The question is, can investigation in this direction accomplish anything? If so, we must at least not entertain or present any unreasonable demands. Such an unreasonable demand would be, for instance, to expect science to explain the concrete forms which life would take in a transcendental world. No man ever has or ever will make such observations. It is even questionable whether such knowledge would be useful or beneficial to us if obtained. We have enough to occupy us in our daily cares and earthly tasks. A complete knowledge of life in a future existence would probably disturb and distract us to such a degree that we would lose interest for our present evolution in this existence. It may be sufficient for us to know whether there be another life, and if so, whether our dealings and actions in the present life are of any importance for that life. It would, no doubt, suffice if we could acquire a knowledge with regard to that life corresponding to what we know about those distant worlds in space which we discern with our bodily eyes and which we further investigate with our astronomical resources. The following conditions must be fulfilled in order to make the cases similar: First of all, such a transcendental world must exist, and emit rays of light. Further, we must be equipped with some special organ, a spiritual eye, which we could direct towards it and by which we could make our investigations here on earth. Do we possess such a spiritual eye? We answer that our conscience, our religious intuition and the eternal and invariable laws of thinking are just such organs. That an ideal world exists, radiating a light of its own, we are able to conclude from perceptions received through our conscience and our religious intuition.
Our conscience gives us rigorous directions and commandments, which sometimes seem to counteract our earthly happiness and show themselves detrimental to our present success. If our life were confined to this world, the demands of our conscience were not only useless and injurious but also in themselves inexplicable. That man, in his religious intuition, also apprehends a reality of a different kind from the material one, appears from the fact that all peoples, in all times and in all stages of evolution, have possessed a religion, as we now do, a certain conception of supernatural things. It may be granted that a great amount of delusion enters into all religions. Nevertheless, religious errors would be inconceivable if man did not apprehend something supernatural which he wrongly interpreted. Superstition would not exist at all, because, as we have already pointed out, nobody can think, speak or form any idea whatever of things that are entirely beyond all experience. To argue with a person about such never-apprehended realities, would be like discussing colors with the blind. But now it is a fact that apprehensions of immaterial substance are so common to man’s consciousness that if we could find somebody who did not understand what we said and meant in speaking about these things, we should be safe in asserting that such a man was not a normal person.
But if all men have an immaterial experience, why do ideas and opinions differ so about the same experience, and above all why do some people even deny its existence? The explanation of this surprising contradiction may be understood when we consider that man also possesses a special faculty, his reason, which he must likewise employ. With his reason, man examines and studies all his experiences and strives to bring them into agreement with the laws of thinking. In other words, he strives to systematize them into a philosophy. But this is a hard and laborious task. It is difficult as it is to arrive at right conclusions in regard to the material world to which our senses are responsive. How much more must this be the case in regard to the immaterial world. The evolution of our reason, therefore, is a slowly advancing historical process, presenting a continuous change in opinions, although, at the same time, an inner continuity may be traced, an evolution pointing towards a definite goal.
The harmony which man is striving to establish between his reason and his other faculties can obtain only during comparatively short intervals of time. Our reason grows in power and keenness; new observations and discoveries are almost constantly made; old ideas and opinions do not, upon closer investigation, satisfy the more developed demands of our thinking; doubts arise, and this is a necessary condition for all theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not of the immaterial experience which we all have, but of the way in which this experience is to be explained, has been expressed in the theory called materialism, which is a widely spread doctrine in our time. Natural science in itself is never materialistic in the sense in which this word is here used, because natural science does not concern itself with anything immaterial. But if this be the case, how is it possible that science can have anything in common with materialism which, strictly speaking, is a doctrine about spiritual things? We answer that life in this world is joined to and revealed through the material world. A more complete knowledge of the nature of matter ought, therefore, to bring about a decision by and by as to whether the soul is a bodily function or a substance differing from matter. In other words, natural science must sooner or later arrive at a stage when it either verifies materialism or gives us tangible and obvious evidence for the truth of idealism. It was to such a point that science arrived in the last century when Büchner presented his well known “Force and Matter,” in which he endeavors to prove that the soul is an attribute of the body, religion, immortality and so on being only illusions.
Had natural science then finally found materialism to be the highest expression of truth? In reality this was so far from being the case, that natural science, just at that time, had given entirely new impulses to a higher evolution of religious conceptions. How then could Büchner, with natural science as a basis, deny all religion, and how can materialism, in our days, live with undiminished force and vitality? No other explanation is possible than the one we have already proposed. When it remained unnoticed that natural science had discovered the inner, spiritual body, which is the very kernel of the belief in the body as an eternal part of man’s nature, then materialism was the only possible alternative for all those who were convinced that the body contained something imperishable. Materialism, in our days, springs from the same instinct as the death-cultus in ancient times. It has, therefore, integrally, something correct and true as a basis, which not only explains the rapid and wide expansion of this doctrine, but also the fact that the materialists are continually using data and evidence which clearly and plainly disprove their own position, although they do not perceive it themselves. As probably no one has treated this theme in a manner more characteristic of materialism than Büchner, we will, in the following study, use his work above mentioned, which may be said to be typical for the materialist’s mode of thinking and reasoning. It will here be evident, we hope, that the modern natural science does not limit but, on the contrary, widens the boundaries of existence, as we receive from precisely this science the palpable demonstration of the thesis that all life on this earth has its origin in a higher, immaterial world.
CHAPTER IV.
Importance of Spontaneous Generation.
The manner in which this problem, from a materialistic point of view, can and must be treated, is not so complicated as we might imagine. The central thought in all materialistic discussions and investigations may be briefly expressed as follows: Life is a material force and nothing else. If this be true, then of course materialism is the only true religion. Whether God or some other higher being exists, must then become a question of little or no consequence. Man knows in any case his own origin and fate. The fundamental religious doctrines will then read: In matter alone dwell all the forces of nature and spirit; in matter alone can these forces appear and reveal themselves; nature knows of no supernatural beginning or continuation; it produces everything; consumes everything; is itself beginning and end, cradle and grave; by its own power nature produces man, by its own power it receives him back again.
Against these and similar statements there would be no objection, if it could be shown that life really has its source in the material world. But if it can be demonstrated that life never does, nor ever could by any possibility, originate in lifeless matter, then it is evident that we must look for some other source.