God the Known and God the Unknown Part 2

Though the trunk and all the inner boughs and leaves have disappeared, yet there hang here and there fossil leaves, also in mid-air; they appear to have been petrified, without method or selection, by what we call the caprices of nature; they hang in the path which the boughs and twigs would have taken, and they seem to indicate that if the tree could have been seen a million years earlier, before it had grown near its present size, the leaves standing at the end of each bough would have been found very different from what they are now. Let us suppose that all the leaves at the end of all the invisible boughs, no matter how different they now are from one another, were found in earliest budhood to be absolutely indistinguishable, and afterwards to develop towards each differentiation through stages which were indicated by the fossil leaves. Lastly, let us suppose that though the boughs which seem wanted to connect all the living forms of leaves with the fossil leaves, and with countless forms of which all trace has disappeared, and also with a single root-have become invisible, yet that there is irrefragable evidence to show that they once actually existed, and indeed are existing at this moment, in a condition as real though as invisible to the eye as air or electricity. Should we, I ask, under these circ.u.mstances hesitate to call our imaginary plant or tree by a single name, and to think of it as one person, merely upon the score that the woody fibre [sic] was invisible? Should we not esteem the common soul, memories and principles of growth which are preserved between all the buds, no matter how widely they differ in detail, as a more living bond of union than a framework of wood would be, which, though it were visible to the eye, would still be inanimate?

The mistletoe appears as closely connected with the tree on which it grows as any of the buds of the tree itself; it is fed upon the same sap as the other buds are, which sap-however much it may modify it at the last moment-it draws through the same fibres [sic] as do its foster-brothers-why then do we at once feel that the mistletoe is no part of the apple tree? Not from any want of manifest continuity, but from the spiritual difference-from the profoundly different views of life and things which are taken by the parasite and the tree on which it grows-the two are now different because they think differently-as long as they thought alike they were alike-that is to say they were protoplasm-they and we and all that lives meeting in this common substance.

We ought therefore to regard our supposed tufts of leaves as a tree, that is to say, as a compound existence, each one of whose component items is compounded of others which are also in their turn compounded.

But the tree above described is no imaginary parallel to the condition of life upon the globe; it is perhaps as accurate a description of the Tree of Life as can be put into so small a compa.s.s. The most sure proof of a man's ident.i.ty is the power to remember that such and such things happened, which none but he can know; the most sure proof of his remembering is the power to react his part in the original drama, whatever it may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with consummate truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about it, he is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was.

The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that they possess-the memories of their common ident.i.ty with a single person in whom they meet-this is incontestable proof of their being animated by a common soul. It is certain, therefore, that all living forms, whether animal or vegetable, are in reality one animal; we and the mosses being part of the same vast person in no figurative sense, but with as much bona fide literal truth as when we say that a man's finger-nails and his eyes are parts of the same man.

It is in this Person that we may see the Body of G.o.d-and in the evolution of this Person, the mystery of His Incarnation.

[In "Unconscious Memory," Chapter V, Butler wrote: "In the articles above alluded to ("G.o.d the Known and G.o.d the Unknown") I separated the organic from the inorganic, but when I came to rewrite them I found that this could not be done, and that I must reconstruct what I had written."

This reconstruction never having been effected, it may be well to quote further from "Unconscious Memory" (concluding chapter): "At parting, therefore, I would recommend the reader to see every atom in the universe as living and able to feel and remember, but in a humble way.

He must have life eternal as well as matter eternal; and the life and the matter must be joined together inseparably as body and soul to one another. Thus he will see G.o.d everywhere, not as those who repeat phrases conventionally, but as people who would have their words taken according to their most natural and legitimate meaning; and he will feel that the main difference between him and many of those who oppose him lies in the fact that whereas both he and they use the same language, his opponents only half mean what they say, while he means it entirely... We shall endeavour [sic] to see the so-called inorganic as living, in respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather than the organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in common with the inorganic."]

CHAPTER VII. THE LIKENESS OF G.o.d

In my last chapter I endeavoured [sic] to show that each living being, whether animal or plant, throughout the world is a component item of a single personality, in the same way as each individual citizen of a community is a member of one state, or as each cell of our own bodies is a separate person, or each bud of a tree a separate plant. We must therefore see the whole varied congeries of living things as a single very ancient Being, of inconceivable vastness, and animated by one Spirit.

