The problem of life and immortality : an inquiry into the origin, composition, and destiny of man, a lecture delivered before the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, Jan. 3, 1861, with recent additions

Introduction

Although the part of this book relating to the origin and composition of man has been under consideration during more than twenty years, it was not until after the publication of Mr. Darwin's speculations on the " Origin of Species," and the " Descent of Man," that the ideas herein contained were reduced to writing.

The part containing the proofs and illustrations of immortality was written as a lecture more than twelve years ago. And although no subject of such deep and abiding interest has reached, or even approximated, the stage of final settlement, and though none has been more ably and earnestly discussed during these years than this, I have as yet seen no reason to change my views on any of the points here presented.

It was my original purpose to leave the problem of God, or " First Cause," as already settled affirmatively. Then I remembered that the sacred books of Jews, Brahmins, Christians, Mohammedans, are no longer of binding authority with the deepest thinkers. And it is bandied about among half-thinking materialists, that "ihe argument from design is exploded," merely because Paley overdrew a little in some of his illustrations from natural history.

As a caterpillar gnaws away upon coarse leaves, and

4 Introduction.

a butterfly comes fluttering over, and fans him with liis wings, and the poor larva knows him not, and does not distinguish him from the leaves upon which he is feeding ; so in man's crude, immature, bodily, or larva state of being, the highest spiritual truths meet him under in • numerable forms, at every step and turn in life ; and he does not distinguish them from the gross materials by which he is surrounded. Hence he needs to have these truths pressed upon him, through every possible illustration.

So I have attempted further proofs of God, in an argument from facts. And, if I have added no new reasons, I have at least varied the forms of statement, and strengthened the old ones.

The argument from design is good, and always will be good, until it shall be proved that outward forms of art precede the ideas which they represent, and that all of man's plans and designs are not continued and extended forms of the plans and designs of that same wisdom and power which first planned and designed him.

The work has been prepared under great difficulties, which none but the writer can possibly understand. While, therefore, I admit that both the style and arrangement may be open to objections, I believe its positions and arguments will stand the " heaviest artillery " of criticism. If, however, they can be overthrown, because false and untenable, I shall gladly see them converted into a muck-heap, as nutriment for a fresher, stronger, and higher outcrop of truth.

L. M.

Boston, April, 1872.

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE.

"So has it been from the beginning : so will it be to the end. Generation after generation takes to itself the form of a body, and, forth issuing from Cimmerian night, on Heaven's mission appears. What force and fire is in each, he expends. One grinding in the mill of industry ; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy Alpine heights of science ; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of strife, in war with his fellows : and then the heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly vesture falls away, and soon, even to sense, becomes a vanished shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild- thundering train of heaven's artillery, does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown deep.

" Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing spirithost, we emerge from the inane, haste stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunge again into the inane. Earth's mountains are levelled,

and her seas filled up in our passage. Can the

earth, which is dead and a vision, resist spirits,

which have reality and are alive ? On the hardest

adamant some footprint of us is stamped in. The

last rear of the host shall read traces of the

earliest van. But whence ? O Heaven ! whither ?

Sense knows not : faith knows not ; only that it

is through mystery to mystery, from God and to

God.

* We are such stuff

As dreams are made of; and our little life -*•-

Is rounded with a sleep.' '*

Sartor Resartus.

The ahove^ remarkahle passages are from one of the deepest and most brilliant thinkers of this or any age. Grand, triumphant, hopeful, despairing, yet giving no clew by which to unravel the strange marvel of our own being ; but seem more like the blind struggles of a strong soul with some vast problem, or the efforts of a mighty giant to turn over bodily some great mountain, and thus reveal its secrets, than the patient, mining philosopher, who searches for results through long-continued and toilsome investigations.

And yet these wild and almost bewildering sentences relate wholly to the questions of man's origin, relations, and destiny. Whence are we ? what are we ? and whither do we go ? Qucs-

A7td Immortality. 7

tions which have brought out for their solution the mightiest efforts of the wisest and mightiest thinkers of all ages. And while various conflicting theories have been proposed, and defended, with all the skill and ingenuity which the great masters of reason and rhetoric could summon to their aid, in one long-continued warfare, axe and stake, rack and dungeon, have added the weight of their terrible logic to different sides of the contest in turn.

Yet amid the onset and encounter of the fierce debate, beneath the swiftly-descending edge of the flashing steel upon the quivering neck, in the fiery baptism of the crackling flames, while under the crudest tortures of rack or wheel, or wasting away in the death-damps of slimy and pestilent dungeons, Faith alone, which links the soul to the Infinite, has given the only answer yet accorded to our hungry and insatiable longings, " Through mystery to mystery, from God, and to God."

