Metaphysical essays

Chapter I

I will not say that we can understand the beginning or first cause; but evidently it is easier to understand that a Law, or Force, existed by which atoms were drawn to coherence, than to believe that the atoms came together without law.

It is easier to understand, and more reasonable to believe, that there was a law, or force, by which the primordial atoms were attracted to each other, thus giving existence to forms, than that the atoms took form without law, and afterwards became the creator of law. Therefore it is easier to understand and more reasonable to suppose that the first cause of all things is law, or a force, inherent in atoms, than that "God" is a form or a person from whom all law came.

Farther back than the law, or the creating force, we cannot reach with our finite understanding; but

4 THE *TRST CAUSE.

we can understand that the law by which atoms are attracted to each other exists in the very nature of the atom, and that it is coeval with the existence of the atoms. We cannot understand that atoms existed before the law existed; neither can we understand that the law existed before the atoms. The atoms and the law are co-existant. In other words the atoms exist, and it is their nature to want to come into closer contact with each other; and thus we prove the existence of the law, and we also see that the one function of the law is to attract. This simple fact will account for all motion and all form, which is the result of motion.

What is the attracting power then ? Why it is Love and nothing else. The law of life is love. Love is the compacting, the solidifying influence whose nature it is to draw, and upon the drawing power of which every form of life or every object in life has its organization. Force or law is impersonal; it exists independently of organization, though it is the one and only agent of organization. This law which is without form or personality draws together and holds in place all forms.

Forms are the effect of the action of the law. They cannot exist without the law; it therefore follows that "God" did not exist prior to the law, and that he did not create the law. Therefore it is impossible logically to conceive that the first cause is a person, having a form and the functions of individuality; and no sillier idea ever existed than the belief in this personal God and the creative power attached to him. The idea was born of the utmost ignorance. It came from the mind of an infantile race whose brain was not sufficiently developed to project a logical conception in relation to human growth or world growth.

Totally absurd therefore is the proposition that God is a person, self existing but unchangeable, and governing the universe by edicts as unchangeable as himself.

If God is a person it is his changeableness that would declare his personality. If he is a person, he has established laws that must be for his own guidance in the government of the universe; he must think, devise, act in accordance with those laws; and it is the very nature of thought and action to produce change. To think means to change; for thought — whether we recognize the fact or not — is the force that everlastingly changes, constructs and reconstructs, tears down and builds up again, first in the invisible thought sphere and then in the visible.

You who have been in the habit of thinking of God as having a form do not conceive of him as doing nothing. To think of him in this way would be to reduce him to the level of a graven image or an Egyptian idol. You do not think of his person as one who having put the universe in harness and in motion, sits down forever and simply lets the thing run. You pray to him to both think and act; to do this and to do that; to stay the plague, and turn aside the lightning stroke; to do a thousand things, the doing of which implies action on his part.

But thought precedes action. Thought resolves and decides; to do a thing when one has not decided to do it, is to do it by accident. Does God do things by accident? If not, then if he acts at all, it must be by intention. He decides to do, and then he does.

But before decision comes indecision. If this or that was done by God, not by accident, but because God had decided to do it, then there was a time when he had not decided to do it, when he was undecided whether he would do it or not. Is the God of your conception a God of indecision?

"But," it is said, "God does not have to decide; does not have to think; he knew everything and ordered everything from the beginning, even to the prayers that would be offered to him, and the manner of their answering." But this again is reducing him to an automaton; self made it is true, but still an automaton, doing that which he himself provided at the first that he should do; this state of things makes him a selfcreated, self-regulating machine, acting without thought or responsibility or present volition of will, in obedience to a command to himself before he ceased to think.

Or if this were not true, and if having personality and form, God still thought and acted, then — I repeat — his form must change from year to year and from century to century, for thought produces action and is action in and of itself, and it changes all things all the time unceasingly.

And then again, a personal God must have limitations. Personality implies form, and form is produced by that which limits or holds it within certain boundary lines. The very moment the idea of limitlessness occurs to the mind, the idea of personality vanishes.

