at least include everything we have so far been able to discover as existent in the Universe. It must, in fact, be the most comprehensive term that can be employed; though for practical purposes it may be permissible to discriminate, and exclude from its connotation, portions such as “self,” and “the world,” and sometimes, though with less excuse, even an abstraction like “nature”; considering these separately from the more purely personal aspect to which attention is directed by our ordinary use of the term God. It is convenient to differentiate the principle of evil also, and to reserve it for separate study.

Sometimes the totality of existence is spoken of as the “Absolute,” and the term God is limited to the conception of a Being of infinite Goodness and Mercy, the ultimate Impersonation of Truth and Love and Beauty; a Being of whose attributes the highest faculties and perceptions of man are but a dim shadow or reflexion.

In man, goodness is the path toward higher development, and a radiant beauty is the crown and perfection of life; so the trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, often referred to in literature, may, without undue stretching, be considered as also equivalent to what is represented by the words, the Way, the Truth, and the Life; they are three aspects of what after all is one essential unity. That which is good, in the highest sense, cannot help being both true and beautiful. Nevertheless, for many practical purposes, these ideas must be discriminated; and the question is occasionally forced upon our attention whether vitality or beauty can possibly be enlisted in the service of evil; and if so, whether it is still in itself good.

We have to learn that most good things can be misapplied, and that though they do not in themselves cease to be good, their desecration is especially deadly. That the corruption of the best abets the cause of the worst, is proverbial; the prostitution of high gifts to base ends is the saddest of spectacles.

“Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

Oratory, the power of persuasion, can thus be debased, and the passions of the multitude may be incited by the Divine fire of eloquence. Rhetoric and sophistry have been on this ground condemned when they were misused for the cultivation of the art of persuasion apart from knowledge and virtue; but almost every good gift—personal affection, medical science, artistic genius—has every now and then been abused; and the higher and nobler the faculty, the more sorrowful and diabolical must be its prostitution.

It has been an ancient puzzle to consider whether the principle of goodness is the supreme entity in the universe—a principle to which God as well as man is subject—or whether it represents only the arbitrary will of the Creator. Many answers have been given, but the answer from the side of science is clear:—

No existing universe can tend on the whole towards contraction and decay; because that would foster annihilation, and so any incipient attempt would not have survived; consequently an actually existing and flowing universe must on the whole cherish development, expansion, growth: and so tend towards infinity rather than towards zero. The problem is therefore only a variant of the general problem of existence. Given existence, of a non-stagnant kind, and ultimate development must be its law. Good and evil can be defined in terms of development and decay respectively. This may be regarded as part of a revelation of the nature of God.

VI
MAN PART OF THE UNIVERSE

Q. 6. How does man know good from evil?

A. His own nature, when uncorrupted by greed, is sufficiently in harmony with the rest of the universe to enable him to be well aware in general of what is a help or hindrance to the guiding Spirit, of which he himself is a real and effective portion.

CLAUSE VI

We are not something separate from the Universe, but a part of it: a part of it endowed with some power of control—power to guide ourselves and others and assist in the scheme of development—power also to go wrong, to set ourselves contrary to the tendency of things, to delay progress, and break ourselves in conflict with overpowering forces.

When not thus warped or misled, we fit into the general scheme, and, like all other portions of existence, can fulfil our function and take our due share in the general progress. We are a part of the Universe, and the Universe is a part of God. Even we also, therefore, have a Divine Nature and may truly be called sons and co-workers with God. The consciousness of this constitutes our highest privilege, and likewise our gravest responsibility. Perception of this is dawning with increasing brightness on the human race in the light of the doctrine of evolution. The process of evolution has no end: progress is toward an advancing goal. At one time

“... all tended to mankind,

And, man produced, all has its end thus far:

But in completed man begins anew

A tendency to God.”

We are essential and active agents in the terrestrial order of things, analogous to the white corpuscles in the human body. The body may be regarded as a colony of cells, some of which are living and moving on their own account; in complete ignorance of the feelings and perceptions of the larger whole of which they are microscopic units, towards whose health and comfort nevertheless they unconsciously but very really contribute; it is in fact by their activity that the health of the body is maintained against adverse influences. So it is with the health of the body politic, to which our wise activity is necessary and essential; we are to be a corporate portion of the whole, effective servants of the guiding and controlling Spirit. But in our case it is not merely unconscious service that is called for: we are privileged not only to be servants, but friends; not only to work, but to sympathise; to give not only dutiful but affectionate service. This is required of the humblest, and no more is required of the noblest:

“He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

VII
THE NATURE OF EVIL

Q. 7. How comes it that evil exists?

A. Evil is not an absolute thing, but has reference to a standard of attainment. The possibility of evil is the necessary consequence of a rise in the scale of moral existence; just as an organism whose normal temperature is far above “absolute zero” is necessarily liable to damaging and deadly cold. But cold is not in itself a positive or created thing.

