[107]. Mr. Keightley’s meaning (and it is difficult for the words to bear any other interpretation) was that the denial of harmony is evidence that, at some previous time, the man who denies has set himself in opposition to the law, in virtue of those very desires and instincts of his animal personality to which Mr. Beatty alludes later on. In this sense, Mr. Beatty is right in saying that a law of the universe cannot be broken; but its limits may be transgressed, and consequently an attempt made by man to make himself into a small, but rival universe. It is the old story of the china pot and the iron kettle, and the fact that china gets the worst of it is conclusive that the china is struggling against Nature.
[108]. Will Mr. Beatty explain the phenomenon of a comet flirting its tail round the sun in defiance of the “law of gravitation”?
[109]. Very little doubt that it does. Mankind is only very gradually developing its fifth sense on the intellectual plane. Intuition might have carried our critic over the difficulty, but in some parts of his criticism he seems hardly to have begun to evolute the intellectual sense.
[110]. “This Karma,” as Mr. Beatty expresses it, would not be quite so bewildering a subject if critics would bear in mind the context and not fall foul of a detached expression—not even a sentence. The “interest of the soul’s welfare in heaven” is concentrated by John Smith on John Smith as John Smith in heaven, and in order that the said John Smith may go on enjoying the things he loved on earth. As his earth life has ended, John Smith has changed and is “transient.” If he were not transient a very natural inference would follow, that progress, evolution, &c., on whatever plane of being does not prevail.
[111]. Mr. Beatty hardly maintains his position of consistent materialism here; and it is at least as vainglorious to deny as to assert.
[112]. Man has the “animal” in him of course, but he has also the power of judgment or discrimination. Mr. Beatty’s wish to be critically pessimistic seems here to run away with his power of discrimination.
[113]. No law of Nature can be set aside, but a man transgresses a law of his [mental] being when he deliberately places himself under the sway of certain “evil” forces. The gist of Mr. Beatty’s criticism is not quite evident here.
[114]. The phenomenal contrast is not denied, but it is representative of no fundamental want of harmony. In the same way the contrast of Subject and Object is essential to our present finite consciousness, although it has no basis of reality beyond the limits of conditional being. Moreover, even in this phenomenal Universe, equilibrium (harmony) is most certainly maintained by the very conflict of the contrasted forces alluded to.
[115]. Mr. Beatty asks how the Universe would come to a stand-still, if the law of Harmony was suspended. Now suppose, for instance, the law of “gravity” was not counterbalanced by the action of other “forces,” what would happen? Science assures us that everything would have long before gravitated to a common centre, and a universal dead-lock have ensued! Vice versa, if “gravity” were to lapse. Verb. Sap.
[116]. Yet, unless metaphysical speculation comes to the rescue of the new philosophy, and, completing, explains it on the old Vedantic lines, the “circle,” instead of being a “self-sustaining” one, is more than likely to become a—“vicious circle.”—Ed.