We have no disposition to charge such materialists as Professors Tyndall, Bastian, Haeckel, Virchow, and Mr. Herbert Spencer, with directing their experimental batteries against the phenomenal facts of "life" for the purpose of overthrowing the foundations of religious faith and belief in the world. They are all eminent scientists, and apparently earnest seekers after truth in the several directions in which their respective paths of investigation have been pursued. But they manifestly array their opinions against the vitalists on the assumption that there is no scientific value whatever in the many and singularly diversified statements respecting "life" in both the Old and New Testaments. And this, it may be claimed, is necessitated by the generally accepted dogma, that science and religion are more or less hostile, the former resting on the inexorable logic of facts only, and the latter entirely on preconceived and prejudicial notions respecting faith and belief. To this position of theirs we have no objection to make, so long as they subject their scientific statements to the one rigid ordeal of positively ascertained facts. But when they set themselves to spinning their theories of life on the strength of "nebular potentialities," and the possibilities of "undifferentiated sky mist," we must insist that they are infinitely wider of the mark than the theologians who claim that the great formative power of the universe is God, and that his "spirit," and not gravitation, "upholds the order of the heavens:"--certainly much wider of the mark than was Pope, when he wrote of the universe:--
"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul."
The truth is, that religion is quite as much the handmaid of science as science can be said to be the handmaid of religion. She breathes far more household laws for her devotees, if she does not veil her "sacred fires" more modestly from the sight of men. She is certainly less dogmatic, less dictatorial, less abounding in positive assertion, than what now passes for "science," in the popular estimation. Perhaps Mr. Herbert Spencer represents the scientific side of a greater number of questions agitating the public mind to-day, than any other one man, and he is still industriously engaged in solving, or endeavoring to solve, a greater number of social problems. And yet the most enthusiastic admirer of this gentleman will be forced to admit, when driven to the wall of actual controversy, that one-half, if not two-thirds, of his more formidable statements, put forth in the name of science, remain undemonstrated as scientific truths. We are thankful enough, however, for the one-third he has vouchsafed us to let the other two-thirds pass as the dogmatic achievements of his wonderfully gifted pen.
Professor Beale asks the question, whether "a man who has the gift of science must ever be wanting in the gift of faith?" It is certain that this inquiry sharply emphasizes the antagonism at present existing between materialistic science and religious faith. But there is only one reason why this antagonism should be continued, and that is, the persistent claim of science to superior recognition in all cases where there is the slightest apparent conflict between the two. Certainly no man ever did more to popularize the genuine truths of science in this country than Professor Agassiz, or worked more successfully to that end. He was willing to place the decorative wreath on the starry forehead of science, but refused to pluck from the soul "the starry eyes of faith and hope," that man might be dwarfed down to the "nearest of kin" to the anthropoid ape.
When we come to this assumed relationship in genetic types, we have not so much as laid the first abutment of the bridge by which these revivers of Lucretian materialism would span the chasm between mind and matter, between the spiritual and physical side of man, between dark brute sense and "a soul as white as heaven." For going back to undifferentiated primeval mist, and following down the whole line of vital phenomena, from whatever subtle molecular combinations their first manifestation may have arisen, until we reach the highest differentiated organism below man, we shall find the chasm between the physical and the psychical not a thousandth part spanned. And even if man, with the assistance of all the maleficent spirits that "walk the air both when we wake and sleep," could span this chasm, it would be only by another bridge of Mirza across which no daring mortal could ever pass.
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles," thinks he has mastered the necessary psychological, if not mechanical, engineering for the successful construction of this bridge. In that branch of his work entitled the "Principles of Psychology," he so far abandons the exact scientific method as to take up psychical phenomena, and deal with them genetically, as he would with the phenomenal manifestations of organic life, in the continuous chain of ideas every where presented as consecutive thoughts in the universe. He finds, or claims to find, in these psychical manifestations, a constant tendency towards differentiation--towards advanced and continuously advancing differences, varieties, and new modes of thought--the same as, or similar to, those taking place in living organisms. He accordingly assumes, for the science of mind, as complete a foundation on which to base the doctrine of "evolution," as in the case of either physical or physiological science. But he is no less troubled, in this psychological realm, with divergent varieties, and exceptional variations and changes, than when he plants himself on the more solid substratum of life in the abounding realm of nature. His psychological differentiations present too many and constantly-shifting divergencies and re-divergences--exceptional branchings in one direction, and still more exceptional in another--to admit of any sufficiently potentiated potentiality for bridge timber. The arch to such a bridge would have to abut, according to Professor Tyndall, on a vital foundation at one end, and spring from undifferentiated sky-mist at the other.
The bridge will never be built.
Chapter II.
Life--Its True Genesis.
The profound Newton did not attempt to show what the gravitative force of the universe was. He bore himself more modestly, only endeavoring to show that such a force existed, and that it accounted for all the movements of celestial bodies, even to their slightest perturbations. He frankly admitted his inability to determine what this force was, but by observations and calculations made with the greatest care, he ascertained that its action upon matter was proportional to its mass directly, and to the square of its distance inversely; and, with the requisite data and the principles of pure geometry, he demonstrated that this mysterious force--utterly inapproachable by human conception in its mystery--not only governs and controls the movements of all the mighty masses of matter rolling in space, but transmits its influence--not successively, but instantly and without diminution--to the smallest conceivable molecule on the outlying boundaries of the universe. In the same calm and comprehensive spirit, if it be possible for us to reach it, let us look upon this mysterious force called "life," not to show that it is simply a "correlate" of this or that motion (a thing utterly impossible of demonstration, if it actually exists), but to ascertain how and in what way it acts, and by what known law, if any, it is governed.