Creator and creation, or, The knowledge in the reason of God and His work

Preface

There must be some point from whence the Universe may be observed, and the self-consistent whole be fully comprehended. To a spiritual discernment from that point the Universe will be known as a Cosmos of order and beauty, and such comprehensive knowing will be true wisdom. Intelligences from lower positions may be urging their way upward towards this point of vision, and may be esteemed wise proportioned to their -elevation ; but the impulse which, from any stair, urges to a higher, is, at least, a love of wisdom; and so the spirit of true philosophy may be taking any step from the lowest to the highest. But the wisdom here loved and sought must be more than a mere apprehension of facts, even the comprehension of facts in their essential unity. To merely get facts as they appear, and carefully classify them, may be called science ; but except as it shall be sought to know the facts in their necessary connec-

4 PREFACE.

tions comprehensively, the so-called science will have in it nothing of philosophy.

It will, moreover, be a delusive assumption to hold that Nature's intrinsic connections can be gained by experience, or by any logical deductions from experience. Appearances will be found in uniform collocations and invariable successions ; but the fact of uniform appearances together in place will not warrant a logical conclusion of a substance in which they inhere, nor will the fact of appearances in an invariable order of sequence admit of the logical conclusion that they adhere together in a causal efficiency. Not less illogical must it be to rise from such assumed substances and causes to one absolute substance or cause. Philosophy and Theology must alike be impossible for any sense-attainment, or an understanding-judgment as a conclusion from sense. If we have not the faculty for an insight into experience which finds a deeper meaning than the mere appearance, then must we be incapable either to be wise or to love wisdom.

And so also with Revelation as with Nature. An assumed Revelation may be studied, and its facts arranged with much learning ; but when a profound scepticism meets us, and drives us back of the facts, and asks for the validity of prophecy, and miracles,

PREFACE. 5

and inspiration, and even for the being of a God who can foreknow, and work miracles, and inspire human messengers, we are thrown directly back upon these old assumptions of Nature's necessary connections. No sense-experience puts within the consciousness anything by which logic alone can enable us to know that which beyond Nature sur> ports and connects Nature ; and thus the logical understanding is driven helplessly to swing on the circle, of taking the Bible's God to make and hold together Nature, and then to take Nature's God to make and reveal the facts of the Bible. The student of the Bible allows himself to rest his faith, ultimately, on nothing which has not first appeared in sense-experience ; physical science is pushing eagerly and earnestly her free inquiries ; many phenomena are encountered which run back into sceptical difficulties ; and seriously or mischievously these stumblingblocks are thrown in the way of religious faith ; and then no theology, without a higher philosophy, can either pass on over them, or push them out of the path.

We must recognize a higher spiritual faculty than sense-experience, as an organ for a spiritual philosophy, which shall abundantly comprehend and confirm our theology ; and therein may all scepticism be fairly

6 PREFACE.

met and answered. The phenomena of Nature must be seen to be ordered by essential forces back of the appearances ; and also faith in Theism must rest on truth known to be beyond Nature, and determining the order of Nature, though known by the insight of reason in Nature. So, seeing in experience what is conditional for it, we attain a comprehensive knowledge of Experience itself. And here only is the opening to a spiritual philosophy which may be competent to silence all sceptical cavilling with our theology.

As far as is necessary or desirable, the metaphysic for such a philosophy has, some years since, been given in the Rational Psychology. The physical portion, necessary in the completion of such philosophy, has never yet been adequately presented even in outline. This is here attempted : and after a critical examination of the leading theories of modern philosophy, exposing the main point in which with most there is an utter, and in the best a partial, deficiency, and therein opening the sure process to the knowledge of an Absolute Creator, the Creation is itself speculatively contemplated in its essential Forces, and these determined in their necessary connections. These essential Forces have their determined connections in all the mechanism of Inorganic nature ; and then a life-power is contemplated as superinduced

PREFACE. 7

by the Creator, which uses these essential mechanical forces in spontaneously upbuilding about itself, and for its own ends, the varied organic structures of the Vegetable and Animal kingdoms ; when a contemplated endowment of animal sentient life with reason introduces man in the image of the Creator, and crowns the creative work with a Spiritual kingdom in Humanity which has dominion over all.