But what, some may ask, is the difference, or why does it matter whether God or First Cause is a person or a force? God is God in either case. In either case is the power above all other powers — the creator and fashioner of the universe — what odds, then, whether we conceive this power to be possessed of a body or not?

But it does make a difference. It makes the greatest conceivable difference. It makes the difference which exists between owning ourselves and being owned by another; the difference between master and servant between Life and Death.

If God has a form and is a person, and if he made the law by which we exist, then are we wholly in his power. Him must we obey forever, and forever must his will be our will. We are his servants and he is our master, and to him must we look for pleasure and for pain, for reward or punishment, for life or for death. If God is a person, his will is supreme; our wills are subject; his will is free; our wills cannot be free; not free to question the law; not free to question God. By his will we exist, by his will we may die. By his will the law of life came; by his will a law of death may come. In all things are our wills subject to his will, and since by his permission we exist, by his command also may we be annihilated.

Not so of a Law. The existence — the very fact of the existence of a Law by which Life first came to be, makes it forever impossible that death should ever be.

For if Law is the cause of life, then death can only be where Law is not; and if Law is the First Cause death can never be; for the First Cause must be self-existing and imperishable, and being so, and being the cause of life, life once existing must always continue to exist, and death is forever an impossibility.

This too: While to a personal God, a First Cause having personality and an individual will — a personal God who created the universe and man for his own personal glory — while to such a God man must forever bow down in worshipful obedience, towards Law as the first cause, man stands in a totally different relation, and may, by understanding it, make it his servant.

For while man is nothing, and can do nothing outside of the law, yet may he through an understanding of the law make its power his own; may compel the law — even the law of which he is the creature — to obey him.

Electricity is a law or a force in Nature. In Nature, force and law are one; the law itself being the force and the force the law.

Before men understood the law of electrical force they supposed it to be a god. Thunder, they said, was the voice of the God in anger, and the lightnings the breath of his nostrils with which he consumed his enemies; and they were the slaves and worshipers of this suppositious god. Man has always made a god of that of which he was afraid.

When man learned that thunder and lightning are caused by electricity, and that electricity is a force or law in Nature, then fear gave place to understanding, and knowing the law of electricity, or so far as he has learned it, he commands it, and is its master instead of its slave. Instead of prostrating himself in fear and trembling before it as an angry God, he now stands calmly upright in the presence of a force in Nature which he can control. Instead of humbly craving to know the wishes of another he confidently expresses his own desires. Instead of asking the will of a god, he gives commands to the law, and the law obeys him. The lightnings are chained. Through knowing the law man has made himself master even of the law itself, and bids it fetch and carry as he will.

The one is a slave, prostrate in the dust at the feet of his God; the other stands majestically forth and gives his commands to the Law, himself a god by virtue of his acquired knowledge and power.

Yet the power and glory of the lightning is not less because man has learned that it is a force and not a person. On the contrary, to the perception of every reasoning being, is its power and goodness and glory magnified a thousand times by knowledge of it — by the knowledge that though its power is sufficient to rend the earth in twain, to thrust the oceans from their beds, the stars from their orbits, yet so gentle is it that a little child with chubby hand upon its mane may guide it where he will.

Neither is man rendered less just or moral by his change in his relationship from slave to master of the lightnings, but the opposite.

Every faculty of his being, every attribute of his nature, is enlarged and elevated and refined and improved by the change. He is not only a wiser but a better man, more noble, more just, more appreciative of good in nature and in his fellow man as master of the forces of nature, than he ever was or could be of a being whose anger the lightnings represented.

And what is true of man and one law or force in nature is equally true of man and all laws, the first Great Law not excepted.

Looking upon God as a person who has created the universe including man, for his own special benefit, or glory, man sees in his creator a rightful master whose ways he may not question, whose laws he has no right to meddle with, no authority to direct, no power to control. To such a creator man's whole duty is expressed in the two words — unquestioning obedience — which mean submission without seeking to know either the law, the object of the law, or the result likely to follow either obedience or a refusal to obey.

