Biological physics, physic & metaphysics; studies and essays

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VETERA ET NOVA

OR

EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF A
MEDICAL PRACTITIONER

BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS
PHYSIC ^ METAPHYSICS

STUDIES AND ESSAYS BY

THOMAS LOGAN, M.D.

LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL FACULTY OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS
OF GLASGOW

EDITED BY

QUINTIN MCLENNAN, M.B., Ch.M.

SURGEON, GLASGOW ROYAL INFIRMARY; FORMERLY EXTKA-HONORARY SURGEON

ROYAL HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILUKEN, GLASGOW ; MEDICAL EXAMINER

FRENCH, SPANISH, RUSSIAN AND ITALIAN CONSULATES; EXTRA

MEDICAL EXAMINER FOR BOARD OF TRADE, ETC.

AND

P. HENDERSON AITKEN, M.A., B.Sc, D.Litt

VOL. III.
METAPHYSICS

Ci?-cuIatio Circulatio?ium om?iia Circulatio

LONDON
H. K. LEWIS, 136, GOWER S.TB.EET

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V, 3
19 10

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Human Organism Physico- Metaphysically regarded - i

Thoughts on the Union, or Oneness, of the Physical and

the Metaphysical throughout the Universe " " 5

Physiologico-Psychological — or Anatomy Transcendental.

In search of the Dwelling-place or Home of the Ego I2

A Study in continuation of that on the Dwelling-place

of the Mind or Ego ------ 20

Innervation and Enervation ------ 22

On some of the " Findings " of Modern Science as to

the Duplex, or Composite, being of Man - - 26

Continuity and Continuance, or Everlastingness - - 31

Continuity throughout Nature and the Cosmos, or Uni-
verse ---------40

Stratification of Knowledge ------ 44

On what is, has been, and will be — and " But it doth

not yet appear what we shall be" - - - - 53

Biogenesis in its widest aspect, and in particular on its

application to Man - - - - - -5^

Instinct and Reason, as respectively Emanating from,
and Dominated and Determined by, the Sympathetic
and Systemic Nervous Systems " ~ " - 63

v

649

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

Like produces like is a doctrine universally true throughout

the World of Organic Nature - - - - 70

On the Expressions — "The Mind's Eye," "Immortality,"

and " The Pursuit of the Truth " - - - - 73

On the Imagination as an Instrument in Scientific Progress,

and on the Scientific use of the Imagination - - 85

Paith, as applied to the Teachings of Science and as

compared with Faith as defined in Holy Writ - 94

•*' Cleanliness is next to Godliness," Physically and Theo-
logically - - - - - - - -lOI

"The Meeting and, it may perhaps be, the Crossing and

Parting of the Ways" - - - - - - 102

It is written : " Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God" .------. 105

649

17/0

METAPHTSICS:

EXTRACT I.

ON THE HUMAN ORGANISM PHYSICO-META-
PHYSICALLY REGARDED.

That man is a composite being has been discovered and
acknowledged, with more or less fulness and intelligence,
since the beginning of the " thinking world " ; that he is
composed of mind and body is a truism, the validity of
which is so apparent and reiterated, that from generation
to generation it has been passed on from mind to mind in
such unbroken continuity that it has become an almost
innate psychological possession of the human race, and
the starting-point of nearly all intellectual progress and
civilisation. Although, therefore, one of the oldest of
our foundation mental concepts, and a universally acknow-
ledged truth, we think that the last word has not been,
and never till the end of time, can be, said upon it, we,
therefore, venture to express a few words more on the
well-worn subject.

We have said that man is a composite being, and we
would add that he embodies all varieties of organic life
known to science, that is to say, he is composed of organic
parts and textures known to the botanist, the zoologist,
and the psychologist, not to mention the moralist, and
that the embodiment of all these varieties of living matter
and energy constitutes him the crown and acme of all
organised being. The botanist discovers in the founda-
tion protoplasmic matrix composing the various textures
and organs of which he consists or is composed, an

III A

2 ;MfeTAPHYSICS

organic material CQirimoh to what is in everyday use in
the vegetable worlds while the zoologist convinces himself
that a common protoplasmic element constitutes the foun-
dation organic currency, so to speak, of the whole animal
kingdom, the 'psychologist discovering that while man has
much mentally in common with the pure systemic nervous
system possessed animal world, he has much superadded
of which fioj.liing, in comm.on with his remote and near
animal ancestry can be claimed to exist, and in virtue of
which he- .ej^irns. .his prerogative of lordship and predomi-
nance oyefe the, Whole organic world.

Man hlay, therefore, be described as a telescopic en-
folding of all the forms of life which have preceded him
and with which he is at present surrounded, and the
representative in his own person of the various forms
of life, from the most rudimentary and elementary to
the most complete and complex. Besides, in his moral
nature and qualities he may be regarded as absolutely
unique in the whole range of being, and as forming an
absolutely new and higher kingdom of nature, with attri-
butes and qualities, mental and metaphysical, which enable
him to penetrate the outer world and to realise that he is
not the Alpha and Omega of the universe, but that outside
himself there is a great world into which he may, and can
to some extent, project himself, and from which he may
in turn realise that life is really " worth living " and that
work is worth working.

The manner of telescoping his various phases of being
may be described, comparatively, as follows, viz. : in an
outer encasement of vegetative organisation, dominated
and vitalised by his sympathetic nervature, is developed a
systemic nervous system, which takes unto itself a skeletal
support and a motor and sensory mechanism which in-
fluence and dominate his outer and surrounding vegetative
encasement, and which in turn contribute an intermediate
organised encasement for all his mental and " moral "
faculties, with their energy producing, conserving, and
distributing machinery, together with the " indwelling "
of the absolutely intangible and immaterial components of
his " inner man." Man may thus be said to be a thrice
hollow and thrice filled being, in the intra-spaces and

ON THE HUMAN ORGANISM 3

containing areas of which he may figuratively be said to
be thrice enfolded, the last fold being regarded as his
distinguishing characteristic, and altogether entitling him to
be regarded as sui generis.

Man, therefore, embodies in himself vital and structural
characteristics in common with or common to the vege-
table and animal kingdom, indicating the action and
necessitating the possession of common formative energies
and common plasmic constituent materials, the vegetable
being represented by the foundation or pre-embryonic
as well as fecundated ovular substances, and the original
non-nervous structures so called of the fully developed
organism, and the peculiarly animal, by the systemic nerve
inspired or innervated texture succeeding the differentia-
tion of the sympathetic and systemic nervous systems.
When this, however, has been said and admitted, we are
brought face to face with the untouched fact that we have
not by this generaUsation reached his higher and highest
mental and moral nature or characteristics, which are only
existent in the merest rudiments in the very highest ranges
of the pre-human animal kingdom, and which in the lowest
members of the human race exist only in embryo. Such
a wide generalisation will, therefore, warrant us in accept-
ing, and compels us to claim, the aid of that admirable
working hypothesis the " law of evolution " in following
out the scientific lines of research involved in the solution
of such problems as the " descent of man," while it will,
at the same time, bid the religionists in earnest with their
work to take courage, because the improvement of the
race is stamped on every page and stage of its history,
written and unwritten, at once affording a foundation
for their faith, and calling aloud to them to pursue
unweariedly their benign work, while purging it of all
influences which can clog and hinder it, whether in
method or manner, in teaching or dogma, copying thus
their co-scientific workers, who have to change their
standpoints of belief day by day as fresh light is thrown
by the progress or the march of truth.

" Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,"
so far as it is attainable, is, or should be, the common
goal of all, of whatever " light and leading " they may be,

4 METAPHYSICS

whether in the moral or intellectual world, and whether
engaged in the conflict against error, the circumscrip-
tion and removal of ignorance, or the obliteration of all
influences which in any way militate against human
advancement. If, therefore, religionists and scientists
but recognise the fact which they sometimes unhappily
overlook or conceal from themselves, that they are
brothers in quest of different routes by which they may
reach the same goal, and that they have duties which
they each owe to the other and to common humanity,
an impetus will be given to the general advancement of
civilisation which cannot fail to be abundantly evident
throughout the length and the breadth of the habitable
world.

Truth will then have a chance of being recognised and
appreciated, whether it be " revealed " or " discovered,"
in its full beauty, proportions, and stability, when dis-
entangled from the encrustations of ancient fable and
obscuring device, and reclaimed from crass ignorance,
placed on a pedestal universally visible and uplifted, and
approachable by all, however feebly inspired, who would
enter its great temple.

Truth pillowed on miracle, overlain by an effbrtless
faith, and asphyxiated by an overgrowth of sometimes
parasitic influences, must at last yield to inertia and in-
anition, but truth standing firm on the rock of criticism
and thrice repeated enquiry, animated by the free air and
life-giving breezes of a militant faith, will advance and
" cover the whole earth " as " the sea covers the channels
of the deep."

Revelation and science will, thus united, give life and
encouragement to each other, and help on the advent
or arrival of that period, in the far-ofl^ future of the
race, when the " millennium " and " perfected evolution "
shall be one accomplished fact.

EXTRACT II.

THOUGHTS ON THE UNION, OR ONENESS, OF THE
PHYSICAL AND THE METAPHYSICAL THROUGH-
OUT THE UNIVERSE.

That there is^ and can be, only one universe, should now go
without saying ; it always, however, has tacitly been, and
is still held by exponents of both departments of know-
ledge— physical and metaphysical — from the earliest period
of their history, that there are two, and each of these
departments has acted towards the other as if it alone
had any existence in truth. That this has been so has
militated to some, we would say a great, extent against
the general march of truth, as opposed to the advance
of particular knowledge ; it therefore seems that the
respective points to which these two departments of
knowledge have advanced, being now more nearly re-
lated in regard to contiguity and character of attainment
than they have ever before been, it might well be with
advantage to both, and to truth in general, if efforts were
made to blend the structures of the two into one fabric,
and, in future, that the progress of the truth as a whole
should be made the goal of research.

Metaphysical truth for a long time made progress with-
out the aid of physical help, while physical truth, a much
later subject of research, has advanced with " leaps and
bounds," until she is parallel with the former, the two
now occupying contiguous grounds, and necessitating,
if both are to succeed in making further progress along
closely related paths, that a combined rtgime of " give and
take" should be observed between them, in order that

6 METAPHYSICS

the universe and the knowledge of it, which has been so
long tacitly understood as dual, should be recognised as
one and indivisible.

Tentatively, for example, the combined field of know-
ledge might be occupied with an array of active searchers
after truth, stretching from the astronomers, composed of
physicists and mathematicians, turning on a central body
of biologists, who in their turn would rest on and merge
in that long existent and well-disciplined body of workers
and speculators, the metaphysicians, philosophers, and
theologians "pure and simple." The ends and aims of
this combined array of militant searchers after the truth,
being found to he identical along the whole line^ it would
necessarily be found that the common as well as the
particular progress of the truth was receiving an impetus,
and forward impulse, which could not fail to make itself
felt to the most remote corners of the whole field of truth.

Besides union being strength, the fabric of universal
truth would thus be strengthened, from below upwards,
from within outwards, or from centre to periphery in
such a way that the great object, the betterment of the
human race as well as all departments of physical and
moral work, would follow as the day follows the night in
quite a natural and law-dependent way, proving that truth
is not only one and indivisible, but that the progress of
humanity along the lines of emancipation from disease,
physical and moral, is dependent on the application of
means dictated by a complete knowledge of the laws of
the universe, physical and moral — moreover, the entire
human family would thus be brought within the same fold
of what is really divine truths and it would be able, through-
out its various races, to see eye to eye from one end to
the other, and to direct its efforts with a single eye to the
advancement of the true interests of the whole by the
individual efforts of each ; and so would be realised
the prophetic utterance of Robert Burns, the " poet of
humanity," when in an inspired moment he pronounced
the faith " that man to man the world o'er should brithers
be an a' that."

We have said that this regime should be adopted
tentatively, but we claim that the necessity for it rests on

PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL 7

the sure basis of continuity and oneness throughout the
entire universe, so to speak ; thus the matter, energy, and
spirit, recognised and claimed as separate entities in the
light of the most recent and special researches, not only
co-exist but merge insensibly into each other, each dwell-
ing in the other by degrees so regular and rhythmic as to
constitute one cycle and one universal whole — the whole
consisting with the inexorable necessity of continuity
and oneness of all its parts, the one part being as essential
as the other for the working of the whole with the
absoluteness of " the reign of law."

Matter is appreciable by the unaided senses in their
immediate vicinity, and, distantly, by the aid of scientific
instruments and faith in the existence of universal law ;
energy, by the same means ; and spirit, by the use of
scientific methods of observation and elimination, com-
bined with " faith in the reality of things not seen " or
appreciable by the senses, but apprehendable by the exercise
of the human intellect in the highest and innermost regions
of consciousness, and metaphysical analysis of intellectual
being and phenomena. These three phases of recognised
existences or entities, the physical, the dynamical, and the
spiritual, constitute the cosmos, and for their proper study
and definite appreciation, call for a combined as well as an
individual study and research, in order that their inde-
pendent, as well as their mutual and inter-dependent,
working should be fully understood, so that the application
of the resultant knowledge can be applied to whatever
utilitarian purpose it is possible to adapt it, to the end
that the right and proper use of knowledge should be the
ultimate end and aim of entire humanity.

The accumulation of particular knowledge, and the
relegation of its fragments to appropriate niches in the
" temple of truth," render it more and more necessary, and,
in fact, essential, that besides the classification and proper
arrangement of these facts, a general disposition of them
should be made by which they can be viewed in relation
to each other, with a view to the full appreciation of their
respective proportions and inter-relationships, and the
ultimate realisation of a complete mosaic, so to speak, of
knowledge, in which the design of the pattern or picture

8 METAPHYSICS

should emerge in all the majesty of the complete truth,
no feature predominating over another, but all revealing
themselves in true perspective, and adaptation to the
wants of the whole. Thus it would once for all be seen,
that no individual fragment was inconsistent with the
truth of the whole, and, therefore, that every searcher
after truth, however humble, in the commonwealth of
knowledge, would find himself in entire accord with
every other searcher, let the subject of his search be what
it might in nature and apparent distance in time or space,
and, therefore, that he was engaged in the great common
work of forwarding the conquest of learning and civilisa-
tion, and adding one more stone to the great edifice of
knowledge.

Thus, the individual worker, and the community of
researchers, would have interests alike, and however hard
they wrought, they would appreciate the great inspiring
influence of feeling that they were engaged in the noblest
work in which it is in the power of humanity to engage.
Moreover, we make bold to say that " the dreams "
of early humanity embraced some such thoughts, when it
had it revealed^ in whatever form, what are the great
facts and teachings of "revelation," and the ends for
which all things that are exist.

It is, we are persuaded, coming, that every exponent of
truth throughout the whole commonwealth of knowledge
will hasten to welcome every addition to its treasures by
whomsoever contributed and whatsoever source it may
have emanated, and that literally the time is coming when
the theologian will shake hands with and embrace the
physicist, that the metaphysican and the astronomer will
agree in their mutual estimates of each other ; and that,
even within the province of humanitarianism, there will be
found sufficient room for the best efforts of the socialist
and the philanthropist. We, therefore, hopefully perceive,
from reading between the lines of contemporary as well
as past history, that the universal drift of the " currents
of human events " shows a growing disposition on the
part of the leaders of thought and action, in all depart-
ments of knowledge, to take advice and to accept
assistance from every available quarter and source possible.

PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL 9

This, then, surely means much when viewed in relation-
ship to the future destinies of the human race, and all
terrestrial problems involved in these destinies, individual,
communal, and affiliated.

The unification and focussing of knowledge, and its
combined application to the wants of humanity, physical,
mental, and spiritual, constitute of a certainty a great and
irresistible lever for the raising of man to a higher position
in the hierarchy of being, and offer a wider and fuller
view of the necessities of his situation than have presented
themselves for many a day, and should infuse new life and
enthusiasm into his efforts after the good and the true in
all walks of life, and into the performance of everything
" his hand findeth to do " " of true and good report."

Universal truth thus recognised, and applied to the
everyday wants and requirements, physical, intellectual,
and moral, of man, will secure his emancipation from the
thraldom of original and acquired idiosyncrasies, and
bring him in touch with and under the shaping influence
of all that is best and necessary for his successful occupa-
tion of his particular " niche " in this world and the place
for which he is adapted in the next by ''first intention "
and the working out of his own destiny.

In this connection, and as a natural continuation of the
study of all the so-called physical, intellectual, and moral
influences and developmental factors moulding the char-
acter of man, individual and communal, it becomes apparent
that the religious developments from the earliest periods of
the history of the human race have been the consequences
of impulses arising from an all-pervading conviction that
man's destiny did not begin and end with the ordinary,
shorter or longer, span of life, but that that life was merely
preliminary, and determinative of the direction in which it
was destined to progress. That conviction being based
on an innate or inbred "feeling," held more or less
strongly by all branches of the race, and supported by the
latest " findings " of science, compels the further con-
sideration of the probable destiny of man and the possi-
bilities in wait for his ever-living principle, the impelling
and compelling imperishable force composing his ego, in
order that he should be satisfied in his innermost self that

lo METAPHYSICS

he is making a proper, if not the best, use of his life here
for continuing it with the best results hereafter.

Any attempt at a solution of the transcendental problems
herein involved must feel almost an act of impiety on the
part of the attempter. We, therefore, disclaim all intention
of going beyond the limits imposed by the method and
manner of our approach to the subject and the light which
the conclusions we have been able to draw from the assort-
ment of our ''Science siftings " have enabled us to shed on
them and to penetrate them.

It ought to be mentioned here that, so far as we possess
the historical knowledge on the subject, we are warranted
in saying that every nationality, even every important
community, tribe, and so-called thinking individual, has
more or less displayed a beliefs implied or expressed, in the
reality of the existence of an after state when that here
enjoyed has been spent to its close, and that around this
belief have clustered influences of the most potent order
in the formation of human character and the direction of
human motives — influences which in many instances have
culminated in the evolution and development of cults and
the development of religious systems. That this is " a
natural outcome " of the operation of " natural cause and
eff^ect" we would claim to be a great truth, and that
it should be encouraged and its growth maintained we
claim as equally imperatively demanded, in order that its
growth should be along the lines of the greatest good to
the greatest number, with the intent that its ultimate full
development should be perfected, so that the here and the
hereafter of man should form one indissoluble whole,
meeting the requirements of the Author and Governor of
all the universe. Therefore, respect for all such systems,
from the most rudimentary individual religious beliefs to
the most fully developed and perfect forms of worship
and codes of morals, must in strict justice be held, and
every liberty given for the growth of religious opinion, in
order that the best and noblest influences in moulding the
final destinies of humanity should have the results attain-
able by the "survival of the fittest."

While thus the teachings of science and of religious
systems developed in the moral world, the universally

PHYSICAL AND METAPHYSICAL ii

existent innate longings of humanity for a higher and
better life, and the ever-increasing strength of the great
graces of '* faith, hope, and charity," continue to dominate
the progress of events, it must follow, as an absolute
fulfilment of Holy Writ, that humanity must mount for
ever and ever the scale of being, until it enters upon that
phase which " it has not yet entered into the mind of man
to conceive," but which will inevitably follow, in con-
tinuous growth, along the lines on which it vi?^^ projected.

It, therefore, in conclusion, follows that the physical
and metaphysical throughout the universe of nature form
a whole^ one and indivisible^ which merges in the spiritual,
the whole constituting one system without beginning
and without end, complete, and ultimately harmonious,
throughout its whole extent, all friction in its working,
and all limitation in the completeness of its operations
removed, and the meeting of its every requirement being
achieved, the success of the whole will be made absolutely
and for ever manifest.

EXTRACT III.

PHYSIOLOGICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL— OR ANATOMY TRAN-
SCENDENTAL. IN SEARCH OF THE DWELLING-
PLACE OR HOME OF THE EGO.

In all ages, or ever since man began to think seriously^ the
search after the manner of his material and mental union
has aroused his curiosity, stimulated his thought, and
quickened his consciousness, and has afforded an ever-
recurrent theme for the flight of his poetry and a text
for his more prosaic dissertation.

The search has been more or less attempted in every
generation — sometimes with more apparent success and
sometimes with less, but always with an absorbing interest
which has kept alive his belief in his dual nature and
destiny.

In the early ages, and even yet, man has referred to
his heart as the centre of his material being and the
dwelling-place of his soul, and, in his most solemn
moments, has appealed to it for guidance and sought
its dictates.

Time, however, and the exercise of the powers of
human observation and thought, have gradually lessened
the hold of this belief on the human family, and the
advent of anatomical, physiological, and psychological
research has driven it into anatomical obscurity, and
compelled its votaries to recognise the brain as the habitat
and scene of mental operations — the metaphysician follow-
ing at last, and saying to this — Amen !

Since the advent of these new views, the curious in
anatomy, or at least some of them, have at different

PH YSIOLOGICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL 1 3

times pointed out certain cerebral structures as the parti-
cular dwelling-place of the mind or soul ; but these have
in turn been discarded, or fallen into abeyance, and we
consequently still find ourselves engaged in this old but
ever new task oi research.

In this search we confess we have, like our forefathers,
been always more or less interested, and, like some of
them, we feel inclined to throw our " stone," or moiety
of thought, on the ''cairn " of research ; and in perform-
ing this self-imposed task we are deeply conscious of the
difficulties surrounding our position — difficulties in the
way of being able to say anything new or true on
the subject, and difficulties arising from scientific inability^
so to speak, adequately to grasp such a piece of trans-
cendentalism.