The validity of the speculation, and the stability of its connections, must be determined in the comprehensive unity and consistency with which it shuts phenomenal facts together in a universe, and the certainty with which it puts the origin and consummation of the universe in the Absolute Thought and Will of a Personal Creator. The importance to the present age, so unphilosophical and thus so sceptical, of a deeper interest in Speculative Philosophy can hardly be over-estimated ; and perhaps by what is here attempted, such interest may be somewhat quickened and extended.

Amherst, 1872.

Chapter I. Pass

KNOWLEDGE RESTRICTED TO THAT WHICH IS GAINED IN EXPERIENCE 18

1. Pure Empiricism in the Positive Philosophy 22

2. Empiricism as expounded by the Laws of Association. 29

3. Empiricism in the Philosophy of Common Sense. . . 39

4. Experience of Force given in Muscular Pressure. . 47

5. The Critical Philosophy 54

i. First Stage, Critic of Pure Reason 56

it. Second Stage, Science of Knowledge 59

Hi. Third Stage, Science of Logic 66

Chapter II. Reason Competent To Know An Outer Cre- Ation 81

1. The Essential Process to Thorough and Comprehen-

sive Knowledge 82

2. Speculative Absurdities in Sense and Logic become

Truth in the Reason 91

3. Distinction between knowing Thoughts and knowing

Things 102

Chapter III. Reason Knows The Creator 106

1. A Creator must be Independent of ant Imposed Con-

dition 107

2. The Finite Reason can from Itself know the Uni-

versal 110

3. The Universal Reason is a Person 113

4. The Personality of Reason is also Absolute 115

i. His Being is Absolute 116

ii. His Sovereignty is Absolute 117

Hi. His Agency is Absolute 119

iv. - His Blessedness is Absolute 119

5. The Absolute Creator is Triune 121

6. Theism distinct from all Forms of Pantheism. . . . 125

PAET II.

KNOWLEDGE OF CREATION.

Design and Method 131

Chapter I. Space And Time 133

1. There are mant different Kinds of Space 133

2. There are different Kinds of Time 135

3. The Constructions of Sense give Extension and Suc-

cession ONLY 136

4. The Logical Judgment gives Place and Period only. 137

5. The Reason only can know Space and Time 139

6. Sameness of Space and Time can be known only in the

Continuity of the Extension and Succession. . . . 141

7. This Continuity of Extension and Succession can onlt

be known through SOME Permanent in Nature. . . 142

8. This Permanent may still admit of great Modifica-

tions of the one Space and the one Time 144

9. The Extension and Succession in the Substantial

itself give, in the reason, absolutely one space and one Time 145

Chapter II. Force 147

1. Force determines Phenomena 147

2. The Elements of Force 151

FIRST DIVISION.

ANTAGONIST FORCE.

1. Creation of Force 156

2. It is competent for Force to affect any Sense-

organ 1G1

3. Force determines Motion 164

*. Motion from simple excess of energy must be incessant, uniform, and rectilineal 167

it. That motion which any superinduced force would give must be compounded with the motion which

the original force already has 168

Hi. The rate of motion must be directly as the dynamic force moving, and inversely as the static force moved 174

4. The Atom is constituted from the created Forces. . 170

5. Such constituted Atom has its own Nature 179

6. The Forces constituting the Atom determine what is

its Inertia 181

7. The Atom determines Gravity 184

8. The Atom from its Constitution is a Magnet 190

SECOND DIVISION.

DIREMPTIVE FORCE.

1. The Constitution of the Diremptive Atom 195

2. Ethereal Atoms occasion Heat and Light 198

3. Ethereal Atoms are the Media op Cohesion 202

4. Molecules, reciprocally neutralizing their Forces

in Cohesion, determine Chemical Combinations. . . 20!

5. Thermal Vibrations determine Solidity or Fluidity. 208

6. Heat and Peculiar Polarity determine Crystallogeny. 211

7. Heat-vibration determines Vaporization 216

8. Heat tibration determines Combustion 219

9. Superficial Magnetism, made free, determines Elec-

tricity 222

i. Electricity as excited by Friction 225

m. Thermal Electricity 231

Hi. Electricity chemically excited 232

THIRD DIVISION.

REVOLVING FORCE.

