you do in earnest—unless you quibble—to all the millions of the Greek Church, and a great many others. Enough of you and your reasoning! Go and square the circle!
The few years which end with 1867 have shown, not merely the intermediate fusion of Theology and Philosophy of which I have spoken, but much concentration of the two extremes, which looks like a gathering of forces for some very hard fought Armageddon. Extreme theology has been aiming at a high Church in England, which is to show a new front to all heresy: and extreme philosophy is contriving a physical organization which is to think, and to show that mind is a consequence of matter, or thought a recreation of brain. The physical speculators begin with a possible hypothesis, in which they aim at explanation: and so the bold aspirations of the author of the Vestiges find standing-ground in the variation of species by "natural selection." Some relics—so supposed—of extremely ancient men are brought to help the general cause. Only distant hints are given that by possibility it may end in the formation of all living organisms from a very few, if not from one. The better heads above mentioned know that their theory, if true, does not bear upon morals. The formation of solar systems from a nebular hypothesis, followed by organizations gradually emerging from some curious play of particles, nay, the very evolution of mind and thought from such an apparatus, are all as consistent with a Personal creative power to whom homage and obedience are due, and who has declared himself, as with a blind Nature of Things. A pure materialist, as to all things visible, may be even a bigotted Christian: this is not frequent, but it is possible. There is a proverb which says, A pig may fly, but it isn't a likely bird. But when the psychological speculator comes in, he often undertakes to draw inferences from the physical conclusions, by joining on his tremendous apparatus of a priori knowledge. He deduces that he can do without a God: he can deduce all things
without any such necessity. With Occam[[81]] and Newton he will have no more causes than are necessary to explain phenomena to him: and if by pure head-work combined with results of physical observation he can construct his universe, he must be a very unphilosophical man who would encumber himself with a useless Creator! There is something tangible about my method, says he; yours is vague. He requires it to be granted that his system is positive and that yours is impositive. So reasoned the stage coachman when the railroads began to depose him—"If you're upset in a stage-coach, why, there you are! but if you're upset on the railroad, where are you?" The answer lies in another question, Which is most positive knowledge, God deduced from man and his history, or the postulates of the few who think they can reason a priori on the tacit assumption of unlimited command of data?
We are not yet come to the existence of a school of philosophers who explicitly deny a Creator: but we are on the way, though common sense may interpose. There are always straws which show the direction of the wind. I have before me the printed letter of a medical man—to whose professional ability I have good testimony—who finds the vital principle in highly rarefied oxygen. With the usual logic of such thinkers, he dismisses the "eternal personal identity" because "If soul, spirit, mind, which are merely modes of sensation, be the attribute or function of nerve-tissue, it cannot possibly have any existence apart from its material organism!" How does he know this impossibility? If all the mind we know be from nerve-tissue, how does it appear that mind in other planets may not be another thing? Nay, when we come to possibilities, does not his own system give a queer one? If highly rarefied oxygen be vital power, more highly rarefied oxygen
may be more vital and more powerful. Where is this to stop? Is it impossible that a finite quantity, rarefied ad infinitum, may be an Omnipotent? Perhaps the true Genesis, when written, will open with "In the beginning was an imperial quart of oxygen at 60° of Fahrenheit, and the pressure of the atmosphere; and this oxygen was infinitely rarefied; and this oxygen became God." For myself, my aspirations as to this system are Manichæan. The quart of oxygen is the Ormuzd, or good principle: another quart, of hydrogen, is the Ahriman, or evil principle! My author says that his system explains Freewill and Immortality so obviously that it is difficult to read previous speculations with becoming gravity. My deduction explains the conflict of good and evil with such clearness that no one can henceforward read the New Testament with becoming reverence. The surgeon whom I have described is an early bud which will probably be nipped by the frost and wither on the ground: but there is a good crop coming. Material pneuma is destined to high functions; and man is to read by gas-light.
THE SUN AN ELECTRIC SPACE.
The solar system truly solved; demonstrating by the perfect harmony of the planets, founded on the four universal laws, the Sun to be an electric space; and a source of every natural production displayed throughout the solar system. By James Hopkins.[[82]] London, 1849, 8vo.
The author says:
"I am satisfied that I have given the true laws constituting the Sun to be space; and I call upon those disposed to maintain the contrary, to give true laws showing him to be a body: until such can be satisfactorily established, I have an undoubted claim to the credit of my theory,—That the Sun is an Electric Space, fed and governed by the
planets, which have the property of attracting heat from it; and the means of supplying the necessary pabulum by their degenerated air driven off towards the central space—the wonderful alembic in which it becomes transmuted to the revivifying necessities of continuous action; and the central space or Sun being perfectly electric, has the counter property of repulsing the bodies that attract it. How wonderful a conception! How beautiful, how magnificent an arrangement!