But Eeason, to whose tribunals the inspirations of Faith are summoned, and at whose bar her testimonies and pleadings are heard, has never yet found that evidence of man's inherent immortality, growing out of his relations to the infinite life, which, based on science, and the philosophy and fitness of things, shall compose it to that perfect rest which springs alone from the full agreement of an enlightened understanding with the inspiratipns of simple faith. And now Faith itself must yield to demonstrative knowledge. Por the researches of scientists and philosophers are fast undermining the foundations of the religious and theological structures of the past, and leaving nothing hut vacancy and waste hehind them ; while the Spiritualists are huilding up a system of enduring, 'natural religious truth, because founded on reason, philosophy, and the fitness of things.

The problem of human life — of man's origin, relations to the universe, the uses of the. trials and conflicts of this life, and his future destiny — has hitherto received no solution which has proved satisfactory, and so tranquillizing to the reason and understanding. And yet the human soul has forever longed, and still longs, for some clear and simple explanation of the mysteries of its own being, so freed from the high-sounding phrases and obscure methods of the metaphysicians as to be easily understood by the commonest minds. And so I shall present the subject through simple, direct, and plain forms of speech, and by the most common and easily-understood illustrations. And we shall not have to seek far for the means of. doing this. For, although the commonest things about us are full of mystery, they may help us to explain the grand mystery. All around is one vast sea of life, revealing itself through numberless forms.

The humblest grass-blade under our feet, the sweetscented flower at our side, each shrub and tree, the mighty elephant which shakes the earth with his tread, the earth itself, with man the lord of all, — are but revelations of unseen forces, visions of unknown power.

These bodies of ours are but dust and shadows, gathered round our conscious selves, wherein we live, and whereby, as with implements and tools, through some moments or years, we work, eat, and sleep, to keep these same bodies in repair, that they may work and eat more ; and so the living, thinking me within may learn and know more.

How wonderful, that the life and mind, which alone make up the proper selfhood of every one of us, and which no outward sense can cognize, should be wrought into such complete working relations with outward, or the grosser fornis of matter, as to be regarded by many as only the result and product of matter ! So let us, with the eye of reason, look the mystery in the face, and see if, with the help of common sense and common philosophj^, it be in any way, or to any extent, solvable.

Outward sense cannot cognize mind, except througli signs ; and these signs have naturally led to the mistakes above stated. We see the plant unfold from the seed, and grow up to maturity ; the chick burst the shell, and come forth, a living, sensational being; and the life which animates

10 The Problem of Life ^m

these forms is supposed by many to be tbe result of their organizing processes : but I shall try to demonstrate, that the organisms are only the product of vital force, which, from the midst of this vast ocean of life, and under the guidance of an infinite wisdom, is forever clothing definite ideas in outward forms; these forms being only the symbols, or visible manifestations, of spiritual force, which is the only real power and substance in the case ; as the forms disintegrate and fade away whenever the animating force is withdrawn, while the living ideas which they clothed remain, and are imperishable.

So, when. the materialist asks if I ever saw mind separate from organized matter, I can truly say, I never did. But when he further asks, if I do not know that when the body is destroyed the mind is destroyed with it, I can as truly say, I do not. But I do know, and shall attempt to prove further on, just the ^ififttrary. But I may say, here and now, that I never saw mind separate from organized matter ; and, what is more, I never saw mind at all. On all sides, and everywhere, I see the signs of mind, but can see, feel, or hear nothing more.

Let us use for an illustration some building or hall. We all know that this hall, with all its finishing and fixtures, is only the outward shape of the architect's ideas. He thought it all out

And Immortality. II

first, — so long, so wide, so high, such a finish, — and then fashioned his thought into wood and stone and brick and mortar, as the case may he, following out its minutest details. And there are the people inside of it, — the thought and the outward shape of it: which is the thought embodied, or clothed in a material form.

Now, the mind or thought of the architect is not the product of the hall, as everybody knows. Nor is the life of the chicken the product of its body. As the mind of the chicken produced its body ; so the mind of the architect produced the hall, and hence is first and greatest. And yet who ever saw the architect's thought ? heard or handled it ? And yet who will say, after due reflection, that the invisible thought w^hich creates is not more substantive, real, and enduring than the thing created by it? This building shall crumble into ruins, and its materials exhale in gases; yet not one particle of its components shall be lost, or their essential properties destroyed. Every one of them shall exist to eternity, as they have existed from eternity. Is the living, creative thought more destructible than this dead, inert matter ?