1. A Revolting Force determines the Universe and its

Absolute Space and Time 237

2. The Revolving Force determines the Separation and

Distribution of the Universal Matter 246

3. Single and Compound Worlds 248

4. Systems of Worlds 251

5. The Revolving Force has determined several Phe-

nomena otherwise inexplicable < . . 255

i. Gradation in planetary density 255

ii. Gradation of interplanetary spaces 256

Hi. Inclination of planetary orbits 256

iv. Periodic times and heliocentric movement 256

v. The orbits of the satellites should present greater

irregularities than those of the planets 257 vi. Planetoids and Saturnian ring 260

vii. The same matter is co-extensive with the universe. 264

6. comkts colin into the system fkom without 265

7. Geological Formations 270

8. From Facts found in the Universal Stellar Distri-

bution, we determine our Terrestrial Relative Position 274

Chapter III. Life 284

1. Life distinguished from Force, in that it deter-

mines higher Unities 284

2. The Contemplation of an Agency competent to work

Individualities 290

3. The Life-power is an Assimilative Agent 293

4. The Assimilative Agency must be elevated to an

Organizing Agency 300

5. A higher Organizing Instinct works Sex-distinctions. 304

6. Sexual Propagation carries in it the Unity of Spe-

cies 309

7. Not Sex-Instinct, but the Absolute Ideal, determines

the higher Unity of all Species 316

8. Organic Life terminates in Death 320

THE REIGN OF LIFE IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

Vegetable life purely instinctive, organizing direct from the mineral kingdom, in unconscious subserviency to the end of a superior Realm 325

THE REIGN OF SENSE IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

The life-power from already prepared cellulose products instinctively builds up a nervous organism with ganglionic centres, thus giving occasion for conscious sentiency, empirical judgment, and brute-will 331

THE REIGN OF REASON IN HUMANITY-

Reason, superinduced on sense, has dominion in its own right, secures a combined psychical and spiritual body, and in this determines Individuality, Identity, and Immortality, with prerogative of free personality in Art, Philosophy, Morality, and Theology; and thereby Humanity becomes the crown and consummation of the Creator's work 339

CREATOR AM) CREATION.

GENERAL METHOD.

The Creator determines the creation. In the order of thought and being the Creator, but in the order of our knowledge the creation, is prior. Knowledge begins in experience, but as the Creator never himself appears in human experience, if our knowledge must be restricted within experience, we of course can never know the Creator. At the outset we are thus thrown upon the necessity of finding and using an organ of knowledge which may carry us beyond all that is given in experience, or our very undertaking to recognize a Creator, and speculatively contemplate the originating of his work, must be an absurdity. But in the use of Reason as a distinct organ of transcendental knowledge, we may consistently attempt to attain a knowledge of the Creator ; following which, we may also consistently seek to know the work of creation in its incipiency, progress, and consummation.

16 GENERAL METHOD.

The following will thus be our General Method : —

It will be requisite, in a First Part, to determine the extent of Knowledge within Experience ; to recognize Reason as competent to carry our knowledge beyond experience ; and then by Reason, to attain the sure knowledge of a Being who may be an Absolute Creator.

It will then belong to a Second Part to show that no one Space and one Time can be determined in common for all, without a knowledge of fixed force in place, and passing force in period ; to contemplate how such distinguishable forces may be originated, and by their multiplication and interaction a material Universe may be consummated ; and then how the superinduction of a life-power may build up all the organisms of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and the gift of Reason may elevate the animal to the human.

The execution of the Plan must necessarily carry us up to the highest sphere of speculation ; and yet a careful insight will be found adequate to guide our way, and take us safely through all the mysteries necessary to be solved in the adventurous undertaking.

PART I.

KNOWLEDGE OF A CREATOR.

A logical proof for the Being of God is an impossibility, in the sense that the very attempt to attain such proof involves a logical absurdity. It would be seeking for a primitive syllogism that might prove its major proposition. The first syllogism must necessarily assume its major premise. The being of the Creator must precede the being of the created Universe, within which all sense-experience must be found and all logical data attained ; and hence this proof for the being of a Creator cannot come within the circum. scription of any logical syllogism. " No man hath seen God at any time," nor has any man seen that which contains God ; hence the being of God can never be distributed in the conclusion of a logical judgment.

