From matter to man; a new theory of the universe

Chapter I. 'n Page

The Origin of Existence, ..... i

CHAPTER n.

Seel. 1. First Causes generally, — 2. The Unknowable. — J 3. The Infinite and Supernatural. — 4. Deity, — 5,Ortho-

-< dox and Ileterodo.x First Causes identical.

CHAPTER HI.

The Constitution of the Universe ; or Space, Eternity, Matter, Energy, and Cause, . . . .32

CHAPTER IV.

The Constitution of Matter, . . . .43

Sect. I. The Elements.— 2. Atoms. — 3. The Classification of the Elements. — 4, The Combining Weights of the Elements.

206561 vi Contents.

CHAPTER V.

PAGE

The Constitution ov Energy, . . . .62

Sect. I. Fundamental Energies. — 2. Secondary Energies. — 3. The Conservation of Energy. — 4. The Correlation of Physical Forces. — 5. Energy as Automatic. — 6. The Duality of Energy. — 7. Magnetism,

CHAPTER VI.

The Primary Laws of Energy, . . . .74

Sect. I. Like-Material- Attraction. — 2. Sexual- Material- Selection. — 3. Polarity. — 4. Like-Central-Repulsion. — 5. Magnetic Induction.

CHAPTER VIL

The Secondary Laws of Energy, . . . . . 89

Sect. I. Gravitation. — 2. Cohesion. — 3. Chemical Attraction.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Evolution of Gases and Liquids, . . . 103

CHAPTER IX.

The Evolution of Minerals, .... 106

Sect. I. Geometrical Minerals. — 2. Snow Flakes. — 3. Arborescent Minerals.

CHAPTER X.

The Causes of Mineral Evolution, . . .114

Sect. I, Substance. — 2. Structure. — 3. Energy. — 4. Form. — S. Design. — 6. Life. — 7. Intelligence,

Contents.

CHAPTER XI.

PAGE

The Evolution of Vegetals, . . . .131

Fungi, Alga;, Cryptogams. Mechanism. Nervous Systems. Parasitical Plants, Insectivorous Plants, Protophyta, Functions of Plants.

CHAPTER XII.

The Causes of Vegetal Evolution, . . .156

Sect. I. Vegetal Substance. — 2. Cells. — 3. Structure. — 4. Energy.— 5. Form.— 6. Sex. — 7. Species. — 8. Life. — 9. Intelligence. — 10. The Aim and Purpose of Vegetal

Evolution.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Evolution of Animals, . . . . i8r

Protozoa, Molluscs, Corals, Plant-like Animals, Electric Animals, Animals as Machines.

CHAPTER XIV.

Causes of Animal Evolution, .... 207

I. Animal Substance. — 2. Cells and Unicellular Animals. — 3. Structure.— 4. Mechanism. — 5. Reproduction. — 6. Form. — 7. Energy and Life.— 8. Inter-relation of Life and Death. — 9. Intelligence.

CHAPTER XV.

The Evolution of Man, ..... 236

I. Man's Substance. — 2. Origin. — 3. The Human Ovule. — 4. Subjection of Organisms to their Environments. — 5. Metamorphosis. — 6. Genital Centres and Causes of Variation. — 7. Man's Embryological Development. — 8. Summary of Man's Materialistic Evolution.

viii Contents.

CHAPTER XVI.

I'AGR

The Evolution- of Mixn, . . . . .250

Sect. I. The Human Mind.— 2. The Evolution of Human Consciousness. — 3. The Will or Reflex Action. — 4. The Mind as a Five-Sense Organ. — 5. Mind and Mechanism. — 6. Electric Action in Mental Phenomena. — 7. Man's Automatic Mental Apparatus. — 8. Summary.

CHAPTER XVH.

The Evolution of Worlds, ..... 274

CHAPTER XVHI.

Man's Place in Nature, ..... 280

CHAPTER XIX.

The Purpose of the Universe, .... 2S7

FROM MATTER TO MAN.

CHAPTER I.

The Origin of Existence.

The preliminary problem in all human speculation has ever been, the origin of existence, and it still frets the natural philosopher; but the solution is partly determined by the definition of the problem, and its accuracy for to-day depends almost wholly upon the meaning which present intelligence attaches to the term origin.