This hall is only the garment of the builder's thought, as our bodies are but the clothing of ourselves ; and both the hall and body are composed essentially of the same materials. Now, as the builder's thought is clothed and manifested in this hall, and as the ruin of this hall will not destroy or even mar one form or detail of the builder's thought, so we are clothed, live, and are manifested, in our bodies ; and the decay of our bodies will not injure one attribute of ourselves.

We must give more attention and greater though tfulness to the e very-day phenomena of life, in order to gain more knowledge upon this deeplyinteresting subject.

I once asked a professedly scientific lecturer, who was attempting to disprove the affirmations of Spiritualism, if he believed in the immortality of the soul. " Science knows nothing of the immortality of the soul," was his quick and flippant answer. Now, it is not science, but her pretending "professors," who are ignorant on this subject ; for science is as boundless as infinity itself. But puffed pretenders, having set foot upon the steps leading to some of her innumerable portals, begin to strut and swagger, and to tell what she knows and what she does not. Let us all cease our boasting, and reverently learn that more of her wonders and mysteries may be revealed and explained to us, as we know but little, comparatively, of what surrounds us ; for the atmosphere contains, and transmits through it, essences too subtle for our analysis. We cannot take them up with forceps, dissolve them in cruci-

Ajtd Immortality. 13

We, or discover them with microscope. They are altogether too fine for our clumsy handling.

In dealing with material substances, we employ microscopes, telescopes, spectrums, retorts, crucibles, lamps, — such means and appliances as shall subject them to the tests of one or more of our outward senses. But, in dealing with spiritual substances, we must liberate ourselves from all bondage " to mere mechanical appliances : as we can subject them only to the tests of our spiritual senses. So when we enter the field of scientific spiritual inquiry, crucibles, retorts — the paraphernalia of material science, — are of but little service, as we must adapt our methods to our subject, always ; and these instruments cannot handle and analyze mind, for mind is not subjected to chemistry, but chemistry is a subject of mind, which is the power that puts material things, and even its own processes, under its own analyses.

Hence, the great difficulty with our wisest philosophers and scientists in dealing with spiritual problems lies in this, that they have not pushed their researches beyond the regions of external sense. Nor have they more than very partial!}'' explored these regions. Confining their investigations wholly to the material, they have come to the conclusion that the spiritual and unseen are not only unknown, but unknowable. And yet outward sense instructs us largely in those things which lie beyond its own limits. And a little examination will show us, that all art, science, law, are invisible and insensible ; and are known to us chiefly, if not wholly, through their relations to the visible and sensible : that in all things, the unseen and spiritual governs and controls the seen and material.

With the outward eye we see the signs of numbers, 1, 2, 3, &c. Now, these signs represent ideas which stand in fixed and exact relations to each other, and which, like all ideas, are wholly invisible ; and yet they are imperishable, and so eternal. The " science of numbers," as a science, is altogether unseen ; and we make visible signs of its relations to outward things, to aid us in the affairs of outward life.

So of measurement. A carpenter's rule is only an outward sign of an idea, of so much length in space. Our minds are full of limitations and definitions. We think, Plow long shall it be ? how high ? how wide ? and make a material fixed scale of measurement to represent these ideas of length, breadth, &c. And so of the whole circle of sciences ; including the whole body of Ip-ws and statutes, both of nature and man.

The statute-books only contain in their letters, sections, and chapters, signs of the ideas which legislators have established for the government of

States and nations. And yet tliese ideas are wholly spiritual, and are never, of themselves, present to any outward sense. As these ideas are indestruc- ^ble and eternal, is the living mind from which they emanate, which studies, analyzes, and comprehends them, any less so ?

OF GOD, OR FIRST CAUSE.

Before proceeding farther in our inquiry, it may be well, perhaps almost essential, to look a little into the operations of Nature, and see if we can find some broad, comprehensive principle of Infinite intelligence operating through fixed and determinate laws, upon which we may base our arguments and conclusions ; rather than drift about in the broad sea of mere opinion, uncertain of our bearings and relations. For, in tliis inquiry, we wish to find out whether the orderly and methodical processes of Nature are carried on under the guidance of a superintending intelligence, with at least one clear and well-defined purpose, — the formation of man, — or are only the results of blind force.

If we shall find such intelligence, with the evidences of purpose, in its various manifestations, this intelligence may stand as God, or First Cause, to our finite minds. I know there arc some who say there is no '' first cause." Then there is no cause, and all the phenomena of the universe are without cause ; which is absurd.