In beginning the work of research, we feel it our first
duty to clear the ground of encumbrances in order to
lay bare the material basis or anatomical framework,
or the biological strata, on, and in, which we think it
possible to reach the actual material dwelling-place, habitat,
or home of the mind.

The work of baring or clearing away, or the process
of structural elimination, necessitates the removal of all the
outer coverings or envelopes of the brain, which (cover-
ings) may be looked upon as merely protecting and
supporting and as constituting the outer framework or
scaffi)lding through which is passed out and in what
is necessary to meet the materio-dynamic wants of the
organism within.

Having accomplished this work of baring or clearing
away, we reveal the large and complex series of structures
called the brain and upper part or root of the spinal cord,
or, technically, the organs known as the cerebrum, cere-
helium, pons Varolii,, and medulla oblongata.

Modern anatomy has done much to elucidate the topo-
graphy of these intra-cranial organisms, and to fix and
localise the centres of the various peripheral nerve supplies,
but into this it will be unnecessary for our present
purpose to enter, we therefore pass over this most in-
teresting but, in the meantime, irrelevant region ot the
subject.

14 METAPHYSICS

The greater part of the brain substance proper is com-
posed or made up of a substance or material called the
neuroglia, the matrix or stroma of which constitutes the
foundation texture or framework of all the parts of
the nervous system enumerated above, a substance which
is composed of a great series of minute sympathetically
innervated cells, connected by a meshwork of uniting
and intervening very minute fibres or fibrils, amid which
is strown, or into the interstices of which is filled, from
the capillaries of the blood circulation, a great mass, or
as much as the structure can hold, of an amorphous or
finely granular material.

This substance, the neuroglia, we must regard as the
soil, so to speak, on and in which the various neurons,
composing the systemic nervous system generally, take
root and grow and from which they extract their constantly
required nourishment.

The neuron, or unit of nerve texture, may be described
as a cell composed of its containing wall and its contents,
having attached and continuous with it a series of pro-
cesses called the dendritic and axonal, the former, the
dendritic processes, or dendrons, with their attached
gemmules, seeming to us to perform the functions of
rootlets — to which, by the way, they bear a great resem-
blance— in the neuroglial soil or substance, and to take
up the nourishment on which the cell grows, while the
latter or axonal processes, or axons, become continuous
with what is called the medullary and the axis-cylinder
or inner and conducting substances of the nerve fibre.

The intra-cellular substance proper consists of and be-
comes continuous with the " white substance of Schwann,"
which constitutes the great insulating and protecting
envelope of the greatest part of the nerve fibres distri-
buted throughout the various structures of the body.

Inside this intra-cellular covering of what we have
called " the white substance of Schwann," or the medullary
substance, and enclosed in its own containing membrane
or wall, is the nucleus. This nucleus in turn is found to
contain, within its containing envelope, a substance which
may be regarded as continuous with the axis-cylinder of
the nerve-fibre, proceeding or springing from it, and

PHYSIOLOGICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL 1 5

hence which may be further regarded as the proper nerve
substance, or the substance the molecular affection of which
conveys those impulses called nervous.

We shall now ask ourselves the question, and what
here seems to us to be the question of questions, viz. :
Whence and whither are these nerve impulses most pro-
bably conveyed ? and we think there can only be one
answer given, if what we have here stated be true. The
nerve impulses are conveyed to the nucleoli of the nuclei
of the cells, the only structures of the neurons remaining
undescribed and unaccounted for, through the axis-
cylinders of the sensory nerves from their " nerve
endings," on the one hand, and from these nucleoli
themselves, which initiate and determine them and pass
them outwards through the various motor nerves to their
" nerve endings," on the other.

The nucleolar structures of the neurons of the brain
proper, or cerebrum, and it may be of some of the higher
related basal centres, thus become, and we contend must be
recognised as, what we are in search of, viz. the Dwelling-
place or Home of the Ego.

The nucleoli of the cerebral and higher basal neurons
must thus be regarded as the most highly functioned and
organised structures of the body, as the most deeply
sensitive, receptive and retentive, and consequently as the
most finally poised and explosive. Hence, emotion, voli-
tion, and "staying-power" in the healthy, and the "nerve
storms " in the diseased.

In arriving at this conclusion we have guided ourselves
by a process of structural elimination, and in searching for
the various possible " dwelling-places of the ego " to be
found throughout our bodies, we first of all elimmated
the organs and structures external and inferior to the
brain ; and in the brain itself we have, in a like manner,
eliminated the neuroglial substance proper, as only afford-
ing the soil on, and in, which the neurons, of which the
higher organisms of the nervous system are composed
grow, and from which they develop and derive continual
sustenance. These two eliminations leave us with the
neurons, the consideration of which in their complete
details in turn leaves us with, after the ehmination ot the

1 6 METAPHYSICS

cells and their nuclei, the residual nucleolar units^ the
totality of which constitutes the material basis of mind,
or, in other words, the dwelling-place or home of the
mind, or Ego,

Here^ amid the teeming activities of the brain, the ebbs
and flows of intra-cranial circulation, the endless processes
of disintegration and repair of its material mechanism —
here^ amid the tumult of atomic change, the buzz and
whirl of molecular displacement and restoration — here^ m
the ceaseless surge and throb of the loom of thought^ with
its recurrent intervals of blessed rest and repose, dwells
the presiding Psyche, burnishing the " wheels within
wheels " of her reason, polishing the keen shafts of her
wit, hugging her griefs, and shedding her " silent tears,"
'' nursing her wraths," and pronouncing her anathemas in
alternate moods of heat and cold, prose and poetry.

Here is the home of the human microcosm, where the
coiled and twisted chains of " the association of ideas "
are forged on the anvils of time, as it pursues its rapid
course into the abyss of eternity. Here^ nevertheless, in
the tiny cosmos of this nucleolar sphere, the Everlasting
Spirit of the great cosmos can come in and hold converse
with its tenant. Yea here^ surely, is the spot where the
Infinitely Great and the infinitely little can meet, com-
mingle, and become one. Tet here^ amid the flux and
re-flux of high motives and noble ambitions, sordid aims
and unappeased yearnings, in an atmosphere of hopes
and fears — why should we not say it ^ — dwells the soul
of man.

Herein^ indeed, dwells the mind, the Ego, indivisible from
and incorporated with, but yet superior to its environment,
and in a sense a ^^ free agent.'" Herein, in this " debatable
land," lies wrapped up as in a nutshell the inscrutable
mystery of immortality. Herein repose, in the archives
of mem.ory, the long list of negatives and positives which
the mind has photographed and stored up during its
course, and the uncountable number of mental " goods
and chattels " which its owner has possessed himself of as
the result of his life's work and endeavours. Herein,
also, is the " court of the temple of appeal," where the
conscience-stricken sufl^erer can be tried and condemned

PHYSIOLOGICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL 1 7

or acquitted by his own showing and on his own evidence,
and where he can be made to feel in his own physico-
mental being a foretaste of a " coming " futurity. Here,
finally^ the Ego^ by itself, is the sum, the Alpha and Omega,
the beginning and end of life, the active and directing
agency in all that man thinks, says, and does. What,
therefore, should be the " creed," the end and aim of
every seriously thinking member of the human family ?
Is it not to possess himself and herself of, in the words of
the great and oft-quoted Celsus : Mens sana in corpore
sano.

The material dwelling-place of the Ego being healthful
and sanitary in all its parts, its mechanism being main-
tained in perfect order, its force-receiving, conserving,
initiating, and conducting machinery being absolutely
intact and in full working order, it must follow that
everything which humanity at its best can accomplish
will be accomplished, and that, given a steady repetition
of such exalted ideals of humanity in the ages^^to come,
civilisation must progress with " leaps and bounds."

The picture is, however, terrible and disappointing
when we consider and realise the myriads of influences
at work daily in the retardation of this work of civilisa-
tion, the almost impossibility of maintaining a uniformly
high rate or level of progress amongst the varying
nationalities of the world, the tendency to retrogression
evidenced on the part of those nations who have reached
what may be called the " high-water mark " of civihsation,
and the large amount of general - cussedness " observable
amongst the individual members of the human race. But
this is the language of metaphor, and we forbear lest we
endanger the truth and cogency of our scientific research.

All the deftly woven textures and wrappmgs which
make and constitute the dwelling-place of the £^0 are,
so to speak, but the -clothes' -in Carlylean phraseology
—of the soul or spirit-this latter being the immaterial
and indestructible "material," so to speak of our being,
and representing the irreducible residuum of that being at

its death. , , , ,. . ^,,„

The totality of the higher cerebral nucleoli, or, at any

rate, those of the psychic cells, as has already been said.

III

1 8 METAPHYSICS

constitute the dwelling-place of the Ego — secured and
protected by their surrounding nuclei and their proper
enclosing textures, and encapsuled by the cell protoplasm
with its containing wall — and become the working neuronic
structures of our conscious being, aided by the systemic
nervous system, insulated by and encased in its peri-neural
sheaths, the neuroglial matrix of particle, cell, and fibre
forming the foundation of that dwelling-place, while the
great blood circulation, with its innumerable vessels and
wonderfully constructed hydraulic machinery, its pre-
ceding, digesting, and assorting apparatuses, constituting
its buttressing and supports, the related and attached
mobile musculature and articulated bony skeleton afford-
ing a moving platform for its peregrination of the world
around it.

Here and in all this we can only perceive that the
governing principle underlying these material parts can
but be immaterial, hence indestructible, and capable of
continued existence, and therefore, that this, the only
living and governing principle within our human organism,
must be — for want of another name — what has for ages
been called our spirit or soul^ as distinguished from the
purely mental part of our being, with the attributes of
immateriality, indestructibility, and consequent immortality.

Along this path of material enquiry and speculation, we
think we can claim to descry, amid the depths of the
increasing gloom of failing intellectual sight, faint streaks
of the everlasting light, as they fall on the inner sight of
the soul through its environment of " clay," its mortal
wrappings, and material impedimenta.

In this region, religion and science may surely and
consistently join hands, and mutually acknowledge that
there is room, warrant, and necessity for both, in shaping
the destiny of the human race, and hastening the advent
of that period when all contradictions and friction, inherent
in the possession of "a little knowledge," will cease, and
merge in the harmony and majesty of revealed, to be
revealed, and absolutely perfect, truth.

In this region, moreover, we may recognise a common
ground, whereon the searchers after the truth in all the
manifold, and widely divided fields of research, physical

PHYSIOLOGICO-PSYCHOLOGICAL 1 9

and metaphysical, constituting the commonwealth of
knowledge, can meet and agree, that they belong to
the same noble army of searchers, that their goal is the
same, viz. the truth, and that the truth cannot contradict
itself, and therefore that their efforts and working powers,
must or should be directed to the accomplishment of
common ends and purposes, so as once again to prove
the cogency of the old adage, that ** in union there is
strength," and thus, or so, open up the way to the fullest
possible exercise of the graces of " faith, hope, and
charity." The exponents of revealed truth, and the
searchers after the truth hidden in the pages of the
material world, organic and inorganic, are thus brought
into touch, and pressing forward in their united struggle
of informing the ignorant, and clearing the world of error,
their power for good will be increased indefinitely and
precisely in all directions, morally, intellectually, and
physically.

EXTRACT IV.

A STUDY IN CONTINUATION OF THAT ON THE
DWELLING-PLACE OF THE MIND OR EGO.

It has been held, " all along the ages," that man Is made
up of mind and matter, and interpolated in, or engrafted
on, the continuity of this belief, we find references to the
indwelling in humanity, as distinguished from animality, of
a third principle in this complex, known as spirit. These
three individual entities or principles, therefore, constitute
the great verities, physical and metaphysical, known to
and discussed by philosophy from its origin in the pre-
historic ages down to the present day ; the nature of each,
their relative importance in the economy of the tripartite
whole, and their relationships to each other in the present
life and future destiny of being, all affording ample and
never-ending subjects for the keen scrutiny of the acutest
intellects, and the subtlest exercise of the most persuasive
pens and tongues amongst the learned of the successive
periods of the world's history.

In contributing this attempt at a further elucidation of
such a well-worn subject, it seems to us unnecessary to
enter into an expiscation of its genesis and evolution, we
shall therefore content ourselves with an expression of
our belief in the verity of this system of knowledge, which
inter-penetrates, surrounds, and innervates all the teaching
of the men of " light and leading " known to philosophy,
ancient and modern.

The summary of the three great principles or entities
entering into the composition of man seems to us com-
plete and impossible to improve upon, i.e. matter, mind,

DWELLING-PLACE OF THE MIND 21

and spirit. The order, also, as thus arranged, seems to
us to express the sequence of evolutionary events or
processes culminating in the production of complete man-
hood— thus, the prehminary material foundation is laid
and the superstructure built up by the initial molecular
disposition and final organic arrangements respectively
characterising the origin and growth of man, while mind
is evolved from, and consists in, the exercise of energy
or force, through, and by, the molecular and organic
arrangements of matter, the resultant living, acting, and
reasoning binary product becoming inter-penetrated, and
ultimately dominated by an *' indwelling spirit," or absol-
utely non-material and ultra-mental energising principle
or essence which, from its non-possession of material and
finite characteristics, may be regarded as continually
existent and consequently immortal. We therefore con-
clude— inverting the order — that spirit dominates mind,
and that mind dominates matter in the economy of life
and action — in other words, matter forms the dwelling,
mind the occupying tenant, and spirit the owner and
disposer — in the destiny of the human microcosm so far
as that destiny is wrought out on the lines of individual
responsibility.

EXTRACT V.

ON INNERVATION AND ENERVATION.

These are words the history of whose evolution, from the
nebulous and faintly intelligible, into two of the most
profoundly expressive terms in literature and science, it
would be both interesting and educative to follow,
inasmuch as the work would involve a study of the
universe in its progress from chaos to order, and its
conversion from dead, to living, form, with all the ''re-
versions " to be observed in nature from the living to
the dead, and from the high-water mark, or acme of
fitness, to the " slough " of complete failure and ineptitude
in men and animals, nations and individuals, genera and
species.

Originally they took their origin in the expression of
truths of the most primitive and elementary order, but
by daily usage they have come to express the ultimate
conditions of organic and human life and death, the
long sequences of evolutionary and involutionary events
characterising the vital experience and destiny of every
organic unit since the dawn of creation. Moreover, they
individually and respectively stand for life, action, con-
sciousness, thought, and responsibility, with all that
hinges upon, and flows from, these things, and devital-
isation, inaction, soporism, '' blank intelligence," and
irresolute nothingness, with their concomitants and con-
sequences.

Innervation has assumed a scientific form from its long
use in the service of physical research, while enervation
has been taken possession of, painfully tended and

ON INNERVATION AND ENERVATION 23

elaborated, and made to do duty by some writers of
biography and history, some purveyors of popular litera-
ture, and some delineators of pictorial character, and has
had its decaying elements quasi-resuscitated and served
up with many a condiment to conceal their corruption,
and to engender and maintain a taste for the ephemeral
and transitory to satisfy a human appetite worthy of being
appeased by better and more lasting things.

Innervation expresses the rule of energy and intelligence
over matter, the redemption of the inert world from its
long lethargy by the circulation through it of impulse
and motion, the organisation of its awakened elements
into definite forms, and the inspiration of these by ever-
increasing degrees of intelligence until their condition has
become one in which the highest attributes of humanity
can be implanted, and a destiny devised for it which is
yet too transcendental to permit of more than a longing
desire on the part of humanity to anticipate its advent,
and to indulge in a "glimpse behind the veil" of "coming
events," which here so realistically and fascinatingly '*cast
their shadows before," but which shadows are, of necessity,
incapable of appreciation by the obtuse, and still half
material, intelligences of humanity.

Enervation on the contrary expresses a survival of the
ancient law of inertia, and the tendency of matter ever to
resist the influence of impulse and to resume if disturbed
the status quo ante, thus indicating an unwillingness
to lend itself to the operation of assuming new forms with
all that follows from intelligently altered conditions, with
the subsequent and consequent evolution of higher and
better present states, and inconceivably sublime future
destinies. As seen in operation in the present day,
enervation clogs and stays the evolutionary wheels of
organic progress in their ordered course, paralyses the
eiForts of labouring nature to accomplish her plans and
purposes, brings to naught the "best laid schemes of mice
and men " to meet the ends of their existence, and mfests
with "dry and wet rot" much of the best work of civilisa-
tion and human advancement, thus slowing or preventing
the application of ameliorative laws and influence to the
reign of pain and sorrow.

24 METAPHYSICS

Innervation is ever affirmative and progressive in its
operations, enervation, negative and retrograde ; in their
mutual relations, however, wherever fully realised through-
out the universe, and understood as the method by which
the great work of evolution — in its widest and highest
sense — is being wrought out and fulfilled, it is impossible
to conceive otherwise than that they constitute two indis-
soluble parts of a great whole. And thus they may be
said to justify and necessitate the contemporary existence
of apparently incompatible elements in the structure of
universal nature and revelation — a conclusion which
becomes at once the solvent of such world-long enigmas
as the co-existence of organic and inorganic matter, life
and death, good and evil, time and eternity.

Furthermore, they not infrequently shape the views of
mankind regarding the present and the future of the
race, in its collective but more especially in its individual
aspects, enervation tempting to the conclusion that death
terminates human as well as all existence, that resolution
of the complex human organism into its component
inorganic elements for ever closes the chapter of its life,
and that becoming " food for the worms " and adding
humus to the soil is all that is in store for it ; innervation,
on the other hand, demanding^ on the authority of the
innate longings after immortality implanted "in the human
breast," the final teachings of untrammelled science, in
the chastened spirit of truth and reverence, the whole
body of revealed truth as is to be found in the epoch-
making "Scriptures" and the works of "light and
leading" left by the subtlest and best intellects all along
the ages — the conclusions that there is no end to life, and
that from its absolute indestructibility it must continue
for ever to animate an organism fitted for its evolutional
development and exercise throughout *' the endless ages
of eternity."

A conclusion thus warranted and demanded must,
therefore, become by the united strength of individual
desire, the consensus of scientific conviction, and the
boldly expressed belief of revealed truth, a potent instru-
ment and influence in the elevation of the final, temporal,
and eternal destiny of the human race. For such work.

ON INNERVATION AND ENERVATION 25

and its full accomplishment, it thus behoves all these
influences for good to merge, and with their united
powers to devote their full and undivided strength to
the accomplishment of the one great object. The
*' millennium " may then be realised ! Who can say ?

EXTRACT VI.

ON SOME OF THE "FINDINGS" OF MODERN SCIENCE
AS TO THE DUPLEX, OR COMPOSITE, BEING OF MAN.

That the beliefs entertained by our forefathers regarding
this subject were, in many respects, far ahead of those
held by their children of the present day there is, we
think, not the least doubt — that these beliefs were
definitely stated in the form of creeds, or in words of
logical precision, is another matter, however, so we shall
content ourselves here by simply recapitulating a few of
the everyday expressions used by some of them in their
literary remains, and a few popular expressions of the
present day, which are evidently fashioned from these
and from altogether spoken sources transmitted to us
as folk " sayings," i.e. emanating from early times, and
still current in the language of the people as well as in
literary non-scientific nomenclature, sacred and secular.
Thus, " he is beside himself," '' he is out of his mind,"
^' he is possessed," and other forms of expression used
to indicate mental alienation^ rest on the belief that their
subject could exist both inside and outside of his body
in virtue of his being possessed of a mind or spirit which
could be displaced or dispossessed and replaced, as when
a condition of mental soundness or " wholeness " was
once more attained, or when he had again " taken posses-
sion of himself" and dispossessed the usurping ''spirit."

On the belief, held by the ancients, that man's nature
was duplex or composite, there grew up, the further
belief that his better self, spirit, or Ego could be tem-
porarily or permanently dispossessed by another spirit,

THE DUPLEX BEING OF MAN 27

or other spirits, and that he could be made the receptacle
for the use of such spirit or spirits, and for the carrying
out of their behests whether they might be good or evil ;
but to follow out this enquiry would lead us too far
afield, we must, therefore, return to the finding of modern
science on the title of our present thesis. In doing so
we need not repeat what we have already written on the
■subject of the duality of the human nervous system, further
than that we have found that system to be composed
of a sympathetic and a systemic, half each of which can
act alone or individually, or in conjunction, and that
each of these two halves, although able to work con-
jointly, has allotted to it an entirely separate and different
field of work, and that both are essential to the integrity
and maintenance of the duplex organism which they
jointly innervate.

As a physical basis on which to erect an estimate of
modern scientific opinion on the subject, we think it will
be of service in combining the data accumulated by
modern research and speculation if we take advantage
of the manner of evolution of these two systems of
innervation and place the details of its accomplishment
in that order of sequence which will enable us, as securely
as enquiry into such transcendental subjects can do, to
come to rational and sound conclusions.

In relationship to the phenomena of life, we must
take it that inorganic matter and vital energy are the
raw materials, so to speak, out of which by an initial or
creative act, the great first cause originally started the
great sequence of living forms which have peopled the
planet from then till now, and that still continue the raw
materials on which life is dependent for its continuance,
and, further, that the principle of life, or vital energy,
transmitted from parent to offspring, has continued, and is
likely to continue, until either or both become exhausted,
to maintain the continuance of living forms which com-
menced in the lowest order and has continued to the

highest. , ,

Living or organised and differentiated protoplasm,
with its containing cell wall and contained nucleus, was the
first form of animated being, and had its vitality main-

28 METAPHYSICS

tained by a mode of vital or pre-nervlne energy, which
accomplished all the purposes of a nervous system by
diffusion along certain intra-cellular molecular lines or
protoplasmic ways, on the principles of intra-cellulo-
molecular metabolism. Even here, however, life is a
duplex affair, in that it requires for its manifestation a
combination of material and dynamic entities, in propor-
tion to and accordance with that determined by the first
creative, vital, or organic act and the law of evolution.