We shall need, in this First Part, three chapters.

Chap. I. Knowledge limited within Experience. " II. Knowledge beyond Experience. " III. The carrying out of such knowledge to the Being of a Creator. 2 17

CHAPTEE I.

KNOWLEDGE RESTRICTED TO THAT WHICH IS GAINED IN EXPERIENCE.

Grecian thinking controlled the Ancient Philosophy. Other processes of thought were foreign, and continued separate, or at most were held subsidiary to this. The philosophic stem, divided into two main branches, flowering in Plato and Aristotle, and which at length exhausted themselves, the one in New Platonism, and the other in Aristotelian Scholasticism. It is not for our purpose important that we here note their peculiarities. Much of their spirit appears in Modern Philosophy, but it has been by infusion rather than genetic propagation, since no seed from either branch of the old was a germinating source for the vigorous and prolific new shoot.

Modern Philosophy started in doubting, not for the sake of doubt, but that all doubting might be excluded from it. Even if amid otherwise universal doubt, one thing was indubitable — that there was thinking. Philosophy may throw itself upon conscious thought for life and deliverance from all doubt. Conscious thinking immediately introduces self-consciousness, and thus thinking Being, and the test for the validity of the being is the clearness of the thought.

KNOWLEDGE GAINED IN EXPERIENCE. 19

But the thought of a most perfect Being is a necessity as clear as the thought of self, and thus the being of God is as indubitable as my own being. As thinking gives spiritual being, so sense gives material being, and clear sense-perception must be valid, for the most perfect being could not make senses which were helplessly deceptive without thereby impeaching his perfection. Spirit and matter, thus known, were also known as wholly disparate and utterly intercommunicable, and their concordant occurrences were referred to a " pre-established harmony ; " and all occasion for interaction was through the Deity, and known as " occasional cause." All distinct appearances were made modes and attributes of one Absolute Substance, in which all further thought was lost, since out of this abyss there can be found no emergent traces. The absolute substance stood utterly helpless ; it could not move and strike, or, if stricken, it could make no rebound.

Philosophy, then necessarily, turned all its thinking into the channel of experience. Sense opens to us all we know; and Sensationalism, i. e., Empiricism, is the source for all possible Human philosophizing. The well-known "Essay on the Human Understanding" presents the clear outline of the general system. Mind is originally destitute of ideas innate or imparted, and stands utterly void. Its experience is from two sources ; Sensation being an inlet from the outer world, and Reflection opening to what passes from the mind itself in its own exercises. We thus know material qualities and mental exercises, and can form judgments by comparing, abstracting, and combining, what is thus given. Reason is no faculty for original knowledge, but for inducing relative ideas and deducing concluded judgments. An abstraction of extended sensations gives place, and an abstraction of limits to place gives pure Space ; and so also an abstraction of successive sensations gives period, and an abstraction of all limits to period gives pure Time. The idea of substance was a riddle, for abstracting sense-qualities and exercises leaves only space and time, and yet the qualities need the substances to be in space and time. Ultimately the idea of Cause induced a similar perplexity. If denied to be attained in some supra-sensible manner, then the ideas of substance and cause were necessarily inexplicable as having any reality. Sense gives sequences, and Cause supposes a necessity of connection in the sequences, and this assumed idea of necessary connection was explained as being the factitious result of the frequent repetition of the experience. Other ideas transcending experience perplexed the empiricist from time to time, and received his solutions as plausibly as practicable, or else were left as mysteries for future elucidations, or as incapable of human cognition.

And here it may be allowed that experience does give a common highway of knowledge, in which, for a short distance, all walk together. We wake in consciousness through sensation, and continued percep-