In seeking for a first cause, the atheist rejects the idea of God ; and so denies, as I understand him, an overruling intelligence, working in and through the operations of the universe. The idea of God is associated with supreme wisdom and power; which involve supreme life and mind. And it is incomprehensible to the materialist, or atheist, that the universe should be animated and governed by an intelligent soul. So, to avoid a difference about words, let us substitute Nature for God in our inquiry, and see if we do not come at last to the same thing.

Does Nature reveal God to the human understanding? In other words, does she furnish proofs of an overruling intelligence working through, and presiding over, the infinitely varied phenomena of the universe ?

All thoughtful atheists, as well as others, agree that from nothing, nothing can come. So far as we understand the operations of Nature, in all the forms of her creative manifestations, like is forever producing and can only produce its like ; such being the law of generation, that the principles of any product must first be contained in the producing cause. A soil destitute of the elements of vegetable life cannot produce vegetation. Nor, if only destitute of the elements of a particular vegetable, as turnip, can turnip grow there.

All the innumerable forms of life, sensation, and mind, which people earth, air, and sea, are the products of Nature. And Nature as a whole, like the soil, or any other of her parts, can only give or furnish what she has : and so must contain in herself the entire mental as well as physical qualities of all her products. This is admitted by all in regard to body. Is iron in our blood, lime in our bones, proteine compounds in our tissues, Nature provides them all. And this law applies alike to mind and body.

As Nature contains in her storehouses all the elements of our physical, so she holds in her vast reservoirs all the elements of our spiritual structures. For our material organisms, Nature provides what she has ; and only that. So in regard to our spiritual, including the sensual. Sight comes only from that which sees ; feeling from that which feels ; hearing from that which hears. Can thought come from that which cannot think ? reasoning from that which cannot reason? judgment from that which cannot judge? To believe it is to believe that something can come from nothing; which materialist and spiritualist alike hold impossible.

All the thoughts, imaginations, passions, of the human soul, and of all souls ; and all art, beauty, deformity, crudity, perfection, — are in, and derived from. Nature. She reveals to us some of her moods, passions, and humors, in the varying play of the elements. And, moreover, does the sculptor give us a fine statue, the painter a beautiful picture. Nature had done infinitely better before them, inasmuch as hers are wonderfully organic, and instinct with life throughout ; while theirs are only dead and senseless imitations.

We are apt to deny spiritual attributes to Nature, as a vast whole, because, in the infinite grandeur of her being, she does not give us those little signs of speech and motion which we are accustomed among ourselves to regard as the only proofs of intelligence. And yet she is forever giving signs, more truthful and impressive than speech to those who are -wise enough to translatQ their meaning ; " For Nature, which reveals God to the wise, hides him from the foolish."

The materialist refers all the phenomena of life — joy, sorrow, love, hatred, hope, aspiration, and the rest — to organization. Organization is merely arrangement, or combination; and the bare fact of combination creates no new principle, but only a new structure, or compound of what existed before. Hence life, mind, and consciousness cannot be created by, or be the product of, organizations. If they are, then the union of parts forms something greater than the whole ; which is absurd. These principles existed before, as parts of the universal life and consciousness ; and the organization only serves the purpose of giving them individual life and consciousness. As the matter of the organism always did exist as matter, so the life and mind which animate and govern it always did exist as life and mind ; and they have only been separated from the Infinite, and clothed in finite organic forms, to give them, as before stated, individualized life, experience, and consciousness.

Matter cannot exist without force, or life and mind, which are its soul. And force is but the expression of this soul of matter ; which shapes, fashions, governs, and reveals it to our finite consciousness, so that the finite may know there is an Infinite.

Nature is an organic structure of infinite extent and duration. Even what we call " inorganic matter," as the rude, heterogeneous masses .of rock piled into mountain ranges, or pulverized into desert sands, are parts of the structure of the earth, and are essential to its wholeness. And this earth is but an infinitesimal part of the grand structure of the uni^'^grse ; which is animated by a life and guided by a mind which act with such unerring precision, that we base our sciences upon the absolute certainty of her methods and processes. And these methods and processes of the Infinite Mind are to us law ; and matter does not govern law, but law governs " matter. You take a lump of clay, and fashion it into an image. Does the clay direct the movements of your liands, and give shape to the ideal in your mind which you desire to work out? That is the end at which materialism begins. Spiritualism begins at the other, the scientific end. It looks through organization to what governs and directs the process.

