God and the World Part 7

Of the debates on the subsequent days those on "Radiation" and "The Origin of Life" were, perhaps, the most remarkable. At the former the point at issue was the amount of truth contained in Planck's "famous hypothesis that energy was transferred by jumps instead of in a continuous stream." Sir Joseph Larmor evidently expressed the prevailing opinion when he said that "some advance in that direction had become necessary, and old-fashioned physicists like himself had either to take part in it or run the risk of becoming obsolete."

For the discussion about "Life," the three sections of Physiology, Zoology, and Botany were combined. Professor Moore stood stoutly for the older views, and "believed that he could demonstrate a step which connected inorganic with organic creation." Then he gave an abstruse and highly technical account of a process by which in "solutions of colloidal ferric hydroxide, exposed to strong sunlight," compounds could be formed similar to those to be found in the green plant. With a proper grouping of molecules it might be imagined how "colloidal aggregates appeared," and eventually "organic colloids" which "acquired the property of transforming light energy into chemical activity." The speakers who followed seemed to be agreed that, even were such "potentially living matter" to be produced, we should have reached, not the discovery of the secret of life, but only the construction of "its physical vehicle." Professor Hartog strongly protested against the notion that there was "a consensus {97} of opinion among biologists that life was only one form of chemical and physical actions which could be reduced in the laboratory." He wished it to be understood that "the preponderance of weight among scientific men" was opposed to such a position.

{98}

CONCLUSION

It is dangerous to generalise; and, when as in this survey we are attempting to indicate broadly the trend of the thought of an age, we have more than ordinary need to be on our guard lest we should sacrifice truth to the desire for a seeming completeness of logical presentation. For fear, then, of misunderstanding, let it be clearly remembered that in what has been said we have had no wish to suggest that all minds have moved at the same pace, or even in the same direction; but only that certain strong tendencies were observable, which gave colour and character to the mental stream at the particular stages in its course. It is with a full sense of the possibility of exaggeration, and of the necessity of holding the balance even, that we shall now make our final attempt to sum up as concisely as possible what we have been able to gather in regard to the thought-movement of the period we have had under review. There can be no danger of misstatement in saying that, all throughout, the chief thoughts of the time were intensely occupied with {99} the greatest of all questions, those about G.o.d AND THE WORLD. And, further, it has not been difficult to perceive that there have been three distinct stages in the sequence of these thoughts.

In the _first stage_ we can see, as we look back, that the Religious feeling was dominant, while the scientific temper could scarcely have been said to exist; certainly it did not exist upon any extended scale.

But, though the desire to be reverent was widespread, we are bound to allow that the ideas about G.o.d were somewhat crudely conceived. As a legacy, no doubt, from the Deistic controversies of the preceding century, the general thought did not rise above the notion of a Supreme Mechanist and all-powerful Ruler of all things. The Divine Being was regarded as having originated the universe by a fiat of His will, fashioning its several contents one after another as He pleased, and appointing that each and all should be subjected to the laws He had ordained; always reserving to Himself the right to intervene by some signal display of wisdom and power, when such intervention was required, either to remedy a defect, or yet further to set forth His glory. Men were very ready to admit the idea of the Supernatural, but it was in the merely superficial and popular sense of _power working without means_, rather than what we now {100} feel to be the far truer sense of _superhuman knowledge of means, and power to use them_.[1] It followed, and this was the weakest point in the Paleyan system of Natural Theology, that G.o.d's action was looked for not in the normal, but in the exceptional processes of Nature. The need of the Divine was only felt when no other explanation was forthcoming; with the result, of course, that as other explanations were found, the necessity for recognising its operation grew ever less and less. And, even apart from such a consequence, the effects of the conception could not be otherwise than injurious to religious faith; for, as it has been truly and reverently observed, "a theory of occasional intervention implies as its correlative a theory of ordinary absence."[2]

As to knowledge of the World, there was scarcely any at all, according in our present understanding of such knowledge. Not everybody, of course, accounted for the existence of fossils by supposing that they were the casts from which the Almighty had designed His creatures, or possibly the Devil's {101} attempts to imitate His works; but the prevailing ideas were of the most primitive kind. Even Paley could give us no better explanation of certain rudimentary anatomical organs, than by suggesting that the creature in whom they were found had been so far constructed before it was decided what its s.e.x should be! We can see that if any real progress in knowledge was to be made, a change of a very radical order had to come. And it did come.

The _second stage_ was Scientific rather than religious. The thought of G.o.d occupied a less prominent place in proportion as men's minds were yielded to the attraction of the new studies. This was partly due, as we have already explained, to the fact that causes were found to account for the phenomena which had previously, for the lack of the understanding of such causes, been attributed to the immediate exercise of supernatural power. Partly, also, it was due to a growing distrust of human ability, which resulted from the belief that this was nothing more than a recent development from a lower animal ancestry. A mind thus originated was supposed to be debarred from forming any trustworthy notion of the nature of a First Cause which had operated, if at all, at some point infinitely distant in the long succession of ages.

