Such an argument, it is evident, merely begs the question at issue, offering as it does no explanation, or suggestion, as to how a power so marvellous was acquired. It would be equally philosophical to argue that there is nothing wonderful about the genius of a great poet because we confidently anticipate that it will be exhibited in the next piece he produces.
It is likewise clear that, here again, imagination rather than reason furnishes the argument. In the first place, were there nothing else, no explanation whatever would thus be afforded as to how the structures in question were first produced, before they could be transmitted. And, secondly, which is still more important, generation—far from furnishing an explanation of anything—introduces us to mysteries yet more inscrutable than any we have yet encountered,[{124}] and to problems which seem to admit of no possible solution apart from, not only Purpose, but transcendent Power.
Doubtless the propagation of life is ruled by natural law, but how such law effects its object we understand immeasurably less than we understand the flight of birds or butterflies. As a recent writer reminds us,[160] what is transmitted from parents to offspring "is not a new form or structure, but only the potentiality of such a new form: which, in suitable circumstances, builds itself up out of surrounding inorganic and organic material." As Lord Grimthorpe expresses the same truth:[161]
If we suppose an apple-tree to have once grown somehow, and to have somehow got power to produce seeds, that would not produce any more apple-trees, unless the seeds, and all the adjacent atoms that are wanted, had the power and the will to combine and grow into another apple-tree. The first hen that laid an egg performed a wonderful feat enough, but it would have done no good unless the atoms of the egg also knew and resolved what to do to turn themselves into a chicken. Yet spontaneous evolutionists are in the habit of slurring over generation as a thing too "natural," and therefore too easy and simple to require explanation.
The continual operation of a law such as this, certainly does not remove mysteries, nor make it more easy to understand how the order and the[{125}] marvels of the universe can rationally be attributed to Chance rather than to Design, according to "this new philosophy of effects without causes and laws without a lawgiver."[162] For "fortuitous" means, as Professor Case has well observed,[163] not the accidental, as opposed to the regular laws of nature, but the spontaneous necessity of nature, as opposed to the voluntary designs of intelligence. Nor is it only in the organic world that we find the need of such a factor to explain phenomena; for it is throughout more essential than any other force to account for Nature as we find her—in such a manner as to satisfy the logical demands of our mind. We learn as little from observation and experiment as to the fundamental laws of matter,—gravitation, for instance, which Faraday and Herschel termed "the mystery of mysteries," or chemical affinities, or the nature of Ether—as concerning anything in organic nature; though in the latter we undoubtedly mount to a higher plane of mysteriousness. And in either case we could learn nothing whatever,—that is to say, Science would be wholly impossible,—did we not find natural phenomena respond to our enquiries with what seems an intelligence akin to our own. And accordingly it appears but reasonable,—that is to say, truly scientific,—to exclaim as did even Diderot—"Quoi! le monde formé prouverait moins une intelligence que le monde expliqué!"[{126}]
XIII
MONISM
ALL systems of philosophy that reject the idea of an intelligent First Cause, which alone is self-existent, and whose being is of a higher order than that of aught else,—base their denial on the assumption that no such distinction of nature either exists or is possible,—that there is but one reality, namely the substance whereof the sensible world consists,—that this has always existed with the same forces it has now, and that it is the source of all phenomena. This assumption of the unreality of whatever is beyond the scope of sense, which has ever been at the bottom of materialistic systems, is now elaborately formulated as a creed, declared by Professor Haeckel and his following to be the only creed which science can tolerate. This is termed Monism,—from the Greek Μὁνος, "single," and is opposed to Dualism, or the doctrine that there are two orders of being, or two distinct substances, material and spiritual.[164][{127}]
According to monistic teaching, therefore, there exists but one Thing, that which we usually call Matter, but might equally well call Mind,—for all phenomena whatever, whether mental or material, are but various shapes which it assumes, exhibiting diverse aspects of itself. Thus all the objects which appear to have a being of their own,—as the globe we inhabit, the furniture of earth and heaven, we ourselves,—are but the forms momentarily assumed by this protean entity in its ceaseless transfigurations, and have no more existence of their own than the ripples on a pool of water or the faces we see in the fire. It follows that when the particular phase of this basic substance is ended which brings us into being, (or rather which we are,) we like everything else, sink into blank nothing,—so that the mighty dead whom nations honour, or the loved ones whose memory we cherish, are blotted out of existence as utterly as the days and nights which made up the span of their lives. But amongst its permutations and combinations this solitary reality can produce the phenomena which we call thought, just as much as those which we call motion, and accordingly the Aeneid or Hamlet is its work, a mechanical product of evolution, no less than a seam of coal, or an eclipse of the moon.
Such, in outline, is the philosophical system which commends itself, as Professor Haeckel assures us,[165] to all men of science, who combine[{128}] the necessary conditions, of scientific knowledge, mental acumen, moral courage, and intellectual independence. It may be rightly described as materialistic pantheism; for while, according to it, everything is equally divine, in the only sense in which anything can be so, everything is likewise equally material, as falling under the category of what we know as matter, and within the direct cognizance of physical science.