CLAUSE VII

The term “evil” is relative: dirt, for instance, is well known to be only matter out of place; weeds are plants flourishing where they are not wanted; there are no weeds in botany, there are weeds in gardening; even disease is only one organism growing at the expense of another; ugliness is non-existent save to creatures with a sense of beauty, and is due to unsuitable grouping. Analysed into its elements, every particle of matter must be a miracle of law and order, and, in that sense, of beauty.

Recent discoveries in connexion with the internal structure of an atom, whereby the constituent particles are found to move in intricate and ascertainable orbits—leading to a new science of atomic astronomy—emphasise this assertion to an extent barely credible ten years ago.

Even what can be called filth—that is to say material which, to the casual observer, or when encountered at unsuitable times, is disgusting—may to an investigator, or under other circumstances, be of the highest interest; and may even arouse a sense of admiration, by reason of manifest subservience to function.

Many social evils are due to human folly and stupidity, and will cease when the race has risen to a standard already attained by individuals.

Excessive hunger and starvation are manifestly evils of a negative character: they are merely a deficiency of supply: they have no business to exist in a civilised and organised community. Famine and pestilence can be checked by applications of science.

Pain is an awful reality, when highly developed organisms are subjected to wounds and poison and disease. Some kinds of pain have been wickedly inflicted by human beings on each other in the past, and other kinds may be removed or mitigated by the progress of discovery in the future. Physiologically the nerve processes involved are well worthy of study and control. Premature avoidance of pain would have been dangerous to the race, and not really helpful to the individual: but great advances in this direction are now foreshadowed. Already surgical operations can be conducted painlessly; and a time is foreshadowed when, through hypnosis, excessive and useless torture can be shut off from consciousness, by intelligence and will; somewhat as the random leakage of an electric supply can be checked. All this will come in due time:

“The best is yet to be,

The last of life for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith a whole I planned,

Youth shows but half: trust God, see all, nor be afraid.”

The contrast between good and evil can be well illustrated by the contrast between heat and cold. Cold is only the absence of heat, and is made at once possible and necessary by the existence of degrees of heat. The fact that we regard excessive cold as an evil is only because our organisation demands a certain temperature for life; there is nothing evil about cold in itself: it is only evil in its relation to organisms sufficiently high to be damaged by it. The real fact is their normally high temperature, and their delicacy of response to stimuli. These things are good; and the only evil is a defect or deficiency of these good things.

Every rise involves the possibility of fall. Every advance seems to entail a corresponding penalty.

The power of assimilating food leaves the organism open to the pangs of hunger, that is, of insufficient nutriment,—manifestly only the absence of a good.

In a world devoid of life there is no death; in a world without conscious beings there is no sin. In a world without affection there would be no grief; and to a larger vision much of our grief may be needless:—

“My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves,

So dark that men cry out against the Heavens.

Who knows but that the darkness is in man?”

A mechanical universe might be perfectly good. Every atom of matter perfectly obeys the forces acting upon it, and there is no error or wickedness or fault or rebellion in lifeless nature. Evil only begins when existence takes a higher turn. There is not even destruction or death in the inorganic world—only transformation. The higher possibility called life entails the correlative evils called death and disease. The possibility of keen sensation, which permits pleasure, also involves capacity for the corresponding penalty called pain: but the pain is in ourselves, and is the result of our sensitiveness combined with imperfection.

The still higher attribute of conscious striving after holiness, which must be the prerogative of free agents capable of virtue or purposed good, and marks so enormous a rise in the scale of creation,—involves the possibility that beings so endowed may fall from their high level, and, by definitely applying themselves to harm instead of good, may abuse their high power and suffer the penalty called sin; but the evil in all cases is a warped or distorted good, and has reference to the higher beings which are now in existence.