We call the octogenarian one person with the embryo of a few days old from which he has developed. An oak or yew tree may be two thousand years old, but we call it one plant with the seed from which it has grown. Millions of individual buds have come and gone, to the yearly wasting and repairing of its substance; but the tree still lives and thrives, and the dead leaves have life therein. So the Tree of Life still lives and thrives as a single person, no matter how many new features it has acquired during its development, nor, again, how many of its individual leaves fall yellow to the ground daily. The spirit or soul of this person is the Spirit of G.o.d, and its body-for we know of no soul or spirit without a body, nor of any living body without a spirit or soul, and if there is a G.o.d at all there must be a body of G.o.d-is the many-membered outgrowth of protoplasm, the ensemble of animal and vegetable life.

To repeat. The Theologian of to-day tells us that there is a G.o.d, but is horrified at the idea of that G.o.d having a body. We say that we believe in G.o.d, but that our minds refuse to realise [sic] an intelligent Being who has no bodily person. "Where then," says the Theologian, "is the body of your G.o.d?" We have answered, "In the living forms upon the earth, which, though they look many, are, when we regard them by the light of their history and of true a.n.a.logies, one person only." The spiritual connection between them is a more real bond of union than the visible discontinuity of material parts is ground for separating them in our thoughts.

Let the reader look at a case of moths in the shop-window of a naturalist, and note the unspeakable delicacy, beauty, and yet serviceableness of their wings; or let him look at a case of humming-birds, and remember how infinitely small a part of Nature is the whole group of the animals he may be considering, and how infinitely small a part of that group is the case that he is looking at. Let him bear in mind that he is looking on the dead husks only of what was inconceivably more marvellous [sic] when the moths or humming-birds were alive. Let him think of the vastness of the earth, and of the activity by day and night through countless ages of such countless forms of animal and vegetable life as that no human mind can form the faintest approach to anything that can be called a conception of their mult.i.tude, and let him remember that all these forms have touched and touched and touched other living beings till they meet back on a common substance in which they are rooted, and from which they all branch forth so as to be one animal. Will he not in this real and tangible existence find a G.o.d who is as much more worthy of admiration than the G.o.d of the ordinary Theologian-as He is also more easy of comprehension?

For the Theologian dreams of a G.o.d sitting above the clouds among the cherubim, who blow their loud uplifted angel trumpets before Him, and humour [sic] Him as though He were some despot in an Oriental tale; but we enthrone Him upon the wings of birds, on the petals of flowers, on the faces of our friends, and upon whatever we most delight in of all that lives upon the earth. We then can not only love Him, but we can do that without which love has neither power nor sweetness, but is a phantom only, an impersonal person, a vain stretching forth of arms towards something that can never fill them-we can express our love and have it expressed to us in return. And this not in the uprearing of stone temples-for the Lord dwelleth [sic] in temples made with other organs than hands-nor yet in the cleansing of our hearts, but in the caress bestowed upon horse and dog, and kisses upon the lips of those we love.

Wide, however, as is the difference between the orthodox Theologian and ourselves, it is not more remarkable than the number of the points on which we can agree with him, and on which, moreover, we can make his meaning clearer to himself than it can have ever hitherto been. He, for example, says that man has been made in the image of G.o.d, but he cannot mean what he says, unless his G.o.d has a material body; we, on the other hand, do not indeed believe that the body of G.o.d-the incorporation of all life-is like the body of a man, more than we believe each one of our own cells or subordinate personalities to be like a man in miniature; but we nevertheless hold that each of our tributary selves is so far made after the likeness of the body corporate that it possesses all our main and essential characteristics-that is to say, that it can waste and repair itself; can feel, move, and remember. To this extent, also, we-who stand in mean proportional between our tributary personalities and G.o.d-are made in the likeness of G.o.d; for we, and G.o.d, and our subordinate cells alike possess the essential characteristics of life which have been above recited. It is more true, therefore, for us to say that we are made in the likeness of G.o.d than for the orthodox Theologian to do so.

Nor, again, do we find difficulty in adopting such an expression as that "G.o.d has taken our nature upon Him." We hold this as firmly, and much more so, than Christians can do, but we say that this is no new thing for Him to do, for that He has taken flesh and dwelt among us from the day that He first a.s.sumed our shape, some millions of years ago, until now. G.o.d cannot become man more especially than He can become other living forms, any more than we can be our eyes more especially than any other of our organs. We may develop larger eyes, so that our eyes may come to occupy a still more important place in our economy than they do at present; and in a similar way the human race may become a more predominant part of G.o.d than it now is-but we cannot admit that one living form is more like G.o.d than another; we must hold all equally like Him, inasmuch as they "keep ever," as Buffon says, "the same fundamental unity, in spite of differences of detail-nutrition, development, reproduction" (and, I would add, "memory") "being the common traits of all organic bodies." The utmost we can admit is, that some embodiments of the Spirit of Life may be more important than others to the welfare of Life as a whole, in the same way as some of our organs are more important than others to ourselves.

