The Creator, and what we may know of the method of creation

by W. H. Dallinger

The researches of science, then, are physical. The observable, finite contents of space and time are the subjects of its analysis. Existence, not the cause of existence, succession, not the reason of succession, method, not the origin of method, are the subjects of physical research. A primordial cause cannot be the subject of experiment nor the object of demonstration. It must for ever transcend the most delicate physical reaction, the profoundest analysis, and the last link in the keenest logic. Absolute knowledge concerning it can only be the prerogative of itself.

But human reason is not only, and wholly, concerned with the brilliant records of physical enquiry: it is conscious of powers within itself that transcend and elude all the processes of physics, and the analyses of mathematics. The activities of the mind are not exhausted, the demands of the mind are not met, the persistent questions of reason are not answered, by all the processes, all the products, and all the possibilities of physical research combined.

Science refuses absolutely to recognise mind as the primal cause of the sequences of matter. This is just;—within the strict region of its research; for phenomena, their sequences and classification, are its sole domain. But observe, science, universally, puts force where the reason asks for cause. The forces affecting matter are tacitly assumed to be competent to account for every activity, every sequence, every phenomenon, and all the harmonies of universal being. A nexus for the infinite diversities and harmonies, a basis for all the equilibrium of nature, is found by modern science in force. But force is as absolutely inscrutable as mind. Force can never be known in itself; it is known by its manifestations. It is not a phenomenon; it produces phenomena. We cannot know it; but we know nothing without it.

Then the ultimate analysis of physical science is the relations of force and matter. But force is a subject of knowledge to science only in its manifestations; that is, motion. In irreducible terms, therefore, the final analysis of science is matter as affected by motion. These—matter and motion—are held by many advanced physicists to be the primary elements of all phenomena; the most minute, subtile, and occult reaction, and the most majestic cosmic manifestation are held to be explained by these. Thus the whole cosmos, with its infinite complexities and harmonies, arose in space, and is in space, because of the affections of matter by motion. To search out the motions on which all changes are based, to reduce all the activities of the universe, from the awful movement of a constellation, to the rhythmic swing of an atom; from the origin of mind, and the writing of Faust, to the building of a snow crystal, or the production of a flower, to sheer mechanics—matter affected by motion—is held to be the chief mission of science.

But examine for a moment the nature of the problem. The matter with which analysis is thus finally concerned cannot be matter as we know it. It is the existing properties or qualities of matter that affect us. Matter is hard, it is yellow, it is sweet. Now the very qualities that make matter as we know it are demonstrated by modern science to be but ‘modes of motion;’ matter is hot because the ultimate atoms of it vibrate in a special manner. The yellowness of an object is not in it, but in our percipient faculty. That which is yellow emits certain light vibrations only; these affect the retina in a special manner, and this affection we call the perception of yellowness. It is thus with all the qualities of matter.

Then what can that ‘matter’ be with which the physicist must ultimately and in the beginning deal? When matter is divested of all its qualities, divested in thought of all the ‘modes of motion’ by which it manifests itself to us, what is it? Is it mass, wholly incapable of affecting our senses? Matter sine perceptione? That cannot be a thing, it is an abstraction, and he must be something more than a bold man, who would logically infer an actual factor, corresponding to the abstract conception.

Manifestly, then, physical science and its methods cannot illuminate and explain all the dilating area of space, and flow of time, with which our consciousness and reason are concerned. Shapes and motion, form and number, are not data that can carry us to the origin of the universe. You must import an unacknowledged factor. Force stands ready: if you endow it, in imagination equipped in the uniform of science, with the very qualities of mind, no doubt you may cross the boundary of experimental science, and see in matter affected by motion the possibility of all that is. But, says Professor Huxley, ‘Kraft und Stoff—force and matter—are paraded as the Alpha and Omega of existence. This, I apprehend, is the fundamental article of the faith materialistic, and whosoever does not hold it is condemned by the more zealous of the persuasion (as I have some reason to know) to the Inferno appointed for fools and hypocrites. But all this,’ he continues, ‘I heartily disbelieve; and ... I will briefly give my reasons for persisting in my infidelity. In the first place, ... it seems to me pretty plain that there is a third thing in the universe, to wit, consciousness, which, in the hardness of my heart or head, I cannot see to be matter, or force, or any conceivable modification of either, however intimately the manifestations of the phenomena of consciousness may be connected with the phenomena known as matter and force. In the second place, the arguments used by Descartes and Berkeley to show that our certain knowledge does not extend beyond our states of consciousness, appear to me to be as irrefragable now as they did when I first became acquainted with them, some half-century ago. All the materialistic writers I know of, who have tried to bite that file, have simply broken their teeth. But if this is true, our one certainty is the existence of the mental world; and that of Kraft und Stoff falls into the rank of, at best, a highly probable hypothesis.’[1]

Look, then, at the striking incongruity. With no explanation of matter without qualities; with no indication of how motion could arise and become rhythmic and infinitely harmonious; with the distinct knowledge that, when the physicist wants to demonstrate matter, he is compelled to do it in terms of motion; and, when he would prove the presence of motion, he can only do it in terms of matter; with all these fetters to our mental movement, and clouds before our eyes, it is argued that, by carrying the discoverable and apparently self-acting affections of matter by motion far enough back, we can explain the origin and structure of the universe.

I would repeat, that in such a mental effort, it is vain to seek logical aid from the employment of the word ‘force.’ We have seen that the only scientific idea of force we can ever have, is motion. Motion is the result of ever-varying relations, borne to each other by matter, space, and time. At a given instant a body is here; in a measurable interval after, it is not here, but yonder. ‘Motion’ carries with it no occult constructive power. It is change of place, and no more.

Is it not inevitable, then, that the mind should refuse its sanction to the claim, that ‘the problem of the universe’ is solved by these feeble factors? ‘If I were forced,’ writes Professor Huxley, ‘to choose between Materialism and Idealism, I should elect for the latter;’[2] and truly, if our choice must be between them, this is the normal alternative.