When the conditions and environment of uni-cellular
existence had been outlived, and when these conditions
and environments no longer met the requirements of a
multi-cellular organism, then came the first call or need
for the provision of an organised nervous system which
would hold a cellular community together and innervate
it, while maintaining supremacy over the individual cells,
to the end that a co-ordinated functional regime should
subsist between the individual cells for communal pur-
poses, apart from or together with the individual cell
work.

The duplex principle here still continues to manifest
itself by the combination of individual and communal cell
autonomy within the multi-cellular organism. But when
this form of organism has in turn " outlived its day and
generation," a new departure becomes necessary, and to
the system of innervation — sympathetic — which has been
thus far sufficient to meet the wants of this merely
vegetative innervation, so to speak, there has to be added
a further system of innervation to meet the requirements
of a voluntarily mobile organism, using muscular agency
for enabling it to bring itself into free and full relation-
ship with its environment. Here appears a principle in
developmental procedure, which has a most profound
effect on the whole current of succeeding organic
evolutionary events, introducing a third manner of inner-
vation into the already duplex method. This triple
method of innervation is composed of the uni-cellular,
or protoplasmic, the multi-cellular, or sympathetic, and the
structural, or systemic, the first concerning itself mainly
with metabolism, the second with communal organic
needs, and the third with intelligence and locomotion.

THE DUPLEX BEING OF MAN 29

An organism innervated by all these methods is able
to depute the work of its maintenance or metabolism to
the first two, reserving for the conjoint work of all the
intrinsic work it has to perform in the universe in the
"' battle of life '' for the " survival of the fittest/* In that
battle, are involved a gradually enlarging faculty for
strategy in the warfare, a correspondingly increasing ne-
cessity for the use of intellectual means, and therefore
an increase in quantity and growing complexity of
arrangement of the systemic nervous system, central
and peripheral, which has gone on enlarging in extent and
improving in character, until it has culminated in man
himself, with his brain, cord, and nerves, superadded to
and inextricably combined, physically and dynamically,
with his sympathetic nervous system, until the latter is
quite able, during a third of his life, to take entire charge
of the work of his innervation.

On a rough estimate man spends a third of his lifetime
in sleep or slumber, and to "all intents and purposes"
deputes for that period the supervision and carrying on
of the whole work of his body, in the meantime, for-
saking it and giving up entirely its voluntary control and
the maintenance of its vitality and organic work ; during
this period he may be said to be " beside himself," and,
for the time, it may be said he " is not " ; that he really
*'is not," however, we are not warranted in saying,
because he is, during that time, liable to dream, and
therefore to show that he is still there, although not
able, consistently and co-ordinately, to think, to will,
or even to innervate his musculature, except somnam-

bulistically. . .

Sleep may truly be said to switch off the " consciously
living " current of life and to relegate the presiding Ego
to regions absolutely unknown, and so far as we have
yet learned unknowable, because without consciousness
they cannot be realised, and consciousness during life,
apart from material organism or cerebral integrity, is,
so far as experience yet goes, unattainable. Regarding
consciousness, as now known, as a composite of material
and dynamic qualities or entities, and that the dynamic
is as evident to the intellect as the material is to the

30 METAPHYSICS

senses, we are bound to conclude that they are both
real factors in its production ; but as the material factor
continues at death appreciable by the senses of other
living beings, and the dynamic factor discontinues to be
so appreciable by the intellect of others, we must conclude^
as we believe in the indestructibility of both matter and
energy, that they both still exist, and that the laws-
regulating the incidents of both material and dynamic
change continue inexorably to regulate their future con-
dition and process of change for all time. That there
is a concrete individual or personal future for the EgOy
or the dynamic portion of the body, at and after death
becomes, therefore, as absolutely proved as that the
material shell, in which it has hitherto resided, will con-
tinue to assume a *' train of changes," which will subsist
as long as it continues to exist, and — so far as we know
— that will be eternally. Science, therefore, proclaims
whether we believe it or not, and whether we wish it
or not, that life is eternal, and, that being so, it is surely
time that all agencies engaged in promulgating the doctrine
of everlasting life should " form " or " come into line,""
and endeavour with a common will and strength, and
with a common purpose, to inspire humanity with an
absolute belief in the inspiring and glorious doctrine.

Do we not see in the process thus imperfectly outlined
the principle of regular advance from the lower to the
higher in development and organisation, both material and
dynamic, the inspiring, so to speak, of the material with
higher and higher dynamic qualities, until the dynamic,
outliving or outlasting the possibilities of further material
extension or elaboration, the great step forwards and
upwards is taken by carrying the dynamic course of
progress of disembodied or immaterial personalities into
regions altogether metaphysical, as entities altogether
ethereal and spiritual .f*

Such, we are constrained to say, is a finding of science y
but that it is the finding of science on the subject it would
be much too presumptuous to assert.

EXTRACT VII.

CONTINUITY AND CONTINUANCE, OR EVERLASTING-
NESS. (AS SEEN IN THE ULTIMATE ESSENCES OF
HUMAN KNOWLEDGE, I.E. IN MATTER, FORCE OR
ENERGY, AND LIFE, AND IN ALL THE PROCESSES
AND CONDITIONS THROUGH WHICH THESE HAVE
SEVERALLY PASSED, ARE PASSING, AND, IN ALL
REASONING FROM ANALOGY, THROUGH WHICH
THEY WILL PASS.)

Continuity in the physical universe is everywhere evi-
dent, the occasional hiatus to be observed in its various
elements, structures, and processes notwithstanding ; in
fact, that occasional hiatus is but apparent, not real,
when the whole is viewed in its natural perspective and
sequence, and at a distance sufficient to ensure or to
afford a clear view on a large scale. Continuity has
characterised the history and evolution of that universe,
so far as can be realised by the senses and appreciated
by the intellect of its best readers and interpreters, and,
for the greater part, it is written in such legible characters
that " he who runneth may read," so much so, that we
hear the same story repeated by such different authorities
as the physicist, who has received his information from an
examination of the material and forces of nature, the
biologist, who has 'Uested and tried'' the organic develop-
ments around, on, and in the surface of the globe, and
the astronomer, who has derived his information from an
exploration of the visible heavens. In short, the simple
enumeration of the primary elements of the earth's crust,
its organic remains and living forms, and the stellar

32 METAPHYSICS

depths and myriad stars, but prove that in variety there is
continuity ; the atmosphere, with which the globe is sur-
rounded, ending in, and becoming continuous with the
sea on the one hand, with which it commingles and to
which it delivers up its life-sustaining oxygen, and on the
other the dry land, which in like manner it inter-pene-
trates and renders productive ; the dry land, likewise,
allying itself with its aqueous neighbour so intimately,
that it takes a temperature of 212 F. to dissolve their
union.

Continuity being thus a universal feature of nature's
plans and operations so far as we have been able to see and
realise throughout the physical universe, we may be pre-
pared, on the extension of our enquiries along the line of
human development^ to find the same — we would say — law
of continuity used to effect the processes of evolution *' all
along the line " so to speak. Thus a line of continuity
marks and guides the progress of life-forms in their
constant advance in complexity of form and ever-recurring
and progressing alteration of racial character to fit them
for their changing environment until the appearance of
man, who, in his own individual organism, evinces the
persistency of the same law, and shows a continuity of
type in his various phases of embryonic and foetal
development which structurally allies him with his neigh-
bours and progenitors. Following this law of continuity
into the non-physical or immaterial portion or aspect of
human nature, we find that certain nervine and mental
features are transmitted to him which, by continuity of
evolutionary progress, ultimately place him on a platform
unapproachable by any other nature than the human, and
where his highest destiny begins to be evolved or unfolded,
amid environments which necessitate and secure his
continued existence, in virtue of this immaterial, inde-
structible, and consequently immortal part which till death
forms an integral portion of his materio-dynamic whole.
At death, by the law of continuity, his dual organism
splits up into its component parts, the material portion,
which has been inter-penetrated and animated by the
immaterial, returning by a process of continuous analysis
and retrograde changes into its original elements or "dust,'*

CONTINUITY AND CONTINUANCE 33

its still living, dynamic, inter-penetrating, and animating
part or principle betaking itself along other lines of
necessarily non-material development into regions where
the organs of sense, did they still exist, could not be
functionally affected, but where, from sacred, and thus
also from secular, sources of information we are warranted
in believing, nay, compelled to believe, that there is an
existence for it still to come as continuous and, therefore,
unending as any or all of those evolutionary and deter-
mining lines which have conducted to the genesis and ascent
of man, and as pregnant with possibilities and potentialities
for further development and evolution as great, and it
may be much greater, than were wrapped up in and
evolved from the first act of creation.

The immortality of man's immaterial part or, to call it
by its usual name, soul, is thus claimed by science as an
indisputably warranted fact or axiom, deducible from the
reading of the book of nature, where it is written as
clearly and legibly as any message which has been trans-
mitted through the ages for our information by means of
sacred writ or floated down the streams of human story
and tradition from father to son and mother to daughter,
from Adam and Eve, to the present or last generation of
their descendants.

The immortality of the soul of man is, therefore, the
iinal terrestrial differentiation observable in that series of
continuous changes constituting his evolution from the
matter and energy of this planet, and represents a product
only producible by absolutely consummate intelligence to
devise and absolutely perfect control over the material and
dynamic universe to make. If this be ^, but not the, true
'' finding" of science as we contend it is, then it behoves
science and revelation to approach each other, and to
''join hands" in mutual recognition of the great and
unmistakable fact that, as they are alike pursuing the
conquest of the same vast regions of the unknown, and
letting in on them the light of truth, they are each bound
to accept what the other can give to fit it the better to
perform its great work ; therefore we beseech both to let
^' bygones be bygones," and, once for all, agree to merge
their forces in a united effort to instil into the mind of

HI C

34 METAPHYSICS

humanity the truth of its eternal destiny^ and the absolute
necessity, consequently, for it to live in the full conscious-
ness and belief that that destiny must inevitably be
determined during its brief interval of individual life, and
before the dissolution of its mortal and immortal parts
has been effected by universal fate or decree.

In continuation, we claim that the universal belief of
the psychologically normal and healthy human being in
the existence of a hereafter is justified, and absolutely
called for, by the continuous " knockings of the human
heart on the bars " of the human intellect and reason, in
" longing desire for an after life," the patiently sifted and
reverently pronounced " findings " of science, the clearly
and firmly expressed messages of holy writ, the story of
countless secular attempts of unaided, but far-seeing and
deep-thinking men, as told by themselves after they have
endeavoured to fathom the " riddle of the universe," and
especially as these all conspire to prove the same truth,
solidity, and reality of the belief in, and hopes from, that
cardinal possession of every unit of the great human family.

Moreover, in extension of these remarks, we would
observe that the media or paths along which man has
been evolved, being primarily, from the inorganic elements
of the earth's crust, by their organised arrangement, union
with, and working by vital energy, and thereafter by the
opening up of lines beyond these, through the nervous
system, which rules and dominates the material organism,
by ways of access into the less tangible and ponderable
regions of the material universe, as, for instance, along
the universal ether, which inter-penetrates all space and
substance, including the human body. Along this medium,
the ether, the sense of sight has been made to appreciate
the existence of material organisms at incalculable dis-
tances, and to realise the presence of astral bodies which
may have long since ceased to exist in the state they did
when their messages were despatched to earth.

This latter statement must be, we think, surely about
as inconceivable and incomprehensible by the uneducated
intelligence of man as is the great induction of meta-
physical science to the educated intelligence, that the
immaterial part of man is inevitably destined to progress

CONTINUITY AND CONTINUANCE 3s

along definite lines of evolution ''for ever and ever,"
perfecting in its continual progression its development
more and more until it enters the light of that region of
ineffable glory, known in revelation as *' the perfect day,"
the light of which, it is allowable to suppose, will illumine
to some extent and reveal to finite intelligence the plans
and proportions of the infinite intelligence, as well as the
working of the all-powerful developmental and evolutional
strength.

Furthermore, we might ask who could say, had he
lived contemporarily with the first created living thing
and seen the first palaeontological remains deposited in the
earliest geological stratum, that intelligent, and, as we now
dare to contend, immortal man, would in time appear
and leave his mark on the latest stratum ?

We need not say that it would have been as impossible
for that man to answer the question as it is for us, in the
twentieth century of the Christian era, in the faintest
degree to anticipate what is in store for the immaterial and
immortal part of man, on its emancipation from its material
impedimenta and its entrance on an unencumbered and
immaterial process of development and progress. Imagi-
nation here, even in her highest flights, could not essay
the task of framing an intelligible answer, but must per-
force drop her leaden and ineffectual wings in helpless
effort to cleave so rare an atmosphere ; where alone, we
may assume, the pure and chastened spirit, in the enjoy-
ment of eternal life, can rest from its labours and dwell
in ineffable joy and freedom for evermore ! Such thoughts
have been alike a source of solace and a perennial stimulus
to rectitude of conduct in the lives of the great and good
of all ages, as well as a potent influence for good on those
who, by the strength of their faith in their '' sweet reason-
ableness," the assurance of their intrinsic truth, and the
certainty of their ultimate fulfilment and realisation, have
been led to live a life of virtue and nobility.

Imagination, however, after all, may have something to
say of "light and leading" in justification of her takmg
up such questions, and of explanation of the position she
assumes as the forager and caterer for information for the
psychic forces and mental constitution of man, and it is

26 METAPHYSICS

our bounden duty to listen to, if we do not take advantage
of, what she says, inasmuch as she constitutes the advanced
guard of the mental forces, the telescope through which
the " eye of the mind " surveys the universe, the camera
by which are secured negatives and pictures from scenes
more remote than the most distant stars, and nearer than
the innermost soul of man.

Thus it becomes apparent to her view, when suspended
by reason in the illimitable region of the unknown — like a
spider in mid air, let down by a strand of web into the
lower depths, to acquaint himself with the surrounding
" situation " — that the prospect for ever deepens and
widens as the rope of suspension continues to be given
out, until she realises that there is no end to the limit
of her vision, and at last, fatigued and worn by her
quest, she seeks to return to her mental companions to
put before them the results of her experience in the
depths of the unexplored and unknown. Of the media,
in which the evolution and final destiny of man are
effected, she has imaged to herself as she has swung,
telescoping and microscoping into the most distant regions
of space and into the nearest and innermost depths of
things, that these consist of the material universe aggre-
gated into " sun, moon, and stars," of the illimitable ether,
which fills all space and inter-penetrates all material, and
of an intangible, imponderable, but yet appreciable medium,
which " seems " to inter-penetrate the ether and control
the dynamic agencies of the universe. The whole three,
being welded and merged in each other telescopically, or
in such a way that there is no loss of continuity of
texture, no loss of purpose and no irregularity of result,
i.e. so far as results can be reckoned in an infinitely
extended field of operations over an infinitely extended
period of time, or, in another word, eternity. Imagina-
tion having thus unburdened herself to her mental
companions, with reason in the chair, so to speak, on
the occasion of their examination and arrangement of her
efforts, she is rewarded, in recognition of her efforts, with
the honour of a unanimously affirmative " finding," or
verdict, on the value of her labours.

It follows, therefore, from this finding and verdict, that

CONTINUITY AND CONTINUANCE 37

the strikingly realistic account of the Last Judgment given
in Revelation is not a mere figment or picture of the
inspired imagination, but a real occurrence of everyday
automatic record ; thus the thoughts, words, and deeds
of every human being register themselves by impact on
the very innermost source of the universe, which, accord-
ing to this finding, is the spiritual medium with which it
is inter-penetrated and surrounded, with absolute exactitude
of detail, without the possible omission of a single "jot or
tittle," and with the verisimilitude and truth of the most
perfect photograph, while leaving at the same time a
duplicate copy on the pages of memory so luminous and
imperishable that it remains as a means of reference and
comparison by the Author of man, and the conscience,
with which every human being has been supplied, to be
consulted continually, and to be used as a guide, counsellor,
and friend, not an enemy, — but if, unhappily, in the latter
manner — alas ! for that man or woman, " it would have
been better for them had they never been born.'* Alas !
also, that the truth, so truly expressed and vouched for
by secular authority, in the saying, that "truth makes
cowards of us all " is universally applicable, more or less,
fully to the experience of every member of the human
family.

The truth, also, of the saying, where man is being
enjoined to be true to himself, in order that he should
" not be false to any man," in the light of such statements,
becomes as applicable to the ethical relationships of man,
as if they had been expressed under the influence of
Divine Inspiration.

Again, it follows from the application of such views to
the everyday working of the machinery of civilisation
generally, and to the incidence and outcome of those
influences flowing from the operations of Divine Provi-
dence, we must teach ourselves to understand that
working with anthropomorphic tools and using anthropo-
morphic methods and figures of speech to convey
ideas of Divine things, when these fail to convey an
intelligible meaning, we must content ourselves with
the limited and finite powers in our possession, making
use of reason and imagination to their fullest extent to

38 METAPHYSICS

explore the realms of matter, energy, and space, to the
limits of the reachable and attainable, thereafter laying
hold of those great sustaining and guiding lines of
principle, described in holy writ as faith and hope, to
scale still farther heights and fathom still farther deeps
of the unknown, until at last it becomes attainable for us
to grasp and be sustained by the principle of charity
(or love) held out by the hand of Divine affection, in
reward for the exercise of continuous and consistent, if
sadly defective, effort, until the entrance of that Glorious
Region reserved for the *' survivals of the fittest " of
science, and the " Redeemed " and " Ransomed " of
Revelation.

Whether this region is synonymous with the heaven
of theology it seems scarcely relevant to the character
of these remarks to enquire, but this we feel warranted
in saying, that heaven must necessarily have its entrance
in this world made visible and recognisable with well-
marked lines and features of physical, mental, and moral
character determining its discovery, open to the obser-
vation of all, capable of discovery by all, and affording
a sense of ultimate shelter, security, and enjoyment to all.

Whether, on the other hand, hell is the region so
vividly depicted in holy writ, and by many a secular pen and
graphic pencil, and the realm to which those who fail in
their attainment of what is above described, it would
here be futile to attempt, and absolutely impossible to
claim as true, but this we feel warranted in saying, that
when man, even a good man, tries himself at the *' bar
of his conscience " he realises that he has wittingly or
unwittingly broken innumerable laws, and does penance
as the punishment of his guilt in '' contrition of soul.'*
But if instead of answering to the description of the
average or good man he be a bad man, in the literal
sense of the phrase, then, whether he tries himself at
the " bar of his conscience " or not he feels the punish-
ment of his guilt as " a matter of course," and is made
to realise that it is not necessary to wait for a future
existence, to feel that the penalties for the breaking of
laws, of both the human and divine governments, are
not delayed, but that of necessity and inexorably there

CONTINUITY AND CONTINUANCE 39

begins the work of retribution, and the satisfaction of
justice. We might adduce the whole history of the
human family as a proof of the truth of this, but does
not that lie plainly to be seen in the pages of divine and
profane history, in the traditions of the nations and tribes
at present existing, and in the individual experience of
every living man and woman ? From the '* origin of
evil," in the far distant past, to the elimination of evil^ in
the far distant future, we apprehend that primitive ex-
periences must inevitably be the common heritage of the
sons of Adam. We claim, however, that the present
justifies the opinion that the work of elimination advances
apace, and that in time, and if not, in eternity, it will be
complete.

EXTRACT VIII.

ON CONTINUITY THROUGHOUT NATURE AND THE
COSMOS, OR UNIVERSE.

Continuity, as actually existent throughout nature, so
far as we can realise, and throughout the cosmos so far
as we can infer, is the great thread of principle^ albeit
evolutionary^ on which is, or can be, strung the accepted
fragments of knowledge which have been won from their
environment by the observation and intelligence of the
human race, in its enquiring progress through the ages
and the unknown, and the medium of connection in which we
piece together these fragments, harmonise their bearings,
realise their relationships to each other, and succeed to
some infinitesimal extent thereby in giving a reason for
the order and sequence of "events" and ''things" per-
ceived throughout the cosmos, or universe.

Thus the fragments, or units, of knowledge, differenti-
ated from the body of the absolutely unknown by the observa-
tion and thought of mankind, and called, or known, by
the names of eternity, time, space, dimension, energy, gross
and chemical matter, ponderable and imponderable, in-
organic and organic, animate and inanimate nature, vege-
table and animal organisms in particular, lower and
higher, automatism and intelligence, mind and spirit,
mental and moral attributes, thought and ideation, blind
" clinging to fate," or passive resistance and active
aspiration towards the ideally perfect and attainable, yea,
every fragment of knowledge, by whatever name known,
of which we are possessed, can be strung on this thread,
viewed apart in its proper proportions and in its cosmic

CONTINUITY THROUGHOUT NATURE 41

order, and seen to be a part of a great whole, one and
indivisible, each and every fragment "showing" or being
shown to be essential, generally and particularly, in its
topographical relationships, and in the totality of its
functions and applications, while distinct and differenti-
able in its individual and local relationships, the one
fragment thereby affecting the other, as well as the great
mosaic, or whole, which they, together and individually^
make up, or form.

