Direction is not a function of energy. The energy of sound from an organ is supplied by the blower of the bellows, which may be worked by a mechanical engine; but the melody and harmony, the sequence and co-existence of notes, are determined by the dominating mind of the musician: not necessarily of the executant alone, for the composer's mind may be evoked to some extent even by a pianola. The music may be said to be incarnate in the roll of paper which is ready to be passed through the instrument. So also can the conception of any artist receive material embodiment in his work, and if a picture or a beautiful building is destroyed it can be made to rise again from its ashes provided the painter or the architect still lives: in other words, his thought can receive a fresh incarnation; and a perception of the beautiful form shall hereafter, in a kindred spirit, arouse similar ideas.
There is thus a truth in materialism, but it is not a truth readily to be apprehended and formulated. Matter may become imbued with life, and full of vital association; something of the personality of a departed owner seems to cling sometimes about an old garment, its curves and folds can suggest him vividly to our recollection. I would not too blatantly assert that even a doll on which much affection had been lavished was wholly inert and material in the inorganic sense. The tattered colours of a regiment are sometimes thought worthy to be hung in a church. They are a symbol truly, but they may be something more. I have reason to believe that a trace of individuality can cling about terrestrial objects in a vague and almost imperceptible fashion, but to a degree sufficient to enable those traces to be detected by persons with suitable faculties.
There is a deep truth in materialism; and it is the foundation of the material parts of worship—sacraments and the like. It is possible to exaggerate their efficacy, but it is also possible to ignore it too completely. The whole universe is metrical, everything is a question of degree. A property like radio-activity or magnetism, discovered conspicuously in one form of matter, turns out to be possessed by matter of every kind, though to very varying extent.
So it would appear to be with the power possessed by matter to incarnate and display mind.
There are grades of incarnation: the most thorough kind is that illustrated by our bodies; in them we are incarnate, but probably not even in that case is the incarnation complete. It is quite credible that our whole and entire personality is never terrestrially manifest.
There are grades of incarnation. Some of the personality of an Old Master is locked up in a painting: and whoever wilfully destroys a great picture is guilty of something akin to murder, namely, the premature and violent separation of soul and body. Some of the soul of a musician can be occluded in a piece of manuscript, to be deciphered thereafter by a perceptive mind.
Matter is the vehicle of mind, but it is dominated and transcended by it. A painting is held together by cohesive forces among the atoms of its pigments, and if those forces rebelled or turned repulsive the picture would be disintegrated and destroyed; yet those forces did not make the picture. A cathedral is held together by inorganic forces, and it was built in obedience to them, but they do not explain it. It may owe its existence and design to the thought of someone who never touched a stone, or even of someone who was dead before it was begun. In its symbolism it represents One who was executed many centuries ago. Death and Time are far from dominant.
Are we so sure that when we truly attribute a sunset, or the moonlight rippling on a lake, to the chemical and physical action of material forces—to the vibrations of matter and ether as we know them, that we have exhausted the whole truth of things? Many a thinker, brooding over the phenomena of Nature, has felt that they represent the thoughts of a dominating unknown Mind partially incarnate in it all.
CHAPTER VII
PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S CONJECTURAL PHILOSOPHY
A reply to Mr M'Cabe.