14. Admitting the view thus presented, we may again discern a remarkable analogy between what we have called our physical Ideas (those of Space, Time, Cause, Substance, and the like), and our moral Ideas, (those of Benevolence, Justice, &c.). In both classes we must suppose that our human Ideas represent, though very incompletely and at an immeasurable distance, the Divine Ideas. Even our physical Ideas, when pursued to their consequences, are involved in a perplexity and confusion from which the Divine Ideas are free. Our Ideas of Benevolence and Justice are still more full of imperfections and inconsistency, when we would frame them into a complete scheme, and yet from such imperfections and inconsistency we must suppose that the Divine Benevolence and Justice are exempt. Our physical Ideas we find in every case exactly exemplified and realized in the universe, and we account for this by considering that they are the Divine Ideas, on which the universe is constituted. Our moral Ideas, the Ideas of Benevolence and Justice in particular, must also be realized in the universe, as a scheme of Divine Government. But they are not realized in the world as constituted of man living this present life. The Divine Scheme of the world, therefore, extends beyond this present life of man. If we could include in our survey the future life as well as the present life of man, and the future course of the Divine Government, we should have a scheme of the Moral Government of the universe, in which the Ideas of Perfect Benevolence and Perfect Justice are as completely and universally exemplified and realized, as the Ideas of Space, Time, Cause, Substance, and the like, are in the physical universe.
15. There is one other remark bearing upon this analogy, which seems to deserve our attention. As I have said in the last chapter, the scheme of the world, as governed by our physical Ideas, seems to point to a Beginning of the world, or at least of the present course of the world: and if we suppose a Beginning, our thoughts naturally turn to an End. But if our physical Ideas point to a Beginning and suggest an End, do our Ideas of Divine Benevolence and Justice in any way lend themselves to this suggestion?—Perhaps we might venture to say that in some degree they do, even to the eye of a mere philosophical reason. Perhaps our reason alone might suggest that there is a progression in the human race, in various moral attributes—in art, in civilization, and even in humanity and in justice, which implies a beginning. And that at any rate there is nothing inconsistent with our Idea of the Divine Government in the supposition that the history of this world has a Beginning, a Middle and an End.
16. If therefore there should be conveyed to us by some channel especially appropriated to the communication and development of moral and religious Ideas, the knowledge that the world, as a scheme of Divine Government, has a Beginning, a Middle, and an End, of a Kind, or at least, invested with circumstances quite different from any which our physical Ideas can disclose to us, there would be, in such a belief, nothing at all inconsistent with the analogies which our philosophy—the philosophy of our Ideas illustrated by the whole progress of science—has impressed upon us. On the grounds of this philosophy, we need find no difficulty in believing that as the visible universe exhibits the operation of the Divine Ideas of Space, Time, Cause, Substance, and the like, and discloses to us traces of a Beginning of the present mode of operation, so the moral universe exhibits to us the operation of the Divine Benevolence and Justice; and that these Divine attributes wrought in a special and peculiar manner in the Beginning; interposed in a peculiar and special manner in the Middle; and will again act in a peculiar and special manner in the End of the world. And thus the conditions of the physical universe, and the Government of the Moral world, are both, though in different ways, a part of the work which God is carrying on from the Beginning of things to the End—opus quod Deus operator a principio usque ad finem.
17. We are led by such analogies as I have been adducing to believe that the whole course of events in which the minds and souls of men survive the present life, and are hereafter subjected to the Divine government in such a way as to complete all that is here deficient in the world's history, is a scheme of perfect Benevolence and Justice. Now, can we discern in man's mind or soul itself any indication of a destiny like this? Are there in us any powers and faculties which seem as if they were destined to immortality? If there be, we have in such faculties a strong confirmation of that belief in the future life of man which has already been suggested to us as necessary to render the Divine government conceivable.
18. According to our philosophy there are powers and faculties which do thus seem fitted to endure, and not fitted to terminate and be extinguished. The Ideas which we have in our minds—the physical Ideas, as we have called them, according to which the universe is constituted,—agree, as far as they go, with the Ideas of the Divine Mind, seen in the constitution of the universe. But these Divine Ideas are eternal and imperishable: we therefore naturally conclude that the human mind which includes such elements, is also eternal and imperishable. Since the mind can take hold of eternal truths, it must be itself eternal. Since it is, to a certain extent, the image of God in its faculties, it cannot ever cease to be the image of God. When it has arrived at a stage in which it sees several aspects of the universe in the same form in which they present themselves to the Divine Mind, we cannot suppose that the Author of the human mind will allow it and all its intellectual light to be extinguished.
19. And our conviction that this extinction of the human mind cannot take place becomes stronger still, when we consider that the mind, however imperfect and scanty its discernment of truth may be, is still capable of a vast, and even of an unlimited progress in the pursuit and apprehension of truth. The mind is capable of accepting and appropriating, through the action of its own Ideas, every step in science which has ever been made—every step which shall hereafter be made. Can we suppose that this vast and boundless capacity exists for a few years only, is unfolded only into a few of its simplest consequences, and is then consigned to annihilation? Can we suppose that the wonderful powers which carry man on, generation by generation, from the contemplation of one great and striking truth to another, are buried with each generation? May we not rather suppose that that mind, which is capable of indefinite progression, is allowed to exist in an infinite duration, during which such progression may take place?
20. I propose this argument as a ground of hope and satisfactory reflexion to those who love to dwell on the natural arguments for the Immortality of the Soul. I do not attempt to follow it into detail. I know too well how little such a cause can gain by obstinate and complicated argumentation, to attempt to urge the argument in that manner: and probably different persons, among those who accept the argument as valid, would give different answers to many questions of detail, which naturally arise out of the acceptance of this argument. I will not here attempt to solve, or even to propound these questions. My main purpose in offering these views and this argument at all, is to give some satisfaction to those who would think it a sad and blank result of this long survey of the nature and progress of science in which we have been so long engaged (through this series of works), that it should in no way lead to a recognition of the Author of that world about which our Science is, and to the high and consolatory hopes which lift man beyond this world. No survey of the universe can be at all satisfactory to thoughtful men, which has not a theological bearing; nor can any view of man's powers and means of knowing be congenial to such men, which does not recognize an infinite destination for the mind which has an infinite capacity; an eternal being of the Faculty which can take a steady hold of eternal being.
21. And as we may derive such a conviction from our physical Ideas, so too may we no less from our moral Ideas. Our minds apprehend Space and Time and Force and the like, as Ideas which are not dependent on the body; and hence we believe that our minds shall not perish with our bodies. And in the same manner our souls conceive pure Benevolence and perfect Justice, which go beyond the conditions of this mortal life; and hence we believe that our souls have to do with a life beyond this mortal life.
It is more difficult to speak of man's indefinite moral progression even than of his indefinite intellectual progression. Yet in every path of moral speculation we have such a progression suggested to us. We may begin, for instance, with the ordinary feelings and affections of our daily nature:—Love, Hate, Scorn. But when we would elevate the Soul in our imagination, we ascend above these ordinary affections, and take the repulsive and hostile ones as fitted only to balance their own influences. And thus the poet, speaking of a morally poetical nature, describes it:
The Poet in a golden clime was born,