Time and eternity so viewed are interchangeable and
continuous ; space, dimension, and locality are continuous^
energy in varying intensity, it may, or must be, inter-
penetrates and overspreads the universe, matter, as
differentiated from energy in its so-called imponderable
condition or part, overspreads the whole of space and
becomes as ether, matter within matter, or ordinary
matter. When observed in the gross or ponderable
state of substance, or the material elements known to
physics and chemistry, this inorganic matter by virtue
of vital energy becomes organic, lives, and has its being
for a more or less brief period, when it returns by death
or dissolution to its original sources, every atom of
matter and unit of energy, the former, it may be, to
be re-energised, the latter to perpetuate the potential
qualities of living force or being, amongst the qualities
of which are those of indestructibility, immortality,
and everlastingness, all of which are inevitable, with the
certainty of intrinsic necessity secured by the existence
of the '' law " of eternal and never-ending continuity, with
its unbroken cycles and circles of sequential association
of occurrence and evolutionary determination.

These great fragments of our accepted knowledge of
the cosmos constitute, in their entirety, the foundation
of the further great, though minute, developments of the
truth, as now known to and appreciated by the educated
human intellect, and so lend themselves to the proper
realisation and appreciation of the great strides made by
the leaders of thought in their studies of human life and
destiny At that stage of materio-dynamic evolutionary
progress reached when organic matter has assumed its
high-water level of attainment, viz. at the creation, or

42 METAPHYSICS

appearance of man, an increasing fineness, so to speak,
in that evolutionary process becomes apparent, when
the intellectual begins to develop and to superadd the
moral qualities — the last and highest of all the human
distinguishing attributes, and constituting a great step
forward in the ultra-dynamic evolution of the cosmos —
and a " new world," in a sense, has been begun, which is
still evolving itself along the line of continuity^ until of a
certainty it becomes apparent that the great common-
plane of eternity must be once more reached, and what
the human longing, so generally and intensely felt by
that race, has pictured to and for itself, the everlasting
life has at last been attained.

Thus what we may denominate the all-pervading law of
continuity opens up to every such creature the prospect
■of eternal life, with a certitude equivalent to mathematical,
and an inexorableness of absolute necessity — time ending
as it began in the everlasting continuity of eternity, with
its passive attributes of space and matter, and its dynamic
factor of force or energy, and all constituting one con-
tinuous whole, in the manner of " wheels within wheels,"
fashioned and administered by an Infinite Intelligence
and Omnipotent Power, which no anthropomorphic
methods of estimation and comparison can enable us
more than very slightly to appreciate, and which, we may
take it, will afford a means of satisfying and employing
the purest intelligence and most perfect reasoning powers
and inherent "adaptability" of spiritual existences through-
out the "endless ages of eternity."

Continuity, as thus seen, includes in '' one whole "
every material entity, every dynamic occurrence, and
every spiritual existence throughout the cosmos or
universe, and occupies space from the dimensions of
the point of the mathematician to the utmost attainable
limit of astronomical observation and metaphysical
speculation, perpetuating itself in never-ending sequence
throughout illimitable space and on through infinite
time. Continuity, therefore, proves that although the
human intelligence can differentiate between these in-
cluded entities, it cannot realise the separate and distinct
existence and working of one or either of them, all being

CONTINUITY THROUGHOUT NATURE 43

essential for the existence of the whole, and for the
working of its entirety.

Amid the immensity so outlined, all anthropometric
methods of realisation of proportions and features become
utterly inadequate to cope with the vast problem, the
terms day and night, east, west, north, and south, and
the like, becoming obsolete, the dawn of day and the
*' light of setting suns " no longer having a meaning,
time itself disappearing, the one great resultant infinitude
embracing every variety of thing and every vicissitude
of change in its growing perfection and perpetuity, the
mind thus dimly and ultimately descrying the goal of
" the supremely beatific," whither destiny is leading and
guiding it by those " powers of attraction " so long
known to and appreciated by all of "light and leading"
who have been earnestly treading the onward and upward
path of truth and knowledge. In this way we discover
that continuity of relationship, harmony of action and
interaction, and unity of purpose, become more and more
apparent and necessary, as synthetic methods become
added to those of analysis, in dovetailing, and appreciating
the elements of the truth as they become revealed to
mankind, and the plan of the universe becomes more
exact and definite in outline.

EXTRACT VIII. A.

STRATIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE.

We are compelled to believe that cosmogenic or general
knowledge has been gradually and slowly evolved and
collected from crass ignorance as the human family
has spread over the earth and passed through its in-
numerable vicissitudes and experiences of rise and fall,
of advancement and retreat, in the progress or race of
civilisation, individual and communal, family, tribal, and
national, and that it has had its more or less well-marked
periods of production, accumulation, decline, and decay,
usually synchronising with these vicissitudes and experi-
ences, and determined by the family, tribal, and national
environment ; and therefore in the earlier periods of its
evolution it was constantly liable to more or less complete
obliteration, leaving, it might be, only the slightest and
most ephemeral trace or stratum of indestructible residuum
or knowledge deposit, in the form of more or less coherent
and available fragments, for future higher human neces-
sities and future human guidance.

Thus from the early conditions of the race knowledge
was constantly being fitfully and slowly evolved and
acquired by limited communities, and with the greatest
difficulty diffused throughout their various branches and
surroundings, so that constant leakages and entire dis-
appearances of the ' ' raw material," as well as the more
or less reasoned collections of knowledge, were of constant
occurrence, leaving, after each such occurrence, the same
intellectual barrenness and the same necessity for begin-
ning the process of its re-acquirement and re-arrangement

STRATIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 45

to suit the altered environment and the ever-increasing
needs of mankind.

All accessible and available collections of knowledge,
ancient and modern, illustrate the truth of these obser-
vations to a greater or lesser degree, and point to the
existence of common factors in their individual formation
and preservation, these factors undergoing, in late and
modern times, a continuity and consistency of operation
due to improved methods and geographical facilities which
were impossible in the earliest periods of human existence
and progress. While the factors engaged in the produc-
tion, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge have
been comparatively uniform, certain communities and
individuals have been conspicuous in their use of them,
and have left contributions to the world's common stock
of knowledge which still continue to supply the means of
■education to the present day.

In the list of these contributors of knowledge, data,
and methods, we are certainly largely indebted to every
great nationality of antiquity, but superlatively so to the
authors of Holy Writ, in which we get a resume, or
bird's eye view, of the origin of the cosmos, the early
history of the earth, the origin and sequence of its flora
and fauna, the appearance and evolution of the human
race, with its culminating characteristics of intelligence
and moral sense, with a belief in a future life and destiny
altogether unapproached for combined fulness and brevity,
terseness of expression, and trueness to nature so far as
yet known.

The definite arrangement of knowledge and its subse-
quent preservation seem to owe much to the stratigraphic
methods adopted by its earliest and later exponents by
which the characteristics of symmetrical proportions and
regularity of detail gave it the qualities of coherence ot
texture and easiness of transmission and acquirement by
"word of mouth" methods, which were then and long
after the sole means of communicating, directly preserv-
ing, and transmitting to posterity the stock of knowledge
possessed by the leading nationalities and schools ot

^ Thus' the manner of stratification was moulded, so to

46 METAPHYSICS

speak, on the elements of the time spent, and the work
accomplished in the great process of the conversion of
"chaos" into cosmic order, and the ordering into being
of the flora and fauna of the earth's surface, each know-
ledge stratum answering to a well-marked period of
genetic time and work.

Each of the six days, or periods, of the creative activity
was marked by well-defined features, which gave it a
distinctiveness at once recognisable and memorable in the
stratigraphic deposits of ancient knowledge which enabled
the early teacher to reach the intelligence of his pupil with
a directness and success which the more diffuse, unstrati-
fied, and promiscuous methods of later times have too-
often failed to do. Moreover, on the completion of the
great story of creation and its culmination in the appear-
ance of man as its final outcome, we see the principle of
stratification most effectively utilised in the unfolding^ of
man's place in the hierarchy of being and the shaping of
his destiny in the present world and ' ' that which is to
come."

When man at last appeared at the end of the biological
line as the last link in the long biological chain, we see
the advent of perfected animality, and, as such, we are
compelled to look upon him as possessed of qualities of
mind and body entitling him to be regarded as altogether
happy, innocent, and blessed amid the earliest Edenic life
on which the first human pair were called upon to enter.

This pair, we may assume, were altogether pure^ and
therefore innocent and happy in their pristine condition^ as
' ' to the pure all things are pure," and had not yet been
tried by conditions higher than those of perfected ani-
mality ; but the time was now ripening when a beginning
had to be made in laying the foundation of the great
fabric of coming humanity from which were to be evolved
a knowledge of the difference between good and evil, a
feeling of accountability for the exercise of this know-
ledge, and the adoption of laws of justice and righteous-
ness and what constitutes the texture of absolutely perfect
human society and mutual human helpfulness.

The earliest creation knowledge strata thus became
overlaid with the earliest story of the human race, a story

STRATIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 47

altogether transcendental in its details, but told with a
lucidity of manner and a firmness of grasp of the entire
subject, which will command respect and faith till the end
of time.

The first stratum of human story is conspicuous from
its containing the first example of divine command or
moral precept communicated to the human family in their
otherwise completely free and untrammelled enjoyment of
Edenic bliss in the form of a request, or demand, that
out of the entire available fruit production of the Garden
of Eden, of which they had been given possession, there
were two trees, the fruit of which they must not eat lest
punishment, also the first human punishment, should
follow.

The command being disobeyed, the punishment surely
followed, and with one stroke of divine judgment and
justice it was realised that the human race had fallen from
the acme of purely biological bliss to which it had attained,
and had entered on the thorny path of securing its moral
salvation in "fear and trembling," "shaping its course"
along lines determined by amenability to moral law, and
responsible to divine decree. Thus man, from being the
highest form of animated being, with physical endowments
complete, now also gifted with intelligence and reasoning
powers, entered on the first stage of moral growth and
aspiration to accomplish the great process of ascension
from finished animality to perfect humanity, with its dis-
tinguishing characteristics of physical, mental, moral, and
spiritual qualities destined to raise coming humanity to
the highest attainable position open to created being, and
absolutely unattainable by even the most perfect anima ity.

Thus the first stratum or layer of the higher develop-
ment or evolution of human destiny consists of the story
of m^ns fall from animal perfection, happmess, and bhss
and his call to cultivate the higher intellectual powers with
which he has become endowed, and to engraft and rear
on these the moral faculties, which had now begun to
waken within him, in order that he should be able to
enter on an ultra-animal or immaterial and altogether
spiritual existence, in which his nature should be able to
live and progress to all eternity. Truly a profoundly

48 METAPHYSICS

marvellous story, alive with the greatest of human interests
and provocative of thought at once overpowering in its
retrospective and prospective ranges of application.

Indeed, it may be said that the fall left man bereft
of his former immediate dependence upon extraneous or
non-personal aid in supplying his daily material wants,
which henceforth must be obtained "in the sweat of his
brow," and thereby was laid the foundation of the future
great economic edifice of "trade and commerce," which
have now for so long exercised the wits and energies of
mankind.

The early attempts of the human species to cultivate the
moral character and faculties and to raise that species into
the position of moral eminence and supremacy to which
its super-animal quaHties entitled and qualified it to occupy,
turned out, to a great extent, failures, even under the
immediate inspiration of divine influences favourable to
moral growth, and when the attempts were attended by
comparative success, these attempts died out and their
inevitable results were almost complete failures and lapses
into the still strongly surviving conditions and seductions
of animality. In this condition of moral blight and
failure were passed the long ante-diluvian ages until the
lup of animality was full and running over^ humanity
lying prone, intoxicated, and helpless amid the pestilent
influences, absolutely overpowering and benumbing, to
which it was exposed continually and from every direction,
until a climax was reached, when the whole human family
was annihilated together with its animal neighbours, with
the exception of a reserved remnant to restart the great
problems of post-diluvian human progress and destiny.
How could such stories as these, embracing incalculable
periods of time and countless human vicissitudes and
experiences, be told otherwise than in essence } the essence
squeezed, so to speak, into almost homogeneous texture,
in which traces of stratification alone survive to mark the
long separated episodes of the earliest stages of human
progress and events, as the long period of human history
reaching from Adam to Noah, as alone fully recorded in
the book of Genesis, in the tersest yet amplest manner,
so abundantly testifies and illustrates.

STRATIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 49

We are warranted in inferring that the human race in
its ante-diluvian proportions was continued in the extent
of its spread to more or less limited areas of the most
fertile regions of the basins of the Tigris and Euphrates,
and that " the flood" embraced those areas and devastated
their whole extent, collateral evidence of which has been
recently shed on the subject by archaeological research into
the literary remains of local nationalities of a kindred
origin to the authors of "Holy Writ."

This being so, we are further warranted in inferring
that the human race, if it had extended outside of these
areas, may not have likewise perished, inasmuch as local
tradition and archaeological remains do not refer to any
such general or local occurrence as that described by the
author or authors of Genesis.

Be that as it may, however, the occurrence of the flood
marked a new departure in the history of the human race,
in which appeared the evidence thcit family cleavage initi-
ated the process of tribal formations and national accretions
of population, which became the foundations of modern
society and nationalities.

While the post-diluvian human family broke up into
family groups, tribes, and nationalities, with ethnic
affinities more or less strongly marked, and operating as
a bond of union between them, it is evident that the
centrifugal and disintegrative forces grew as the centri-
petal ceased from distance and geographical remoteness
to exercise their wonted cohesive power and influence.
Thus there developed difi^erent types of human character
as time and environment shaped the course of evolution
of the various branches into which the race was being
divided and subdivided.

These types were dependent for their production on
the nature of the occupation engaged in, together with
the geographical character of the country inhabited, thus
the tilling of the soil or agriculture evolved a certain
type ; while hunting and the chase evolved another, and
when both conditions were operative as factors in national
character formation, an element of stability and strength
was afl^orded which told favourably on the nationality
concerned, and gave it the opportunity of being prolonged
III D

so METAPHYSICS

into what are regarded as early historic and even modern
times.

The period of time embraced in this process must
necessarily be uncertain, but necessarily prolonged, and the
stratification embraced in the process of its deposition
must therefore cover a large area of post-diluvian and pre-
historic knowledge stretching down to the historic period.

Its progress embraced and was responsible for the
growth of prehistoric civiHsation and the foundation of
human law and jurisprudence, but its great opportunity
and divinely enjoined privilege was the foundation and
evolution of a higher moral standard of excellence than
had yet been displayed by humanity ; and the development
of individual and communal moral character for its sake
as well as for its influence on moral progress generally.

The long process of pre-human psychogenesis attained
absolutely perfect and completely rounded proportions in
man, to whom the endowment of a moral nature was in
addition given, by the cultivation of which he could
qualify himself to enter on a higher phase of being, and
to attain to a position in relation to the future altogether
impossible to the highest animal life.

During ante-diluvian times, when the relationship of
the human family to the Author of its being was seem-
ingly closer than in post-diluvian times, its apparent
lukewarmness in the matter of the cultivation of its
higher powers can only be regarded as due to clinging
to or survival of old animal habits and natural disposi-
tions, the throwing off of which still continues the great
moral task, individual and communal, of the twentieth
century of the Christian era.

There are not wanting, however, references to the
growth of the spiritual qualities, such as that Enoch walked
with God, in even ante-diluvian times, and that Noah
had so commended himself to the respect of the Most
High that a renewed opportunity was given to the human
race to begin the moral tasks which had proved too great
for his predecessors.

These tasks, during post-diluvian times, continued to
be much hindered in their performance by the "clinging
of the Old Adam" to his descendants, and in consequence

STRATIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 51

a very chequered existence was led by the highest types
of moral growth and culture, insomuch as direct and
drastic punishment were frequently meted out to "erring
humanity." Nevertheless, during this long post-diluvian
and very slightly historical period there were elaborated
cults and systems of religions which served to keep the
minds of men informed of and in touch with " the higher
things" belonging to human life and destiny, and above
all these cults and religious systems there ultimately arose
the great forward impulse and influence of the Jewish
religion, which gave a coherence and life to the principles
of the moral life and practice which continues to be felt
to the present.

Contemporarily, no doubt, there have been in operation
throughout the various branches of the human race great
agencies and influences, each dependent for its success on
its adaptability to the requirements of its immediate and
more remote relationships and its powers to meet human
higher needs and the general moral advancement of the
highest human interests. Needless to say that the evolu-
tion of religious cults and systems has received its highest
pitch of attainment and its living and every-day applica-
tion to the ethical and moral requirements of the human
family, individual and communal ; with a fulness and
sublimity far outreaching local and temporary conditions,
and stretching forward to the times when the human race
will at last be made ''perfect."

All this is consistent with the system of knowledge
stratification adopted in the opening chapters of Holy
Writ, and, so far as we are able to anticipate, in accord-
ance with the immediate and remote " signs of the times"
and the requirements of the truth.

A remarkable parallelism characterises the incidence and
development of moral faculty and religious disposition
and practice on the part of the individual and the com-
munity, thus the moral faculties are the latest in develop-
ment and the most uncertain in duration and result of
all psychological endowments of man in his individual
capacity, while in the community the same rule holds
good, with perhaps an even greater tendency to non-
development or lapse into failure.

52 METAPHYSICS

It is remarkable also that religious systems have arisen
from the individual efforts of men of "light and leading,"
who, by strength of moral character and will power, have
exercised an influence for good on their human environ-
ment to the extent that a form of religion has taken shape
that has become a more or less permanent institution for
the advancement of civilisation, with all that is implied
in the term and that flows from it.

Thus in ante-diluvian times the family of the first pair
instituted the recognition of their dependence on God by
the adoption of the institution of the offering of sacrifice
with a more or less definite understanding of its meaning.
This mode of religious observance was renewed in post-
diluvian times, and continues to some extent to the present
day to exercise the religious instincts of the human race
in some parts of the world.

Higher modes of religious practice have, however,
gradually displaced this early method, and its complete
substitution by moral, and self-, sacrifice has now been
effected amongst all the more civilised communities and
nationalities as well as individuals, many of whom live as
well as profess the tenets of a fully evolved religious
system with a definite "creed" and a more or less
elaborate "form of worship."

EXTRACT IX.

ON WHAT IS, HAS BEEN, AND WILL BE— AND "BUT IT
DOTH NOT YET APPEAR WHAT WE SHALL BE."

The scientific bearings of the great subject embraced in
the above title must be drawn or taken from whatever
sources they can be obtained, and the conclusions as to
the course of the ship of truth, so far as the subject is
concerned, must be based, if they are to be reliable,
upon the widest inductions from the universe of nature,
revelation as it has been vouchsafed to us by Holy
Writ, history, and tradition, besides what of "light and
leading " is obtainable from, or supplied by, our inner
consciousness.

There is a consensus of opinion, backed by authority
and support from all these sources, that the present " state
of things " is a reflex and continuation of the past
*' state of things," with a general belief that that state
of things known as what is, is an advance, however
infinitesimal in degree of perfection, on what has been ;
moreover, what has been, when regarded from the same
points of view, so far as we can accommodate ourselves
to them, shows a continuous improvement, from the
utmost limit of possible comparisons, on the most primi-
tive or foundation " state of things," or that of chaos,
when the work of creation, so far as this earth and
planetary system are concerned, began, and when time
also began to run.

IVhat is and what has been, therefore, constitute an
unbroken or continuous sequence of events, which dis-
plays a constant onward progress of developmental

54 METAPHYSICS

achievement and improvement in the "state of things,"
and which, in virtue of the sustained and ever-recurring
increments in adaptation of means to ends and working
efficiency, must inevitably lead on to degrees of perfection
in the future state of things as well, which must eventuate
in or lead to infinite advantages and advancement all
round for that period embraced in what will he^ in
comparison with which, by an effort of the scientific
imagination, we feel ourselves compelled to estimate the
is and has been as only a beginning and an earnest.
If this be true, regarding the first three questions — what
is, has been, and will be ? — and we fail to realise that it can
be otherwise than we have ventured to state — what answer
can be given that can in any degree meet the last question,
"but it doth not yet appear what we shall be?" or in
the faintest degree express the profundity of meaning
embraced in its absolute transcendentalism of nature,
the extent of its thought provocativeness, and the faith-
inspiring power in the existence of the unseen and
eternal verities which lie hid, but which we are constrained
to admit realisable, within its cryptic folds and ample
proportions ? Verily, there can be no answer given, even
from the highest levels reached by the combined forces
of knowledge in their most daring efforts to reach the
goal of the farthest knowable ; we must, therefore, having
done our best to satisfy ourselves that there can, as yet,
be no answer given which will convey an appreciable
meaning, resign ourselves in faith, that it will at last be
answered in " the fulness of time," and where the fulness
and completion of the entire circle of events embraced
in the title of our thesis have been evolved.

Who, as we have elsewhere said, of the most far-seeing
moderns, could have foretold, had he lived contemporarily
with the first created living thing, and had seen its remains
deposited in a geological stratum which has now become
palasontological, that intelligent and, as we now dare to
contend, immortal man would in time appear and leave
his mark on the latest stratum }

EXTRACT X.

ON BIOGENESIS IN ITS WIDEST ASPECT, AND IN
PARTICULAR ON ITS APPLICATION TO MAN.

Biogenesis, in its widest aspect, relates to and includes
the past or prehuman transcendental process of the origin,
continuance, and transmission or evolution of life generally,
and therefore lies without or stretches beyond the region
of the immediately demonstrable, and consequently it
may, or must, at once be accepted in scientific faith as a
necessary truth, and as affording a bed-rock of solid,
though unrevealed, knowledge on which to erect the
whole structure of present and future biological science.

The origin of life or its creation, when the condition
of the globe became suitable for its advent, must neces-
sarily be accepted as the central fact in the great chain
of cosmic purposive causation and effect, and as marking
the definite area where the inorganic and organic worlds
of matter meet, commingle, and separate, each to perform
their related but divergent roles in the evolution of the
cosmic vitalities and inorganic entities.