“There shall never be one lost good! what was shall live as before;

The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;

What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;

On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”

Some further idea of the necessity for evil can be conveyed as follows:—

Contrast is an inevitable attribute of reality. Sickness is the negative and opposite of health: without sickness we should not be aware what health was. There is no sickness in inorganic nature; yet, even there, contrast is the essence of existence. Everything that is must be surrounded by regions where it is not. There is no stupid infinity, or absence of boundaries, about existing things,—however infinite their totality may be,—no absence of limitation, either of perfection or of anything else. Existence involves limitation. A tree that is here is excluded from being everywhere else. Goodness would have no meaning if badness were impossible or non-existent.

“No ill no good! such counter-terms, my son,

Are border-races, holding, each its own

By endless war.”

We are not machines or automata, but free and conscious and active agents, and so must contend with evil as well as rejoice in good. Conflict and difficulty are essential for our training and development: even for our existence at this grade. With their aid we have become what we are; without them we should vegetate and degenerate; whereas the will of the Universe is that we arise and walk.

VIII
THE MEANING OF SIN

Q. 8. What is sin?

A. Sin is the deliberate and wilful act of a free agent who sees the better and chooses the worse, and thereby acts injuriously to himself and others. The root sin is selfishness, whereby needless trouble and pain are inflicted on others; when fully developed it involves moral suicide.

CLAUSE VIII

The essence of sin is error against light and knowledge, and against our own higher nature. Vice is error against natural law. Crime is error against society. Sin against our own higher nature may be truly said to be against God, because it is against that purpose or destiny which by Divine arrangement is open to us, if only we will pursue and realise it.

Sin is a disease: the whole of existence is so bound together that disease in one part means pain throughout; the innocent may suffer with the guilty, and suffering may extend to the Highest. The healing influences of forgiveness, felt by the broken and the contrite heart, achieve spiritual reform though they remove no penalty. Every eddy of conduct, for good or ill, must have its definite consequence.

We have high authority for the statement that hard circumstances and disabilities, not of our own making, are mercifully taken into account; while privileges and advantages weigh heavily in the scale against us, if we prove unworthy:

“If ye were blind ye would have no sin;

but now ye say We see, therefore your sin remaineth.”

A man’s or woman’s nature may be so weakened and warped by miserable surroundings, that its strength is insufficient to cope with its environment. Pity, and a wish to help, are the feelings which such a state of things should arouse, together with an active determination to improve or remove the conditions which lead to such an untoward result. Most human failures are the result of bad social arrangements, and they constitute an indictment against human inertness and selfishness. It is a terrible responsibility to turn a human soul out of terrestrial life worse than when it entered that phase of existence. In so far as it accomplishes that, humanity is performing the function of a devil. Deterioration of others is usually achieved under the influence of some of the protean forms of social greed and selfishness.

Another reason why selfishness is spoken of as specially deadly, and even suicidal, depends upon certain regions of scientific inquiry not yet incorporated into orthodox science and therefore still to be regarded as speculative; it may be outlined as follows:—

Our present familiar methods of communicating with each other are such as speech, writing, and other conventional codes of signs more or less developed. It appears possible that a germ or nucleus of another, apparently immediate or directly psychical, method of communication may also exist; which has nothing to do with our known bodily organs, although its impressions are apprehended or interpreted by the receiver as if they were due to customary modes or forms of sensation. Whether that be so or not, it is certain that bodily neighbourhood and blood relationship confer opportunities for making friends which should be utilised to the utmost, and that friendship and affection are the most important things in life.

The intercourse with, and active assistance of, others enlarges our own nature; and hereafter, when we have lost our bodily organs, it is probable that we shall be able to communicate only with those with whom we are connected by links of sympathy and affection.

A person who cuts himself off from all human intercourse and lives a miserly self-centred life, will ultimately, therefore, find himself alone in the universe; and, unless taken pity on and helped in a spirit of self-sacrifice, may as well be out of existence altogether. (A book called Cecilia de Noel emphasises this truth under the guise of a story.) That is why developed selfishness is spoken of as moral suicide: it is one of those evil things which truly assault and hurt the soul. It is a disintegrating and repelling agency. Love is the linking and uniting force in the spiritual universe, enabling it to cohere into a unity, in analogy with attractive forces in the material cosmos.

It has been necessary to dwell on the sin and pain and sorrow in the world, but the amount of good must be emphatically recognised too.

Our highest aspirations, and longings for something better, are a sign that better things exist. It is not given to the creature to exceed the Creator in imagination or in goodness; and the best and highest we can imagine shall be more than fulfilled by reality—in due time:—

“All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist:

Not its semblance, but itself; ...