Every origin in the universe necessarily includes both the thing made and that out of which it is made. For as nothing begets nothing, so something must be begotten of something. As no definition of origin, therefore, however orthodox, can be accurate which assumes a creation of something from nothing, origin in so far as it refers to the universe is meaningless. Hence, origin is only a term which describes a particular transition stage of existence between present states of being and preceding states of being, no matter how far our steps may be retraced. Tliis, however, is not the common belief.

A well-known scientist, more noted for his orthodoxy than his accuracy, recently said, " Creation, strictly speaking, is inconceivable to us, yet it is a fact. The system of visible things in which we live was certainly not the author of itself."*

Now, " creation " was a word invented by the most learned men of a byegone age, to express the notion that something may be created out of nothing. This was a simple matter to them, for the ignorant man's imagination is illimitable, and vacuities naturally beget vacuities. As this miracle however is, from the indestructibility of matter, impossible, creation is a fallacious and ignorant hypothesis, yet we are assured it is a "fact." A "fact" again is a word denoting something demonstrable ; but as creation is not demonstrable, our mentor's vocabulary again requires revision.

Further, although it may be quite true that the system of visible things in which we live is no more the author of itself than any man is the author of himself, yet it is equally certain that as day but succeeds day, and peer succeeds peer, so existence is but an endless succession of " living pictures," a panorama having no author, because requiring none, other than that each picture had a picture preceding

* The Duke of Argyle on "Prof. Huxley on the War-path," Nineteenth Centu)-y, January i8gi.

First Origins. 3

it. The system of visible things to-day thus virtually has its authorship in the system of visible things yesterday, and to-morrow that again of to-day, and so on interminably, either backwards or forwards. For the present is always both the end of, and the beginning to, existence : an eternal hub of being, whether earth or men existed or not.

Again, the application of the restricted term author — a term derived from the puny operations of men on this planet — to universal operations, is another instance of erroneous teaching, for we are comparing what cannot be compared. Tracing the origin of things to their furthest ken on orthodox lines, we arrive, it is alleged, at an author who did the impossible and inconceivable thing of creating the present system of visible things from nothing. But, unfortunately for this deduction, it also warrants us, who see further than our fathers, to ask the equally legitimate and more pertinent question, " Who amid the eternal sequences was the author of this author ? " and the mere fact that we can ask such a startling genealogical question and get no intelligible answer, disposes of the supposition in its entirety. Problems of this nature are not quite so easy, nor are they in quite the same category as tracing the pedigree of a peer.

A common question is : Was the beginning a chaos ? — a time when there were no planets, stars or solar systems, when all was a crude, unformed, inert mass of matter waiting a Creator? But the answer again would be, "If so, from whence came the _Creator ? "

Kant's nebular theory of creation, clever though it be, does not solve the ultimate origin of the universe, for the origin of his basis "nebulous matter" would itself require to be explained, as well as the cause of " the centre of attraction " set up, which started the universe in motion.

From an abstract point of view, the universe is a

virtual chaos just now. The orthodox, indeed, style

the earth the perfection of creation, an exemplary

model of order, method and peace, fit work of an

omniscient, methodical and all-wise Creator. ^But

this conception was cradled in ignorance, was nursed

by credulity and sustained by fearA It was the

necessary consequence of believing the earth to be

not only the centre but the sum of the universe. As

a matter of fact, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,

globe unceasingly. It revolves on its axis every

twenty-four hours ; it whirls round the sun at sixty

times the velocity of a cannon ball ; it doubles that

tremendous pace in its circumnutation, along with the

rest of the solar system, towards Hercules; it is

subject to endless perturbations by Jupiter, Venus,

and other planetary bodies ; hence, disorder and

hurly-burly are more the rule than the exception.

Similarly with all the heavenly bodies, " general incoherence is the rule of the universe. The stars are

First Origins. 5

as specks of dust dancing in a sunbeam. The centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere."*

If then our investigations involve the principle of universal disorderliness now, no necessity calls for our postulating the universe either more or less disorderly at any antecedent time; consequently, there is only one intelligible escape from the dilemma (if dilemma there be, seeing it is of man's own making), and that is to predicate, on the orthodox and only possible mode of reasoning at the present time — an uncmiscd basis of tilings. We differ, however, from the orthodox as to the basis. Thus, we enunciate as indisputable that the universe as a zv/iole, and not as an incomplete or incomprehensible part, is uncaused ; that it never had or could have had a Creator, that it never had a beginning, even as it never can have an end ; hence, that it never was and never can be more chaotic, disorganised, and unformed than it is now. True it is that progress and improvement may occasionally be registered on one or other of the myriads of worlds, but this is counterbalanced by equal rack and ruin in others; hence, from the very conditions of eternal existence by which opposites are irrevocably locked together — as growth and decay, aggregation and disintegration, cause and effect, life and death — the universe as a whole, ever has been, now is, and ever shall be, as it is.