Whatever form characterised the first of living organisms
it is now impossible for science exactly to say, we, there-
fore, tentatively content ourselves by assuming that it was
of the lowest order, a statement which both Revelation
and science mutually warrant, and that, as the conditions
of environment have altered, and transmitted characteristics
have accumulated and undergone change and modification,
corresponding alterations have necessarily taken place m
the specific and generic characters of existent life forms,
by which a process of continuity, increasing complexity,

S6 METAPHYSICS

and adaptation has prevailed, and at last revealed man,
with attributes fitting him, to some extent, voluntarily to
adapt himself to his own altering surroundings and aspira-
tions, and so, it may be, to fit him to aid in the evolutionary
work of the cosmos throughout the future ages.

Biogenesis, however primarily initiated, whether by unal
or multiple creation or creative acts, has been at work
since the commencement of that process in perpetuating
and securing the continuance of life, and each biogenic
act has marked a rising in complexity of organisation,
and has consisted essentially of the repeated and repeated
innervation of a passively living mass of specially prepared,
alternately fixed and free, protoplasm, by a dynamically
active body of also specially prepared but mobile protoplasm,
each of the two being usually contributed by different
organic or parental factors in response to specific initial
influences and conditions for the consummation of the one
communal biogenic object ; in other words, ovulation and
fecundation characterise every such biogenic occurrence,
the great exception to this prevailing rule being effected
by gemmation, segmentation, or kariokinesis, in which
cases the whole biogenic phenomena are unal, or confined
to the one organism, and repeated in continuity so long as
the environment and conditions of such life are maintained.

We, moreover, take it, notwithstanding what has been
urged to the contrary, that life constantly proceeds from,
or is preceded by, life, the only exception to this, so far as
reasoned assumption and observation enable us to form
a definite opinion on such a transcendental problem,
being the act or acts of creation referred to, the
materio-dynamic necessity for which it is impossible to
gainsay, even though we admit the subsequent, or after,
universality of the operation of the law of evolution in
the determination and sequence of natural inorganic
events, and the organic procession of life forms.

The main developmental events, in the more usual
biogenic and elementary forms of procedure and
sequence, as already observed, are the direct, dual or
parental, contributions of a specially prepared protoplasm
to the organic formation and evolution of a uni-cellular
organism, the dynamic endowment of the resultant or

ON BIOGENESIS 57

united protoplasmic mass with vital energy, the re-
arrangement of its molecular elements, in virtue of that
endowment, into living and developing structures with
functional attributes conformable to the living necessities,
in whole and in part, of such an organism, and the
concurrent preparation, for its subsequent perpetuation,
of a potentially endowed and organised residual biogenic
plasm, which will, in turn, contribute to or ensure a
further biogenic combination and sequence, to be repeated
ad infinitum^ or until the resultant multi-cellular organism
requires the division of its texture into specially endowed
cell groups, or nascent organs.

In the process of multi-cellular increase, and the
differentiation of the uni-cellular organism, the unity,
material and dynamic, of that organism is secured and
maintained by the collateral uniting or inter-cell pro-
cesses, left by kariokinesis during and after cell
division and detachment, these processes constituting the
foundation of the sympathetic nervous system, which
ultimately unites into one multi-cell community every
division and subdivision of the original uni-cellular
organism, and, therefore, operates and administrates that
cell community on the lines foreshadowed in the mole-
cularly determined innervation of that, the uni-cellular
organism. All vegetable, and the greater part of the
lower animal, forms, are so innervated and vitally
operated, the vital energy, or life, being transmitted and
maintained by somatic, material, and dynamic agencies,
entirely under the control of a central or original, and
the derived sympathetic nervature, molecular, stranded,
or fibrillar, with, in the most advanced forms, the
provision of ganglionic centres, for specific structural
purposes and local functional contingencies.

The biogenic phenomena, here described, constitute
exactly those observable in the first stages of human
biogenetic development, as well as those observable in
the first stages of development of all systemically inner-
vated animals, and are alone absolutely sufficient to
meet the organic requirements, material and dynamic, of
the vegetable kingdom, and the larger half of the animal
kingdom— the other half of the animal kingdom callmg

58 METAPHYSICS

for the genesis of a systemic nervous system, or nervature,
to meet the requirements of a voluntarily determined
innervation, with its added striped musculature and
attached skeletal structures, protective, prehensile, and
progressive.

This last biogenic nervine phenomenon may be
regarded as the crowning act and finished product,
and, so far as biogenesis has allied itself with, or consists
of, the matter and energy of the cosmos in the evolution
of the flora and fauna of the globe, it is the scientific
raison d'etre of all preceding biogenesis ; it may, more-
over, be regarded as the conclusion, or summing up, so
to speak, of all biogenic problems, and the final
evolutionary product of the entire cosmic organic work,
material and dynamic, through which our planet has
passed since it was "launched into space."

The systemic nervous system, with all that belongs
to it of material and immaterial, of ponderable and
imponderable, is the high-water mark of biogenesis, and,
even in its most rudimentary and elementary form,
constitutes the most profound departure from the earlier
species of innervation and biogenic procedure in the
whole history of organic life. Furthermore, we are
warranted in looking upon it as the culmination of all
the biogenic activities of the whole aeons and ages of
the entire organic events and plan of creation, and the
introduction of the most profound and inscrutable
problem of man's higher, immaterial, and immortal,
destiny.

The biogenic origin of the systemic nervature in all its
parts thus becomes the greatest of all the functional work
of the sympathetic nervous system, and the highest type
of evolutionary product yet known to science. So distinct
and unique as an organic structure is the systemic nervous
system that we may look upon it as a separate organic
entity or living being evolved from, surrounded by, and
conjoined with the sympathetic nervature, each of the
nervatures having at the same time an independent, or
particular, and a communal functional role^ and, to some
extent, a separate histological and physiological existence,
with an intimate anatomical relationship. So much so is

ON BIOGENESIS 59

this last series of relationships secured and safeguarded that
the systemic nervature, as it becomes developed, absolutely
dovetails itself into and with its non-neurosystemically
related neighbouring structures, that it affects and is
affected by them through a more or less delicate,
thin veil of specially prepared and interjected fluid
or lymph, so as to be passable by the most delicate
nerve impulse, but not, or sparingly so, by other modes
of energy.

Thus the systemic nervous system in all its parts is
separated from its material surroundings and functionally
related, sympathetically innervated, textures so absolutely
that, for independent functional purposes, it literally
becomes " the inner man," or, more strictly, the abode of
" the inner man," and holds sway over the whole con-
sciousness and contingent destinies of that inner indi-
viduality which is guided by the light of reason or is led
astray by unconsidered impulse or passive obedience to
the lower instincts and survivals of neuro-sympathetic
agency and domination.

The material biogenesis of man may, therefore, be
regarded as threefold, viz. uni-cellular, multi-cellular, and
neuro-systemic, each stage of which is characterised by
the biogenic influence of a distinct form of innervation, in
virtue of which the original life impulse is passed on from
stage to stage of the individual existence, and finally
yielded up or shed in dynamic continuity and indestruc-
tibility, by its dissolving material matrix and " erstwhile
dwelling-place."

The systemic nervous system, when all has been pre-
pared for its introduction into or evolution from the
sympathetically innervated textures by a further biogenetic
process, becomes the kernel or habitat for " the eternally
living principle" of man, to become surrounded by
textural enfoldings and outworks of organised materials
so complete as to affbrd as untrammelled an opportunity
for complete evolution as a material matrix of the most
highly organised order known in this world can allow.
It is, therefore, not to be wondered at if this matrix of
transcendentally organised nervine tissue is surrounded
by accessory structures and fluid environments of an

6o METAPHYSICS

order unknown, or at any rate unsurpassed in design,
throughout the entire anatomical domain of " adaptation
of means to ends," or in the whole physiological array of
specialised structure and function displayed within the
human body.

Man, " to all intents and purposes," thus becomes a
persistent, living, dynamic entity, whose biogenesis is
effected by a threefold series of materio-dynamic changes,
beginning with his duo-uni-cellular detachment from his
parental sources, and terminating with his dynamic release
from material incorporation by dissolution of his biogenetic
bonds and corporeal entanglements, and, therefore, whether
he wills, wishes, or believes it or not, his continued existence
is absolutely certain^ and he may rely upon it with the
utmost scientific warranty and confidence as a clearly
demonstrated and undeniable materio-dynamic problem
and biogenetic truth.

Concluding that this generalisation is scientifically
tenable, we at once perceive that the most important
structure in the human body is, therefore, necessarily, the
systemic nervous system, and recognise that all the organ-
ised and structurally related material parts outside that
system are but the scaffolding and buttressing erected by
a specific process of biogenic activity to contain it, and
afford it a means whereby its *' indwelling " spirit, soul,
or conscious and reasoning essence can affect, and be
affected by, its environment, and so have its destiny
determined and secured, and its passage from the past
to the present, and from the present to the future, evolved
in perfect and continuous sequence ; the materio-dynamic
or temporary merging in, and continuing as, the
purely dynamic or eternal, by the influence and through
the reign of undeviating, ever existent, and controlling
law.

Materialism and spiritualism, so called, thus arrive at
the same conclusion as to man's immortality and eternal
destiny, and it will surely be unworthy of either, or both,
therefore, should they persist in standing aloof from each
other, and in endeavouring, single-handed, to perform
their duties to the human race, in ignorance of the great
services they are capable of mutually rendering each other,

ON BIOGENESIS 6i

and of the increased power for good which such a recog-
nition may, and would, effect.

In thus a little further analysing the steps or stages of
human biogenesis, we become aware, first, of the great
fundamental truth that the individual life is transmitted
by direct descent from two pre-existent or parental
organisms, a material basis for its evolution being at the
same time provided, whereby the process of biogenetic
development is secured and finally perfected, and last, that
the materio-dynamic compact, which has so long, or for
a full lifetime, existed in the individual being, is undone,
when the conditions for further collaboration between the
material and dynamic partners thereto no longer yield a
profitable return, so to speak, on the invested common
capital, and when, therefore, it has become necessary for
each partner to claim its own and to re-invest or continue
business under altered conditions. Here death steps in
and dissolves the partnership, leaving each to become
amenable to the re-arranging power and administrative
influence of cosmic law and order and " the eternal fitness
of things," the material partner, with its organic wealth,
returning to the great common storehouse of inorganic
nature, while the now untrammelled dynamic partner,
with unimpaired energy and the accumulated immaterial
capital of a lifetime, is left free to continue the life of
eternal evolution, an instrument beyond time in the service
of Supreme Intelligence for effecting the discharge of con-
genial duty and meeting necessary obligation in the regions
of that transcendentalism, the faith in which, however
imperfect, has ever been held and expressed, more or
less clearly, and more or less strongly, by the leaders of
the human race.

The duplicate volumes of nature and revelation thus
lying side by side, from this point of view are found to
speak the same language, illustrate the same truths, and
become mutually explanatory and helpful. We therefore
bespeak for the work of their joint teaching that tolerance
and catholicity, and that depth of charity for mutual differ-
ence of opinion that the supreme importance ot the
situation demands from their respective devotees, in the
fervent hope and strong confidence that only good can

62 METAPHYSICS

result therefrom. Moreover, we are convinced that but
one volume must ultimately suffice to contain the clarified
body of absolute truth, from whatever source it may have
emanated, natural or supernatural, and whatever it may
have concerned, material or dynamic, human or divine,
temporal or eternal.

EXTRACT XI.

ON INSTINCT AND REASON, AS RESPECTIVELY EMANA-
TING FROM, AND DOMINATED AND DETERMINED
BY, THE SYMPATHETIC AND SYSTEMIC NERVOUS
SYSTEMS.

This transcendental psychological subject has exercised
the human intellect since the dawn of mental philosophy,
and is likely apparently to continue a subject for meta-
physical enquiry and calisthenics till " the end of time,"
or until its solution becomes a scientific possibility.
Meantime, then, we would venture to indulge shordy
in the exhilarating exercise by adding a few thoughts to
the already large accumulation left by our mental philo-
sophical predecessors and other thinkers and writers more
amateurly interested in the subject.

Instinct and reason are alike the functional result of
the action of nervine agency, or energy, on organised
matter, but through differing channels, or by different
nervous systems or structures, on differently responsive
organisms; the former, instinct, may be regarded as simple
and automatic, the latter, reason, as compound and auto-
determinant in nature and character. These resemblances
and differences must, therefore, be due to the existence
in their respective spheres of a principle of differentiation
in structure or innervation or both, in virtue of which
their specific nervine products become divisible into the
two categories. This principle of differentiation seems to
us naturally to flow out of, and be dependent upon, the
existence of two separate, but inter-dependent, nervous
systems; in the higher ranges of animal life each, to some

64 METAPHYSICS

extent, influencing the other in the region of compound
and auto-determinant cerebration and neuro-muscular
function, while acting as one in the lower, where neuro-
muscular function is simple and automatic, and required
merely for organic purposes.

The latter, or simple and automatically acting nervous
system, is synonymous with the sympathetic, and is, alone
or by itself, capable of meeting the entire requirements
of the earliest innervated organisms by producing and
distributing the necessary vital or nerve energy on which
their individual life and the perpetuation of their species
depend. Combined with, or added to this simple and
automatically acting nervous system, the sympathetic, at the
time when the conditions of animal life have become more
complex, is the systemic nervous system which, while not
abrogating or abolishing the functions of the former, or
sympathetic, incorporates it, so to speak, with itself, the
two blending and merging into a dual nervous system,
which henceforth works on joint principles in reciprocal,
varying, or changing proportions, according to the position
occupied by the individual animal in the scale of being.

The neuro-genetic structural or evolutionary develop-
mental procedure implied herein seems to us to be the
organic basis on which is built up, or from which are
evolved, the dual nervine and neuro-mental attributes of
instinct and reason, each being dependent on the existence
of an individual nervous system, and both being combined,
in the higher animal orders, in the dual direction and
control of many unally impossible nervine phenomena.

In the uni-cellular or lowest orders of animal life, as
well as vegetable life, the vitalised protoplasm composing
their organic textures, by the operation of the natural
forces surrounding and inter-penetrating them, responds
spontaneously and performs unaided the various functions
of these orders without being possessed of a nervous
system proper. In the animal orders immediately suc-
ceeding and rising above and from these, however, the
necessity for the possession of a structural arrangement
for the molecular and cellular constituents, whereby energy
can be produced, captured, or stored, and distributed by
them for vital purposes, becomes so urgent that the

ON INSTINCT AND REASON 65

provision is made or evolved of a rudimentary nervous
system which, in addition to taking advantage of the
inherent vital facilities provided in the earliest or uni-cellular
forms, affords a means of localising and circulating vital
energy, which in turn enlarges and intensifies the range of
vital action, and increases or widens the field of functional
activity. Such a rudimentary nervous system responds
spontaneously and automatically to stimuli, natural and
nervine, with undeviating precision, a circumstance which
lays the foundation of that exactitude which characterises
all instinctive action, and that apparently far-seeing ability
with which the lowest orders of sympathetically innervated
organisms are credited.

Rising, by natural or sequential stages, higher in the
scale of animal life, we continually observe, as we ascend,
that this nervous system, the sympathetic, becomes more
differentiated from the merely vitalised or living proto-
plasm which constitutes the individual cell, and while
retaining under its charge, as an elementary part of
itself, each and every such cell, it, in virtue of the
increase in cell-production, owing to kariokinetic
agency, continues its connection with each cell ; as it is
added to the community of already existent cells, and as
these cells and communities of cells become arranged
into an organic whole, or into separate structures, it
ultimately establishes itself as the vital agency in the
administration of the cellular commonwealth, animated
being, or animal organism, and conducts its affairs with
the utmost precision and certainty. When this primary
and sympathetic nervous system becomes no longer
capable of coping with the vital conditions of increasing
extent and complexity, an additional nervine agency is
evolved, or called to its aid, of a higher order, which
enables it completely to cope with the increasingly com-
plicated condition of its immediate and more remote
environment, and which, in conjunction with itself, enables
it to meet and overcome all the difficulties due to its
organic limitations as the cellular life nervous system,
and which opens the way along which the long evolu-
tionary process culminates in the production of intelligent
and reasoning man.

Ill E

66 METAPHYSICS

This second nervous system is evolved from and
produced by the first or sympathetic, or, as we have just
termed it, the cellular life nervous system, and it may
in turn be called, besides the systemic, the higher animal
or ultra-cellular nervous system — a nervous system which
enables its possessors, by virtue of sense organs and
ultimately reason, to appreciate their distant as well as
immediate environment, and to more or less intelligently
adapt themselves to the requirements of the positions
in which they may be placed. At first, or in its earliest
stages of evolution or developmental unfolding, it (the
ultra-cellular) is to a great extent subordinated to the
requirements of the cellular nervous system, and, con-
sequently, acts with the almost automatic regularity and
exactitude of that system, responding to the ordinary
stimuli of external nature, and evincing the faintest be-
ginnings of independent and determinable, or purely
systemic nervine activity ; hence, any indication of this
latter is almost purely instinctive in its character, and
limited in extent to the most elementary systemic nervine
requirements in the fixed or immobile structural conditions
characterising the first examples of the compoundly or
dually innervated organism.

Ascending still higher in the scale, we perceive that
systemic nervine conditions gradually increase in com-
plexity as the character of the animal form rises in point
of organisation, freedom of movement, and independence
of existence, and as the real " battle of life " and the
" survival of the fittest " come in to direct the formative
and developmental processes along the lines of continual
improvement and upward progress. The movements
evinced by the animal life of this period are necessarily
dominated and coloured by the sympathetic nervous
system, and therefore limited almost entirely to nervine
influence, or the instinctive and non-self-determinant
in nature and extent.

Following up the stream of animal life, we continually
enter on new phases of advancement in type of individual
organisms as the conditions of life rise in difficulty and
complexity, and therefore necessitate the addition of
more highly organised and finely working neuro-muscular

ON INSTINCT AND REASON 67

machinery, organs, and viscera for the performance of
particular and specific functions, and for nervine centralisa-
tion and reflex innervation, until entering the region of
the vertebrates we discover that the principle of centralisa-
tion has reached proportions in which a great nervine
emporium, exchange, or brain, has been evolved from
the upper or anterior nerve ganglia of their more
elementarily developed progenitors, and means arranged
by which the movements of their bodies can be effected
on determinant lines, or by the aid of reason. Necessarily,
in its earliest stages of evolution, reason is much overlaid
and affected by instinct, and hence its infant efforts are
often so rudimentary and meaningless as to betoken the
still prevalent subjugation by its ally and ancient master,
instinct ; the movements and activities evinced by the
organisms of the early vertebrate animals are therefore
largely dominated and determined by instinct, which is
yet powerful, and very little by reason, which is feeble,
and has not yet obtained the position of ascendency
which it ultimately is allowed to obtain in determining the
actions and shaping the destinies of its possessors. Here,
necessarily, where the growth of reason is yet rudimentary,
instinct is more trusted and obeyed than it, with the
result that evolutionary progress is made more automati-
cally secure and exact, and the way thereby prepared
for the advent of reason, with the prospect of its ultimate
ascension to the vacant throne in the mental hierarchy
of man himself.

At that stage of neural evolution and mental develop-
ment which we have now reached, where man appears
on the scene, we have attained a point in our enquiry
into the nature of the processes involved in the production
and existence of instinct and reason respectively, which
will, we hope, enable us more fully to realise their true
nature and the causes of the similarities and differences
which characterise them, as well as some of the poten-
tialities and limitations belonging to them, as the great
guiding influences at work in determining and shaping
the destinies of the various species and genera possessing

them. ,

In the above short summary we have seen, but

68 METAPHYSICS

necessarily very dimly, that in the early stages of neural
evolution or neuro-genesis, where the sympathetic or pan-
cellular nervous system is conterminous and identical with
the cell and its nervine influence, and constitutes the life
of the uni-cellular organism, that kariokinesis and con-
sequent cell proliferation and increase constitute the
starting-point of the neuro-genetic process, inasmuch
as every cell unit is connected with another cell unit by
continuity or by a cell process, so that such processes,
remaining constituent parts of the growing cellular
community, must be regarded as indivisible from, and
intrinsically identical and conterminous with, that cellular
community or organic structure, and, therefore, that
every such structure is synonymous with the sympathetic
nervous system, and altogether a neural structure ; hence it
may be said that the sympathetic or cellular nervous system
nourishes itself by imbibition from without, and conveys
pabulum as well as energy through its so-called inter-
cellular fibres or processes, which processes must, therefore,
be porous enough to permit capillary transmission of that
pabulum, and so must be reckoned as circulatory media
in the double capacity of conveying both material and
energy from cell to cell by cell contiguity, or unbroken
histological continuity and insulated dynamic disposal or
conduction ; all which constitutes the ordinary functional
role of the sympathetic or cellular nervous system, through
the guidance of automatism and instinct. Further, we
have observed, when the growing needs of increasing and
more complex organic relationships required the provision
of a supplementary and improved nervature to aid the
existing sympathetic or cellular nervature adequately to
perform its functions, that an incipient systemic nervature
showed signs of development within and from the hitherto
sufficient sympathetic nervature, and that thereafter
the innervation of the gradually rising and increasingly
complex forms of animal life have continued to be inner-
vated by the dual co-ordinate and reciprocal nervatures,
and that in the latest and highest forms of animal life the
nervine administration of the vast machinery engaged in
systemic nerve work alone, and in its reciprocal relation-
ships v/ith the sympathetic, has been delegated to and

ON INSTINCT AND REASON 69

centralised in that enormously developed and complex
structure, the brain, cord, and subsidiary nerve centres.