Before the Law as first cause, before an impersonal instead of a personal Force, man feels his relations changed and himself free. Free to question, free to act, free to command, free to climb to any heights, free to prospect to any depths, free to aspire to any good, to hope for anything, for all things that are in the law, even the powers and goodness of the law itself.

Yet more. As before a personal god it is man's duty to bow in humble obedience, in the presence of an impersonal force it is his duty to command.

If God is a person then man is for his use.

If God is an impersonal force then it exists for the use of the highest personal expression of itself, which is man.

Rights attach to persons. Impersonalities have no rights.

As between man and a personal God, God has all the rights and man has no rights, but only duties, the duty of obedience.

As between an impersonal God or a force in Nature and man, man has all the rights and God has none.

Rights attach only to beings possessed of the ability to desire, to experience pleasure and pain, to like and dislike.

If God is a person then he has desires, likes and dislikes, and can know pleasure and pain, consequently has rights, and as the Creator of all things can owe no duty of obedience to any one or any thing; so man the Creature can have no rights with relation to his personal Creator but only the duty of obedience.

But if the Creative power be an impersonal force it is without the ability to feel pleasure or pain, consequently has no rights, these having passed to man when he was endowed by the law with ability to know pleasure and pain; while the duty of obedience, if the word is longer a proper one* to use in this relation, is now with the law, the relations of the two being reversed, leaving with man the right to command, and with the Law the duty of obedience.

There is no blasphemy nor irreverence for the Creative power in all this. It is but a logical deduction of the relations existing between man and the forces in nature by which all things — man included — exist. That both the premise and the reasoning are correct is proven by every advance which man has made in the understanding and control of the forces of nature since his advent upon the earth.

Whoever understands the law may command it. Whoever understands the forces of nature may control nature. Do not men by knowing the law of hybridization produce new strains of flowers ? new vegetables? new fruits? Do they not control the lightnings through a knowledge of the law of electricity, and are not the powers of steam theirs to command through a knowledge of the law which makes and controls steam? Are not the powers of the mightiest rivers man's, and do not the winds fetch and carry for him? And when man shall have grown to a full knowledge of the law which holds the planets in their orbits this law also shall obey him, and he shall command it as

THE FIKST CAUSE. 15

he compels the winds and the waves and the lightnings to do his will now.

The right to command is the prize which nature ever holds up before the eyes of her best loved children, men, tempting them constantly to higher knowledge, which means greater personal power.

It is the premium which Nature offers as a reward to the courageous, the diligent,/ the hopeful, the patient, the persevering among the sons of men. It is the reward of merit to those who dare most and climb highest, who have most faith in themselves because of so great faith in the possibilities of the Law; to those who magnify the law by proving how great men may become; who honor the law by earnestly seeking to understand it that they may command it to the upbuilding of self. These prizes are everywhere. Wherever a law in nature is hidden there also is hidden the prize for him who shall search out the law. In earth and sea and sky are the prizes concealed. The thunders tell of them; the sea raves of them; the inter-stellar spaces are full of them.

The law is no niggard in the giving of rewards. The law exists but for the service of man. The law yields its power to him who most asserts his equality with it by striving to understand it. It rewards him, and him only who seeks to know and to command it. In this faith have I sought truth, and in this knowledge have I written.

LIFE. 17

LIFE.

Chapter II

That which we understand as life in its varied forms 6i plant and animal is but different forms of expression of the one life — the Law.

There is but one life, one law. Search the universe of worlds and we find system after system each with its separate planets revolving about their central sun, and each system but one of many similar systems revolving about a common center, which center with its greater systems revolves in turn about a still greater center; until contemplating them we are lost in speculative wonderment — as they are themselves lost in infinitude.

Such is the law of the Magnitudes, and the Law of the Minutia is the same. Every atom, every molecule, even the particles of inter-stellar space are subject to the same law; each is a planet in some system of

18 LIFE.

worlds with its center of revolution about which it continually whirls.