When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.”

IX
DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE

Q. 9. Are there beings lower in the scale of existence than man?

A. Yes, multitudes. In every part of the earth where life is possible, there we find it developed. Life exists in every variety of animal, in earth and air and sea, and in every species of plant.

CLAUSE IX

One of the facts of nature which we must weld into our conception of the scheme of the universe, is the strenuous effort made by all live things to persist in multifarious ways,—spreading out into quite unlikely regions, in the struggle for existence, and establishing themselves wherever life is possible. The fish slowly developing into a land animal, the reptile beginning to raise itself in the air and ultimately becoming a bird, the mammal returning under stress of circumstances to the water, as a seal or whale, or betaking itself to the air in search of food, in the form of a bat,—all these are instances of a universal tendency throughout animate nature.

Sometimes this determined effort at persistence breeds forms that appear to us ugly and deleterious. For the struggle results not only in beneficent organisms, but also in parasites and pests and blights, and may be held to account for the numerous cases of the interference of one form of life with another: one form utilising another for its own growth, and sometimes destroying that other in the process. It accounts also for the ravages of disease, which for the most part is an outcome of the establishment of a foreign and alien growth in a living body of higher grade,—a growth whose vital secretions are poisonous to its temporary host. On the other hand, the theory of manuring, the purification of rivers, the treatment of sewage, the use of opsonins and of serum-injections,—all illustrate the ministration of one form of life to another; they exhibit the contribution of beneficent organisms,—that is, of forms of life which promote higher development and conduce to well-being.

Many of the microbes and bacteria and low forms of cell life are beneficent in this way; and it is our function,—as ourselves one of the forms of life,—now consciously to intervene and take control of these vital processes. By investigation and study we can gradually understand the condition and life-history of each organism, and then can take such measures as will encourage the beneficent forms whether plant or animal, and destroy or eliminate those which from the human point of view are deadly and destructive,—attacking them at their weakest and most vulnerable stage. Widely regarded or interpreted, this function covers an immense range of possible activity—from every kind of scientific agriculture and the extirpating of tropical diseases, to the reformation of slum dwellings and the encouragement of physical training and school hygiene. As part of our work in regulating this planet and utilising its possibilities to the utmost for higher purposes, the regulation of vital conditions is probably our most pressing, and also at present our most neglected, corporate duty. Stupidity and a mistaken parsimony are among the serious obstacles with which the progressive portions of humanity have to contend.

Another aspect of the universal struggle for self-manifestation and corporeal realisation, which plays so large a part in all activity and is especially marked in the domain of life, is illustrated on a higher level by that overpowering instinct or impulse towards production and self-realisation, which is characteristic of genius. It may be said that throughout nature, from the lowest to the highest, a tendency to self-realisation, and a manifestation of joy in existence, are conspicuous.

It is thought that something akin to this tendency is exhibited in a region beyond and above what is ordinarily conceived of as “Nature.” The process of evolution can be regarded as the gradual unfolding of the Divine Thought, or Logos, throughout the universe, by the action of Spirit upon matter. Achievement seems as if irradiated by a certain Happiness: and thus a poet like Browning is led to speak of the Divine Being as renewing his ancient creative rapture in the processes of nature:—joying in the sunbeams basking upon sand, sharing the pleasures of the wild life in the creatures of the woods,

“Where dwells enjoyment there is He;”

and so to conjecture that

“God tastes an infinite joy

In infinite ways—one everlasting bliss

From whom all being emanates, all power

Proceeds; in whom is life for evermore.”

X
COSMIC INTELLIGENCE

Q. 10. Are there any beings higher in the scale of existence than man?

A. Man is the highest of the dwellers on the planet earth, but the earth is only one of many planets warmed by the sun, and the sun is only one of a myriad of similar suns, which are so far off that we barely see them, and group them indiscriminately as “stars.” We may reasonably conjecture that in some of the innumerable worlds circling round those distant suns there must be beings far higher in the scale of existence than ourselves; indeed, we have no knowledge which enables us to assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.

CLAUSE X

The existence of higher beings and of a Highest Being is a fundamental element in every religious creed. There is no scientific reason for imagining it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence—there is no reason to suppose that we dwellers on this planet know more about the universe than any other existing creature. Such an idea, strictly speaking, is absurd. Science has investigated our ancestry and shown that we are the product of planetary processes. We may be, and surely must be, something more, but this we clearly are—a development of life on this planet earth. Science has also revealed to us an innumerable host of other worlds, and has relegated the earth to its now recognised subordinate place as one of a countless multitude of worlds.