In this dual nervine regime it becomes more and more
observable that a subtle and beneficent plan runs through
the evolutional process involved in the genesis and
development of the structures concerned, whereby the
maintenance of life is secured, and the purposes of that
life made attainable ; thus, the maintenance of life is
secured by the existence of an automatically acting and
systemically independent nervature, by which the lapse
of vital function is obviated and the continuity of the
vital processes or life maintained, while the conscious or
voluntary and higher needs of life are met and secured by
a systemic nervature absolutely adapted for the purpose,
and capable besides of reaching towards and enabling its
possessors to realise the existence of a universe external
to itself and extending into infinity.

EXTRACT XII.

LIKE PRODUCES LIKE IS A DOCTRINE UNIVERSALLY
TRUE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD OF ORGANIC
NATURE.

The truth of this doctrine is now acknowledged by-
physicist pure and simple, chemist, physiologist, and path-
ologist alike, i.e. throughout the domain of matter and
energy as known to these scientists — matter in its inorganic
and organic varieties, and *' organic energy'' by whatever
name denominated, being subject to its all-pervading
influence.

The inorganic matter composing the crust of the earth,
on passing through its long series of changes, as recorded
in the archives of its strata, has comported itself with the
utmost constancy to the requirements of its evolutionary
operation, and has, through the long asons of time that
have passed since its departure from '' chaos," made
gradual progress along the stages of like producing like,
with one step farther, better, and higher, until now a
retrospect of unbroken continuity of likeness and advance-
ment of production is traceable, of the greatest precision
and consistency, throughout its whole extent. No new
elements have been evolved, no unfamiliar methods of
procedure have been adopted, and no departure from the
primitive manner of evolution has been introduced to
disturb the sequence of materio-dynamic events.

Of organic matter the same may be aflirmed, and with
equal truth, although here, from the first establishment of
the lowest living form or organic unit until the final
evolution of the '' human form divine," a more multi-

LIKE PRODUCES LIKE 71

tudinous array of change and variety is observed, but
absolutely consistent with the most complete conformity
to the truth of the doctrine, and showing a rate of progress
and an increase in complexity of organic detail and advance-
ment in the character of vital activity and purpose from its
origin to its present condition.

That organic matter has been and is won by vital or
organic force from inorganic matter is a truth supported
by everyday observation and experience, and that like
vital processes on like inorganic materials produce like
organic results is also shown by everyday observation and
experiment, and, besides, that a continuity of life-forms
have been at work in modifying the inorganic material of
the surface of the globe can be read in legible characters
there is also true, and leads on to the recognition of the
converse truth, that like and dislike cannot reproduce each
other ^ a statement which at this juncture must he advanced
as a truths and, therefore, that organic matter was at first
initiated by a departure from the operation of this law and
the substitution of a withdrawal or departure from its
universal prevalence. This substitution constitutes a new
creation^ an act which enables inorganic to be converted
into organic matter, and to minister to the sustenance of
living forms, or, in other words, an act by which the
Creator and Originator of life made it possible for organic
forms to live and grow on the inorganic elements of
matter. This creative act over, the dominant influence of
the law that like produces like again became operative in
the moulding and evolving of the long chain of living
forms which has intervened between that creative act and
the flora and fauna which now cover the surface of the
earth.

Creation thus must be regarded as a great truth in
scientifically reading the story of matter as it surrounds us,
and in appreciating the relationships of the two great
organic kingdoms in all their length and breadth in the
past history of the globe and its present condition.
Creation itself signifies the measured and consistent
influence of evolutionary energy or force in the earliest
inorganic state of matter, and its preparation for the
advent of organic use and the achievement of great

72 METAPHYSICS

organic ends, as well as in the actual initiation and intro-
duction of the primeval living form, the nursing of its
infant existence, and the spread of its progeny throughout
the organic world.

Creation, as it is portrayed in Holy Writ, is nothing
else than marvellous in the closeness of its details to the
sequence of the evolutionary steps that constitute its
so-called profane or lay scientific history in the unstrained
truth of its thrilling story, in the terseness of its phrase-
ology, in its great fulness of meaning and unfathomable
profundity of teaching ; besides, it verily constitutes the
highest teaching of the highest level of present-day science,
which indeed seems to be but a re-telling of its story in a
belated manner, though with perhaps greater fulness yet
diminished effulgence.

EXTRACT XIII.

ON THE EXPRESSIONS— "THE MIND'S EYE," "IMMOR-
TALITY," AND "THE PURSUIT OF THE TRUTH."

The origin of the expression "the mind's eye" is very
obscure, but its true meaning has been appreciated and its
use had recourse to by every section of educated people
when speaking of things pertaining to what we may
designate the inner consciousness, or of things appreciated
by the mind alone, unassisted by the use of the senses, and
amenable alone to the processes of reasoning in their pure
and peculiar psychological forms.

The physiological and material bearings of the subject
have here to some extent ceased to enter into the practical
evolution of the phenomena of mind, or apart from their
necessary existence and potential bearing as a sleeping
partner in the materio-dynamic, or physiologico-psycho-
logical firm, so to speak.

This sleeping or physiological partner, to continue the
metaphor, contributes to the assets of the firm the whole
material and rolling stock in use, with their motive
powers, or dynamic supplies generated and regulated by
uni-cellular or molecular innervation, sympathetic inner-
vation and control, and systemic innervation, all of which
are inhibited from but capable of immediate switching on
and periodically sustained use, by the mentally endowed
cells or purely psychic neurons. The physiological
material and power, with their histological ways and
means, open and viable by psychological impulse, the
whole universe lies open to the view of " the mind's eye,"
and but requires the aid of reason, with the assistance

74 METAPHYSICS

of the other great faculties of the mind, to scale heights
and fathom depths only reachable by and visible to that
" organ."

The mind's eye constitutes the very centre and essence,
so to speak, of the consciousness or innermost core and
the imponderable or immaterial part of man, where his
whole life's experience, derived from material and im-
material sources, is stored up, focussed, and made available
for the mental and moral working of the human machine,
and for its pilotage through the scenes of earth to the
regions only appreciable by the mind's eye, by the agency
of faith — faith begotten of belief in " things seen and
temporal," or appreciable by the senses and strengthened
by the exercise of reason on the consideration of those
" not seen and eternal."

The material whereabouts or locale of the mind, we
have elsewhere contended, is to be found amid the
nucleoli of the purely mental cells, or neurons, in that
region of the cerebrum which we may designate the
sensorium proper — a very indefinite term, but, nevertheless,
one which histologically will embrace the totality of the
truly mentally endowed neurons, and the centre of which
we might claim, as locally situated, where the special
senses and motor neurons debouch in the psychic area
and become linked up to it.

When in a state of deep thought or mental abstraction,
or when becoming conscious in absolute darkness after
deep sleep and before the mental neurons have had time
to become continuous with or linked up to the cerebro-
spinal neurons, if, with the mind's eye we introspect
ourselves we shall be struck with a feeling, or conscious-
ness, that the whereabouts of the mind, or ego^ is
intimately related to that cerebral area where the organs
of special sense are centrally located, or where the afferent
nervature and the efferent nervature become functionally
related to consciousness.

In this region, spoken of popularly as situated
" behind " and " above " the eyes, the victims of too hard
work, worry, and insomnia sometimes express themselves
as suffering the " tortures of the damned," and almost
universally to speak of it as the region^ or the fons et

"THE MIND'S EYE" 75

origo^ of their several maladies; and there can be no
doubt, topographically regarded, all evidence, anatomical,
histological, clinical, and self-introspective, points to this
somewhat indefinite central and related cortical region
par excellence as being the scene of the main part of
focussed or concentrated mental and moral activity, and
the cerebral region above all on which fall the effects
of the sustained strain and worry which the civilisation of
the present time has so much accentuated in incidence
and intensified in virulence of effect, as witness the
records of our daily press, and its teeming rehearsals of
tragic incident and criminal occurrence.

Moreover, this is the cerebral region in which moral
culpability is recorded with automatic regularity and self-
searching intensity on the truth recording pages of memory
and conscience, and where a foretaste thus is experienced
of personal accountableness for crime and individual re-
sponsibility for the use of all the psychological and moral
powers with which every human creature is endowed to
a greater or lesser degree, and for the proper exercise of
which both the material and immaterial parts of that
creature are necessarily jointly punished or rewarded during
the present state of being, besides posterity, even to '' the
third and fourth generation."

The psychological, or immaterial, part of man must
necessarily conform to the texture and quality of that part
of his material organism set apart for its accommodation,
growth, and evolution, and must be coloured and, so to
speak, finished according to the inevitable law of pro-
duction expressed in the words, like produces like ; but a
reservation must be made to the effect that every member
of the human race, in spite of environment, can raise him
or herself, by the exercise of will power and the cultiva-
tion of mental and bodily hygiene and tone, to a higher
and better state of personal morale and physique than he
or she was born in, and that, given a succession of such
demonstrable occurrences, the race, as well as the indi-
vidual, will ultimately correspondingly rise in the scale of
civilisation. This, in fact, constitutes the raison d'etre of
all effort, individual and collective, for the use of every
influence which can be brought to bear on the onward and

76 METAPHYSICS

upward progress of the race, and affords incentive to public
spirit to continue the use of every appropriate means to help
on such beneficent progress, physical, mental, and moral.

To return to the subject of the meaning of the expres-
sion, " the mind's eye," which is alike familiar to the
scientist and " the man in the street," we would claim
that it represents, in the psychic economy, very much the
same as the whole array of the senses represents in the
economy of cerebro-spinal function, apart from the purely
psychic, the material scene of its operations and functional
use being confined to that cerebral area in which repose,
in texturally inhibited but in functionally free and unre-
strained existence, the innermost, the most intensely
functional, the most dynamically and explosively endowed,
and the last to appear or be evolved, of the neuronal
structures, what we have denominated the mental or psychic
nerve cells or mentally endowed neurons. This area,
towering in functional character above the highest related
cerebral-spinal nerve centres^ sheds the intensity of its light-
giving activity over the whole area of voluntarily controlled
nervine work, acting as an imperium in imperio with the
full responsibility of a " free will " agent and the necessary
amenability to praise or blame, with whatever these bring
in the way of reward or punishment.

In this cryptic material region of the psychologically
endowed neurons there is, in the waking state, a continual
activity of thought, thought begetting thought, and the
law of "association of ideas" reigning supreme, setting
its mark and seal on each day's record. Here, in this
^'^ mentally endowed'' neuronium^ to coin an expression, the
mind is continually engaged in its thousand and one daily
interests, saturated, it may be, with its daily cares, worried
with its daily occupation of meeting its material wants,
lurid with the flames of passion or the designs of avarice,
effulgent with the beams of benevolence, and it may be
" coruscating with wit and humour," or throwing its
searchlights into the immediate present, the long past, or
the far-reaching future.

This neuronium or psycho-plasmic fabric, is ever, when
awake, aglow, like a taper of radium^ with a light above
and beyond what its textural envelopment.s can lay claim

"THE MIND'S EYE'^ 77

to produce, hence we are driven by metaphysical necessity
to conclude that a light which has never been "seen on
sea or land " shines here inextinguishable by the fate and
chances of matter, supplied from metaphysical sources, to
reappear and shine again within congenial surroundings,
and amid local conditions, about which it is as impossible
for science even to dogmatise, as it would be futile and
even impious. Suffice it to say, that science warrants
absolute belief in the reality of both physical and meta-
physical law, in the indestructibility of matter and energy,
whether they be recognised as two entities or one, and
consequently in the immortality of the soul of man.

From these three distinct sources, therefore, the reality
and reasonableness of the doctrine of everlasting life are
deducible — (i) from the universal longing and incessant
desire of man for continued existence ; (2) from the
teaching of Holy Writ, and the extant sayings of collateral
non-divine authorities; (3) the combined findings of both
physical and metaphysical science.

It is not now, therefore, presumptuous to express the
hope that a doctrine so humanly attractive and so
warranted may ultimately exercise such a strengthening
influence on human belief and purposive action that an
impetus will thereby be given to the progress of civilisation
which will be felt and sustained with ever-increasing
progressive effect and result until the arrival of that time
dreamed of by untaught humanity, that millennial period
spoken of by divines, and that period of hygienic perfection
and unfolding of human beatitude shall be pronounced,
achieved, and terrestrially finished, and the dawn of an
absolutely perfect day in the history of humanity be
ushered in, which shall be coeval with eternity.

So far the physical aspect of the expression " the mind's
eye " has been the main theme of our study ; let us now
try to some extent, or as far as our powers of materio-
dynamic analysis and synthesis, so to speak, will enable
us, to picture to ourselves the metaphysical aspect of this
transcendental subject, and to trace the steps of the evolu-
tionary achievement effected in the conjoint progress of
the human mind and body as they live out the span
of conjoint life allotted to them on earth.

78 METAPHYSICS

We have endeavoured, inconsecutively and fragmen-
tarily, to trace the growth of the body from the coalescence
of the dual parental protoplasmic elements to the stage of
senile decay, when the dissolution of the materio-dynamic
compact is naturally accomplished, and the partners assume
their intrinsic individuality. At the stage of dissolution,
or when the partnership is broken up, we have ample
evidence, through our senses and reason, that the body
resumes in time its original inorganic character, and that
every atom of matter composing it is restored to mother
earth, as " ashes to ashes, earth to earth," leaving the
gross weight of the planet undisturbed and entirely
unaffected. It is entirely different with the non-material
or dynamic partner in the great compact or " combine "
of human life when that compact is destroyed by death,
or when the mind, soul, or spirit becomes disembodied.
At the supreme moment of the dissolution of its physical
envelope or dwelling-place, the central, immaterial, and
indestructible essence known to the human race by these
names, mind, soul, or spirit, leaves the body which it has
up till then animated, in, we have every reason to suppose,
a concrete, self-existent, and dynamically or spiritually
unchanged form, with attributes of unchanged and un-
changeable identity, and qualities which only imagination
chastened by reason can conjure up and " the mind's
eye " dimly perceive.

The complex array of psycho-dynamic, and now spiritual,
activities, we must believe, are left intact by death, but
loosened from their material host they emerge into an
untrammelled condition of pure dynamic or spiritual
freedom, intact, coherent, and capable of perennial exist-
ence and association with kindred existences and, although
desire may be " father to the thought," there is every
reason to suppose, superior, begins. The psycho-dynamic
agencies here referred to, together with their related
materio-dynamic agencies, consist of the molecular
activities of every cell in the body, of the complexus of
sympathetic nervine agencies, and of the great systemic
nervous system, linked to each other by materio-dynamic
strands of continuity, and attached to and one with the
mentally endowed neurons of the '' home," " habitat," or

'THE MIND'S EYE" 79

*' dwelling-place of the ego^' constitute the physico-meta-
physical basis of our spiritual and immortal bodies.

As " side evidence " of the reality of this scientific find-
ing, we might recite a single instance of the existence of
the indissoluble strength of these neuro-dynamic bonds
of union and continuity. Thus, an unfortunate human
being loses a limb, lives, and re-enters the battle of life,
when he "realises" that although the limb is physically
lost it still metaphysically constitutes a part of his being,
the sensations of its presence being too insistent and real
to prevent the realisation of its physical absence from his
body. In conclusion, we are, we contend, scientifically
warranted in claiming that death of the body is none other
than the beginning of a life beyond death, the physical
part no doubt ceasing to exist as an organised and ani-
mated body, but the metaphysical part maintaining its
existence and individuality, entering a new phase of being,
and undergoing evolution in accordance with its intrinsic
condition and altered environment. The fabric of the
living spirit, being left intact when its earthly body, in
which it has been evolved, has become inanimate and
dissolves into its physical or inorganic elements, begins a
new life or phase of existence in accordance with the plans
and demands of an infinite wisdom and power behind and
beyond all things in which or in whom " we live, move,
and have our being," from whom we have come and to
whom we go, the " beginning and the end," the " Alpha
and Omega," and the "Author and Finisher" of the
Universe.

Inspired by these views, we feel constrained to say that
the multiply confirmed doctrine of immortality is entitled
to become a lever for the uplifting of humanity into the
clear region of metaphysical reality, where the plan, design,
and intention of the universe become coherent and realis-
able, and where the clouds of pessimism are seen rolling
away like mists before the noonday sun, and the clear
skies of optimism becoming spiritually visible from
horizon to horizon. The evolution of the ideas of
ghostly forms and angelic presences is intimately related,
in some of its aspects, to the metaphysical transformation
which the human being undergoes at death ; thus, the

8o METAPHYSICS

spirit, in the act of disembodiment, may be scientifically
supposed to be shed by its physical host somewhat in
the manner of the emancipation of the butterfly from its
enclosing chrysalis encasement, with every dynamic feature
and faculty intact, as it rolls, amoeba-like, into the meta-
physical universe, pushing aside its hitherto material garb,
and assuming its full and proper metaphysical or spiritual
form, in which state, anthropomorphically regarded, it is
at least conceivable it may become realisable to kindred
'* departed " beings. The non-material or incorporeal
form could only, therefore, he the form in which it could
appeal for recognition to the kindred departed beings in
the spiritual world, and that diaphanous outline, so familiar
in the representation of ghostly and angelic forms, has
happily suggested itself to, and been represented by, art ;
and which, according to some well-meaning people, has
become a vehicle of communication between the worlds
of flesh and spirit, sometimes, it may be conceded, for
reasonable and desirable ends, but alas 1 generally for the
satisfaction of mere curiosity, selfish, ignorant, and alto-
gether undesirable. It is grotesque and abhorrent to think
that the rest and anticipated calm of the spiritual world
can be broken in upon by the frequenters of dark seances^
and the exponents of the cult of mediumism, spiritual
and material, and that it conceivably might be made the
excuse, on the part of some of the right-minded, alto-
gether to neglect and shun the subject of eternal destiny.
Why not conduct these enquiries, if enquiries they can
truly be claimed to be, in the free air and clear light of
heaven, and before the full, unfettered gaze and united
sight of humanity }

Of course these last remarks, do not apply to the
" babes and sucklings " of Holy Writ, to whom " the
deep things of God" are revealed, and to whom, as
the possessors of a faith which accepteth, but questioneth
not, all things, even to the absolutely unseen or invisible,
become plain, visible, and tangible, as those of outer
nature are to the unaided, educated senses and reason of
grown man, but only to that class of mankind who have
been more or less in evidence since the days of " the
witch of Endor," and long before, on the banks of the

"THE MIND'S EYE" 8i

Nile, the Euphrates, the Ganges, and the far-off regions
of the Orient, and it may be the primitive, early or Aztec
races of the so-called new world, who have sought to
extract from the unseen world, for various personal and
other purposes, the knowledge it was supposed to hide
within it, and which it was, and still is, supposed to be
able to communicate to those familiar with the manipu-
lation of more or less elaborate but contorted means
and inventions for their own petty purposes, or for
purposes of very questionable intention and application.
It is an unspeakable pity that the ingenuity exercised
thus has not been displayed in an unquestionable search
after truth, and in the application of its discoveries to
beneficent ends and purposes, to the end that no human
effort should be lost to the amelioration of human pain
and suffering, and the advancement of human civilisation
and progress.

Regarded from this point of view, the destruction of
the Alexandrian library, and the misdirection of so much
zeal for research, and subtle intellectual exertion after
the discovery of the so-called occult, have been, next to
"the fall of man," the two greatest misfortunes that have
befallen the human race. With the non-occurrence of
these two misfortunes the position of the world at the
present time, in regard to its knowledge of the truth,
would no doubt have been different and better than it
is ; therefore, let us put before ourselves the absolute
necessity of obtaining a knowledge of truth for truth's
sake, and all else of practical advantage derivable from a
knowledge of truth will follow '' as the night the day,"
inasmuch as, thus followed, the truth "cannot be ^ false
to any man," for " magna est Veritas et pravalebity

Anthropomorphism has hitherto clogged the progress
of sacred knowledge by its ingrained beliefs in the after
death continued reality of the reign of "flesh and blood
methods, in the crumbling "dry bones" necessity of
retaining personal identity, in the application of material
forms and everyday human methods of calculation to^
the manner of spiritual evolution, and the shaping ot
divine ideals on the lines of human excellence— personal
identity, personal after-existence in a glorified form ot
III ^

82 METAPHYSICS

the present individuality, moulding all forms of possible
appearances and forms of superior beings or existences
and personalities on human lines, and culminating in the
representation of the personality of the Supreme Being
on essentially the same human lines and principles.

We must ever be prepared to recognise that there are
more things in our philosophy than have yet been dreamt
of, and that it behoves us habitually, as time goes on, to
adapt it to the present state of knowledge, and only to
abandon it at the stage when its apparent boundaries have
been reached. These boundaries, at different periods of the
world's past history, have been sometimes almost indelibly
marked by the erection of seemingly indestructible and
most elaborately constructed monuments and temples,
and other means for allowing the reunion of the still
living and eternal spirit with the long since dead and
temporal body ; at times they have been marked by less
material or ponderous methods of signifying belief in
continued existence of soul as a component, but merely
passive, part of a universal whole ; while at other times
the ingenuity of the devotees of particular cults, dogmas,
and doctrines have elaborated services and liturgies
dedicated to the service and worship of the Supreme
Being, amid displays of sensuous trappings and belongings
which have employed the energies of a lifetime to gain
an expert knowledge of, and which have required for
their propagation and upholding whole armies of the
best manhood of the various countries of the world in
which they have been evolved and flourished. No doubt,
to many of these so-called sacred institutions and holy
men the world owes a great debt of gratitude for holding
aloft the torch of knowledge and spreading the influences
of civilisation, when all around the forces of superstition,
vice, ignorance, and error have been mustered for, and
ardently intent on, their undoing and annihilation.

