English
Take, for example, that pri- mary plastic matter of yours, which I can compare to nothing but infinite quicksilver, but which you describe as a sort of ubi- quitous fluid, and as being in fact the bubbling seed of life. Much more I ask, as even the greatest of physical inquirers have asked, where did such a fluid get its motive ? could it even be moved at all, if law as the result of design or thought did not underlie its movements ? You will readily admit that it moves in subjection to certain rules, and that however truly all the 172 LAW, THOUGHT, CHANCE, forma of matter may perhaps be resolved back into one primary flnid, that fluid has at least been varied into a thousand forms of life, according to the conditions under which it has moved. There has been heat melting, cold condensing, liquid flowing, lightness flying up, and gravity tending downward — these things are not more facts historically, than the order in which they are on the whole arranged is metaphysically a thought. Indeed, I humbly conceive, metaphysically, that it would not be possible to trace back the process by thought, unless its arrangement, in fact, had been orderly, and such as proceeds from design. For if ever you arrive at things which are literally the work of chance, though it is not very easy to find such, no one then ventures to predict an order, or attempts to trace one. Thus, as to which of the myriad drops of salt water will wet each grain of sand on the shore we give no account, for it seems to be chance ; but the great body of the tide we predict, and that seems to be law. The same remark of the utter uncertainty of pure chance may often be made as to the units, even when we have no doubt as to the aggregate. Thus we do not know which pigeon out of a flock will get a particular grain of com when we throw a handful at random, though we may be certain the com will be all eaten, and the pigeons in the mass fed. I have, in talking to Dr Wolfi^, already glanced at the idea of fixed proportions, according to which the primary forms into which we actually trace nature become combined together. If all these are evolutions, as you suppose, of one indissoluble fluid, they must have been evolved out of it, on some law of combination equally implying arrange- ment. Again, it seems a favourite theory with some of us, that time is the mental order of events, and space the capacity of arranging objects. So far as I at all understand* such an imagi- nation, it seems very consistent with my argument for a creative mind, though not perhaps necessary to it. For just as time would be nothing to us if we did not notice it and devise ways of marking it, so that, in fact, we create human time by thinking * Confiteor tibi, Domine, me nescire adhuc quid ait tempus. — St Augtuiine. IDEA, MIND— MORAL FITNESS. 173 about it, and imprint it as an order upon onr lives, thus the absolute idea of time would perhaps be an impossibility if the Highest Spirit had not designed an order, and marked out a suc- cession either of causes and effects, or of days and nights and seasons in which events should happen. Similarly, I suppose the absolute idea of space implies a potential arrangement of objects by the creative spirit. What shall we say then? K time and space, and I suppose similarly many such mental clas- sifications, such as causation, and gravitation, and combinations of number, are quite necessary in order to enable us to understand the world we live in, which, without them, would be a conftised chaos — ^yet all these in their largest reality, which has certainly something external to ourselves, imply an eternal thought as the only thing which can give them substantiality — have not we already an Eternal Spirit as the Creator of all things standing out as visibly to the eye of the mind, as the world itself does to our bodily sense ? Not but that an easier answer to those who doubt of a creative Iswara may be drawn for people in general out of special instances of design, to some of which I may pre- sently refer; but to you, who err rather by boldness than timidity in your metaphysical speculations, some such argument as the above from thought shewing itself as law in the creation, may be properly addressed, and ought to be convincing. Per- haps you will permit me to remind you here of your own argu- ment for the distinct existence of soul. I did not, when you used it, see why such an argument should convince you; but was too glad of your conclusion on that point to quarrel much with your mode of arriving at it. You said, as there is a spec- tacle in nature so there must be soul as a spectator. But why must or ought one thing to be rather than another? This in- ference of yours implies moral fitness ; and it would be ridi- culous to talk of fitness as regards the very nature of mun- dane existences, without a Supreme Mind to settle, or at the very least to judge of it. For you did not mean fitness in the s^uie of a key fitting a lock, though even that would imply, as 174 MORAL GOVERNOR— CAUSES OF INCONSISTENCY. every one allows, some mental design ; but you meant fitness in a £ax more delicate and truly spiritual sense, of the correspondence between two things being such as to recommend the plan for admiration, or even its possibility for credence. Consider what far higher conditions of mental thought this latter problem in- volved; and then tell me whether your theory did not uncon- sciously assume a moral governor, even while you professed to deny one. At least there seems to have been here a practical inconsistency in your argument. It is true that others whose wisdom is based on piety often reason from the fitness of our ex- pectation as regards the moral government of the world to the probability of ftiture events on the grandest scale ; but then the instincts which lead them to do so seem to be a testimony which God has planted in their mind of his own great being, and either a kind of faith, or at least a foundation on which a more perfect faith may be built. You, however, are open to the sneer of Dr Wolfi* on this point ; since there is no reason why the drama of the world's history should be wrought out in goodness unless its Author and Exhibitor be good. " But now, if any one were to ask me why you, in spite of all your wisdom, are betrayed into inconsistencies almost as great as those of the Chdrvdcas, — for you in effect put matter before mind, and the thing made before the Maker, as they do, — ^I should answer that perhaps the reasons are chiefly these. Both you, and all other Hindti thinkers on these subjects — for I may now include the venerable Vidyltchdrya — are very desirous of carrying your inquiries about the Deity to the most subtile point of refinement. You observe with great justice that none of the phenomena of nature give an adequate representation of one whom we can suppose to be their author. He is neither Tempest, nor Fire, nor Ocean, nor Sun; and though rude nations may have fancied the thunderbolt to be brandished by his hand, or the clouds to conceal his chariot, yet these and all other things in nature prove empty, the moment we search in them for the incommunicable signs of a right to our worship. For BEFININQ SUBTLETY — YASTNESS OP SCALE. 175 they all obey something higher or deeper, and haYe nothing which answers to onr heart. Thus, although they betray an order disposed by DiYine wisdom, they shew no signs of par- taking that Yery wisdom. One by one then we mentally separate from these things that which we belie Ye to be Yery Deity. But the natural train of thought in such an iuYCStigation has been happily glanced at by the Saugata Muni. For thus at last there remains nothing in nature, that is, nothing we can touch, or hear, or see, by means of our bodily senses, which we either dare or condescend to address with prayer. To what then shall we liken our God? The mind, which by its refinements seems to be ever removing Him farther and farther backward, despairs of perceiving what He is, and because it cannot describe the fjEishion of His being, becomes in danger of disbelieving its rea- lity. Here, then, is a terrible error.