Matter is the formal expression of thought, or the necessary condition of such expression, and in this condition is found the link that connects the subjective and objective manifestations of being. Subjectivity is ideality, as objectivity is materiality. The consciousness can take cognizance only of what is within itself, and therefore without every other. Consciousness is therefore wholly personal. To communicate an idea it must be placed within the consciousness of another. To reach this result it must cease to be personal, must pass out of the subjective consciousness into objective form, so as to be placed in the same relation to the speaker and the hearer. Thought, out of the consciousness of the thinker, is objective to him, and to render thought objective is to give it material form. Thought to be communicated, must pass out of the consciousness of the thinker into a material representation. The assumption of material form individualizes the idea. The artist's mind may be filled with splendid conceptions, but no one but he can look within his consciousness and see them. Before others can have any knowledge of his thoughts, he must give them form, or embody them in statues or paintings. The soul of the musician may be thrilled by the harmonies that his imagination creates, but no other soul can join him in this ecstasy until he has given form to his conceptions. So the thinker must embody his thoughts in language before he can communicate them to another. Matter, then, is the vehicle by which thought is communicated, and, so far as we are concerned, the necessary condition of such communication, so that the conception of thought apart from the thinker involves the intervention of material forms, and it is by the interpretation of these symbolical forms that we discover the idea.
Now, let us suppose a Supreme Intelligence. The intellectual processes of such a Being, to be conceived as rational by us, must be identical with ours, or at least analogous to ours. The possession of infinite attributes may in fact free him from the control of any law, but it is impossible for us to conceive an intelligence acting otherwise than in accordance with law. So that if the Supreme Intelligence is to communicate with man, it must be in obedience to the laws which control our mental activities. The Divine thought must, then, like human conceptions, be communicated by means of physical symbols.
The Supreme Intelligence, being the final generalization, must possess all knowledge, and the only intelligent action possible to him from our point of view, is from this absolute generalization towards the concrete and individual. The absolute general is purely subjective, which, to become cognizable, must be rendered objective. This can be secured to us only through the intervention of material forms. From this point of view, matter is only the symbol of thought—thought apart from the thinker. The first result of the divine activity in self-manifestation would be the analysis of being into subjective and objective—that is the discrimination of mind and matter, which terms are severally the final generalizations of the two fundamental divisions of science. Matter, then, mere formless, chaotic matter, would be the first result of creative activity. Following the development of this idea in its continually increasing individuality, as new attributes are severally added, matter assumes determinate form and becomes related in systems, as the various so-called elementary substances are discriminated, until finally all truth, capable of being revealed by inorganic matter, is presented to us.
Add the idea of organism and we have the two great divisions of phenomena—material and vital. The higher the generalization, the fewer will be the attributes composing the concept, and thus the simpler will be the form symbolizing its expression. As in the case of matter, the first result of the divine activity was more matter, undiscriminated by any further attribute; so here, we have, as the first organic creation, a concrete expression of the highest possible generalization comprising the fewest possible attributes—that is, forms of life involving the fewest individual characteristics. To matter add the simplest organic attribute—that is, the one lying nearest the genus—and we have mere organized matter, the simple cell, the foundation of all life, no matter how great its future complexity, equally the origin of animal and vegetable growth, which are as yet entirely undiscriminated. This would be the first appearance of life.[1] Differentiating again by the addition of a new attribute, and organic being is subdivided into the two species, vegetable and animal. Beginning with these typical forms, adding single attributes in a continuous series, we at last reach the highest types of animals and plants. Finally, add rationality to the animal, and we reach man, the highest and therefore the most complex type of life, and who, so far as we are concerned, must be the end of creation. We cannot conceive of any higher creation, because we cannot add an attribute to those we already possess, any more than we can conceive of an additional sense by which to cognize such new attribute.
This process has been determined from the very outset by those intellectual laws which we cannot disobey, and which we cannot conceive disobeyed by an intelligent creator. If the law of intellectual action require this process from the simple to the complex, the concrete representation of the steps of this process must indicate the operation of this law, and must also proceed from the simple and rudimentary to the complex and highly developed. An intelligent Creator in revealing his thought must follow the method which our minds must follow in interpreting this revelation. When we know and seek to communicate our knowledge, we proceed from the general to the specific.[2] The Creator assumed to be infinite in knowledge would therefore follow this process instead of the method peculiar to investigation. The law of intellectual action determines this method, and the conditions of intellectual communication determine the representation of this method in the material expression of the ideas communicated. Considering the operation of this law under these conditions, we find that the thought communicating only, as nearly as may be, the generic idea, will be distinguished from it by the addition of but a single attribute as the generic by itself is incapable of being represented in concrete form, the expression of this thought in form will present us matter distinguished from matter in general by but a single attribute. The least possible individualizing attribute added to the highest possible generalization gives us the simplest expression of an idea, and the form or the organism symbolizing this thought will be the simplest form and the simplest organism possible. For instance: in organic life the highest generalization barely individualized will give us the simple cell; and no matter what degree of complexity we subsequently reach by the addition of an almost infinite number of attributes, we nevertheless begin in every case with the same starting point.