Consider a spherical region bounded by the distance of the farthermost stars visible in the strongest telescope, or say with a radius corresponding to a parallax of one-thousandth of a second of arc, so that the time taken by light to travel right across it is 6000 years:—Lord Kelvin, treating of such a portion of Universe, says:

“There may also be a large amount of matter in many stars outside the sphere of 3×10¹⁶ kilometres radius, but however much matter there may be outside it, it seems to be made highly probable, by §§ 11-21, that the total quantity of matter within it is greater than 100 million times, and less than 2000 million times, the sun’s mass” (Philosophical Magazine, August 1901).

It does not follow that all this matter is distributed in masses like our sun with its attendant planets; but, on the average, that is as likely an arrangement as another, and it corresponds with what we know.

So, given, on this hypothesis, the existence of some thousand million solar systems or families of worlds, within our ken, and knowing what we do about the exuberant impulse towards vital development wherever it is possible, we must conclude that those worlds contain life; and if so, it is against all reasonable probability that the only world of which we happen to know the details contains the creature highest in the entire scale. It would be just as reasonable to imagine, what we happen to know is false, that our particular sun is the largest, and our particular planet the brightest of all, as it is to conjecture that this world is the highest and best, or the only one in existence.

The self-glorifying instinct of the human mind has resented this negative conclusion, and for long clung to the Ptolemaic idea that the earth was no mere planet among a crowd of others, but was the centre of the universe; and that the sun and all the stars were subsidiary to it. A Ptolemaic idea clings to some of us still—not now as regards the planet, but as regards man; and we, insignificant creatures, with senses only just open to the portentous meaning of the starry sky, presume—some of us—to deny the existence of higher powers and higher knowledge than our own. We are accustomed to be careful as to what we assert; we are liable to be unscrupulous as to what we deny. It is possible to find people who, knowing nothing or next to nothing of the Universe, are prepared to limit existence to that of which they have had experience, and to measure the cosmos in terms of their own understanding. Their confidence in themselves, their shut minds and self-satisfied hearts, are things to marvel at. The fact is that no glimmer of a conception of the real magnitude and complexity of existence can ever have illuminated their cosmic view.

XI
IMMANENCE

Q. 11. What caused and what maintains existence?

A. Of our own knowledge we are unable to realise the meaning of origination or of maintenance; all that we ourselves can accomplish in the physical world is to move things into desired positions, and leave them to act on each other. Nevertheless our effective movements are all inspired by thought, and so we conceive that there must be some Intelligence immanent in all the processes of nature, for they are not random or purposeless, but organised and beautiful.

CLAUSE XI

Origin

We cannot conceive the origin of any fundamental existence. We can describe the beginning of any particular object in its present shape, but its substance always existed in some other shape previously; and nothing really either springs into being or ceases to exist. A cloud or dew becomes visible, and then evaporates, seeming to spring into being and then vanish away; but as water vapour it had a past history and will have a future, both apparently without limit. In our own case, and in the case of any live thing, the history is unknown to us; but ultimate origin or absolute beginning, save of individual collocations, is unthinkable.

The truth that science teaches, on the one hand, is that everything is a perpetual flux,

πάντα ῥεὶ ϰαὶ οὐδὲν μένει,

that nothing is permanent and fixed and unchangeable:

“The hills are shadows, and they flow

From form to form, and nothing stands;

They melt like mists, the solid lands,

Like clouds they shape themselves and go.”

On the other hand, we learn that, in its ultimate essence and reality, everything is persistent and eternal; that it is the form alone that changes, while the substance endures. No end and no beginning—a continual Eternal Now—this is the scientific interpretation of I AM.

There are those who think that in the last resort the ultimate reality will be found to be of the nature of Spirit, Consciousness, and Mind. It may be so—it probably is so—but that is a teaching of Philosophy, not at present of Science.

The teaching of religion may be summarised thus:

“All that exists, exists only by the communication of God’s infinite being. All that has intelligence, has it only by derivation from His sovereign reason; and all that acts, acts only from the impulse of His supreme activity. It is He who does all in all; it is He who, at each instant of our life, is the beating of our heart, the movement of our limbs, the light of our eyes, the intelligence of our spirit, the soul of our soul.”—Fénelon.