Now, however, that a natural ally, in the form of what
may be called the army of science, is becoming possessed
of a system of truth, of laws founded thereon, of an
active and expert propaganda, and of hosts of far-seeing
leaders, we are persuaded that the time is rapidly coming,
if it has not indeed already come, when the two forces of

"THE MIND'S EYE"

83

the church in all its branches and science in all its depart-
ments may unite their legions of trained followers, and,
even if they do not fuse, present an united front to the
common enemy, and go forward ''conquering and to
conquer," till the enemies, physical and moral ills, be wiped
out, the reinvigoration of the race be effected, and the
reign of law, human and divine, be established on a basis
of truth and righteousness beyond the need of reform, being
adapted to the entirety of human needs and requirements,
secular and sacred.

"There are wheels within wheels" is an expression
made use of when things or inventions are elaborate and
involved, and when we wish to convey a definition or a
criticism of them in a sentence.

Taking advantage of that very human method of pro-
cedure, we are tempted, in conclusion, to venture to sum
up, in a few v^ords, the impression which the foregoing
studies have left on our mind.

Man is said to be, and is generally believed to be,
composed of soul, mind, or spirit, and body, and with this
we can find no fault, but we would add that man, as we
meet him in the flesh, is composed of three elements
instead of two. The justification for this audacious state-
ment is, that he maintains his identity unchanged through
all the vicissitudes of existence, both here and, so far as
we can infer, hereafter, and that the mind, though dis-
embodied, must necessarily retain a belief in the main-
tenance of that identity ; hence the mind, soul, or spirit,
must, in turn, embody or contain the indwelling ego^ the
irreducible^ never-dying principle of life^ around which the
material body was developed, and through which the
psycho-dynamic energy of life was materio-dynamically
interwoven, to inspire and innervate it — inside these
material and dynamic elements or fabrics, being evolved
from pristine spiritual elements, is the essential ego, with
imperishable attributes, capable of maintaining its identity
and able to afford it the means of eternal existence and
development.

Thus far materio-dynamic facts and data have been
available for metaphysical enquiry, and have enabled us to
conclude that metaphysically there are only two separate

84 METAPHYSICS

and concrete elements or entities existent, and that these
are the ego and non-ego^ respectively representing in
their relative proportions the infinitely small and the
infinitely vast, the microcosm of the individual human
unit and the macrocosm of the universe, the two occupy-
ing separate planes of being, while indissolubly related
as cause and effect, and, therefore, essential as constituent
parts of a whole, and as absolutely continuous, the one
with the other.

But this psychological and metaphysical finding, true as
it is, arouses no mental enthusiasm, kindles no intel-
lectual flame, and evokes no emotion, save that of the
pleasure of attaining knowledge, and applying it, however
imperfectly, to the unravelment of human destiny. We
are compelled, therefore, as ^' babes and sucklings," to
turn or return for support and energy to the pure font ot
revealed truth, where we find what science needs to com-
plete its conquests in the cause of the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, where we are met with
such expressions as " there is a place prepared for you " —
not necessarily defined, named, or numbered, but cap-
able of unlimited or indefinite expansion to meet all
possible developments, and " but it does not yet appear
what we shall be," the general and individual plans, as to
the destiny of the human family not having been yet un-
rolled, the problems involved therein being but in
process of solution, and the everlasting fiat withheld till
*' the fulness of the time has come," and a great definite
arrangement, lasting for eternity, becomes effected.

With " the mind's eye " and reason, without a violent
stretch of imagination, all this seems capable of realisation,
and conformable to the requirements of truth and human
destiny.

EXTRACT XIV.

ON THE IMAGINATION AS AN INSTRUMENT IN
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS, AND ON THE SCIENTIFIC
USE OF THE IMAGINATION.

Imagination as here implied refers to the supplementing,
in the regions of abstract and applied science, of the work
done by observation and experiment, where necessary for
greater completeness of view, of individual sciences or
isolated scientific problems, and for the unification of the
knowledge of the universe and of proved data by lines of
thought relevant to, suggested by, and flowing out of a
full and clear realisation of the subject of thought or
enquiry in which we may at any time be engaged. It is
needless to say that imagination, divorced from exact
knowledge, and given licence to ramble unchecked amid
the proved possessions of the cultivators of the fields of
truth, is not what is meant, neither is it the mere cultiva-
tion of the faculty meant, apart from its power to
meet the temporary necessities arising in the daily
experience of all scientists when they have exhausted
their acquired supplies of accepted doctrine and become
beholden to their own innate or self-emanating resources
— when, in fact, they have literally come *' to the end of
their acquired tether," and feel they but require its
lengthening by the use of any other available resources
within their reach, as, for example, when they have
attained to or reached a psychological moment or point
where independent forward action, or acceptance of defeat,
have to be at last, and at all hazards, selected. Who will
deny any such enquirer after truth under such circum-

86 METAPHYSICS

stances the freest use of that faculty, the possession of
which is held more or less by all humanity, and, we may
add, much of the higher animated world, in order that he
may, so to speak, " swing himself free " into the unknown
beyond in order, peradventure, that he may alight on the
nearest foothold of neighbouring fact or tangible fragment
of accepted truth ? Verily, whether we will or not, the
resolution is usually formed, and the required " leap into
the dark " taken, and often with the best results both to
the progress of science and the advance of civilisation.
Many a discovery and invention owe their origin and
attainment to such fortunate occurrences, let us, therefore,
welcome every effort of the scientific athlete and the
earnest enquirer after truth to throw themselves aloof
from the entanglements and limitations of received
doctrine when they have arrived at the confines of their
knowledge, and to take up the role of pioneers in dis-
covery in the great continents of the unknown which
everywhere stretch around our *' cribbed, cabined, and
confined " world of accepted truth.

Imagination, as a trained faculty, is one of the most
fruitful of great results in the everyday progress of
mankind, whether in the realms of art, poetry, music, or
all that is " excellent and of good report " in the world of
literature ; why, therefore, should we forbid its chastened
use in the regions of even the severest science, where its
presence can relieve the tension and monotony of the
most rigid logic, and assist the slow and exact processes
of deduction and induction, smoothing and harmonising
the contradictory and irreconcilable, casting a glow and
charm over the life-work of even the greatest stickler
after style and form, and giving a completeness of detail
to the whole fabric of knowledge pleasing to the " mind's
eye " to look upon, and attractive to the searcher after
truth ?

The history of discovery and invention generally, and
the glimpses of autobiographic experience bearing on the
matter so plentifully recorded throughout the pages of
literature, past and contemporary, amply prove that
imagination has never been absent as a factor in the work
and course of progress, and a potent instrument in the

ON THE IMAGINATION 87

hands of every climber in the higher and more inaccessible
regions of knowledge. Here it has supplied incentive to
continue the endeavour to scale, and to penetrate when
foothold was being lost and the darkness of the unknown
was thickening around the indefatigable explorer, and has
been to him to some extent its own recompense when
success has not been achieved, in this last respect sharing
with "virtue" the distinction of repaying itself, and con-
stituting " its own reward."

The astronomer, from lowly imaginings and meagre
beginnings in exact knowledge, and minus the helps
latterly afforded by inventive genius, has discovered in
otherwise inaccessible and almost transcendental regions
the existence of law and order and the procession of
worlds beyond the reach of immediate observation, extend-
ing into regions only dimly realisable, even by the
chastened and experienced imagination, but, nevertheless,
quite allowable as an exercise of scientific faith on the
lines of infinite continuity and extension.

Here, '' where eye has not seen nor ear heard,"
imagination floats on wings sustainable in the medium
of faith, with a feeling of as complete realisation as when
the telescope is made to survey the features of the moon's
face and scan its geographical complexion, and when,
allying himself with the physicist and the chemist, he
turns his attention to the distribution of " the elements "
in the structure and behaviour of the heavenly bodies,
and realises that, in the great astral sphere or common-
wealth, law and order exist of a character far transcending
in the harmony and exactitude of their working any thing
or system on the face of this earth or amongst the most
civilised family of man.

In like manner the men of " light and leading " com-
port themselves in every branch of human knowledge and
along every path of research— the searchers after truth in
every department of knowledge and the exponents of
every science which the course of events has brought mto
existence, therefore, stand, or should stand, '' shoulder to
shoulder " in their march towards the common goal of
truth, scouting independently, or joining in proper battle
array against the common forces of the " great unknown.

88 METAPHYSICS

There can be no doubt, we think, that, under the cir-
cumstances here indicated, the first impulse towards the
use of combined effort in the furtherance of the common
cause of truth on the part of the participators in the great
common work was prompted by and originated in the
views ahead presented by imagination to the pioneers in
the forefront of invention and discovery ; it, therefore,
behoves every searcher after truth still to avail himself to
the full of every well-founded and genuine imagining,
from whatever source it may emanate, in order that, fired
by the " light ahead " which it affords, he may be able to
take, it may be, only one step forward in the great march
of discovery, to the end that he may assist in realising the
great destiny of the human race and its emancipation
from every influence which mars its progress towards its
accomplishment.

That a full and proper use should be made of the
faculty of imagination there seems every reason to believe ;
it therefore becomes necessary that we should be able
to distinguish between imagination, warranted as being
founded on exact knowledge, and suggested by lines of
continuity leading from the known to the unknown, and
imagination founded on uneducated impulse, and prompted
by unscrupulous motives for vain and, it may be, ignoble
purposes.

Imagination of the kind serviceable to the highest
aspirations of mankind has been conspicuous along the
whole lines of progress of the human race, as history
enables us to see, and believing that " human nature has
been and still is human nature all the world over," we are
persuaded that one of the greatest influences in the
raising of man from savagedom and barbarism to civilisa-
tion, as now seen, has been and is the use of this faculty.

Has not the faculty of imagination been largely made
use of on the part of inspired writers, and those to whom
these writers appealed and still appeal } Was not the
faculty of imagination largely cultivated by the ancient
Phoenicians in their many maritime adventures and
accomplishments ? Did not the illustrious Columbus
mark for ever the value of properly founded and rigidly
followed imagination ? Have not all our great voyagers

ON THE IMAGINATION 89

and discoverers been inspired by the same faculty ? And
do we not still see around us, amongst the great army
of research and discovery, the torch of imagination held
aloft, as they turn their eyes on the things which have
not yet become visible, but which, they are led by this
faculty to believe, lie immediately or somewhere before
them ? All round us now, all behind us, and all before
us IS irradiated by the light of imagination. The human
race, par excellence, has been endowed with this faculty
for the accomplishment of the great ends and aims for
which it has come into being ; who, therefore, will argue
that experience, and experience alone, constitutes the
''Alpha and Omega," and is to be sole guide to the
workers in the field, as well as the sole test of the
genuineness of human knowledge ?

Observation and experiment, conducted by stringent
methods of logic, inductive and deductive, are no doubt
absolutely essential in the great search after truth; but
these, divorced from the inspiring influence of imagina-
tion, will fail to reach the highest levels of discovery and
invention, and, therefore, will fail in placing man on that
plane of existence to which his supreme qualifications, as
compared with his lower animal relations, entitle him to
attain.

While imagination may be described as a picturing by
the aid of images, already more or less fully realised
by the intellect of images lying outside of the experience
of the individual or of the race, so the manner and
method of imagining must conform to the necessities of
the situation on the part of every imaginer, be he engaged
in original research, deducing laws from the experience of
the past for the regulation of the future, depicting the
subtle beauties of ever-changing scenery for the delectation
of those to come, laying the foundations of structures,
material and immaterial, which are ultimately to embody
great conceptions, or pointing the way to continued exist-
ence or immortal destiny, along the lines of continuity,
material and immaterial, in actual and logical coherence,
and continuity of accomplishment, in imperishable actuality
and sequence of occurrence, one thing leading to another,
one event merging in another, for ever and ever.

90

METAPHYSICS

in obedience to, the law of never-ending and absolute
necessity.

Imaginations proceeding on lines of actual knowledge,
leading back into antiquity, showing in full significance
their present proportions, and indicating unmistakably the
trend of their probable progress beyond the confines of
our own immediate time and place, can be safely followed
so long as the law of probability, so to speak, enables
or will enable the imaginer to sustain powers of reasoned
thought. This latter essay, in fact, constitutes the last
and highest endeavour to scale that line of demarcation
which lies between the present and the future, and between
the worlds of sense and faith. If, therefore, any searcher
after truth has so mastered the subject that it has become
a real possession to him or her, and that it has at last
ceased to accrete fresh truth, and has become, so to speak,
shelved, let him or her take fresh inspiration and en-
couragement from the unexhausted, or, it may be, unused
faculty of imagination, which he or she may or must
possess, and let that faculty, founded on the bed of
■complete knowledge of the subject in question, coruscate
on, and light up the subject, so that in the unwonted
radiance cast on it, it may reveal a way or ways to fresh
discoveries, and afford a fresh setting of the subject in its
matrix of surrounding truth.

To particularise, let us take the example of the modern
method of clinical diagnosis of disease. Since the days of
the Fathers of Medicine, down to the termination of the
middle or dark ages in Europe, the method of diagnosis
of disease was of the most empirical and arbitrary character,
being deduced from the appearance of certain signs or
symptoms, which had come to have a settled place in the
-category of morbid phenomena, and the occurrence and
sequence of which determined the generic names of disease.
This method sufficed to meet the equally empirically guided
treatment of disease, until the desire for more exact know-
ledge of the significance and meaning of these disease
entities resulted in the foundations of anatomical science,
then physiology, and ultimately pathology, being laid, the
evolution of all of which has been characterised by some-
what rigid progression, along the lines of observation and

ON THE IMAGINATION 91

experiment, at times lighted up with scintillations of
forethought and scientific imagination, and a consequently
safely constructed edifice of solid, but necessarily still
incomplete, biological truth.

The structural and functional knowledge thereby placed
at the disposal of the clinical observer enables him now to
unravel the hitherto absolutely obscure problems of the
action of morbid influences in the causation of disease,
and confers the power so to define and demarcate the
areas of these influences by structural and functional
limitations, that he can, with comparative exactitude,
diagnose, and also to a large extent indicate, an appropriate
treatment for diseases of all natures and characters.

Exact clinical methods of diagnosis and treatment being
founded on the scientific knowledge of the organism
affected, the manner of causation of the morbid pheno-
mena which it displays, and a growing power to cope with
the ravages of the various disease-producing influences
from which it suffers, it becomes warrantable to indulge in
the chastened imagination that human life will ultimately
be made to last out to its legitimate close, with the
enjoyment of health begotten of the abolition of morbid
entities, and the absolute reign of physiological law and
order throughout the entire human race.

In this process of increased precision in diagnosis of
disease, the indications of the proper methods of pre-
vention and treatment, and the wholesale education of
the people in the laws of health, hold out the bright hope
that the day may at last dawn when imagination will end
in and embrace realisation, therefore, we again bespeak
a free and exact use of the faculty of imagination, in
the role of suggesting and perfecting the means to this
glorious end.

This latter use of imagination pre-supposes the possession
by its employers of exact knowledge on the subject involved,
and the exhaustion of that knowledge in the cause of
original research on it, in which case he is permitted to
give rein to his imagination, with a deliberate intention to
accomplish his ambition of adding to that exact knowledge.

Under all such circumstances, in the experience of the
advance of knowledge, it is found that free use has

92 METAPHYSICS

generally been made of this faculty, and that one leader
in research has handed on to another his torch of imagi-
nation, ere its radiant influence has been extinguished,
or its "light gone out."

We have only to look at the history of discovery and
invention, in whatever department of knowledge you like,
to discover the truth of these observations, and if
exceptions be found to their absolute truth, it will be
evident that these are only examples of delayed operation
of the rule. It follows, therefore, that the use of the
faculty of imagination is all but universally operative in
the great process of human advancement in knowledge,
abstract and applied alike, and that, as a consequence,
it behoves the leaders of human thought to stimulate and,
at the same time, to regulate its exercise, to the end that
whatever services it can render should be obtainable from
its operation, and that any possible harm it can do to the
cause of advancement should be obviated by properly
devised modifying and preventive means. Indeed, this
matter seems of such paramount importance in relation to
the great work lying before those responsible for the
proper direction of the affairs of the world generally, that
the institution in our universities of chairs for its cultiva-
tion would be amply repaid in connection with the
repression of the wild uses to which it is often put, and
the encouragement and regulation of it as an instrument
of general progress and special culture.

So encouraged and regulated by a consensus of cultured
opinion, it could not fail to have a stimulating influence on
the minds of men generally, and be the means of starting
those destined to be men of '* light and leading" on the
special paths in which, by their innate ability, they are
destined to out-distance and to outshine and become the
recognised leaders and pioneers.

Imagination is always exercisable, and the materials on
which it can be exercised are more or less always in
evidence around us, it therefore does not impoverish
its possessor if legitimately used, but may enrich him
'' beyond the dreams of avarice," and while he reaps a
blessing it may become a source of untold riches to his
fellow-men, thus blessing both giver and receiver, and,

ON THE IMAGINATION 93

it may be, adding another name to the most select category
of the "immortals."

The origin of the word is lost in antiquity, but
its use has been universally indulged in by the human
family, and it has been responsible for the origin of every
religious system and the evolution of all mythologies,
thus leaving its impress so distinctly and indelibly as
to be " read of all men," and so as to afford a clear
insight into the history, the mental and moral character,
and the form of civilisation of its producers.

Imagination, consequently, covers a wide expanse of
what constitutes the sum of human knowledge, and when
entirely eliminated, if that were possible, from that sum,
it would be found that what remained had shrunk into
proportions quite possible of acquirement by the candidates
for university honours and participators in competitive
examinations for the public services.

This mass of knowledge claimable by imagination, and
still incorporated with the material of a liberal education,
calls purely for recognition on its own behalf as a non-
negligible quantity, and, therefore, for a special recognition
on the part of all engaged in the responsible task of
regulating and imparting knowledge, and shaping that
education. A distinct value, therefore, we think, attaches to
the separation of subjects of knowledge into their proper
categories, to suit the requirements of the various
intellects constituting the community of student-scholars.

EXTRACT XV.

ON FAITH, AS APPLIED TO THE TEACHINGS OF
SCIENCE AND AS COMPARED WITH FAITH AS
DEFINED IN HOLY WRIT.

Science, it may at once be said, is, in a sense, synonymous,
with faith, and consists in the discovery and appreciation
of the laws by which the universe is governed and ad-
ministered, each new fact of science falling, naturally,
into the category of proved and undeniable truth to be
believed by the scientist as undeviating and inexorable
in recurrence, and working for ever and ever ; moreover,
all so-called living things, and all conscious beings, thus,
of necessity, conform to the law of faith by belief in their
undeviating consistency of recurrence, in accordance with
the type they represent and the developmental obligations,
imposed upon them, as the parts of a great whole, or
universe, all parts of which "work together in unison."
The expression, the universe^ is an idea evolved by
humanity from its daily experience of the "passing of
events," and the appreciation of its environment, and one
which becomes essential to the thoughtful mind to enable
it to distinguish between the whole and its parts ; it
embraces, therefore, the greatest generalisation ever accom-
plished by man, and constitutes the foundation on which
all philosophical, scientific, and folk systems of "account-
ing for things" seen and unseen rest. It must, therefore,
be cherished by humanity as the "Alpha and Omega"
of its knowledge of itself and nature, because through it
humanity realises the great outstanding fact, that it consti-
tutes a merely fractional part of the universe.

ON FAITH 95

Faith, in the reality of such truth, serves to repress the
arrogance of man, and enables him to discover that he is
really but an atom in the inappreciable " dust of the
balance," and therefore, to all intents and purposes, a
negligible quantity, while, at the same time, it stimulates
him to make the best of his opportunities to make himself
appreciable in the absolutely true and exhaustive r^c^owiw^
of the universe in all its parts, the atom, then, having
its place recognised and its essential value as an indis-
pensable part of the whole assigned to it, with the precision
of absolute law and as the reward of duty done and
purpose fulfilled.

If we might say so, faith, as between the component
parts of the universe of both the so-called animate and
inanimate alike, permeates the whole, i.e. every unit of
that whole responds, with unquestioning alacrity, to the
behests and necessities of the whole, whether consciously
or unconsciously, and thus the progress of universal events
is regulated by universal assent, notwithstanding the
sometimes apparent frictions between passing examples of
them. Thus, great physical masses cling to each other
by the exercise of cohesion, chemical elements ally them-
selves by the exercise of affinities, the ivy hugs the ruin
with the strength of absolute necessity, the tiny fish
companions play about the cavernous jaws of the ravenous
shark, the parasite insinuates itself into the good or bad
graces of its host, while still a hundred and one other
examples, equally obvious, might be enumerated, in which
the exercise of mutual faith, trust, or confidence, char-
acterises the relationships maintained between the elements
composing them, all proving that faith, or its equivalent,
permeates nature, and is largely responsible for the admini-
stration of her laws and for the shaping of her destinies.

While we thus recognise that faith, or its equivalent^
is largely in evidence throughout the inanimate and lower
animate world as a factor in the great work of evolution,
we must be prepared to find that it projects itself along
the lines of animate existence into the regions of conscious
being, and that it there receives its highest development
amid the higher animal world, and finally in the human
family, where, at last ceasing to be blind and assuming

96 METAPHYSICS

the character of a mental attribute, it is exercised, or
withheld, at will, and assumes the position of the chief
determinant in shaping and colouring the life of the
individual and the community.

