In the transcendental or ultra-mundane or supersensual region there is the further difficulty to be encountered, that we are not acquainted with anything like all the 'boundary conditions,' so to speak; we only know our little bit of the boundary, and we may err egregiously in inferring or attempting to infer the remainder. We may even make a mistake as to the form of function adapted to the case. Nevertheless there is no better clue, and the human mind is impelled to do the best it can with the confessedly imperfect data which it finds at its disposal. The result, therefore, in this region, is no system of definite and certain truth, as in Physics, but is either suspense of judgment altogether, or else a tentative scheme or working hypothesis, to be held undogmatically, in an attitude of constant receptiveness for further light, and in full readiness for modification in the direction of the truth.
So far concerning the ascertainment of truth alone, in intangible regions of inquiry. The further hypothesis that such truth when found will be most satisfactory, or in other words higher and better than any alternative plan,—the conviction that faith in the exceeding grandeur of reality shall not be confounded,—requires further justification; and its grounds are not so easy to formulate. Perhaps the feeling is merely human and instinctive; but it is existent and customary I believe among physicists, possibly among men of Science in general, though I cannot speak for all; and it must be based upon familiarity with a mass of experience in which, after long groping and guess-work, the truth has ultimately been discovered, and been recognised as 'very good.' It is illustrated, for instance, by the words in which Tyndall closes the first edition of his book on Sound, wherein, after explaining Helmholtz's brilliant theory of Corti's organ and the musical mechanism of the ear,—a theory which, amid the difficulties of actual observation, was necessarily at first saturated with hypothesis, and is not even yet fully verified,—he says:—
"Within the ears of men, and without their knowledge or contrivance, this lute of 3000 strings has existed for ages, accepting the music of the outer world, and rendering it fit for reception by the brain.... I do not ask you to consider these views as established, but only as probable. They present the phenomena in a connected and intelligible form; and should they be doomed to displacement by a more correct or comprehensive theory, it will assuredly be found that the wonder is not diminished by the substitution of the truth."
CHAPTER VI
MIND AND MATTER
What, then, is the probable essence of truth in Professor Haeckel's philosophy? for it is not to be supposed that the speculations of an eminent man are baseless, or that he has been led to his view of what he conceives to be the truth by some wholly erroneous path; his intuitive convictions are to be respected, for they are based on a far wider experience and knowledge of fact than is given to the average man; and for the average man to consider it likely that there is no foundation whatever for the life convictions of a great specialist is as foolish as to suppose it probable that they are certain and infallible, or that they are uncritically to be accepted even in regions beyond those over which his jurisdiction extends.
First as to the "law of substance," by which he sets so much store; the fact which he is really, though indistinctly, trying to emphasise, is what I have preferred to formulate as "the persistence of the really existent," see page 34; and, with that modification, we can agree with Haeckel, or with what I take to be his inner meaning, to some extent. We may all fairly agree, I think, that whatever really and fundamentally exists must, so far as bare existence is concerned, be independent of time. It may go through many changes, and thus have a history; that is to say, must have definite time relations, so far as its changes are concerned; but it can hardly be thought of as either going out of existence, or as coming into existence, at any given period, though it may completely change its form and accidents; everything basal must have a past and a future of some kind or other, though any special concatenation or arrangement may have a date of origin and of destruction.
A crowd, for instance, is of this fugitive character: it assembles and it disperses, its existence as a crowd is over, but its constituent elements persist; and the same can be said of a planet or a sun. Yet for some "soul" or underlying reality even in these temporary accretions there is permanence of a sort:—Tyndall's "streak of morning cloud," though it may have "melted into infinite azure," has not thereby become non-existent, although as a visible object it has disappeared from our ken and become a memory only. It is true that it was a mere aggregate or accidental agglomeration—it had developed no self-consciousness, nothing that could be called personality or identity characterised it,—and so no individual persistence is to be expected for it; yet even it—low down in the scale of being as it is—even it has rejoined the general body of aqueous vapour whence, through the incarnating influence of night, it arose. The thing that is, both was and shall be, and whatever does not satisfy this condition must be an accidental or fugitive or essentially temporary conglomeration or assemblage, and not one of the fundamental entities of the universe. It is interesting to remember that this was one of the opinions strongly held by the late Professor Tait, who considered that persistence or conservation was the test or criterion of real existence.
The question, How many fundamental entities in this sense there are, and what they are, is a difficult one. Many people, including such opposite thinkers as Tait and Haeckel, would say "matter" and "energy"; though Haeckel chooses, on his own account, to add that these two are one. (Perhaps Professor Ostwald would agree with him there; though to me the meaning is vague.) Physical science, pushed to the last resort, would probably reply that, within its sphere of knowledge at the present stage, the fundamental entities are ether and motion; and that of other things at present it knows next to nothing. If physical science is interrogated as to the probable persistence, i.e., the fundamental existence, of "life" or of "mind," it ought to reply that it does not know; if asked about "personality," or "souls," or "God,"—about all of which Professor Haeckel has fully-fledged opinions—it would have to ask for a definition of the terms, and would speak either not at all or with bated breath concerning them.
The possibility that "life" may be a real and basal form of existence, and therefore persistent, is a possibility to be borne in mind. It may at least serve as a clue to investigation, and some day may bear fruit; at present it is no better than a working hypothesis. It is one that on the whole commends itself to me; for I conceive that though we only know of it as a function of terrestrial matter, yet that it has another aspect too, and I say this because I see it arriving and leaving—animating matter for a time and then quitting it, just as I see dew appearing and disappearing on a plate. Apart from a solid surface, dew cannot exist as such; and to a savage it might seem to spring into and to go out of existence—to be an exudation from the solid, and dependent wholly upon it; but we happen to know more about it: we know that it has a permanent and continuous existence in an imperceptible, intangible, supersensual form, though its visible manifestation in the form of mist or dew is temporary and evanescent. Perhaps it is permissible to trace in that elementary phenomenon some superficial analogy to an incarnation.
The fact concerning life which lies at the root of Professor Haeckel's doctrine about its origin, is that living beings have undoubtedly made their appearance on this planet, where at one time they cannot be suspected of having existed. Consequently that whatever life may be, it is something which can begin to interact with the atoms of terrestrial matter, at some period, or state of aggregation, or other condition of elaboration,—a condition which may perhaps be rather definite, if only we were aware of what it was. But that undoubted fact is quite consistent with any view as to the nature of "life," and even with any view as to the mode of its terrestrial commencement; there is nothing in that to say that it is a function of matter alone, any more than the wind is a function of the leaves which dance under its influence; there is nothing even to contradict the notion that it sprang into existence suddenly at a literal word of command. The improbability or absurdity of such a conception as this last, except in the symbolism of poetry, is extreme, and it is unthinkable by any educated person; but its improbability depends upon other considerations than biologic ones, and it is as repugnant to an enlightened Theology as to any other science.