But the above resemblances between the language which we can adopt intelligently and that which Theologians use vaguely, seem to reduce the differences of opinion between the two contending parties to disputes about detail. For even those who believe their ideas to be the most definite, and who picture to themselves a G.o.d as anthropomorphic as He was represented by Raffaelle, are yet not prepared to stand by their ideas if they are hard pressed in the same way as we are by ours. Those who say that G.o.d became man and took flesh upon Him, and that He is now perfect G.o.d and perfect man of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting, will yet not mean that Christ has a heart, blood, a stomach, etc., like man's, which, if he has not, it is idle to speak of him as "perfect man." I am persuaded that they do not mean this, nor wish to mean it; but that they have been led into saying it by a series of steps which it is very easy to understand and sympathise [sic] with, if they are considered with any diligence.

For our forefathers, though they might and did feel the existence of a Personal G.o.d in the world, yet could not demonstrate this existence, and made mistakes in their endeavour [sic] to persuade themselves that they understood thoroughly a truth which they had as yet perceived only from a long distance. Hence all the dogmatism and theology of many centuries.

It was impossible for them to form a clear or definite conception concerning G.o.d until they had studied His works more deeply, so as to grasp the idea of many animals of different kinds and with no apparent connection between them, being yet truly parts of one and the same animal which comprised them in the same way as a tree comprises all its buds. They might speak of this by a figure of speech, but they could not see it as a fact. Before this could be intended literally, Evolution must be grasped, and not Evolution as taught in what is now commonly called Darwinism, but the old teleological Darwinism of eighty years ago. Nor is this again sufficient, for it must be supplemented by a perception of the oneness of personality between parents and offspring, the persistence of memory through all generations, the latency of this memory until rekindled by the recurrence of the a.s.sociated ideas, and the unconsciousness with which repeated acts come to be performed.

These are modern ideas which might be caught sight of now and again by prophets in time past, but which are even now mastered and held firmly only by the few.

When once, however, these ideas have been accepted, the chief difference between the orthodox G.o.d and the G.o.d who can be seen of all men is, that the first is supposed to have existed from all time, while the second has only lived for more millions of years than our minds can reckon intelligently; the first is omnipresent in all s.p.a.ce, while the second is only present in the living forms upon this earth-that is to say, is only more widely present than our minds can intelligently embrace. The first is omnipotent and all-wise; the second is only quasi-omnipotent and quasi all-wise. It is true, then, that we deprive G.o.d of that infinity which orthodox Theologians have ascribed to Him, but the bounds we leave Him are of such incalculable extent that nothing can be imagined more glorious or vaster; and in return for the limitations we have a.s.signed to Him, we render it possible for men to believe in Him, and love Him, not with their lips only, but with their hearts and lives.

Which, I may now venture to ask my readers, is the true G.o.d-the G.o.d of the Theologian, or He whom we may see around us, and in whose presence we stand each hour and moment of our lives?

CHAPTER VIII. THE LIFE EVERLASTING

Let us now consider the life which we can look forward to with certainty after death, and the moral government of the world here on earth.

If we could hear the leaves complaining to one another that they must die, and commiserating the hardness of their lot in having ever been induced to bud forth, we should, I imagine, despise them for their peevishness more than we should pity them. We should tell them that though we could not see reason for thinking that they would ever hang again upon the same-or any at all similar-bough as the same individual leaves, after they had once faded and fallen off, yet that as they had been changing personalities without feeling it during the whole of their leafhood, so they would on death continue to do this selfsame thing by entering into new phases of life. True, death will deprive them of conscious memory concerning their now current life; but, though they die as leaves, they live in the tree whom they have helped to vivify, and whose growth and continued well-being is due solely to this life and death of its component personalities.

We consider the cells which are born and die within us yearly to have been sufficiently honoured [sic] in having contributed their quotum to our life; why should we have such difficulty in seeing that a healthy enjoyment and employment of our life will give us a sufficient reward in that growth of G.o.d wherein we may live more truly and effectually after death than we have lived when we were conscious of existence? Is Handel dead when he influences and sets in motion more human beings in three months now than during the whole, probably, of the years in which he thought that he was alive? What is being alive if the power to draw men for many miles in order that they may put themselves en rapport with him is not being so? True, Handel no longer knows the power which he has over us, but this is a small matter; he no longer animates six feet of flesh and blood, but he lives in us as the dead leaf lives in the tree.