KNOWLEDGE GAINED IN EXPERIENCE. 21

tions perpetuate consciousness. Past perceptions may be made present recollections, and these may be subjected in reflection to analysis, comparison, abstraction, and connection in judgments and general classification; and we may thus have each his sense-world ordered and arranged in his own experience, and each may say for himself what is, and what has been; but when we inquire, Why thus? and seek to know what must be, — no perception of sense, nor any logical judgment according to sense, can find an answer. All is within experience, and there is no organ to look through and beyond experience, and thus conscious experience itself can have no explanation. No sense can perceive how it perceives, and hence there can be no possible interpretation of our knowing, nor any settling of the validity of that which appears in conscious experience. Yea, the sense alone never seeks to rise above itself, and ask a reason for its own being and perceiving. That we irrepressibly have such inquiries, and can never be restrained from starting them anew after every repulse, and yearn some way to get round and over our encountered difficulties in knowing truths eternal beyond experience, is an abundant proof that man has a higher faculty than sense and logical judgment ; and that some organ of intelligence is in humanity that the brute never had; and as it rises above sense in its inquiries, so must it be competent to go beyond sense in its knowledge, or its capacity for inquiring is worse than in vain to it. A sense-philosophy cannot satisfy, though such philosophy has become nearly all-prevalent. It is interesting in itself, and for our present purpose necessary, that we note discriminatingly some of its most prominent theories in their variety.

The notice taken of these theories will best subserve its purpose, if we disregard the order of time in which they were promulgated, and arrange them as they in themselves exhibit the promptings of reason more manifestly, though their authors recognized no distinct Faculty of Reason, except in some of the last examples given.

1. Pure Empiricism in the Positive Philosophy. — In the early age, as history opens, it is quite in course to find that the observation of the changes and movements in the world around has induced the conviction that some power above nature has controlled the changes and motions, and that the gods, though keeping themselves concealed, are the great agents in working out the passing events. Their voices are heard in the thunder and the earthquake ; tempests and pestilences are the expressions of their displeasure ; and prevalent health, prosperity, and fruitfulness are the results of divine benignity.

Longer experience, and with closer observation, assigns the powers at work in the material changes to some occult efBciences within and about the objects themselves, and these secret forces and hidden entities in nature are moving the dead matter of the world about, and in the directions of their own energy. The

POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 23

Tlieologic faith fades out, and then the Metaphysic age dawns in human history. Subtle discussions, abstract reasonings, and ideal speculations, in a thousand varied and ingenious forms, occupy the attention of the strongest minds through long generations.

But anon the metaphysic age passes as necessarily as had the tlieologic ; since sharpened observation had attained to clear and positive consciousness of the phenomenal world, and the wise have learned to discriminate between immediate perceptions and fancied notions, or fictitious ideals. If these occult notions have any real entity, they are beyond human knowledge, and outside of all conscious experience, and science learns to care nothing about them. The Positive age is thus a sure occurrence in its time, in which the superstitions of the tlieologic and the dreaming fictions of the metaphysic age have become merged and lost forever, as controlling matters of interest and attention, in the age of Positivism. The sages of humanity have now the grand work, uninterruptedly, to get and spread the light of positive science ; attaining, arranging, and classifying all that comes in to conscious experience. Humanity must needs have passed all these stages to the last, and, indeed, every individual mind has its theologic, metaphysic, and positive period, while in the last only, all illusions vanish, and true science prevails.

The order of procedure in positive science is from the simple to the complex, till we reach and make clear all the complications of nature and human society. The science of Sociology, in the family, the community, and the state, organizing all relations and occupations, and overcoming the resistances of nature, and the selfish inclinations and animal passions of the uncultivated races, finally introduces order, freedom, and social contentment, and opens the way to the indefinite development and progressive maturity and perfection of the human species.

By a strange personal experience, a religious cultus was superinduced upon the positive science, which it is taught will harmonize all the family of man in universal unity, as if Humanity had become itself one great Being. The religious age, spontaneous in its devotion, was originally exercised in fetichism, worshipping any rock, tree, or animal that fancy proposed. Then polytheism abounded ; followed by monotheism as the mind rose to higher unity, till ultimately the true, living, thinking, feeling, loving, Humanity is the object and end of all worship ; and the greatest names of history, as manifestations of humanity, are worthy of a qualified homage.

Positivism is thus in theory consistent with empiricism, and a consequent of it. It attempts to carry out its own adopted dictum, that the human mind has no function that can make itself objective to itself. Any single sense may as well attempt to examine and expound itself, as the entire consciousness to attempt determining the validity of its revealings. And yet with all this consistency in claim and

POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 25

theory, its whole procedure evinces the presence and perpetual prompting of the function of Reason which it so peremptorily discards. If there were nothing but elements given in experience and their use in reflection, there could be no attempt to overlook experience, and determine how much it might know. Perception, and judgment according to perception, would go on just as occasion was given ; but from nowhere could come the impulse to examine experience, and learn how far the consciousness might spread its light. The brute perceives in sense, and judges according to sense, as truly, and often as exactly, as the man; but no animal ever manifested the capability or the curiosity to examine his experience, and determine the limits of his knowledge. That the Positivist is able to so emphatically assert his positivism, carries in it a sure evidence that there is working in him a higher intelligence than any sense-experience can reach.

