12. (Creation.)—Acknowledging a Divine Mind which is the foundation and support of the world as it is, constituting and upholding its laws, it may be asked, Does this view point to a beginning of the world? Was there a time when the Divine Mind called into being the world, before non-existent? Was there a Creation of the world?
I do not think that an answer to this question, given either way, affects the argument which I have been urging. The Laws of the Universe discoverable by the human mind, are the Laws of the Divine Mind, whether or not there was a time when these Laws first came into operation, or first produced the world which we see. The argument respecting the nature of the Divine Mind is the same, whether or not we suppose a Creation.
But, in point of fact, every part of our knowledge of the Universe does seem to point to a beginning. Every part of the world has been, so far as we can see, formed by natural causes out of something different from what it now is. The Earth, with its lands and seas, teeming with innumerable forms of living things, has been produced from an earth formed of other lands and seas, occupied with quite different forms of life: and if we go far enough back, from an earth in which there was no life. The stars which we call fixed move and change; the nebulæ in their shape show that they too are moving and changing. The Earth was, some at least hold, produced by the condensation of a nebula. The history of man, as well as of others of its inhabitants, points to a beginning. Languages, Arts, Governments, Histories, all seem to have begun from a starting-point, however remote. Indeed not only a beginning, but a beginning at no remote period, appears to be indicated by most of the sciences which carry us backwards in the world's history.
But we must allow, on the other hand, that though all such lines of research point towards a beginning, none of them can be followed up to a beginning. All the lines converge, but all melt away before they reach the point of convergence. As I have elsewhere said[320], in no science has man been able to arrive at a beginning which is homogeneous with the known course of events, though we can often go very far back, and limit the hypotheses respecting the origin. We have, in the impossibility of thus coming to any conclusion by natural reason on the subject of creation, another evidence of the infinitely limited nature of the human mind, when compared with the Creative or Constitutive Divine Mind.
13. (End of the World.)—But if our natural reason, aided by all that science can teach, can tell us nothing respecting the origin and beginning of this world, still less can reason tell us anything with regard to the End of this world. On this subject, the natural sciences are even more barren of instruction than on the subject of Creation. Yet we may say that as the Constitution of the Universe, and its conformity to a Collection of eternal and immutable Ideas as its elements, are not inconsistent with the supposition of a Beginning of the present course of the world, so neither are they inconsistent with the supposition of an End. Indeed it would not be at all impossible that physical inquiries should present the prospect of an End, even more clearly than they afford the retrospect of a Beginning. If, for instance, it should be found that the planets move in a resisting medium which constantly retards their velocity, and must finally make them fall in upon the central sun, there would be an end of the earth as to its present state. We cannot therefore, on the grounds of Science, deny either a Beginning or an End of the present world.
14. But here another order of considerations comes into play, namely, those derived from moral and theological views of the world. On these we must, in conclusion, say a few words.
It is very plain that these considerations may lead us to believe in a view of the Beginning, Middle, and End of the history of the world, very different from anything which the mere physical and natural sciences can disclose to us. And these expressions to which I have been led, the Beginning, the Middle, and the End of the world's history according to theological views, are full of suggestions of the highest interest. But the interest which belongs to these suggestions is of a solemn and peculiar kind; and the considerations to which such suggestions point are better, I think, kept apart from such speculations as those with which I have been concerned in the present volume.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Analogies of Physical and Religious Philosophy.
1. ANY assertion of analogy between physical and religious philosophy will very properly be looked upon with great jealousy as likely to be forced and delusive; and it is only in its most general aspects that a sound philosophy on the two subjects can offer any points of resemblance. But in some of its general conditions the discovery of truth in the one field of knowledge and in the other may offer certain analogies, as well as differences, which it may be instructive to notice; and to some such aspects of our philosophy I shall venture to refer.