He is with G.o.d, and G.o.d knows him though he knows himself no more.

This should suffice, and I observe in practice does suffice, for all reasonable persons. It may be said that one day the tree itself must die, and the leaves no longer live therein; and so, also, that the very G.o.d or Life of the World will one day perish, as all that is born must surely in the end die. But they who fret upon such grounds as this must be in so much want of a grievance that it were a cruelty to rob them of one: if a man who is fond of music tortures himself on the ground that one day all possible combinations and permutations of sounds will have been exhausted so that there can be no more new tunes, the only thing we can do with him is to pity him and leave him; nor is there any better course than this to take with those idle people who worry themselves and others on the score that they will one day be unable to remember the small balance of their lives that they have not already forgotten as unimportant to them-that they will one day die to the balance of what they have not already died to. I never knew a well-bred or amiable person who complained seriously of the fact that he would have to die.

Granted we must all sometimes find ourselves feeling sorry that we cannot remain for ever at our present age, and that we may die so much sooner than we like; but these regrets are pa.s.sing with well-disposed people, and are a sine qua non for the existence of life at all. For if people could live for ever so as to suffer from no such regret, there would be no growth nor development in life; if, on the other hand, there were no unwillingness to die, people would commit suicide upon the smallest contradiction, and the race would end in a twelvemonth.

We then offer immortality, but we do not offer resurrection from the dead; we say that those who die live in the Lord whether they be just or unjust, and that the present growth of G.o.d is the outcome of all past lives; but we believe that as they live in G.o.d-in the effect they have produced upon the universal life-when once their individual life is ended, so it is G.o.d who knows of their life thenceforward and not themselves; and we urge that this immortality, this entrance into the joy of the Lord, this being ever with G.o.d, is true, and can be apprehended by all men, and that the perception of it should and will tend to make them lead happier, healthier lives; whereas the commonly received opinion is true with a stage truth only, and has little permanent effect upon those who are best worth considering. Nevertheless the expressions in common use among the orthodox fit in so perfectly with facts, which we must all acknowledge, that it is impossible not to regard the expressions as founded upon a prophetic perception of the facts.

Two things stand out with sufficient clearness. The first is the rarity of suicide even among those who rail at life most bitterly. The other is the little eagerness with which those who cry out most loudly for a resurrection desire to begin their new life. When comforting a husband upon the loss of his wife we do not tell him we hope he will soon join her; but we should certainly do this if we could even pretend we thought the husband would like it. I can never remember having felt or witnessed any pain, bodily or mental, which would have made me or anyone else receive a suggestion that we had better commit suicide without indignantly asking how our adviser would like to commit suicide himself.

Yet there are so many and such easy ways of dying that indignation at being advised to commit suicide arises more from enjoyment of life than from fear of the mere physical pain of dying. Granted that there is much deplorable pain in the world from ill-health, loss of money, loss of reputation, misconduct of those nearest to us, or what not, and granted that in some cases these causes do drive men to actual self-destruction, yet suffering such as this happens to a comparatively small number, and occupies comparatively a small s.p.a.ce in the lives of those to whom it does happen.

What, however, have we to say to those cases in which suffering and injustice are inflicted upon defenceless [sic] people for years and years, so that the iron enters into their souls, and they have no avenger. Can we give any comfort to such sufferers? and, if not, is our religion any better than a mockery-a filling the rich with good things and sending the hungry empty away? Can we tell them, when they are oppressed with burdens, yet that their cry will come up to G.o.d and be heard? The question suggests its own answer, for a.s.suredly our G.o.d knows our innermost secrets: there is not a word in our hearts but He knoweth it altogether; He knoweth our down-sitting and our uprising, He is about our path and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways; He has fashioned us behind and before, and "we cannot attain such knowledge,"

for, like all knowledge when it has become perfect, "it is too excellent for us."