And then there is, moreover, his constant assumption of Necessity and Law in nature, which can come from no element attainable in sensation. Experience may remember past observations, in the uniform combination of some qualities and invariable sequence of some events, and such order of experience may be transferred to an outer world, and called an order of nature ; but this would then be only a way that nature was seen to have, and not any necessary behest that nature is forced to obey. Law is more than the fact of order ; it is an imposition from a source that binds to order, and is a notion which only can flash in from a light that overshines experience itself.

And then Positivism has also its Religion with it& cultus of sacred ordinances and ritual ceremonies. True in form to its restriction of all knowledge to experience, its religion has no higher deity than Humanity, and its most sacred shrines are the names of the renowned men and women of the ages, to whom homages, and festivals, and votive offerings are dedicated, and the calendar months are named from the most eminent, and the days of the week from other illustrious benefactors ; yet even such a service could never be assumed as binding itself upon human observance, were there not in man a deeper claim than any sense can awaken. But because social life is itself of the reason, and has its rights and duties, it reaches beyond the wants which make the cattle herd together, and thus the religion Positivism inculcates, born of social ties and sympathetic claims, would never have been even speculatively instituted, were it not that already in the priest and the worshipper there is a spirit seeking supernatural communion, and binding bach from all finite good to an exhaustless source of eternal goodness. While Positivism knows not its use of the reason, it still evinces the working of the reason, and that it has been deeply quickened and prompted by reason.

With the observed uniformities in experience, and

POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY. 27

these in their connections taken as laws in nature, as if they were more than facts found, even as necessities imposed, it is true the human mind may accumulate its observed facts, and physical science may sort and classify them endlessly as experience attains them, while all philosophic inquiry is held in abeyance. Yet will not the enterprise of reason be ever so satisfied or repressed. The faculty is there, though unrecognized, and its living energies will prompt speculative inquiries into these uniformities and invariable sequences of nature. Science itself soon learns that it can make its way with far greater facility, when it is helped to a ready anticipation of its probable hypotheses by a given direction to the course of its inductions. Thus both the spontaneous impulses of the faculty, and the wants of science, will combine to urge on philosophical investigations ; and humanity can never rest in barely perceiving and classifying the facts of experience, but must go beyond the positive in seuse, and attempt, at least, to know experience as universally and necessarily determined. The ages will be seeking for the reasons why its passing experiences are ever thus, and this is nothing other than finding the ultimate truths in the insight of reason itself. Reason's insight is the last reason for anything, and man is never at rest till his clear insight and comprehending oversight sees beyond the facts, and finds the facts themselves to be reasonable. No matter how positive the man may be in the observed order of his facts, and that he has it as the long experience of ages has given it ; he wants to know the long order, not merely as positive fact, but as imposed law ; and even the positivist himself talks freely of the laws of nature, and the obligations of society ; for no man's speech can satisfy his inward conviction, which does not carry in it the meaning, that there are a priori bonds on all the facts of nature and communings of society.

It might thus have been anticipated, just as it occurs, that the reason should thrust up its irrepressible inquiries, and in ignorance of the source from whence the asking comes, the mind should set some lower faculty to the task of finding an answer. The sense and logical understanding are set to solve the problems the reason propounds, and which will really amount to nothing else than asking reasons for a fact, and then giving another fact in answer. Experience cannot ask for itself, why itself is so : the reason makes the demand, and experience can as little answer as inquire to any purpose. When it has given one fact to explain others, which must be its only way, there is still the same thing to be gone over. The reason can never stand on any last fact, and cease her inquiries. She must get above the fact, and see through the fact a transcendental principle, and no empirical answer can be other than illusory. And yet, notwithstanding the manifest absurdity of attaining any end in such a process, we shall constantly find modern philosophy very largely at work in the interpretation of experience by experi-