Each higher type is reached by adding to a lower. The higher thus embraces all that can be found in the lower, and something besides. This method is invariable, and can never be departed from. The genus must always be predicable of every individual component of every species contained under it. Translating this law into the forms of material expression, and it requires each higher species to physically include all lower species, and to differ from them only by addition. Man, the highest type, must thus include all the attributes of the cell as physically expressed, and without them he would not be man. The differences between no two terms in a series can be total. If the successive steps in a train of thought must be related, so that no two notions will be wholly distinct from each other, these notions will constitute a series, each term of which will, in a measure, determine the next, so soon as the law of the series is discovered; and if this train of thought be objectively presented, it will afford a corresponding series of physical terms, each one of which will in like manner determine the next. But thought is impossible unless by a train of ideas so related. Its physical expression will therefore be equally impossible except by a series of physical terms similarly related, each one of which in some manner determines the next. There must then be a perfect continuity in the line that reaches from the simplest form of matter through all grades of organic life up to man, the highest expression of the divine idea. There can be no break in the chain of thought, because the law of the logical process forbids it: there can be no break in the series of material symbols for the conditions of concrete expression equally forbid it. A symbol is nothing except as it represents that which is to be symbolized. So the symbols form a physical series, because the thoughts symbolized form a logical series.
If the creator has fully revealed his thought, it must be by a series of physical terms arranged in such a manner as to indicate the logical series of ideas symbolized. Every form of matter is a symbol of thought, and challenges interpretation. Every change in form corresponds to an antecedent change in idea, and must be intended to reveal it. As thought, then, begins its evolution with the general and proceeds to the individual by a series of terms each of which is similarly related to both extremes, we must find the material enunciation of this process assuming the form of a series of terms, beginning with mere nebulous matter, grading into organic life, and organic life presenting us with a similar series beginning with the mere cell and ending with man. So rigid and invariable must this serial arrangement be that if a term in either series be wanting, we are authorized to hypothetically interpolate it.
"Nature never makes a leap," says the scientific investigator, as he studies the material symbols of thought. "Thought never makes a leap," says the metaphysician, as he studies the necessary laws of rational action: and both have uttered the same truth. We prove a proposition by determining the steps by which it was educed from a more generic statement. Science must proceed in the same manner, for science only discovers the track of mind—it does not make the track, it only follows it. If then we find the chain of evolution broken at any point, science must either stop there, or assume the wanting term in the series. We have the right to interpolate these missing terms, for we must assume that the thoughts of God communicated to us in material forms constitute a continuous revelation, beginning with Himself, the final generalization, and ending with man the highest individualization. These limits are fixed—the one by the nature of God, and the other by the nature of man. Between these two extremes we must find a series of intermediate terms. Any other conception of their relation than that of a determinate series is impossible and irrational; and a series, so far as it means anything, means evolution of some sort. Finding the relation between these terms—distinguishing the same which reproduces itself, and the different which introduces a new term—that is, determining the law of apparent evolution—is the problem presented to science.
The astronomer found Bode's law to all appearance violated by the omission of a planet between Mars and Jupiter. He could see no reason for the law, but if the planets had been placed by an intelligent Creator, some order of arrangement must be discoverable according to which their position was determined. The Creator being intelligent, it is impossible to conceive them placed fortuitously. There must then be a link between Mars and Jupiter, because the law once established cannot be broken. The same law may be observed in the arrangement of leaves around the axis of a plant. If intelligence arranged them they must be arranged in some order, for intelligence never performs the least act without a purpose. Each leaf or pair of leaves is not a mere duplication of the previous leaf or pair of leaves. The relation which subsists between any two sets in the series expresses the idea of the Creator, and this must be constant. Completing the series as indicated by different plants, we may assume that if any term is apparently wanting, it is only because it has not been discovered. In neither of these cases would it be asserted that any physical evolution had taken place—the terms form a series of which each term is equally determined by the operation of a fixed law; and yet it is an operation precisely analogous to that which in the case of animals presents every appearance of a real evolution. Take, for instance, a series of animals, presenting at one period of time the simplest and most rudimentary forms, and at another the most complex and highly organized; we cannot do otherwise than conceive these two extremes as related by intermediate terms, through the operation of some law which holds good throughout the series. The relation subsisting between any two, must be the same as that subsisting between any other two similarly situated, or a departure from that relation which is itself governed by a definite law discoverable from a comparison of two sets of terms. The application of this law is so universal and so rigid that we need not hesitate to interpolate a missing term, and confidently assert that it either does exist or has existed. To deny this principle is to deny the necessity of continuity in reasoning. This continuity of thought is represented in matter by the persistence of generic forms under specific differences. But just as the specific is the generic with certain additions, so the individual is this same generic with still further additions; and these additions, whether considered solely in space, as given in the symbols of physical science, or in time as in the conceptions of intellectual science, must be determined by the same unvarying law. The persistence of the same form furnishes us the means of identifying this relation, while the differences reveal to us the successive steps by which the generic was differentiated into the individual.