This assumption of a perpetual universe in perpetual motion, and that motion a perpetual

* "Philosophy" {Trans.), p. 460. Andre Lefevre.

average uniformity, may be simply illustrated. When water is boiling and bubbling in a pot its action seems chaotic : order is apparently absent and disorder rampant. Yet closer scrutiny reveals more or less rhythm in the seething froth, a sequence even in the blowing and bursting of the water bells, as well as a cycle in the rotation of the chemical chansres. Hence, if even we can see an order reigning in this chaos, what would there not be to a " conscious atom " — dancing through a life-time in the hundredth part of a second — in this terrible topsyturvy?

Similarly, are we not such conscious atoms at home in our planetary hurly-burly? May not all this seeming astral and mundane order be but the illusions of ignorance, the mirage of nonentity, the kaleidoscopings of insignificance ; even as our sensations of sabbath quiet and midnight stillness are utterly irreconcileable with the earth's frantic "corkscrew" through space. May not the order of the stars be but the halo of distance and our dreams of perfection the perspective of prejudice ? We mundane midgets impose our time, our sequence, our orderliness, our interpretations, and our Deities on the universe, as inalienable privileges and divinely begotten rights, as if we were ourselves lords of space, the acme of creation ; instead of being mere accretions of atomic dust, accidents of a moment, and parasites of a planet which is itself but a mote in the sunbeam of eternity.

First Origins. 7

Moreover, the universe cannot be measured by planetary rules or weighed by planetary scales, for Eternity has no stages to limit its duration, Existence no clock to regulate its epochs, and the Everlasting no map to define its areas. To a Sphinx, calm, impassive, colossal, sitting upright in space, with head in the stars and feet in the deeps — a being to whom time was unknown, days and nights incomprehensible, age a mystery, and planets as pearls — all the order we prate about would be inappreciable to him. The flight of even suns and stars in their courses would seem but as a mesh of fire-flies on a summer's night, and as devoid of order and sequence as the bubbling of boiling water-bclls to us.

A water-bubble blows on the kettle's surface for a second and disappears, falling but to reform the domes of others incessantly. Similarly, by universal reckoning, what are planets in their cyclic revolution, the things they produce, and the time they last before dispersing again into their constituent nebulous elements, but similar ephemera. We, true enough, parcel out time into past, present, and future; but this feat is the measure of our own littleness; for what are ten thousand mundane years to an universal day ? Lastly, the earth has endured and apparently improved and progressed for thousands of years ; hence, it may last, improve, and progress for thousands of years more ; but this apparent permanency cannot save it from the dissolution inseparable of necessity from the haphazard conditions of its ephemeral constitution, or accord even probability to man's peevish whine for immortahty. What then, by universal time-dials, shall the duration of our earth's life history be, in its transition from chaos to chaos, but as the blowing and bursting of a planetary bubble in the cauldron of eternity ?

As non-existence, non-manifested existence, motion without matter and matter without motion, are all contrary to reality, as well as impossible in fact and inconceivable in imagination, as beginnings to existence, no absolute origin of, or beginning to, existence is or was possible. All is a vast, impersonal, yet pregnant noiu, beginning and ending momently. The eternal is begotten matutinally in every sunrise, and buried nightly in every sunset : its midwife and undertaker itself

Section i . First Causes generally

Twin problem to the Origin of Existence is that of the First Cause of the universe. Our duty is again definitive, viz., to determine the meaning of the terms cause and first cause.

A cause, pure and simple, is either the agent of or the antecedent to, any effect.

A Jirst cause, on the other hand, is a cause which preceded the first condition of things ; a something which existed in nothing ; which evolved itself out of nothing ; and which created the present existence out of nothing.