The main work of this stage was to prosecute {102} research into the elaborated mechanism, or as men soon came to prefer to think of it, the developing growth of the world. And wonderful, beyond all antic.i.p.ation, was the success which rewarded the pains that were lavishly bestowed upon the inquiry. Small marvel was it that some men's heads were well-nigh turned, and that to many it seemed little less than certain that science had dispensed with the supernatural altogether; and that it only required time, and no great length of time, to secure universal acceptance for the materialistic explanations which were destined, as they supposed, to leave no mysteries of life unsolved. But such persons had reckoned with a too hasty and superficial knowledge of the data involved. Little by little the counter-criticisms produced their effect. The idea of a First and Permanent Cause was shewn to be as indispensable as ever; not, indeed, as an influence to be pushed far back, and to be thought of as acting either once or occasionally. A truer reading of the meaning of what had been discovered led to the grateful acknowledgment that "Darwinism has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit by shewing us that we must choose between two alternatives: either G.o.d is everywhere present in Nature, or He is nowhere."[3] {103} So, again, with Design. The earlier notion of the separate manufacture of species and of special adaptations to particular ends had to give way to a larger conception of the growth and gradual correlation of the parts and functions of a stupendous whole. But for the attainment of this mighty result direction and superintendence are even more imperatively needed. As it was often urged with good reason, to make a world right off would not have been so marvellous an achievement as to make that world make itself.

The problem of Beneficence had, as we saw, come to be so entangled with difficulties as to render it the most serious of all the problems which pressed upon the minds and hearts of the men of this second stage of thinking. But here, also, the fears which were at first aroused were found to have been exaggerated; and perhaps it is true to say that before the end of the century there was a general disposition to conclude that with larger knowledge we should get to understand the utility of much that to uninstructed eyes appears to be lavish waste and needless suffering. The obvious fact that science could not go forward without a loyal belief in the rational intelligibility of nature gave justification to a corresponding belief in its ethical intelligibility, even though in this case, as in the other, the {104} complete proofs might not be immediately forthcoming. And there was, further, the possibility--to some it was more than a possibility--that much in the world which looks contrary to goodness is really to be accounted for as the result of a misuse of liberty on the part of powers and forces whose action has most mysteriously been allowed to thwart and to complicate the task of the beneficent Maker of all.

About the _third stage_ it is fitting that we should speak with more hesitation. We are living in it, and are as yet only at its beginning.

But we may hazard the prognostication that it will be both Religious and Scientific; and that, "as knowledge grows from more to more," there will be found the "more of reverence" of which our modern poet sings.

There is reason to hope that the bitterness of old controversies will not be revived, and that we have before us a time in which Theology and Science will co-operate and no longer conflict. With deepening insight it is becoming plainer than ever that the phenomena of life, and even of matter, are the expressions of a more than physical force.

Evolution is a law under which a forward process is moving on, and moving up. There is an impulse of consciousness working from within, and there is a spiritual, as well as a material, environment inviting {105} to correspondence with itself. Freedom and power of choice are admitted to be present in regions where their existence was for long most strenuously denied. Even matter may have its own power of insistence and resistance--how much more mind and will. This consideration may give us a yet clearer clue to the mysteries of failure, miscarriage, and waste. A world that was to produce self-conscious, self-determining personalities needed to have freedom through the whole of its development; and the consequent risk and possible cost were inevitable. Shall we not be led to admire and revere increasingly the wonder of it all, as there grows upon us the sense of the quietness and gentleness, the foresight, and the infinite patience of the Being of beings, who will never obtrude His presence and action upon us, just because He would help us to be our own, not dead but living, selves, and would have us rise with Him to the highest things?

We are far from the end of our learning. There are many enigmas yet to be made plain. We could not wish it otherwise. It has ever been through the narrow gate of difficulty that we have pa.s.sed into the wider court of truth. We have good cause to be humble, but we have full right to be hopeful. We must not be afraid to face the problems that await {106} us, whatever they may be. We may be confident that we are not to be deceived; but that, under a Guidance that has never failed, we shall at length be brought to see the dawning of the longed-for day,

"When that in us which thinks with that which feels Shall everlastingly be reconciled, And that which questioneth with that which kneels."

[1] This important distinction was carefully drawn by the Duke of Argyll in his _Reign of Law_ (pp. 14, 25), published in 1866.

[2] Aubrey Moore, in one of a series of remarkable articles contributed to the _Guardian_ (January 18th, 25th, February 1st, 1888).

[3] Aubrey Moore, _Lux Mundi_.