The law which governs the universe of worlds and the universe of atoms is one and the same; it is the one Life in motion, the one love seeking expression; and all things that appear to us as wearing form are its manifold manifestations.

It appears to me that the most expressive term for use in speaking of this universal life or law is "Energy"; giving it of course the scientific meaning. This universal Life or Law, or "Energy" permeates all things, is in all things, is the life — the vital force of all things.

Since it is impossible that anything less than the whole can contain the whole, it is impossible to fully comprehend, and difficult to find terms in which to express our understanding of the universal Life or Energy; but again it appears to me that a good word to express our conception of its workings is the term "Automatic." It is of course much more than this, for it is self-existing. It is that which always was, and is indestructible.

It is that power which is, and it is all the power there is. It is nature, and it is that principle in na-

LIFE. 19

ture which causes the acorn to germinate and the tree to put forth its leaves; and it is in the dead branch equally with the springing shoot, the opening flower or the ripened fruit.

In the living tree it is working to perfect the fruit of that tree; in the dead branch it is just as certainly working to produce some other form of expression of itself; some vegetable or animal that shall be of a higher organization, and hence a fuller expression of itself — the one life, the universal Energy. Hence, I say, it works automatically. Nothing hinders, nothing delays. Nothing can interfere with its perfect working to the one end for which it exists — which is expression of itself.

The instant that the branch ceases to receive more of Life, that instant, without the slightest disturbance to any other portion of the universal energy, without jar or friction anywhere in all the universe, begins as it were, automatically, the change to a new form of life, or more correctly a reorganization of old forms. For in fact life never leaves the branch for an instant, not for any conceivable or inconceivable space of time. If it is no longer the life of the branch, the branch having recognized all of life possible to that form, the

20 LIFE.

universal Life, intent upon giving itself, upon finding further and higher expressions of itself, is compelled by the law of its existence, the law by which, and in which, it is, to change from the form of the branch which could no longer receive or express more of it, to some other form or forms which can.

If it were not to do this then Life itself would lose a part of itself; then Life itself might die, Life which is that power men call God.

This cannot be because there is no dying; that which we call death being simply a change in the form through which life obtains expression.

Thus life is constantly casting off old and taking on new forms; new in relation to the individual, or the species or both. What is true of the trees and plants in this respect is true also of animal life, including man.

When the individual man has reached the limit of his ability to give expression to the universal Energy he dies, and the same with nations and races of men.

It is the immutable law of Life that he who will not, or cannot, accept of more shall have less — for since life cannot cease, even for an instant to give itself, that form of organization which fails but for an instant to receive more, must perish in order that a new form

LIFE. 21

may take its place and by receiving life enable Life to express itself.

The reverse truth of this proposition would appear to be, that so long as man, or any other form of organization, continued to grow in ability to recognize life, life might continue to flow into and sustain that form. For since its sole purpose is to give itself, why should it refuse to give when ability to recognize exists ? Indeed it cannot; so long as any form of organization continues to increase in ability to comprehend the Law, just so long must the law sustain that organization; and in proportion as any organization continues to grow into fuller recognition of life, just that long is life compelled to flow to and sustain it; until arrived at the point of intelligent comprehension of the law which is spoken of as "being at one with God" it can command the law; and can, by the exercise of its individual will, change its form to suit its individual desires, being no longer the servant but the master of the law.

Whether the individual ego retains its separate and independent existence after the death of its visible form is a question for speculation.

Since it is a different expression of the universal energy from that of any other ego, it would appear

22 LIFE.

that it might do so, especially so in the higher order of expression as in man, when a broader consciousness of both the individual and the universal life has been reached.

A speculative thought purely, is that the ego of each individual plant or animal may unite at the death of its outward form with the ego of others of its own order of intelligence and become one and the same ego up to that period where it becomes sufficiently conscious of its abilty to command the Law, to will its continuance as an entirely separate and distinct organization — the time when it may command as well as obey the law.