In pursuing our enquiries into this aspect of the great
subject of faith, we at last find its highest development
in the appreciation of "things not seen," and in the real-
isation of a world beyond the powers of sense to appreciate,
to which the instincts of humanity point backwards and
forwards, and regarding which some of the greatest intel-
lects of the past and present have done, and are doing,
their best to form an estimate of it, and with more or
less consistency and success, have endeavoured to found
a system and to raise a religious superstructure which will
embody faith and ensure obedience to the laws which its
particular interpretation necessitates and determines.

Amongst the human family scattered all over the world,
faith, as between man and man, community, tribe, and
nation, is essential for the conduct of business of com-
merce generally, of amenity to the laws, local and general,
of acquiescence in the manner of their administration and
contentment with the state of things as they are, and even
where the "state of things" is universally acknowledged
to require amendment, faith holds out the promise of the
ultimate evolution and obtainment of that amendment.

From all this, it must be concluded that faith is the
universal cement alike of the animate and inanimate
universe, that without it the world could not exist, that
material change in orderly fashion would be impossible,
that the relationships of living beings would be constantly
strained, that the conduct of man to man would be for
ever arbitrary and uncertain, and that the realisation of
the higher aspirations of humanity would be an impossi-
bility, or a monstrosity, dictated in outline by the eccen-
tricities, the irresponsible promptings of ambitions, and
the aspiring designs of individual members of the race,
which would live but for a day, and give place to a
repetition of ineffectual effort and ephemeral performance,
and so on, ending without progress or improvement to
the individual or the community for ever and ever.

Let us rejoice, therefore, that faith exists, and let us

ON FAITH 97

hope that confidence in its beneficent reign and the out-
come of its inspiring operation will increase with the
passage of time until the dawn of that period when
humanity must vacate this planet, and find another region
in infinite space, where room will be afforded it to pursue
its great destiny, freed from the trammels of earth, and
assured in the exercise of its more and more glorious
attributes "throughout the endless ages of eternity."

Hope, here, may be said to ' ' take up the wondrous
tale," and "proclaim" that its sustaining and inspiring
influence flows from a font of justification, fed by the
visible, tangible, and sentient stream of faith trickling
from the wide universe of nature, and the records left
by all of "light and leading" who have left their records
behind and entered on that phase of being, the existence
of which is at once the "finding" of science and the
innermost and most deep-rooted belief of humanity.
Hope may be said, therefore, to at once feed upon and
to inspire faith, and it will be found, wherever these two
great attributes predominate in the nation or the indi-
vidual, that there man is to be seen in his fullest develop-
ment of the best characteristics of his race, in the enjoyment
of the highest blessings of civilisation at its best, con-
forming without a murmur to the requirements of his
environment, and giving an impetus and impulse to the
powers "that make for righteousness," which are felt to
the remotest corners and confines of the earth.

Faith, founded on the broad plane of universal know-
ledge and truth, inspired by hope emanating from the
same sources, aided and strengthened by the universal
assent of man, which union will ensure a strength past
the power of the prophet to conceive, is surely likely to
be a lever by which the race can, and will be, raised to
that level on which, at last, the day of true brotherhood
of man will dawn and brighten into the full sunshine of
universal peace, sympathy, and love, never to be darkened
by the gloom of oppression, self-seeking, or unbrotherly
action.

In thus speculatively forecasting the probable outcome
of the fraternisation and combined working of all sections
of the great army of searchers after the truth and workers

III G

98 METAPHYSICS

in the harvest field of knowledge, we observe, through
the eye of faith, aided by the telescopic powers of hope,
that the last state of the long generations of man may
finally attain that goal, dimly visible to every thinking
man, believed in by the most far-seeing and best, and
absolutely proclaimed as true by the teachings of all
religious systems worthy of the name, but more especially
by that religion which has dominated for the last two
thousand years, the progress of religious thought and
action of the leading "powers" of the world, at any rate
the Western world. Should this consensus of elevating,
purifying, and ennobling progress continue, and we see
no cause for doubt on the subject, then the regime of
seeing "eye to eye," and acting for the one great end of
universal good, will become apparent as the process of
evolution continues, until it must end inexorably with the
precision and certainty of the sequence of cause and effect
in the production and continuance of the reign of law,
so perfect in its working that every unit of the great
living and acting human governmental machine will spon-
taneously and affectionately take its place in the family
circle of absolutely united humanity.

Quite naturally, therefore, and in accordance with the
laws of moral growth and development, the great problems
involved in the operation and cumulative effects of
brotherly sympathy or love will unfold themselves as the
human race becomes emancipated from the bonds of
cramping ephemeral beliefs and temporary barriers of false
systems, and as individual, racial, and international feuds
and frictions cease from out the machinery of human
progress.

Progress, thus, will necessarily be aided in ' ' the fulness
of the time" by the united influence of every such
emancipation, individual, communal, and national, and as
physical science has progressed, as intellectual and mental
activity have been brought to bear on its abstract and
applied problems by its votaries, the end amply justifying
the means, so will moral progress follow the efforts of the
intellect and the fully awakened moral consciousness of
humanity ; therefore, we claim that religion must in the
end, when freed from the thraldom of anthropomorphism,

ON FAITH 99

rise into the position of an unquestioned, and ultimately
unusurpable, kingdom, wherein will dwell the fuller
development of the human family in an atmosphere of
righteousness, and all that can flow from perfect conformity
to its requirements.

It surely, therefore, behoves mankind throughout the
world to work its best in aid of the accomplishment of
this glorious work with no other but a single eye and
determined purpose to further what must be a united task
and a great general developmental process, feeling in its
individual, as well as in its communal capacity, that it is
adding fraction after fraction to the great sum of human
effort to forward, and ultimately to achieve, the perfection
of the human race, and so to aid the great general purposes
of the Creator and Governor of all things.

The leaders of thought and the pioneers of knowledge
throughout the world, in whatever state they be, recog-
nising their individual and communal relationships to the
great forward and upward progress of humanity, may do
much by respecting each other and the quality of the work
they are doing in the cause of general progress, to expedite
the arrival of the race at the great goal of complete
adaptation to the requirements of its environments and
the attainment of its destined position in the hierarchy of
intelligence and responsible being ; let them, then, close
their ranks, present a united front to the world of ignor-
ance and error, and fight "shoulder to shoulder" in "the
good fight of faith," in the field of emancipation from
evil and the conferring of good, which is the highest ideal
yet attained to by civilised man. Let there be no more
saying that I am of this school and I am of that school,
but, feeling united to one another by the bonds of a
common brotherhood, by a consciousness of working for
the same cause, and by the recognition of the fact that they
are each cultivating a patch of the same great field of
truth, let them go forward in the glorious common task
of realising the great destinies which they each believe,
with lesser or greater strength, await perfected humanity.

By so doing, we are persuaded that they will each
become possessed of a stronger desire to accomplish more
and more the cultivation of tKeir mdividual field pf work.

loo METAPHYSICS

in order that they may be able to add more to the accom-
plishment of the great common work which lies before
united humanity to accomplish, and so be able to feel the
truth of the divine saying, that "it is more blessed to give
than to receive," and that it is not an injustice to be made
to recognise that "to whom much is given, of him much
shall be required."

While we have faith in, and are persuaded of, the truth
of these contentions in our own mind, we cannot fail to
perceive that the time is still far distant when they can be
realised generally as accomplished facts, we are, neverthe-
less, hopeful than an appreciable growth of opinion may
take place as to their soundness, and that a corresponding
strength will be given to the faith and belief that special
and general knowledge, and individual and communal
attainment of it, will together advance the cause of truth
and civilisation, to the end that every step of the progress
made, in whatever direction, according to the requirements
of truth, will bring the end in view nearer and nearer, both
theoretically and practically.

EXTRACT XVI.

"CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS," PHYSICALLY
AND THEOLOGICALLY.

Cleanliness will thus not only be entitled to rank " next
to Godliness," but will, in conjunction with it, and as the
instrument to achieve the material advancement of the
people, enable it to lay a foundation for the quicker rearing
and longer standing of a spiritual edifice or kingdom, in
which will be taught and practised all that is noblest and
best in the annals of Holy Writ, and all " of light and
leading" that can be extracted from the teachings of
so-called profane literature and the findings of scientific
effort and culture.

As leprosy represents or emanates from the accumula-
tion of matter no longer useful in the economy of the
human body, and calls for its prevention or removal, so
do all of the admitted spiritual anachronisms and effete
theological systems, which are usually only historically
interesting to the specialist as "time markings" in the
march of the evolution of divine truth, represent the no
longer useful, and thus far, therefore, the obsolete and, it
may be, hurtful call for abandonment as no longer effective
instruments in the achievement of the highest destiny of
mankind, but, nevertheless, as instruments to be kept
reverently stored in the archives of human progress for
comparative study and for use in the schools of Divinity
and Religion, and as materials for the equipment of the
militant forces of applied theology.

. EXTRACT XVII.

ON "THE MEETING AND, IT MAY PERHAPS BE, THE
CROSSING AND PARTING OF THE WAYS."

What is meant by the use and adoption of the above
title is to call attention to the approach towards each other,
now becoming apparent, in their investigation of the same
great root principles of human existence and destiny, of
the two great schools most actively engaged in the investi-
gation of such problems as the ultimate findings of science
and revelation or theology, and the consequent possibility
there exists of the two combining their forces for common
purposes and for mutual help along what may become
the common way in the advancement of civilisation in its
highest aspects, the amelioration of the common lot of man
in its every-day aspects and the focussing of effort, specu-
lative and practical, for common ends and universal good.
Historically the evolution and growth of theological
opinion have left on every succeeding phase of the world's
civilisation in outstanding relief the disposition of the
human family to crystallise into more or less definite form
the sum of their theological beliefs, each occurrence of
which, at its various stages, is marked by the use of
anthropomorphic imagery and methods sufficiently char-
acteristic to enable the observant and comparative
theological student of to-day to form a fairly accurate
opinion as to where and when the particular occurrence
was located and evolved or originated, and to appreciate
the intrinsic value of a psychological principle so widely
distributed and created for good or evil in the past and
the present of the human family.

PARTING OF THE WAYS

03

The anthropomorphic manner of representing theo-
logical ideas, essences, dogmas, and opinions has necessarily
been limited, being confined in its range by the limitation
of its component instruments within the, for the time
being, or at any particular new departure or fresh expres-
sion of theological opinion, very narrow radius of
positive knowledge and power of expression arising from
a rudimentary or non-existent appreciation of the natural
laws of the universe, and the necessity for representing to
a more or less ignorant people in a more or less intelligible
form subjects pertaining to an order comparatively out-
side the material world, and at the same time lying within
and inter-penetrating it in all directions. However
changed for the better, the condition of things theological
may now be thought by some to be, we are yet very far
from having reached that " point of view " where we can
clearly apprehend the nature of the spiritual world and the
forces which the human race at all times and now have
continually interested itself in, hence we must be prepared
to accept, from whatever quarter it may come, with readi-
ness and thankfulness, any fresh light which can in any
degree illuminate the prevailing darkness surrounding this
absorbingly attractive region of theological insight and
learning, so fraught with the realisation of past, present,
and future human destiny.

Hitherto theology has pursued her course to a great
extent unaided by what is popularly called secular agency,
and, no doubt, has laid the human race under the greatest
obligations for the intrinsic worth of the services she has
been able to place at its disposal ; but viewing the
" possibilities for good " which have at all times existed
within and around the church militant, we are unable to
persuade ourselves that she has at all times realised
everything for good which her position offered and
which her great obligations necessitated. We are far,
however, from finding fault with this, but we do beseech
her, in her endeavours to meet her responsibilities to
mankind, to accept of every aid which will enable her to
perform her duties better by reaching the intelligence of
the people, bending it towards an ethical advancement,
and ministering to its spiritual growth by a rational

I04 METAPHYSICS

use of the pabulum of truth from whatever source
derivable.

Viewing the relationship of revelation and science so-
called in the light of these observations, we would express
a fervent hope that the aloofness, not to use a stronger
term, which has hitherto characterised that relationship
may become so modified that a spirit of mutual respect
and goodwill, if not joint effort, shall pervade their pro-
gress in the future, for their own welfare and that of the
world at large.

This, we think, could only engender a deeper and wider
spirit of charity in its most catholic aspect, and evolve a
more living and true interest generally in the strides of
civilisation, and the concurrent emancipation of the human
race from the domination of every material as well as
spiritual influence nocuous to its present welfare and
future destiny.

EXTRACT XVIII.

IT IS WRITTEN : " MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD
ALONE, BUT BY EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDETH
OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD." A LAY CREED.

This is one of the most famous and subtle sayings
in Holy Writ. The phraseology is anthropomorphic, but
its meaning is divinely transcendental, the words are
alive with the essence, the very spirit of religion, as it
were, while they teach the last scientific findings of human
knowledge in relation to the problem of the sustenance
of life, and throw into the axioms deducible from human
experience, as they are here crystallised, a depth of mean-
ing and a profundity of realisation of the deepest-seated
problems of human life which is altogether startling in
its reality and novelty, and which throws a halo of
purposive design around the institution of the human
family in its higher relationships which may do much
to stimulate human interest in the accomplishment of
human destiny.

These words prove the truth of the teaching of human
science, in that they acknowledge that man lives by bread
in so far as his material wants are concerned, and his
position as a member and citizen of the great animal
kingdom is concerned, but that there is an overwhelming
great reserve of life in store for him, both here and
hereafter, which the satisfaction of his material wants,
however these may be essential for his present condition,
do not reach or minister to, and, therefore, that it is
essential he should recognise that this transcendental
side of his being should be provided for by his employ-

io6 METAPHYSICS

ment of the immaterial pabulum put within his reach,
through his exercise of the psychological and spiritual
faculties and energies of which he is consciously or
unconsciously possessed.

Of course, it has been denied all along the ages, and
is still denied, that man lives by anything else than bread,
and affirmed that his wants are entirely material ; of these
beliefs it does not concern us here to speak beyond
expressing from the point of view of science, that man
really consists of an admixture of material and immaterial
entities, that these entities are indestructible, and at their
severance by death both entities continue to pursue their
respective destinies in such manner as their respective
elements by the laws of matter and energy determine.

The life, the ego^ being an immaterial independent
existence, pursues its concrete course, while the material
body is reduced to its original condition or elements by
the analytic activity of mother earth.

As the breath of life was originally infused into
primitive man, and continues generation after generation
to be infused into him as he " arrives on the scene," so
does that life or vital principle which dominated and
innervated even his pre-breathing organism remain un-
touched by the incidence of death, and continues to live
when the material necessity of drawing the breath of life
has ceased, and complete dynamic freedom been obtained,
in obedience to the immaterial and dynamic necessity
contained in the pregnant words : " man liveth by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." That
is to say, in obedience to the inalienable and inviolate laws
of the universe, a few of which laws have only yet been
dimly or imperfectly realised by the intellect of even the
greatest exponents of " natural truth," but sufficiently
clearly, nevertheless, to warrant the statement quoted, and
to proclaim the continuance of the eternal truth contained
therein.

As bread is essential for the physical sustenance and
life of man, so is the law of immaterial or dynamic
sustenance to maintain and develop the inner and
immortal life of man, and to perpetuate the great evolu-
tionary work, of which the material part only has been

A LAY CREED 107

physically realised as a concrete experience and foretaste
of that spiritual existence enjoyed by some of the best
of humanity even in this life, but which necessarily must
be the final lot of all. Human life is multiple, and that
portion of it passed here composed of stages running into
each other, and constituting one continuous whole, which
should but does not always reach its " allotted span,''
is but preparatory to other stages which science and
revelation alike attest will follow with the inexorable
certainty of cause and effect in accordance with the
absolute necessities of definite law and order for ever
and ever.

The appreciation, therefore, of the words of this thesis
should prove a great individual and communal incentive
to the cultivation of the dual aspects of life, in order that
the most, so to speak, should be taken out of that life,
and that death, when it does come, may release that life
to pursue its destiny wherever it may be determined by the
reign of law to which it has already conformed, and which
will still enable it to conform more and more. Whether
life is " here or hereafter," therefore, there is absolute
continuity between its parts, the difference being only in
relation to its material and dynamic conditions and
environments, the essential oneness being continued ad
infinitum^ while development of its character and attributes
will in hke manner be subject to the operation of eternal
law, order, and necessity.

Moreover, the applicability of the words is capable of
immediate and constant use in the everyday experience of
man, his "natural" and better selves being equally included
and interested in the practical working of the doctrines
advanced in them, and of the great personal obligation lying
on every human being of working out his or her " own
salvation."

When material wants have been met, it is very frequently
assumed that all obligations and necessities have been met,
and that *' sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," but
that is only half the truth ; true, the material part of man
has been provided for, but the immaterial and better has
not thereby been provided for, and as that is equivalent
to his eternal part, provision for that also requires to be

io8 METAPHYSICS

obtained ere he can afford to say that the " whole plan "
occupies the position described in the sublime words : '' It
is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."

Natural designs, works, laws, and order, are they not
the articulate expressions of divine speech, yea, the very
words of God ? which have been heard ringing throughout
space and time from their beginning, but audible " from
eternity to eternity," overspreading these temporary barriers
and making the universe one and indivisible, without be-
ginning and without end, in which, whether we wish or
will it or not, our being cannot do otherwise than be
subservient to eternal ends and purposes, a natural denoue-
ment attestable by reason and abundantly visible to and
supported by the eye of faith — a faith resting alike on the
foundations of human knowledge and that divine teaching
which has so wonderfully and succinctly drifted down
through the ages to the present generation of men, and
which still maintains a hold on human belief which no
influence however strong has done more than produce a
mere temporary arrestment of its all-powerful influence
on human progress, and the ultimate unquestioned reign
of true religion.

What matter material matters when we individually
approach " the valley of the shadow of death " ? — only
"the shadow," be it marked. At that supreme juncture,
all material and sensual appetites having ceased, all over-
whelming material interests slipped away, all hold on
earth gone, we resign ourselves to the dominion of the
inexorable law of death with what intelligent or blank
concern we can command, and with what strength of
expectancy we are able to exercise.

Who that has been brought into frequent contact with
the dying but has not been struck with the variety of
emotions elicited by nearness to the end of life ? — and
who that has had the opportunity of studying the life and
character of those who lie dying but has not been impressed
with the truth of the saying that, "as a man liveth,
so he dieth } " proving even here, that there is a continuity
of development in life and death characterised by con-
sistency of quality and texture, regulating the whole

A LAY CREED 109

constituent fabric of life to its terminal fringe, which
betokens an immediate entry on a farther stage of
development and progress, in accordance with its intrinsic
qualities as a material thing, and its dynamic qualities
as an essence that resists death, or as an organism
altogether immaterial, and hence, spiritual.

Here the sublimity of the words we have quoted steals
into the waning consciousness, and infuses a strength
of faith which lights up the exit from the material world,
and reveals through the " shadow of death " the longed-
for entrance to the scene of immaterial realities, which
" it has not even yet entered into the heart of man to
conceive," the spiritual being inconceivable by the material.
So says lay experience, but here let us resign this
glorious and sublime subject into the hands of those
capable from their special training and knowledge to
apply it to rhe wants of humanity — and should it in any
degree be found applicable to such service, and consonant
with divine or revealed truth, in the fervent hope that
the universal affirmative of nature's teaching may assist
revelation ultimately to overpower and supplant the some-
times boldly asserted negative of human teaching, and
to inspire and vitalise the supineness and inertia of human
purpose and effort ; and as a corollary to the words
" as a man liveth, so he dieth," we would add these —
" And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write, Blessed
are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth ; yea,
saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, for
their works follow with them."

Having absolutely satisfied ourselves, from the scientific
outlook, of the certainty of life hereafter, we may, we
think, apply these last quoted words to the character, at
least, of the earliest stage of that after-life, and would
claim that that character is one of continuity and con-
sistency— like the "going down" and the "rising" of
the sun — the works done by, not the materials won by
or belonging to him or her, which are left behind with
those that remain, and have no representative, value, or
ability, to affect the immaterial transaction represented in
the act of death, the material body, with all its material
belongings, being left as the absolute property of the

no METAPHYSICS

planet and all that belongs to it, as absolutely its own,
of character, of good done, of services rendered to the
cause of truth, of work accomplished for the benefit of
others, without fee or reward, save the inward satisfaction
of the innate consciousness and conscience, and of the
thousand and one occasions met, when the interests of
self have been spontaneously subordinated to the advance-
ment of those of others, and to the still greater number
of unenumerated acts of kindness because of their lifelong
accumulation, in which the life of true religion has been
lived without its being taken note of by the liver, with all
that can be called " true and of good report " in the
"daily walk and conversation of life."

These are some of the everlasting " properties and
belongings " of this life, entitling " the dead who die in
the Lord " to be received into the blessed condition of
" rest " defined above, as that which is awaiting everyone
entitled to it, with the certainty of " cause and effect,"
and as a satisfaction of the laws of everlasting justice and
truth. Thus, the elements of uncertainty and chance,
favour and accident, are absolutely eliminated, at the
fountain-head, from the reign of law in the spiritual
condition into which man enters at death, and in which
his future evolution and development are ensured to all
eternity — which is surely a goal to be aimed at by all,
and in the aiming at which, virtue, if it does not succeed
in obtaining its own reward here, will become a personal
asset of the utmost importance when the material gives
place to the spiritual life, and when that rest, so much
longed for by the weary soul, is at last granted as the
recompense and reward of those " who die in the Lord."

'RINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

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