Although the problem of a first cause is thus an obviously absurd one, we may, owing to the widespread belief in it, profitably discuss it at greater length. Investigators generally confound the creation of the earth with the creation of the universe. Philosophical confusion not infrequently begins with a similar lack of discrimination ; for there is no great gulf fixed between fools and philosophers. The creation of the earth compared to the creation of the universe is as a child's problem to a paradox. For the present constituents of the earth existed before the earth's actual creation, in other forms as nebulae, cosmic dust, meteors, or other planetary and astral material. The earth, in fact, in creation, or more correctly in evolution, could only be a re-formation of other earths, or a re-arrangement of the constituents of other astral bodies which had already existed. The creation of the universe, on the other hand, is assuming an impossibility. For, as the sum of all those things which exist, the universe neither has nor could have a beginning ; antecedents to it are impossible. Blot out existence and non-existence is assumed, the absence of causes as well as of causal material ; consequently, the assumed creation of the universe could not be a re-formation of other universes, but would be a distinct creation of something from nothing, by a something, say a Deity, who was Himself nothing, which is a rediictio ad absiirdnm.

To render the argument clearer, let us take a simple illustration. When a cart wheel revolves we do not seek a cause for the revolution of each spoke in the wheel, but a cause for the revolution of the wheel as a whole. Yet the one involves the other, for the motor power for both is the same. Nature, similarly, resembles a vast revolving wheel, whose motions include an infinite number of sub-motions, each again sub-divided, classified, and apportioned

First Causes. ii

under different heads as natural forces. These sub-motions, consequently, if accurately read, should solve also the rotation or motion of the universe as a whole; but confusion instead of comprehension here supervenes. Something anterior to and transcending everj'thing known or concei\"able is sought for, even by physicists, as a cosmical first cause ; hence the great ultimate question is still fretfully said to be, What is the first cause of nature's rotation ? As if a beginning could be attached to the motion of indestructible matter in motion. In other words a beginning is sought to the beginningless.

This demand for a First Cause doubtless dazed ignorant dunces in the past, and still puzzles immature logicians in the present, because the aforementioned cart-wheel has been seen both at rest and in motion. But they overlook the fact of the wheel's externals. That the wheel-wright, for instance, who turns the wheel, is external to it ; while nature through the indestructibility of its constituents (matter in motion) has neither externals nor antecedents ; everything is internal. Consequently, when such a supererogatory power as a First Cause to nature's rotation is invented, an external to nature itself is not only implied, but, as with man and the wheel, a Something in that external, more omnipotent, intelligent, and eternal than anything internal ; transcending even nature itself The squirrel is not only inside the cage but outside of it as well. The universe is postulated to have an outside. It is curious how man cannot rid himself of Jiiniself in his philosophy. If he disclaims making the universe, he at least foists it upon his deities. But if men fashion their own deities — their invariable practice to-day as hitherto — it follows that they also construct their own universes. For, translating their philosophy into intelligible language, the universe is to them exactly what they understand and state it to be, and it cannot to man at any time ever be anything else.

The myth of a First Cause obviously originated in that confusion of ideas, common to past ignorance and perpetuated by present pedantry, which confounds the philosophical first cause with the scientific or cosmical first causes ; the linear hypotheses of beginnings and ends with the true cyclic facts of unending evolution and devolution. (What man is really anxious to ascertain is, not who the Causer of tRe laws of the universe is, for the Causer ivoidd have to explain his oivn origin and existence, but what the laws themselves arfe.

Finally, as a check to much scientific, theologic, and metaphysical nonsense, it should be distinctly understood in both science and philosophy that to seek for the origin of ultimates.is as unscientific and unphilosophical as in religion it is blasphemous.

k

Section 2. TJie Unknowable as a First Canse : — rrhe doctrine of the Unknowable is of modern origin, the product ot agnosticism, its inventor Mr Herbert Spencer. Vlt comprises three phases: — (i)

The Unknown Unknowable. (2) The Cosmic Unknowable or " the force under phenomena." (3) The Unknowable as an Infinite Energy.

I. TJie Unknown Unknowable. — In Mr Spencer's formula of an Unknowable, a First Cause, or an Energy, is foisted upon the universe in such a way that its very existence, as well as its nature, eludes our comprehension. It is absolutely unintelligible, and interminably unknowable. By this positive assertion of the existence of an Unknowable, along with ordinary human unknowability of it, the doctrine virtually involves the hypothesis of an Unknowable, unknown to the ignorant mass of mankind generally, but familiar in some incomprehensible fashion to the superior intellectual perceptions of its inventor.