We cannot of course conceive of the beginning of the universal energy, but this does not appear to me to preclude us from conceiving of the beginning of a personal ego as expressed in man, or any of ihe lower orders of animals or plants.

All the forms of life that exist are but varying expressions of the universal Life or Energy. Each has its own ego, its particle of the One Energy, yet each has a personality of its own and an organization which changes with its increasing recognition of the source of its being, until unable to recognize (hence to re-

LIFE. 23

ceive) more of life, it must be reorganized through what we call death.

The ego, however, may not perish with the outward form. There seems to be the best of reasons for believing that it does not. But what becomes of it after death? Does it return to the unseen life to become one with another ego which has also lost what we call its form, and so form a new and distinct ego possessed of the experience and intelligence of the two, and thus become a higher and better expression of the central ego than when separate? Something, for lack of a better simile, as two chemicals unite to form a new one.

If this is not supposable then what are we to think of the lower orders?

Do they cease all existence as organized entities? Can an ego be annihilated; become again an unexpressed part of the universal life? If so then what assurance have we that it may not be true of man as well as of the lower organizations?

It does not appear reasonable that it can be in either case, since it would apparently mean loss; a failure on the part of nature-life to accomplish its work of growth in the visible sphere. It would be effort lost, and in the economy of the Law there cannot be such a thing.

24 LIFE.

Is it not more reasonable and logical to suppose that those egos which express less of the universal life unite at the death of the outward form as suggested, and so continue doing until, having arrived at the point when a comprehension of the law has become possible to them, there comes also the will, accompanied by that saving faith in the perfection of the law which enables them to retain their individuality; and is not this the beginning of true selfhood and of immortality in the flesh ?

I see nothing in such a supposition antagonistic to the accepted theory of evolution, from which standpoint much of the argument upon metaphysical subjects in what is called their practical application, appears to be discussed. On the contrary it appears to me to be in perfect accord with such theories of the advancement from the lower to the higher forms of physical life, and rather to add new weight to the evolution of such theories.

As to the value of any or all such speculations as these I leave each reader to judge for himself, with the simple suggestion th^.t all truth of which we are possessed was but supposition once, and that any logical assumption that seemingly gives us a clue to the road

LIFE. 25

over which we have come in our upward climb must be of value in our farther progress.

Truth cannot but be beautiful, and if it appears not so to us, it is because of a veil over our eyes which prevents us from seeing clearly.

Let us not therefore reject without investigation, that which gives a reasonable assurance of being truth because it does not harmonize with our previous conception of the beauty of truth, but rather let us seek a closer inspection, knowing that if it be truth indeed, its beauty and goodness will speedily become apparent to our eyes.

INDIVIDUAL LIFE— UNIVERSAL ENERGY.

Chapter III

Whatever may be the conclusions to which our speculations lead us with regard to the reincarnation of either the lower or higher expressions of the universal energy, the relation of the individual to the source of all life remains the same.

An arm of the sea is not the sea, but as the smaller body connected with the larger by a channel deep as the deepest soundings of the larger can never be emptied, so the individual ego, because of its connection with the universal life, can never cease to exist.

If the connection between the sea and its arm be closed, the smaller body will in time lose its waters, but only that through the process of nature they may return to the parent body, the sea.

By the removal of a portion of its shore the arm may cease to exist as an arm and become an unindividualized portion of the sea; an indistinguishable part of it; but in no case can its waters be lost or destroyed.

May the human ego, at the death of the body, or through a refusal, at any period of its existence to put forth effort to preserve its connection with the source of all life, or when it shall have made the full round of existence necessary to complete its experience — may an ego once individualized as in man, from any cause return to the source of its begetting, lose its individuality in, and become an indistinguishable part of the universal Life ?

If, as I have ventured to assert, the sole function of the universal energy is to express itself, and if this can only be done through individualized forms, as the parent gives expression to its offspring, then the absorption or reabsorption into itself of an individualized ego, while that ego yet continued to groiv, would appear to be a mistake on the part of the universal life.