"Whither then," says David, "shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither shall I go, then, from thy presence? If I climb up into heaven thou art there; if I go down into h.e.l.l thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say peradventure the darkness shall cover me, then shall my night be turned into day: the darkness and light to thee are both alike. For my reins are thine; thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. My bones are not hid from thee: though I be made secretly and fashioned beneath in the earth, thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect; and in thy book were all my members written, which day by day were fashioned when as yet there was none of them. Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am I not grieved with them that rise up against thee? Yea, I hate them right sore, as though they were mine enemies." (Psalm Cx.x.xIX.) There is not a word of this which we cannot endorse with more significance, as well as with greater heartiness than those can who look upon G.o.d as He is commonly represented to them; whatever comfort, therefore, those in distress have been in the habit of receiving from these and kindred pa.s.sages, we intensify rather than not. We cannot, alas! make pain cease to be pain, nor injustice easy to bear; but we can show that no pain is bootless, and that there is a tendency in all injustice to right itself; suffering is not inflicted wilfully, [sic] as it were by a magician who could have averted it; nor is it vain in its results, but unless we are cut off from G.o.d by having dwelt in some place where none of our kind can know of what has happened to us, it will move G.o.d's heart to redress our grievance, and will tend to the happiness of those who come after us, even if not to our own.

The moral government of G.o.d over the world is exercised through us, who are his ministers and persons, and a government of this description is the only one which can be observed as practically influencing men's conduct. G.o.d helps those who help themselves, because in helping themselves they are helping Him. Again, Vox Populi vox Dei. The current feeling of our peers is what we instinctively turn to when we would know whether such and such a course of conduct is right or wrong; and so Paul clenches his list of things that the Philippians were to hold fast with the words, "whatsoever things are of good fame"-that is to say, he falls back upon an appeal to the educated conscience of his age. Certainly the wicked do sometimes appear to escape punishment, but it must be remembered there are punishments from within which do not meet the eye.

If these fall on a man, he is sufficiently punished; if they do not fall on him, it is probable we have been over hasty in a.s.suming that he is wicked.

CHAPTER IX. G.o.d THE UNKNOWN

The reader will already have felt that the panzoistic conception of G.o.d-the conception, that is to say, of G.o.d as comprising all living units in His own single person-does not help us to understand the origin of matter, nor yet that of the primordial cell which has grown and unfolded itself into the present life of the world. How was the world rendered fit for the habitation of the first germ of Life? How came it to have air and water, without which nothing that we know of as living can exist? Was the world fashioned and furnished with aqueous and atmospheric adjuncts with a view to the requirements of the infant monad, and to his due development? If so, we have evidence of design, and if so of a designer, and if so there must be Some far vaster Person who looms out behind our G.o.d, and who stands in the same relation to him as he to us. And behind this vaster and more unknown G.o.d there may be yet another, and another, and another.

It is certain that Life did not make the world with a view to its own future requirements. For the world was at one time red hot, and there can have been no living being upon it. Nor is it conceivable that matter in which there was no life-inasmuch as it was infinitely hotter than the hottest infusion which any living germ can support-could gradually come to be alive without impregnation from a living parent. All living things that we know of have come from other living things with bodies and souls, whose existence can be satisfactorily established in spite of their being often too small for our detection. Since, then, the world was once without life, and since no a.n.a.logy points in the direction of thinking that life can spring up spontaneously, we are driven to suppose that it was introduced into this world from some other source extraneous to it altogether, and if so we find ourselves irresistibly drawn to the inquiry whether the source of the life that is in the world-the impregnator of this earth-may not also have prepared the earth for the reception of his offspring, as a hen makes an egg-sh.e.l.l or a peach a stone for the protection of the germ within it? Not only are we drawn to the inquiry, but we are drawn also to the answer that the earth was so prepared designedly by a Person with body and soul who knew beforehand the kind of thing he required, and who took the necessary steps to bring it about.

If this is so we are members indeed of the G.o.d of this world, but we are not his children; we are children of the Unknown and Vaster G.o.d who called him into existence; and this in a far more literal sense than we have been in the habit of realising [sic] to ourselves. For it may be doubted whether the monads are not as truly seminal in character as the procreative matter from which all animals spring.

It must be remembered that if there is any truth in the view put forward in "Life and Habit," and in "Evolution Old and New" (and I have met with no serious attempt to upset the line of argument taken in either of these books), then no complex animal or plant can reach its full development without having already gone through the stages of that development on an infinite number of past occasions. An egg makes itself into a hen because it knows the way to do so, having already made itself into a hen millions and millions of times over; the ease and unconsciousness with which it grows being in themselves sufficient demonstration of this fact. At each stage in its growth the chicken is reminded, by a return of the a.s.sociated ideas, of the next step that it should take, and it accordingly takes it.