The elements of this supercilious doctrine have obviously been borrowed from Kant. That great but misguided thinker declared that a Supreme Creator was not an object to be known or proved, in the strict sense of the term. He would "even fear to know anything of his duties, his God and his soul, convinced that if they were objects of his knowledge, they must be in themselves illusions, phenomena purely human" (how could they be anything else?) "of his mode of seeing and conceiving."

The chief stumblingblock to intelligent men with these paradoxes is, How are we to know if we don't know ? Is it because we don't know that we know ? Or, How are we as men to know, not as men, but as phantoms? It really does not seem possible to handle such hypotheses seriously. They rather provoke, and should obtain, as Dr Thomas Brown said, "ridicule," for ridicule is always the strongest argument against nonsense.

By the standards of to-day intelligence, moreover, if an assertion is nonsensical to us, governed as we of course must be by the highest to-day knowledge (which decides what is sense and what is nonsense), it should be treated as nonsensical by us, in order to protect our own sanity. If we are not to stop at the doorway of the comprehensible and draw our own distinctions between sense and nonsense on the very threshold of knowledge, there is an end to all comprehension, sense, and intelligence. Permit the unintelligible in one form, it is permissible in all. Far better were it to revert to our nursery rhymes, and at least not pretend to an intelligence which we cannot sustain. Nothing in philosophy is truly more pitiable than to witness how great intellects, after breaking loose from their moorings of scientific reason and practical demonstration, plunge under the wing of some unintelligible hypothesis into a tempest of their own verbosity, where, borne aloft on an inflation solely of words, and floundering hopelessly in the bathos of a " peradventure," they fondly imagine themselves cleaving the empyrean of " pure intelligence."

Words undoubtedly are words, but they are meaningless save when expressing intelligible ideas, or symbolising objects. An agnostic or a metaphysician is quite at liberty to style his uncouth terms, pedantic phrases, and interminable sentences, his thoughts or his reason ; but, fundamentally, they are only words, undemonstrable to intelligent men as aught save conjoined letters of a humanly concocted alphabet.

Fortunately for humanity in the mass, its sanity is protected from and convoyed safely through all epidemics of philosophical incoherences by that ne plus ultra of existence — man must be sensible in order to live. Even a Pyrrho had sometimes to punish his cook for spoiling his dinner.

In this connection an American writer tersely says, " A reason which will not accept its own paper is hopelessly bankrupt." On the same lines, it may further be added that a humanity which will not accept its own science, uphold its own knowledge, trust to its own inferences, believe in its own creeds, and abide by the consequences of its own observations, experiences and experiments, in preference to the science, knowledge, logic, beliefs, observations, experiences and experiments of any past age whatsoever, is hopelessly imbecile.

As all agnostic and metaphysical speculations must, equally with present intelligible knowledge, be tried by the present standard of intelligence (scientific logic and verified fact), we see no evidence either of a known or of an unknown Unknowable. Indeed, this image which Mr Spencer, like a modern Nebuchadnezzar, has enthroned, but typifies in a more civilised fashion that unreasoning fear and consequent abject devotion ever shown by ignorant humanity towards all strange, startling and inexplicable natural phenomena. The legitimate successors of the vulgar superstitions of the past are thus the intellectual intuitions of the present. After the medicine-man the priest, after the priest the metaphysician, after the metaphysician the agnostic, after the agnostic the theosophist, after the theosophist the pantaloon.

11. TJie Cosmic Unknown^ or the Force imdcr Phenomena : — The assumption by Mr Spencer of the Unknowable as a First Cause has undoubtedly arisen from a confusion of ideas. A first cause in non-existence has been confounded with ordinary every-day causes in existence, through logical inability to comprehend the full meaning of that great natural fact, the indestructibility of the constituents of existence.

By describing the Unknowable as a "force under phenomena causing phenomena," Mr Spencer has .laid a mine to his own foundations, for the cause of a phenomenon, according to all evidence, must necessarily be the phenomenon's own antecedents in other phenomenal forms. The fallacy of the hypothesis, as well as the unwisdom of Mr Spencer's mode of philosophising, may be illustrated in several ways : —

I. Mr Spencer or any thinker may, if he choose, descant upon what he thinks unknowable, but he has no right to assume equal obtuseness in other people.