We may not yet comprehend that Infinite and eternal Nature should work with a knowledge and understanding which not only include the knowledge and understanding of man, but of all other beings of the universe. Nor can the being which Huxley speaks of as " a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless millions in a body of a living fly," comprehend man.

It is incomprehensible to us that Nature should think, feel, and know all, and more than all, that we do. That she should plan, devise, and execute in any way as we do. And yet we are only her imitators. When we wish to accompUsh any given work, we begin with a mental conception of it. The work really begins in the mind ; then we prepare our material, and with it give our conception an outward form. And herein we are only doing what Nature has taught us by inward instinct and outward example. She prepares her plastic material, or " protoplasm,'^ as. a " physical basis," in which she clothes and gives outward form to her innumerable living ideas, from the molecule up to man.

And when we make machines involving the nicest mathematical principles and equivalents, and the highest laws of mechanics, these principles, equivalents, and laws, together with all the knowledge, art, or science ever yet attained, or to he attained hy man, exist as primary elements of Nature, and we learn them from her. For as we derive our life from that which lives, so we derive our knowledge from that which knows. And, furthermore, as the life of Nature is infinitely greater, so is her knowledge infinitely greater than ours. Indeed, as man himself is hut an expression or manifestation of Nature, all his inventions and devices are but continued and extended forms of her expressions or manifestations through him.

So when I refer to our contrivances or inventions to illustrate the operations of Nature, I merely take her secondary processes through man's intervention, to illustrate her primary ones without his intervention.

Nature has her destructive, as well as her constructive processes ; and the first are as orderly and methodical, or as much under the control of law, as the last. For the first are only preparatory steps to the last; and the convulsions of earthquakes, tempests, tornadoes, the slow disintegration of rocks, the silent withering and decay of grass-blades, the rotting of logs, the death and decomposition of our own bodies, are only tlie operations of some pulp-mills in which she grinds and jDrepares materials for her wonderful formations. Now, the ■ material does not prepare and fashion itself, any more than man conceived and fashioned himself, or the clay fashions itself in his hands.

Man, with all his thoughts, passions, and imaginations, with all the other creatures below him, are, as before stated, the products of Nature. From the boundless storehouse of her life and mind, she endows them all with their varied passions, instincts, and powers. To deny this, — to deny that these powers, instincts, passions, pre-exist in and are derived from Nature, is to affirm that they are derived from nothing, are self-created, or are supernatural. The theory here proposed is based on the ground of the universality and oneness of Nature, — that her life includes all lives, and her mind includes all minds, and her body includes all bodies, whether organic or inorganic.

Now, all the organic forms of Nature which come within the reach of our analysis are governed and controlled, in all their processes and operations, by life and mind, or animating and guiding souls. And herein Nature but repeats or re-creates herself. She endows her own offspring with her own essences. " Like parent, like child." For the universe, as its name implies, is one vast whole, — one boundless organism animated, and governed by one

A?id ImvLortality. 23

Soul. And this soul of Nature is something as unlike its organic structure, in essence, as the essences of our minds are unlike the materials of our bodies. And yet this infinite Soul operates in and through the body of Nature, as our souls operate in and through our bodies. Hence we reach the conclusion, that all the phenomena of the universe are caused by an overruling Intelligence, working in and through its numberless transformations, processes, «&c. And this intelligence is something as different from the body and operations of Nature, as the intelligence of a man is from the machine he constructs, or the house which he builds. Nor is this Infinite Intelligence any more unseen or unknown to our outward senses than the intelligence of man is.

So, with what light reason affords me, and also in the light of science, I am forced to the conclusion that Nature, so far from being soulless, is soulful. And this Soul of Nature is to me God, and supplies all I wish to feel or know of a Divine Spirit. For he is the Father of my spirit, as of all spirits ; and Nature is the mother by and through which we are formed. And so we are akin, by Divine conception and birth, with all living things ; and as man is the highest of all created intelligences, I need no higher tokens of the Divine life and presence than what I may find in truly cultured and loving human souls.

If, then, we accept the Soul of Nature as the real being of God, we have something upon which we may rest unfettered and unswayed by the narrow and conflicting systems of faith which human ignorance has set up ; for here is indeed the " Eock of ages." And yet here, also, we shall discover the reason of all these crude, conflicting, and barbarous creeds. For all these faiths, and even the doubts and denials of atheism and materialism, are based on phases, or are themselves phases, of the Divine manifestations of Nature. For God, working through Nature, in his innumerable processes, reveals all conditions, from the rudest to the most refined and celestial.