Part 2 (1/2)

12. And this is true both as regards physical and moral effects.

13. Our intuitions, as the final arbiters of judgment, demand this or some equivalent order as the only one embraced in a logical praxis.

And since there can be no sound without an ear to appreciate it, so there be can no matter without an existing _ego_, in some state of consciousness in the universe, to apprehend it--to ascribe to it attributes.[2] On what, therefore, are we to predicate the existence of either matter or motion, except it be these intuitions of consciousness whose validity, so far as we have any knowledge whatever on the subject, rests exclusively on that ”breath of life,” which was breathed into man when he became a living soul? But if our intuitions are not realities, then nothing is a reality.

All is as unsubstantial, as vague and shadowy, as Coleridge's ”image of a rock,” or Bishop Berkeley's ”ghost of a departed quant.i.ty,” as he once defined a fluxion. We may, therefore, retort upon Professor Bastian:--The ”materialists,” must give up their last stronghold--we cannot even grant them a right to a.s.sume the existence of either matter or motion, since both manifestly depend, for their slightest manifestation, upon the more potent agency of ”vital force,” as expressed in thought, volition, and consciousness--that triumvirate of the intellectual faculties without which neither matter nor motion could have so much as a hypothetical existence.

The great trouble with Professor Bastian, as with Mr. Herbert Spencer, is that he advances a purely materialistic hypothesis, and then goes to work, with his quant.i.tative and conditional restrictions, to eliminate all vital force from the universe. As he has been no more successful in finding G.o.d--the Infinite source of all life--at the point of his dissecting-knife, than has the speculative chemist at the bottom of his crucible, or Mr. Spencer at the top of his ladder of synthesis, he resolutely grapples with logic, as a last resort, and as remorselessly syllogizes G.o.d out of the universe as he would a mythological demon infecting the atmosphere of his dissecting-room. In the same way, he successfully syllogizes all life out of existence: although, in the very act of constructing his syllogism, he demonstrates its existence as conclusively as that matter and motion are objective realities in the world of mind and matter which is about him. He fails to see, however, that the thing which demonstrates must necessarily precede the thing demonstrated, as life must necessarily precede its manifestation. In admitting the existence of ”vital manifestation,” therefore, he virtually admits an antecedent vital principle, lying back of an effect as a cause, which must exclude anything like a contradictory judgment, so long as the laws of the human mind, in respect to logical antecedents and consequents, remain as they are.

Whatever may be the alleged inaccuracies of the Bible Genesis or the disputes heretofore indulged in respecting the _Hagiographa_, or ”sacred writings” of the Jews, it will hardly be denied by the Biblical scholar that some of the most important discoveries in modern science, especially in the direction of astronomy, as well as in geological research and inquiry, confirm rather than throw doubt upon their more explicit utterances. This has been so marked a feature in the controversy, that whenever scientific speculation has thrown down any fresh gage of battle, as against the validity of these ”sacred writings,” the advocates of the latter have only had to take it up to dispel the mists of controversy and achieve a more conclusive triumph than ever. For the truth of this statement it is only necessary for us to instance a few of the more important facts contained in the Bible Genesis. And should it be found that the writer of this volume has discovered, in a long overlooked, much neglected, and inaccurately translated pa.s.sage of this Genesis, a key that unlocks the whole ”mystery of life,” as the great battle is now waging between the materialists and vitalists of this country and Europe, it will most conclusively establish the point we shall here make--that in no equally limited compa.s.s, in ancient or modern ma.n.u.script or published volume, since the first dawn of letters to the present time, are there to be found so many conclusively established facts of genuine scientific value as in the first chapter of Genesis.

In dispelling the mists of prejudice, and possibly of doubtful translation, let us look this ”genesis” squarely in the face:--

1. Take the statement that ”in the beginning” the earth was without form and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led Laplace to construct his ”Nebular Hypothesis,” or that magnificent system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all s.p.a.ce, and hence ”without form and void,” but which subsequently became aggregated by gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in s.p.a.ce.

2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important suggestive statement that ”the spirit of G.o.d”--the great formative force of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define ”gravitation”--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused matter in s.p.a.ce--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the universe from ”the spirit of G.o.d,”--that spirit which was breathed into man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, ”upholds the order of the heavens,” then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis, and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.

3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that G.o.d set two great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to rule the night; and that ”he made the stars also.” For it is nowhere stated that the ”greater light” was not made to perform a similar office for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as ”bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars,” adorns our own.

4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been ”guessed at,” setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of this most remarkable genesis.

5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature, either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, ”after his kind,”

and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence in any such sense as the ”scientific genesis,” pretentiously so called, would authoritatively indicate. No ”increase in variety,” which Mr.

Spencer regards as the ”essential characteristic of all progress,” will ever enable us ”to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles.”

6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible theory herein advanced, that ”the germs of all living things, man only excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the earth,” and that they severally make their appearance whenever the necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal organisms. All these come from ”the earth wherein there is life,” and hence the divine command for the earth ”to bring forth” every living thing (except man) ”after his kind.”

But let us embrace, in the proper ant.i.thetical summary of statements, some of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and that of materialistic science:--

THE BIBLE GENESIS.

1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a G.o.d, or an Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as _perfect_ of its kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or ”germs,”

declared to be in themselves upon the earth.

3. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as causing to grow, out of the ground, every tree that is ”pleasant to the sight and good for food,” also every plant of the field ”before it was in the earth,” and every herb of the field ”before it grew.”

4. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as causing the waters of the earth to bring forth abundantly great whales and every living creature that moveth therein, and every winged fowl that flieth above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

5. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as causing the earth to bring forth every living creature ”after his kind,” enumerating them in the order in which they appear in geological distribution.

6. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as making man in his own image, after he had commanded the waters and the earth to bring forth abundantly of every other living creature.

7. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as breathing into man ”the breath of life,” and he became a ”living soul,”

8. The Bible Genesis represents G.o.d as creating the earth for the abode of man--giving him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, and of every living thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth.

9. The Bible genesis represents G.o.d as exercising a moral government over man, to the exclusion of every other living creature.