2. Mr Spencer should be loyal to his Unknowable, and not falsify his argument by endeavouring to describe either what it is or is not ; for by so doing he obviously renders the conception not only knowable, but partially at least, known. Thus when he even finds in this Unknowable something to fear or reverence he commits himself He lacks both policy and loyalty to his own conception.

3. If a force under, or a first cause to phenomena exists, exerts influence over us, and, as the Creator to the created, the producer to the product, holds some affinity to us as a universal phenomenon, we cannot logically or intelligibly concede that because this " force" is unknowable to Mr Spencer, it shall be so eternally to humanity. We would require some other authority than Mr Spencer as an ultimate and infallible philosophical oracle. Besides, a time must in the inevitable evolution of things — if they have unfolded themselves aright in the past — arise in the future, when men shall enjoy a closer communion with, and a clearer conception and, knowledge of, any alleged but as yet unknowable or unknown natural power or law.

4. Mr Spencer, through a similar obliquity of intellect to metaphysicians, confounds the perceived force iinder phenomena (motion as manifested in phenomena, or the phenomenal antecedents as causes, to phenomenal consequents) with som.e fancied force preceding phenomena, a force preceding even the force or energy in noumena ; in other words, a force preceding existence. Consequently, while he bases his criticism on, acquires his notion of, and deduces his principle or hypothesis of an " Unknowable " from the energy resident in the knowable, he applies his theory to both non-existence and existence indiscriminately, as if both were alike. In other words, he confounds nothing with something, the impossible with the possible, the inconceivable with the conceivable, and does not know it.

5. No particular exigency demands the translation of a mere law, or force, or energy, or phenomenal cause, or any mere man-made natural mystery, into a deity; yet, as a consequence of his confusion, and to the confusion of his whole philosophy, Mr Spencer confesses to the existence of a something corresponding to a God. Even an agnostic cannot thus exist without his fetich.

III. The Unkjiowji as an Infinite Energy. — Mr Spencer's latest definition of the Unknowable is to the effect that " at the bottom of all argument we at last come to the one absolute certainty, the presence of an infinite and eternal Energy from which all things proceed." * But, as definition implies knowledge, this categorical enumeration virtually states what is alleged to be unstateable. For what is defined cannot be unknown, far less unknowable ; hence much has been conveyed as actually known

* Nineteenth Century, January 1SS5.

in these few lines of Mr Spencer's. For instance : — { (r) A knowledge of ii to the extent given is absolutely certain.

(2) It Is present.

(3) It is an. infinite Energy.

(4) It is infinite and eternal, not finite and ephemeral.

(5) It is energy, not matter.

(6) All things proceed from it, including, we suppose, even indestructible matter.

The most striking objections to this agnostic paradox are as follows : —

(i) Is the knowledge absolutely certain only to Mr Spencer, or is it so absolutely certain to everybody that all eternity shall think as Mr Spencer in his wisdom or ignorance now does ?

(2) If it hz present, why cannot we test the Energy through the things in which it is present or which it influences?

(3) If the Energy has personality, it has constituents : what are they ?

(4) By what evidence does Mr Spencer determine the Unknowable to be solely an infinite Energy and not a finite material property as well, when any conceivable infinite involves only an extension of the known finite ?

(5) If all things proceed from Energy, how does Mr Spencer account for its twin-eternal and twinindestructible potency, matter? How is it possible to prove the generation of matter from energy, when all evidence demonstrates energy to be only a property or condition of matter? Moreover, energy absolutely requires matter for its manifestation, hence without matter could practically never exist, and certainly without it could not possibly be known to or seen by men. All evidence confirms the supposition that existence is a duality, not a unity; wedlock, not celibacy. It takes two potencies, matter and energy, to produce visible phenomena, and no natural product, mineral, vegetable, or animal, is exempt from this dual law.

In an incisive exposure of Mr Spencer's formula, a caustic critic advised the author to " stick to his evidence and nothing more ; " but the censor, in a weak moment, ventured the following rash improvement : — " All observation and meditation, science and philosophy, bring us to the practical belief that man is ever in the presence of some energy or energies of which he knows nothing, and to which, therefore, he would be wise to assign no limits, conditions, or functions." *