But if this is so, and if also the congeries of all the living forms in the world must be regarded as a single person, throughout their long growth from the primordial cell onwards to the present day, then, by parity of reasoning, the person thus compounded-that is to say, Life or G.o.d-should have already pa.s.sed through a growth a.n.a.logous to that which we find he has taken upon this earth on an infinite number of past occasions; and the development of each cla.s.s of life, with its culmination in the vertebrate animals and in man, should be due to recollection by G.o.d of his having pa.s.sed through the same stages, or nearly so, in worlds and universes, which we know of from personal recollection, as evidenced in the growth and structure of our bodies, but concerning which we have no other knowledge whatsoever.

So small a s.p.a.ce remains to me that I cannot pursue further the reflections which suggest themselves. A few concluding considerations are here alone possible.

We know of three great concentric phases of life, and we are not without reason to suspect a fourth. If there are so many there are very likely more, but we do not know whether there are or not. The innermost sphere of life we know of is that of our own cells. These people live in a world of their own, knowing nothing of us, nor being known by ourselves until very recently. Yet they can be seen under a microscope; they can be taken out of us, and may then be watched going here and there in perturbation of mind, endeavouring [sic] to find something in their new environment that will suit them, and then dying on finding how hopelessly different it is from any to which they have been accustomed.

They live in us, and make us up into the single person which we conceive ourselves to form; we are to them a world comprising an organic and an inorganic kingdom, of which they consider themselves to be the organic, and whatever is not very like themselves to be the inorganic. Whether they are composed of subordinate personalities or not we do not know, but we have no reason to think that they are, and if we touch ground, so to speak, with life in the units of which our own bodies are composed, it is likely that there is a limit also in an upward direction, though we have nothing whatever to guide us as to where it is, nor any certainty that there is a limit at all.

We are ourselves the second concentric sphere of life, we being the const.i.tuent cells which unite to form the body of G.o.d. Of the third sphere we know a single member only-the G.o.d of this world; but we see also the stars in heaven, and know their mult.i.tude. a.n.a.logy points irresistibly in the direction of thinking that these other worlds are like our own, beG.o.dded and full of life; it also bids us believe that the G.o.d of their world is begotten of one more or less like himself, and that his growth has followed the same course as that of all other growths we know of.

If so, he is one of the const.i.tuent units of an unknown and vaster personality who is composed of G.o.ds, as our G.o.d is composed of all the living forms on earth, and as all those living forms are composed of cells. This is the Unknown G.o.d. Beyond this second G.o.d we cannot at present go, nor should we wish to do so, if we are wise. It is no reproach to a system that it does not profess to give an account of the origin of things; the reproach rather should lie against a system which professed to explain it, for we may be well a.s.sured that such a profession would, for the present at any rate, be an empty boast. It is enough if a system is true as far as it goes; if it throws new light on old problems, and opens up vistas which reveal a hope of further addition to our knowledge, and this I believe may be fairly claimed for the theory of life put forward in "Life and Habit" and "Evolution, Old and New," and for the corollary insisted upon in these pages; a corollary which follows logically and irresistibly if the position I have taken in the above-named books is admitted.

Let us imagine that one of the cells of which we are composed could attain to a glimmering perception of the manner in which he unites with other cells, of whom he knows very little, so as to form a greater compound person of whom he has. .h.i.therto known nothing at all. Would he not do well to content himself with the mastering of this conception, at any rate for a considerable time? Would it be any just ground of complaint against him on the part of his brother cells, that he had failed to explain to them who made the man (or, as he would call it, the omnipotent deity) whose existence and relations to himself he had just caught sight of?

But if he were to argue further on the same lines as those on which he had travelled hitherto, and were to arrive at the conclusion that there might be other men in the world. besides the one whom he had just learnt to apprehend, it would be still no refutation or just ground of complaint against him that he had failed to show the manner in which his supposed human race had come into existence.

Here our cell would probably stop. He could hardly be expected to arrive at the existence of animals and plants differing from the human race, and uniting with that race to form a single Person or G.o.d, in the same way as he has himself united with other cells to form man. The existence, and much more the roundness of the earth itself, would be unknown to him, except by way of inference and deduction. The only universe which he could at all understand would be the body of the man of whom he was a component part.

How would not such a cell be astounded if all that we know ourselves could be suddenly revealed to him, so that not only should the vastness of this earth burst upon his dazzled view, but that of the sun and of his planets also, and not only these, but the countless other suns which we may see by night around us. Yet it is probable that an actual being is hidden from us, which no less transcends the wildest dream of our theologians than the existence of the heavenly bodies transcends the perception of our own const.i.tuent cells.